At last he went over to the rickety shelf where my textbooks stood and opened them—one glance must have told him they were untouched, most of their pages still uncut. “Your lecture notes!” This request was the first thing he had said. Trembling, I handed them to him, well knowing that the shorthand notes I had made covered only a single lecture. He looked rapidly through the two pages, and placed the lecture notes on the table without the slightest sign of agitation. Then he pulled up a chair, sat down, looked at me gravely but without any reproach in his eyes, and asked: “Well, what do you think about all this? What now?”

This calm question floored me. Everything in me had been strung up—if he had spoken in anger, I would have let fly arrogantly in return, if he had admonished me emotionally I would have mocked him. But this matter-of-fact question broke the back of my defiance: its gravity called for gravity in return, its forced calm demanded respect and a readiness to respond. What I said I scarcely dare remember, just as the whole conversation that followed is something I cannot write down to this day—there are moments of emotional shock, a kind of swelling tide within, which when retold would probably sound sentimental, certain words which carry conviction only once, in private conversation and arising from an unforeseen turmoil of the feelings. It was the only real conversation I ever had with my father, and I had no qualms about voluntarily humbling myself; I left all the decisions to him. However, he merely suggested that I might like to leave Berlin and spend the next semester studying at a small university elsewhere; he was sure, he said almost comfortingly, that from now on I would work hard to make up for my omissions. His confidence shook me; in that one second I felt all the injustice I had done the old man throughout my youth, enclosed as he was in cold formality. I had to bite my lip hard to keep the hot tears in my eyes from flowing. And he may have felt something similar himself, for he suddenly offered me his hand, which shook as it held mine for a moment, and then made haste to leave. I dared not follow him, but stood there agitated and confused, and wiped the blood from my lip with my handkerchief, so hard had I dug my teeth into it in order to control my feelings.

This was the first real shock that, at the age of nineteen, I experienced—without a word spoken in anger, it overthrew the whole grandiose house of cards I had built during the last three months, a house constructed out of masculinity, student debauchery and bragging. I felt strong enough to give up all lesser pleasures for the act of will demanded of me, I was impatient to turn my wasted abilities to intellectual pursuits, I felt an avid wish for gravity, sobriety, discipline and severity. It was now that I vowed myself entirely to study, as if to a monastic ritual of sacrifice, although unaware of the transports of delight awaiting me in scholarship, and never guessing that adventures and perils lie ready for the impetuous in that rarefied world of the intellect as well.

The small provincial town where, with my father’s approval, I had chosen to spend the next semester was in central Germany. Its far-flung academic renown was in stark contrast to the sparse collection of houses surrounding the university building. I did not have much difficulty in finding my way to my alma mater from the railway station, where I left my luggage for the time being, and as soon as I was inside the university, a spacious building in the old style, I felt how much more quickly the inner circle closed here than in the bustling city of Berlin. Within two hours I had enrolled and visited most of the professors; the only one not immediately available was my professor of English language and literature, but I was told he could be found taking his class at around four in the afternoon.

Driven by impatience, reluctant to waste an hour, as eager now to embark on the pursuit of knowledge as I had once been to avoid it, and after a rapid tour of the little town—which was sunk in narcotic slumber by comparison with Berlin—I turned up at the appointed place punctually at four o’clock. The caretaker directed me to the door of the seminar room. I knocked. And thinking a voice inside had answered, I went in.

However, I had misheard. No one had told me to come in, and the indistinct sound I had caught was only the professor’s voice raised in energetic speech, delivering an obviously impromptu address to a close-packed circle of about two dozen students who had gathered around him. Feeling awkward at entering without permission because of my mistake, I was going to withdraw quietly again, but feared to attract attention by that very course of action, since so far none of the hearers had noticed me. Accordingly I stayed near the door, and could not help listening too.

The lecture had obviously arisen spontaneously out of a colloquium or discussion, or at least that was what the informal and entirely random grouping of teacher and students suggested—the professor was not sitting in a chair which distanced him from his audience as he addressed them, but was perched almost casually on a desk, one leg dangling slightly, and the young people clustered around him in informal positions, perhaps fixed in statuesque immobility only by the interest they felt in hearing him. I could see that they must have been standing around talking when the professor suddenly swung himself up on the desk, and from this more elevated position drew them to him with words as if with a lasso, holding them spellbound where they were. It was only a few minutes before I myself, forgetting that I had not been invited to attend, felt the fascinating power of his delivery working on me like a magnet; involuntarily I came closer, not just to hear him but also to see the remarkably graceful, all-embracing movements of his hands which, when he uttered a word with commanding emphasis, sometimes spread like wings, rising and fluttering in the air, and then gradually sank again harmoniously, with the gesture of an orchestral conductor muting the sound. The lecture became ever more heated as the professor, in his animated discourse, rose rhythmically from the hard surface of desk as if from the back of a galloping horse, his tempestuous train of thought, shot through with lightning images, racing breathlessly on. I had never heard anyone speak with such enthusiasm, so genuinely carrying the listeners away—for the first time I experienced what Latin scholars call a raptus, when one is taken right out of oneself; the words uttered by his quick tongue were spoken not for himself, nor for the others present, but poured out of his mouth like fire from a man inflamed by internal combustion.

I had never before known language as ecstasy, the passion of discourse as an elemental act, and the unexpected shock of it drew me closer. Without knowing that I was moving, hypnotically attracted by a force stronger than curiosity, and with the dragging footsteps of a sleepwalker I made my way as if by magic into that charmed circle—suddenly, without being aware of it, I was there, only a few inches from him and among all the others, who themselves were too spellbound to notice me or anything else.