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WIKIPEDIA
Ernst Toller (*1. Dezember 1893 in Samotschin, Provinz Posen; gestorben am 22. Mai 1939 in New York City, New York) war ein deutscher Schriftsteller, Politiker und linkssozialistischer Revolutionär.
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#183 Brief an N.
| Datierung | *1921-??-?? |
| Absendeort | Niederschönenfeld, Deutschland |
| Verfasser | Toller, Ernst |
| Beschreibung | Brief |
| Provenienz | Original nicht ermittelt. |
| Briefkopf | - |
| Publikationsort | Letters from Prison. London: The Bodley Head 1936, S. 104 (TW, Bd. 3, S. 694f.). |
| Poststelle | - |
| Personen |
N.
N. Toller, Ernst |
My Dear N–,
I think your greatest shortcoming is a distrust of your own powers. Everybody puts a goal before himself; and if he persistently undermines this goal, he loses faith in himself and undermines his own strength.
And that is what you, my dear, are doing.
I often ask myself: How is it that you, a man of unusual powers, with your gift of swift decision and, when there is need, of cold and smiling ruthlessness, how is it you compared yourself to a winter landscape: sharp edges, clean air. What is this but that you have lost your illusions? That you see through the pretences, those illusions which intoxicate and quicken life, those which promise heaven and threaten hell? When you lost those did you not lose the power to move the masses? Whom do the masses love? The man who believes his dreams. And with a heart-breaking love they love the man who believe what they themselves no longer believe.
“One has only to see things as they are.”
Ah! My dear! This sentence does not, I think, bear the meaning you would put on it. A teasing, puzzling, problematic sentence!
What are “things”?
Only realities created for us by our own desires. Elemental things, endowed with the life that we have willed for them.
“Only see.” All true sight is insight.