Hope (Lu)
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My heart is extraordinarily lonely.
But my heart is very tranquil, void of love and hate, joy and sadness, colour and sound.
I am probably growing old. Is it not a fact that my hair is turning white? Is it not a fact that my hands are trembling? Then the hands of my spirit must also be trembling. The hair of my spirit must also be turning white.
But this has been the case for many years.
Before that my heart once overflowed with sanguinary songs, blood and iron, fire and poison, resurgence and revenge. Then suddenly my heart became empty, except when I sometimes deliberately filled it with vain, self-deluding hope. Hope, hope — I took this shield of hope. to withstand the invasion of the dark night in the emptiness, although behind this shield there was still dark night and emptiness. But even so I slowly wasted my youth.
I knew, of course, that my youth had departed. But I thought that the youth outside me still existed: stars and moonlight, limp fallen butterflies, flowers in the darkness, the funereal omens of the owl, the weeping with blood of the nightingale, the vagueness of laughter, the dance of love… . Although it might be a youth of sadness and uncertainty, it was still youth.
But why is it now so lonely? Is it because even the youth outside me has departed, and the young people of the world have all grown old? I have to grapple alone with the dark night in the emptiness. I put down the shield of hope, hearing the Song of Hope by Petöfi Sándor (1823-49):
"What is hope? A prostitute! Alluring to all, she gives herself to all, Until you have sacrificed a priceless treasure — Your youth — then she forsakes you."
It is already seventy-five years since this great lyric poet and Hungarian patriot died for his fatherland on the spears of the Cossacks. Sad though his death, it is even sadder that his poetry has not yet died. But — so wretched is life — even a man as daring and resolute as Petöfi had in the end to halt before the dark night and gaze back towards the distant Orient.
"Despair, like hope," he said, “is but vanity.”
If I must still live in this vanity which is neither light nor darkness, then I would seek the youth of sadness. and uncertainty which has departed, even though it is outside me. For once the youth outside me vanishes, my own old age will also wither away.
But now there are neither stars nor moonlight, no limp fallen butterflies, no vagueness of laughter, no dance of love. The young people are very peaceful.
So I have to grapple alone with the dark night in the emptiness. Even if I cannot find the youth outside me, I would at least have a last fling in my own old age. But where is the dark night? Now there are neither stars nor moonlight, no vagueness of laughter, no dance of love. The young people are very peaceful, and before me there is not even a real dark night.
Despair, like hope, is but vanity.
New Year's Day, 1925
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