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return no one knew where he had been. His abrupt departure upset me like an illness; I went around absent-mindedly, restlessly, nervously for those two days. Suddenly my studies seemed pointlessly empty without his familiar presence, I was consumed by vague and jealous suspicions, indeed I felt something like hatred and anger for his reserve, the way he excluded me so utterly from his real life, leaving me out in the cold like a beggar when I so ardently wished to be close to him. In vain did I tell myself that as a boy, a mere student, I had no right to demand explanations and ask him to account for himself, when he was already kind enough to give me a hundred times more of his confidence than his duty as a university teacher required. But reason had no power over my ardent passion—ten times a day, foolish boy that I was, I asked whether he was back yet, until I began to sense bitterness in his wife’s increasingly brusque negatives. I lay awake half the night and listened for his homecoming step, and in the morning I lurked restlessly close to his door, no longer daring to ask. And when at last and unexpectedly he entered my room on the third day I gasped—my surprise must have been excessive, or so at least I saw from its reflection in the embarrassed displeasure with which he asked a few hasty, trivial questions. His glance avoided mine. For the first time our conversation went awkwardly, one comment stumbling over another, and while we both carefully avoided any reference to his absence, the very fact that we were ignoring it prevented any open discussion. When he left me my curiosity flared up like a fire—it came to devour my sleeping and waking hours.

My efforts to find elucidation and deeper understanding lasted for weeks—I kept obstinately making my way towards the fiery core I thought I felt volcanically active beneath that rocky silence. At last, in a fortunate hour, I succeeded in making my first incursion into his inner world. I had been sitting in his study once again until twilight fell, as he took several Shakespearean sonnets out of a locked drawer and read those brief verses, lines that might have been cast in bronze, first in his own translation, then casting such a magical light on their apparently impenetrable cipher that amidst my own delight I felt regret that everything this ardent spirit could give was to be lost in the transience of the spoken word. And suddenly—where I got it from I do not know—I found the courage to ask why he had never finished his great work on The History of the Globe Theatre . But no sooner had I ventured on the question than I realized, with horror, that I had inadvertently and roughly touched upon a secret, obviously painful wound. He rose, turned away, and said nothing for some time. The room seemed suddenly too full of twilight and silence. At last he came towards me, looked at me gravely, his lips quivering several times before they opened slightly, and then painfully made his admission: “I can’t tackle a major work. That’s over now—only the young make such bold plans. I have no stamina these days. Oh, why hide it? I’ve become capable only of brief pieces; I can’t see anything longer through. Once I had more strength, but now it’s gone. I can only talk—then it sometimes carries me away, something takes me out of myself. But I can’t work sitting still, always alone, always alone.”
    His resignation shattered me. And in my fervent conviction I urged him to reconsider, to record in writing all that he so generously scattered before us daily, not just giving it all away but putting his own thoughts into constructive form. “I can’t write now,” he repeated wearily, “I can’t concentrate enough.” “Then dictate it!” I cried, and carried away by this idea I urged, almost begged him: “Dictate it to me. Just try! Perhaps only the beginning—and then you