Hermann Sudermann

“ The world went its way, calmly, gaily, busily, as if nothing had occurred, as if no lost happiness were tossing about on the sea of life, disappearing farther and farther in the distance; as if no human being had been thrown into a corner to crouch there and stare at the ground helplessly with dimmed eyes.
Mrs. Laue was pasting pressed flowers; the fried potatoes were sizzling in fat, the lamp in the hall was smoking, and the poor people's odour greeted all who entered its realm.
Lilly did not cry her heart out of her body as when she had been expelled from Lischnitz ”

“ All of them were noble and good, sparkling with merry wit, full of eagerness to do little friendly services; golden souls, each awaking a new hope and bringing a new delight.
She felt her cheeks flaming, her eyes shining, with the intoxication of the hour. And now and then she would see, as if reflected in a mirror, a response to her own happiness in the eyes she looked into. This was no longer a strange Lilly, an animated puppet, but it was herself, the real Lilly, who laughed and made bright repartees as she romped and passed from arm to arm, feeling regret at each transition. ”

“ As he glanced sideways at Lilly, there was such a droll, wicked twinkle playing under the light lashes that she burst into a fit of light laughter. He joined in with his dear old noiseless giggle that shook him like an earthquake. So they stood still and both laughed till they cried; and Lilly forgot all about her exalted duties as chatelaine and her mission of salvation. Then, instinctively, their footsteps turned together into the most deserted and overgrown part of the park, where its bounds were lost in a dense thicket of birches. It grew darker at every step. ”

“ The old, slumbering desire for Italy began to beat its wings again in Lilly's breast.
"Yes," she cried with the same enthusiasm as he, "isn't it so? There all ideas grow, and you feel what you can do, and you become what you wanted to be from the first. Isn't it so? I've never been there, but I feel what I say strongly. There, in the home of everything great and beautiful, you yourself become greater and more beautiful—and—everything—sordid passes away. Isn't it so?"
He listened dumbfounded, and embraced her with a beaming gaze. ”

“ Grey dawn pierced the chinks of the library shutters. Lilly jumped out of bed and threw up the window. The street looked like a big bowl of milk, the mist of early autumn rose so densely from the ground. The damp soft vapour cooled her burning cheeks, and she held out her arms as if bathing in it. Her thin summer dress, which she had washed and ironed with her own hands the night before, hung on the whitewashed wall like a blue cloud. She had never made herself so smart as she did to-day; for a picnic so fraught with fate she must be worthily adorned. ”

“ A game of hide-and-seek with herself, a long-drawn draught from an unfailing fount of expectancy, anticipation, delicious aftertaste and joyous recollections. Each day brought new pleasures and untold wealth.
Sometimes when Lilly threw open the shutters in the morning and the fresh red September air flowed in over her she felt as if God had spread a mantle of sunny gold over the heavens to wrap both of them in, so snug and close that the whole world disappeared, leaving no one but themselves behind, pressed against each other in laughter and drunk with all that light. ”

“ Exciting tales would be told of their own adventures, in which, amid blithe sinning, marital fidelity asserted its modest worth.
The afternoon would decline pale and perspiring as a fever patient. A hot breeze would blow in through the window. The varnish of the rosewood furniture would reek, the walls of the houses opposite would shine as if polished with wax, and Mrs. Laue, munching her cheese cake, would again repeat the tale of her stale virtues.
When at last she took leave Lilly would groan and sink on her bed, burying her face in the close-smelling pillows. ”

“ Lilly saw as little of the riot of blossom out of doors, the white foam of the cherry-trees, the red glory of the hawthorn, as she had done when she swept the golden dust that sprang from Frau Asmussen's bookcases. Frau Laue did not care to take walks and expose herself to temptation. For to see a park and not collect plants, a garden gate, and not thrust your hand through it to pick flowers, was to her an altogether inconceivable act of self-restraint. Lilly would not go out without her, for she dreaded being alone in a crowd. ”

“ Often their eyes would meet and linger with a soft yearning smile in them as if that were the most eloquent language in which they could talk to each other. And often Konrad's thoughts went their own way, returning to Lilly only under compulsion. She would then grow melancholy and jealous, and insist on leaving.
She would not feel thoroughly content until he lay comfortably in her arm, on her heart.
The walls were permeated with the day's heat; the curtains threatened suffocation; a veritable sirocco blew through the cracks of the shutters. But Lilly and Konrad suffered no discomfort. ”

“ This horror often came upon Lilly so powerfully that she had to run out of doors, no matter where—out into the world, into the arms of life.
Before an hour had elapsed she was back again. The streets frightened her. The painted prostitutes who brushed her shoulders, the young fellows hunting for game who trotted behind her, the unconcerned brazenness with which each and every one elbowed his way—all this filled her with apprehension and made a coward of her.
A dim feeling told her she would never again be equal to that lusty independence which takes pleasure in fight. ”

