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. The timely news arrived, that 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.
For 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 irrevocably confined?
The world was bounded by Franz Joseph I on all sides in those days; there was no escaping him. That ubiquitous and inevitable profile loomed on every horizon; it peeped from around every corner; it locked up the whole world like a prison. And behold! Just when we, filled with bitter resignation, had given up all hope, internally reconciled to the unequivocalness of the world and its narrow invariability — of which Franz Joseph I was the all-powerful guarantor — then You, O God, as if it were some trivial thing, unexpectedly opened before me a stamp album. 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, 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... How many possibilities of existence You have bestowed, O God. How innumerous is your world! It was beyond anything I had ever imagined, even in my boldest dreams. So it was true, that early anticipation of my soul, which had insisted against all the evidence that the world is innumerous!
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