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from the start. I went upstairs but didn’t immediately sit down at my desk. I looked at it through the door of the thirty-foot upstairs room, standing about twenty-five to thirty feet away from it, to see whether everything on it was in order. Yes, everything on the desk is in order, I told myself, everything. I took in everything on the desk, un-moving and unmoved. I looked steadily at the desk until I could see myself sitting at it, as it were from behind. I could see myself bending forward, because of my illness, in order to write. I saw that I had an unhealthy posture. But then I’m not healthy — I’m thoroughly sick, I told myself. Sitting like that, I told myself, you’ve already written a few pages on Mendelssohn Bartholdy, perhaps ten or twelve. That’s how I sit at the desk when I’ve written ten or twelve pages. I stood motionless and observed the posture of my back. That’s the back of my maternal grandfather, I thought, about a year before his death. I have the same posture, I told myself. Without moving I compared my own back with my grandfather’s, thinking of a particular photograph that had been taken only a year before his death. The man of the intellect is suddenly forced to adopt an unhealthy posture and shortly afterwards he dies. A year afterwards, I thought. Then the image vanished. I was no longer sitting at my desk; the desk was empty, and so was the sheet of paper on it. If I go and start now I might be successful, I told myself, but I hadn’t the courage to go to the desk. The intention was there, but I hadn’t the strength, either the physical or the mental strength. I stood looking at the desk through the doorway, wondering when would be the right moment to go up to it, sit down and begin work. I listened, but I heard nothing. Although my house is surrounded by my neighbours’ houses, there was not a sound to be heard. It was as though at this moment everything was dead. I suddenly found this state of affairs pleasant and tried to make it last as long as possible. I was able to make it last for several minutes and to enjoy the idea, the certainty, that everything around me was dead. Then, suddenly, I said to myself, Go to your desk, sit down, and write the first sentence of your study. Not cautiously, but decisively! But I hadn’t the strength. I stood there, hardly daring to breathe. If I sit down, there’ll at once be some interruption, some unforeseen incident. There’ll be a knock at the door, or a neighbour will call out, or the postman will ask for my signature. You must quite simply sit down and begin. Without thinking about it, as if you were asleep, you must get the first sentence down on paper, and so on. On the previous evening, when my sister was still here, I’d felt sure that in the morning, when she’d finally left, I should be able to start work, selecting from all the opening sentences I’d considered the only possible one, hence the right one, getting it down on paper and pressing on with the work relentlessly, on and on. When my sister is out of the house I shall be able to start, I kept telling myself, and once more I felt triumphant. When once the monster is out of the house my work will take shape automatically; I’ll gather together all the ideas relating to the study into one single idea, and this will be my work. But now my sister had been out of the house for well over twenty-four hours, and I was further than ever from being able to start work. My annihilator still had me in her power. She directed my steps and at the same time darkened my brain. When our father died, three years after our mother, her ruthlessness towards me intensified. She was always aware of her own strength and my weakness. She’s exploited this weakness of mine all her life. As for the contempt we feel for each other, this has been equally matched for decades. I am nauseated by her business deals, she by my imagination. I despise her successes, she my unsuccessfulness. The