“ There was a half-ruined chapel in a tropical forest, on the high altar of which a herd of monkeys were gambolling; in a monotonous desert background a group of stubborn-eyed camels drew round the dead body of a lion, sniffing it; best of all was the nude figure of a woman loaded with chains, her white limbs shining out in relief from a rugged barren rock, and round her head swooping a horde of red-eyed vultures. There was much else that showed restrained strength and wealth of imagination; but the woman in chains remained Lilly's favourite. ”

“ Always the same pleasures, the same faces, the same aimless drifting from place to place until dawn.
Sometimes she felt so weary—as if after a day's hard labour.
Sometimes, too, she went on strike, and remained in bed reading the Fliegende Blätter, or dreaming of old times with closed eyes.
Mrs. Asmussen's sunless hole among the books became a paradise, her mush, food for the gods. Lilly's thoughts stepped cautiously about the pictures of her girlhood loves, as if it were a crime to charm them back into being. ”

“ Sometimes when her glance fell on the mirror while she was undressing and she beheld the image of a human being consecrated by beauty, round, slim, with long-lashed, yearning eyes and a mouth ripened by kisses, glad astonishment seized her at the thought: "Is that myself?" And she was overcome by a transport compounded of consciousness of her youth and readiness for love.
The world was there just to press her to its heart. Then even that dingy work-a-day existence became a blessing, because it keyed up her energies to intoxication and flight. ”

“ Yet think and think it over as she did by the hour, nothing could prevent her thoughts travelling back to the wardrobes where her finery reposed, silently offering her an exquisite choice. Nowhere could she find a loophole by which she could evade her promise, nowhere an excuse for the crime of breaking it. In spite of all this wrestling with herself, the night passed in happy dreams, for the sun of hope had risen once more. And, as usual, when Lilly's sleep was refreshing and profound, she felt her senses lapped in familiar melodies. ”

“ Lilly did not awaken to real life until evening came, when the world endeavoured to throw off the heat it had absorbed during the day, when dusty yellow vapours rolled on the turbid water of the canal, and beyond the chestnuts, the leaves of which were already beginning to wither, the red glow of the heavens melted into one with the winking lights of the street lamps. ”

“ And Lilly, for her part, could watch for the intoxicated sensations of that evening to awake in her ever anew. She might under drooping lids see and feel all those young, hot pairs of eyes around her hang burningly on hers, full of hopeless passion and desire; might, accompanied by the sad wail of the violins and the clash of the cymbals, take flight into those Elysian fields whither her road had been barred--she knew not how or why--since her great good fortune had come to her. ”

“ Sometimes spring finds him barren and clogged, like ground that cannot recover from the ravages of winter. And, again, spring carols deceptive songs of liberation and redemption in a man's heart, as if it was in its power to liberate and redeem. But the most beautiful manifestation of spring is when we are scarcely aware of it, because its budding and sprouting is but symbolic of the jubilant stirring of spring within us, the widening and growth of our being spiritually.
Such a spring now dawned for Lilly. ”

“ She landed in Berlin, the harbour for all wastrels and wrecks. In that world where oblivion lays its hands in blessing on the heads of righteous and unrighteous alike; where eternal hopes illumine drab days of depression like firework sparks; where grief for the past is soon changed into an eager expectation of coming happiness; where the great god, Luck, holds sway as lord and master--in that world of the unknown and stranded, where only those who are old and poor together sink hopelessly, into that world crept Lilly on her hands and knees. ”

“ Lilly struggled against sleep.
She saw as through a veil the thin blond hair waving over her mother's forehead in the morning breeze, saw the pointed nose, red with weeping, turn now to the right, now to the left, according to the direction from which a sound came; saw the nightgown fluttering like a white flag, and the lean legs incessantly rubbing against each other in nervous agitation. ”

“ But Lilly was content with the forty or fifty marks a month that her work brought in. Her new craze for lamp-shade making led her on to higher aims. The dried grasses, or grass flowers, as Frau Laue called them, specially took her fancy. Their slender graceful stalks, the delicacy of their veinings, the melancholy charm with which they drooped, reminded her of little forest trees, weeping willows beside brooks, ashes bending over marble tombs, or palms waving yearning fronds on torrid rocks.
She dreamt of starting a new kind of art. ”

“ On Friedrichstrasse the people thronged as in the daytime.
Young men rejoicing in the chase followed close upon the heels of their laughing quarry.
The lamplight shone on the silk stockings of damsels as they tripped along.
"Those who have once been completely submerged in this world," thought Lilly, with a shudder of envy, "no longer trouble themselves with questions of honour and death."
Alas, beyond that brilliant whirl came quiet and darkness again, in whose shelter a person may die as he will. ”