3 5 6 D O C U M E N T 3 5 9 A U G U S T 1 9 2 6 I’m always well. That is, I haven’t been doing well yesterday and today. I am also suffering continually from back pain. I went therefore to the doctor. I hoped it would be a protracted and rare illness. The doctor ruled that out. He said there was absolutely nothing significant. His remarks culminated in the theory that it is an acute muscular rheumatism. I was disappointed. I am of the opinion that pain has justification for existing only if it serves to reveal and make visible some underly- ing thing. A pain whose lifework is only to trumpet its own existence to the world seems common and egotistical to me. Incidentally, I have been very happy since I have my lecture behind me.[3] There is nothing more loathsome to a person than giving a lecture. While I was giving it, I had the great need to stop in the middle and abandon the rest. The lecture was, by the way, quite a success. The students giggled irrepressibly about every silly joke that I served up. In the moving places, they stared with deadly seriousness into the distance. I watched the teacher with particular interest during the lecture. When I said: “It is very, very pleasant to speak about a topic that is not so familiar to the listeners. Then, the danger does not exist that every tiny detail will be rechecked,” he threw me a look like to a dog who just grabbed a piece of bread from someone’s hand. When I stated: “Danton’s Death[4] is hardly appropriate for reading in school. At least one would have to delete roughly three quarters of the drama. Otherwise, everyone could be morally corrupted, and that would be such a shame,” he frowned and turned away. When I remarked about Leonce and Lena[5] : “There are, in fact, individuals who find fault with this play I am one of them,” he looked as if he found that arrogant. When I proclaimed in my pompous locution: “The person whom this marvel (Woyzeck)[6] does not touch to the innermost core is hopeless. One can confidently give up on him,” he looked to me as if the literary marvel had not touched him to his innermost core. He raised objections at the end. He conceded that my jokes were in themselves good. However, he advised me to de- lete them in advance with future lectures, or to save them for a special appendix. I didn’t listen to his chatter.[7] I knew that he has a preference for sentimentality and dignity. I knew that he likes the conventional, the hackneyed, the impersonal. I am currently reading a French book. I am reading it with the help of two dic- tionaries, one very large and one very small. I look up the words first in the small one. I don’t find them there, and I therefore also look them up in the large one. It is rather tedious reading. It even happens that I can’t find the words in the very large dictionary because I’m looking for the wrong stem. The book that I’m reading is