Take
a
thorough rest,
sweetheart,
you
can
do enough wonderful
studying with
your
Johonnesl later
on.
But
now
rest
and
enjoy
your
carefree life.
Papa has
now
also written
me a
sermonizing letter for the time
being, but he promised
me
that the main thing will follow orally,
to
which
I
am
most
dutifully looking forward
to.
I
can
understand
my
old
folks
quite
well.
They consider
a
wife
as
the man's luxury, which he
can
only allow
himself
once
he
makes
a
comfortable living. However, I
have
a
very
low
opinion
of such
an
attitude toward the
relationship
between
man
and
woman
because
according
to
it,
a
wife and
a
whore
differ only insofar
as
the former is able
to extort
a
contract
for
life from the husband, due
to
her
more
favorable life circumstances.
Such
a
view is
the natural
consequence
of the fact
that with
my
parents,
as
with most people, the
senses
exert
a
direct mastery
over
the feelings, while with
us,
by virtue of the
happy
circumstances
under which
we are
living,
the
enjoyment
of life is
infinitely
broadened. But
we
must not
forget
how
many
existences of
the
first
kind it takes to make this
possible
for
us;
because in the social
evolution of humankind the former
are
a
far
more
important
constituent.
Hunger and love
are
and remain such important
mainsprings
of
life
that
almost
everything
can
be
explained
by them,
neglecting
the other leitmotifs. I
am
therefore
trying
to
spare my
parents,
without
giving
up
anything
I consider
to
be
good
-
and that
is
you, my
dear sweetheart!
If
you
haven't yet told anything to
your
family, don't do it! I
think that this is better for all parties concerned. Otherwise they
might start
having
the
same
unnecessary
worries
and
qualms
as
my
family.
But after
all,
you
are
wise
and know them, and know better
what
you
have
to
do.
When I do not have
you,
I feel
as
if
I
were
not whole. When I
am
sitting,
I would like
to
walk; when
I
am
walking,
I look forward to
being
at
home,
when I
amuse
myself,
I would like to study, and when I
am
studying, I feel
a
lack of contemplativeness and
repose
&
when I
go
to
bed,
I
am
not satisfied with how
I
passed the
day.
Be
cheerful, dear
sweetheart.
Kissing
you
tenderly,
your
Albert
71.
TO
MILEVA MARIC
Zurich
Thursday [9?
August
1900]
My
dear sweetheart!
You
are
surprised,
aren't
you,
that I have
popped
up
here
again!
But
I
am
using
the
first possible
excuse
to get out from the
boring
environment,
even
though
my
mother made it her duty
to
observe the
deepest silence about the "affair." She behaved
as
if nothing had
happened, handed
me
your
letters in
person,
did
not
notice when I
was
writing
to
you
-
to
put it briefly,
she
gave up
the
open
battle
&
probably
will only
fire off the
philistine
cannons
jointly
with
Papa.
The latter promised
me
in
his last letter that he will visit Venice
with
me,
because
our
power
plants
are
not far from there. I would
also
like to
get
initiated
a
little into administration
so
that I
could take
Papa's
place in
case
of
emergency.
He too does
not
mention
you any
longer.
I would have done better, sweetheart, had
we
kept
144
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