Letter XLIX
Hyperion to Diotima
I can barely bring myself to speak.
We delight in speech, to be sure, we chatter away like the birds so long as the world wafts over us like a May breeze; but between noon and evening things can change, and what is lost in the end?
Believe me, and mind that I say this to you from my deepest soul: language is a great superfluity. The best is ever for itself and rests in its depths like the pearl at the bottom of the sea. — But what I really wanted to write to you, since the painting must have its frame and man his daily task, I intend to take service for a while with the Russian fleet; for I want nothing more to do with the Greeks.
O dear girl! it’s grown very dark around me!