If we were on the right road, having to leave it would mean endless despair. But we are on a road that only leads to a second one and then to a third one and so forth. And the real highway will not be sighted for a long, long time, perhaps never. So we drift in doubt. But also in unbelievable beautiful diversity. Thus the accomplishment of hopes remains an always unexpected miracle. But in compensation, the miracle remains forever possible.
The other day I wrote down the following wish: 'When passing a house, to be pulled in through the ground-floor window by a rope tied around one's neck and to be hauled up, bloody and ragged, through all the ceilings, furniture, walls, and attics, without consideration, as if by a person who is paying no attention, until the empty noose, dropping the last shreds of me when breaking through the roof tiles, appears on the roof.
You write: "Ano, máš pravdu, mám ho ráda. Ale F., i tebe mám ráda-- Yes, you're right, I love him. But Franz, I love you, too." I'm reading this sentence very carefully, each word, particularly over the "i" ("too") I stop short. Everything is right, you wouldn't be Milena if it weren't right, and where would I be if you didn't exist, and it is also better that you are writing it from Vienna than that you say it in Prague. All this I understand perfectly, perhaps better than you, and yet, out of some weakness, I can't come to terms with the sentence; it's an endless reading and I'm writing it down once more so that you can look at it and we can read it together, temple to temple. (Your hair against my temple.)
It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet.
'Because I have to fast, I can't help it,' said the hunger artist. 'What a fellow you are,' said the overseer, 'and why can't you help it?' 'Because,'said the hunger artist, lifting his head a little and speaking, with his lips pursed, as if for a kiss, right into the overseer's ear, so that no syllable might be lost, 'because I couldn't find the food I liked. If I had found it, believe me, I should have made no fuss and stuffed myself like you or anyone else.'
