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The water will boil directly, and here are cigarettes. You were speaking of sopranos when you stopped; go right on from there. But ashamed you ought to be. If I did not know with what pride and passion you are devoted to your calling ..." "Say nothing about a 'calling, Lisaveta Ivanovna. Literature is not a calling, but a curse let me tell you that. When does this curse begin to be perceptible?
And then the sea they have the Baltic up there! ... In short, I am going up there, Lisaveta. I wish to see the Baltic again, hear these names again, read those books on the spot; and I wish to stand on the terrace of Kronborg, where the ghost appeared to Hamlet and brought distress and death upon the poor, noble young man ..." "How are you going to go, Tonio, if I may ask? By what route!"
"Ah, Lisaveta Mihalovna, believe me," he cried, "I have been punished enough as it is. I have expiated everything already, believe me." "That you cannot know," Lisa murmured in an undertone. "You have forgotten not long ago, when you were talking to me you were not ready to forgive her." She walked in silence along the avenue. "And what about your daughter?" Lisa asked, suddenly stopping short.
You become emotional, you become sentimental; something unwieldy, awkwardly serious, uncontrolled, unironical, unspiced, tedious, or banal takes form under your hands, and the end is simply indifference in your public, simply disappointment and lamentation in yourself ... For so it is, Lisaveta: feeling, any warm, hearty feeling is always banal and unusable, and only the irritations and the cold ecstasies of our demoralized, of our artistic nervous system are useful in art.
But my deepest and most secret love belongs to the blond and blue-eyed, the bright-spirited living ones, the happy, amiable, and commonplace. Do not speak lightly of this love, Lisaveta; it is good and fruitful. There is longing in it and melancholy envy, and a tiny bit of contempt, and an unalloyed chaste blissfulness.
And therefore I will soften my sentence a little, for I can do so. You are an ordinary man astray, Tonio Kröger, an erring commoner." Silence. Then he stood up resolutely and reached for hat and cane. "I thank you, Lisaveta Ivanovna; now I can go home in peace. I am finished." Toward autumn Tonio Kröger said to Lisaveta Ivanovna,
I read these and am myself touched in view of the warm and inarticulate human feeling which my art has aroused in these people; a kind of sympathy comes over me at the naive enthusiasm which the letters utter, and I blush at the thought of how it would sober these honest folk if they could ever cast a glance behind the scenes, if their innocence could ever comprehend that an honest, healthy, and decent human being never writes, acts, or composes ... all of which does not prevent me of course from using their admiration of my genius to strengthen and stimulate myself, that I take it with the gravest seriousness, and put on a face like that of an ape pretending to be a big man ... Now don't put in your oar, Lisaveta!
Lavretsky went out of the church after her and overtook her in the street; she was walking very quickly, with downcast head, and a veil over her face. "Good-morning, Lisaveta Mihalovna," he said aloud with assumed carelessness: "may I accompany you?" She made no reply; he walked beside her. "Are you content with me?" he asked her, dropping his voice. "Have you heard what happened yesterday?"
Now I frequently have days on which I prefer making some good general observations to telling stories. I wonder if you still remember, Lisaveta, that you once called me a commoner, a commoner astray.
Do you know that I often watch myself surveying the audience, and catch myself stealthily looking around with the question in my heart: who is it that has come to me, whose applause and thanks are reaching me, with whom will my art procure me an ideal union here? ... I do not find what I seek, Lisaveta.
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