/lit/ - Literature

>"Hardly anything would disturb him when he was reading, but sometimes he disturbed himself, for as soon as he opened a book he started talking about it, and I had to listen patiently whether I was interested in the subject or not. Every now and then, in Linz even more frequently than in Vienna, he would thrust a book into my hands and demand that I, as his friend, should read it."
p.180

>"Adolf had an especially feel for poets and authors who had something of value to say to him. He never read books simply to pass the time; it was a deadly earnest occupation. I got that impression more than once. What an upset if I did not take his reading seriously enough and played the piano while he was studying."
p.180

>"I had always thought of my friend as basically an artist, and would have understood if he had grown indignant at the sight of the masses who appeared to be hopelessly perishing in their misery, yet remained aloof from all this, so as not to be dragged down into the abyss by the city's inexorable fate. I reckoned with his susceptibility, his aestheticism, his constant fear of physical contact with strangers - he shook hands only rarely and then only with a few people - and I thought this would be sufficient to keep him at a distance from the masses. This was only true of personal contacts, but with his whole overflowing heart he stood then in the ranks of the under-privileged. It was not sympathy in the ordinary sense which he felt for the disinherited. That would not have been sufficient. He not only suffered with them, he lived for them and devoted all his thoughts for the salvation of those people from stress and poverty. No doubt, this ardent desire for a total reorganisation of life was his personal response to his own fate, which had led him, step by step, into misery"
p.173

>"I knew the normal interests of young people of my age: flirtations, shallow pleasures, idly play and a lot of unimportant, meaningless thoughts. Adolf was the exact opposite. There was an incredible earnestness in him, a thoroughness, a true passionate interest in everything that happened and, most important, an unfailing devotion to the beauty, majesty and grandeur of art"
p.194

>"He wallowed deeper and deeper in self-criticism. Yet it only needed the lightest touch - as when one flicks on the light and everything becomes brilliantly clear - for his self-accusation to become an accusation against the times, against the whole world. Choking with his catalogue of hates, he would pour his fury over everything, against mankind in general who did not understand him, who did not appreciate him and by whom he was persecuted"
p.158 / 159

>I hope people on here aren't racist

>>19336665
>"At long last the great moment arrived. Adolf, beaming with delight, came to see me at the workshop, where we were very busy at that time. 'I'm leaving tomorrow,' he said briefly. He asked me to accompany him to the station, as he did not want his mother to come. I knew how painful it would have been for Adolf to take leave of his mother in front of other people. He disliked nothing more than showing his feelings in public"
p.127

>"His mother was crying and little Paula, whom Adolf had never bothered with much, was sobbing in a heart-rending manner. When Adolf caught up with me on the stairs and helped me with the suitcase, I saw that his eyes too were wet"
p.127

On his poverty and his attitude towards the rich
>"When we went with empty stomachs into the centre of the city, we saw the splendid mansions of the nobility with garishly attired servants in front, and the sumptuous hotels in which Vienna's rich society - the old nobility; the captains of industry, landowners and magnates - held their lavish parties: poverty, need, hunger on the one side, and reckless enjoyment of life, sensuality and prodigal luxury on the other"
p.163

>"At all costs, he would keep his linen and clothing clean. No one, meeting this carefully dressed young man in the street would have thought that he went hungry every day, and lived in a hopelessly bug-infested back room in the 6th District"
p.163

On his lack of confidence in regards to Stefanie

>"With his memory of his first day in Vienna transfigured by his yearning for Stefanie, Adolf entered the critical summer of 1907. What he suffered in those weeks was in many respects similar to the grave crisis of two years earlier when, after much heart-searching, he had finally settled his accounts with the school and made an end of it. Outwardly, this seeking for a new path showed itself in dangerous fits of depression. I knew only too well those moods of his, which were in sharp contrast to his ecstatic dedication and activity, and realised that I could no help him. At such times he was inacessible, uncommunicative and distant. [...] Adolf would wander around alone for days and nights in the fields and forests surrounding the town"
p.123

>"Stefanie had probable long since become bored by the silent, but strictly conventional adulation of the pale, thin youth, my friend lost himself increasingly in his wishful dreams the more he saw her. Yet he was past those romantic ideas of elopement or suicide"
p.123

>"Adolf, perhaps, already realised that, if he wanted to win Stefanie, he would have to speak to her or take some such decisive step. Nevertheless he felt instinctively that it would abruptly destroy his life's dream if he actually made Stefanie's acquaintance. Indeed, as he said to me, 'If I introduce myself to Stefanie and her mother, I will have to tell her at once what I am, what I have and what I want. My statement would bring our relations abruptly to an end'"
p.124