Lenz took this all in, he carried things further, began having anxious dreams, and started reading the Apocalypse like Stilling, consulting his Bible at great length.

Around this time Kaufmann arrived in Steintal with his bride-to-be. Lenz was at first uneasy about meeting him, he had carved out such a nice little place for himself, this tiny bit of peace was so precious to him, and now someone was coming his way who reminded him of so much, with whom he had to speak, converse, who knew of his situation. Oberlin knew nothing at all; he had taken him in, cared for him; for him it was the hand of God that had sent this unfortunate creature his way, he loved him dearly. Besides, it was fitting that he be there, he belonged among them as if he had been there forever, and no one asked from where he had come and where he was bound. At table Lenz was again in fine spirits, the talk turned to literature, he was in his element; the era of idealism was just then beginning, Kaufmann was among its adherents, Lenz vehemently disagreed. He said: the writers who were purported to offer up reality had no idea of what it was, even though they were more bearable than those who wanted to transfigure it. He said: the good Lord has without a doubt made the world as it should be and there is no way we can scratch together anything better, our sole goal should be to imitate him in a small way. What I demand in all things is life, the potentiality of existence, and that’s that; we need not then ask whether it be beautiful or ugly, the feeling that whatever’s been created possesses life outweighs these two and should be the sole criterion in matters of art. As it is, we encounter it rarely, we find it in Shakespeare and it rings forth fully in folk songs, now and then in Goethe. Everything else can be tossed into the fire. These people can’t even draw a doghouse. They claim they want idealistic figures, but from what I’ve seen, they’re all just a bunch of wooden puppets. This idealism represents the most disgraceful contempt for human nature. Let them just once try to descend into the life of the humblest person and reproduce all the twitches, all the winks, all the subtle, barely noticed play of facial features; he had tried something of the sort in “The Tutor” and “The Soldiers.” They are the most prosaic people under the sun; but the pulse of feeling courses through nearly everyone, only the sheathings through which it must break are more or less thick. One merely needs the eyes and ears for this. Yesterday as I was walking along above the valley, I saw two girls sitting on a rock, one was putting up her hair, the other helping her; and the golden hair was hanging free, and a pale, solemn face, and yet so young, and the black peasant dress, and the other one so absorbed in her task. The finest, most heartfelt paintings of the Old German School scarcely convey an inkling of this. At times one wishes one were a Medusa’s head in order to turn a group like this into stone and call everybody over to have a look. They stood up, the lovely group was destroyed; but as they made their way down among the rocks, there was yet another tableau. The finest images, the most soaring sounds, group themselves, dissolve. Only one thing remains, an infinite beauty passing from form to form, eternally unfolding, transformed, but of course one cannot always capture it and stick it in museums or set it to music and call everybody over, young and old alike, and have them all prattle on about it, going into raptures. One has to love mankind in order to penetrate into the unique existence of each being, nobody can be too humble, too ugly, only then can you understand them; the most insignificant face makes a deeper impression than the mere sensation of beauty and one can allow the figures to emerge without copying anything into them from the outside where no life, no muscle, no pulse surges or swells. Kaufmann objected that he would find no models of the Apollo Belvedere or a Raphael Madonna in reality. So what, he replied, I have to admit they leave me quite cold, if I work at it within myself, I suppose I may end up feeling something, but I am the one making all the effort. The writers and painters I prefer are those who make nature so utterly real to me that their works move me to feel, everything else is plain annoying. I prefer the Dutch painters to the Italians, they are the only ones who make sense; I know of only two paintings, both Dutch, that have made the same impression on me as the New Testament; one of them, I know not by whom, is Christ and the Disciples at Emmaus. When one reads of how the disciples went forth, all of nature immediately lies within these few words. Shadowy night is falling, a solid red streak on the horizon, the road half in darkness, a stranger approaches, they talk, he breaks bread, in their simple humanity they recognize who he is and the divine suffering in his features speaks to them distinctly, and they grow afraid, for it has gotten dark, and something incomprehensible comes over them but it is not some ghostly dread; it is as if the dear departed one were coming up to you in the twilight just as he used to, and so it is in the painting, with its uniform brownish cast and the shadowy stillness of the evening. Then another one. A woman is sitting in her room, prayer book in hand.