READ: Peter Camenzind By Herman Hesse

Thanks Alex Boeckl.

"The unlimited spaciousness of the horizon affected me as deeply. Once again, as in childhood, I beheld the soft blue of immeasurable distances beckoning to me like an open gate. And the feeling swept over me that I was not born for a normal life at home among my people or in cities and houses, but my fate was to wander through foreign regions and make odysseys on the sea. Darkly, the old melancholy longing rose up in me to throw myself on God's mercy and merge my own pitifully insignificant life with the infinite and timeless."

"Wise and frugal, life remained silent, however, and let me drift. It sent me neither storms nor stars but waited so that I would become aware of my insignificance again and in patience lose my obstinacy. It let me perform my little comedy of pride and knowledge, ignoring this as it waited for the lost child to find his way back to his mother."

For Elly

If I Could Turn Back Time