Spring: -I- -II- -III-
The Stamp Album: -IV- -V- (VI) -VII- -VIII- -IX- -X- -XI- -XII-
In the Municipal Park: -XIII- -XIV- -XV- -XVI-
Springtime Twilight: -XVII-
The Villa: -XVIII- -XIX- -XX- -XXI- -XXII- -XXIII- -XXIV- -XXV- -XXVI- -XXVII-
Bianka’s Lineage: -XXVIII- -XXIX- -XXX- -XXXI- -XXXII- -XXXIII-
Hiatus: -XXXIV- -XXXV- -XXXVI- -XXXVII-
Finale: -XXXVIII- -XXXIX- -XL-
VI
THEN IT happened, that revelation, that suddenly disclosed vision of the incendiary beauty of the world — then that timely news arrived, the secret mission, that special duty toward the immeasurable possibilities of Being. Glaring, severe and breathtaking horizons opened wide, and the world trembled and sparked in its joints — it tilted dangerously, threatening to break loose from all measures and rules.
What, dear reader, is a postage stamp to you? What is that profile of Franz Joseph I, his bald spot crowned with a laurel wreath? Is it not the symbol of the everyday, the determining of all possibilities, the guarantor of the impassable borders within which the world is now confined, once and for all?
The world in those days was bounded on all sides by Franz Joseph I, and there was no escaping him. That ubiquitous and inevitable profile sprouted up on every horizon and peeped from behind every corner, and it locked the whole world up like a prison. And behold! Just when we had given up all hope, full of bitter resignation, resigned to the unequivocalness of the world and its narrow invariability — of which Franz Joseph I was the all-powerful guarantor — then, unexpectedly, as if it were some trivial thing, You O God opened that stamp album before me. You allowed an inadvertent glance to be cast into that book, peeling away in glory — into a stamp album casting off its vestments page after page, ever more glaring and dreadful... Who can blame me for being dazzled then, and helpless with emotion, or for the tears that poured from my eyes, crowded with brilliance? What dazzling relativism! What a Copernican deed! What fluctuation of all categories and notions! That is to say, You bestowed so many possibilities of existence, O God — your world is so innumerous! It was beyond anything I had ever imagined, even in my boldest dreams. So it was true, that early anticipation of my soul, which insisted against all the evidence — that the world is innumerous!
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