Letters to Willi Schlamm

Letters to Willi Schlamm, 1938
You accused me several times for being less nice to you. From more than one of your words I take that you believe I am less nice because I am "disappointed". Shall I be "awfully open " again? You assume that I love you, that I was trying to win your love, and when I realized that you don't love me, I became "less nice". One of those assumptions is true: I really do love you very much. I don't completely understand it myself - I only know that I love you very much- but the premise of this love was the fact that you don't love me. And this you don't know. If I had thought it possible that you would love me as well, I would have run away to the far end of the earth.  Whether you can make sense of this does not matter - but it is true: I only needed your friendship. Anything more would have been less. This was the only way I could easefully come to you, feel infinitely happy around you. It was this, your friendship, that was the safe ground, the strange, enchanted world of a few hours, that all my life I will count towards my most wonderful ones. It was exactly the fact that you don't love me, that you have a good heart though, that you like me,and that you have a face that I love more than I could ever say.
Your friendship however I needed and wanted. Your friendship I was trying to win... But then I realized that you have a different kind of friendship for me than the one that gave me so much happiness: you have the same words, the same attitude, the same niceties for many people, Willi. It is surely not an accusation -just an explanation. This benevolent, nice, lukewarm friendship, that rather stems from your decency than from your heart (...) cannot make me happy, Willi. Though I am very modest I am also very proud. For an extraordinary love there should be an extraordinary friendship (...). To be just one amongst the group of your many friends is not happiness, Willi.


You wrote: when you heard that I had cried "it seemed to you that I liked you a little bit?" Willi, I will tell you something, but stop agonizing me. There was no one in this world whom I liked as much as I like you. My whole life no separation was as hard as the separation from you. (...) Each day I wait for the pain to cease a bit, the hurt to stop. But I love you more than you will ever be able to spend throughout all of your life. You cannot even spend a hundredth, a thousandths, of this love.



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