The Tanners

Klara said: “Think of a silent landscape, the way all of it is just lying there, the forests and hills and the wide meadows, and here we are in this glittery theater. How strange. But perhaps it’s all just nature — not only the vastness and silence out there, but also the small agile things that are the work of man. A theater is also part of nature: What nature instructs us to create must itself belong to nature, though perhaps that’s just a natural anomaly. Let culture become ever so refined, it will nonetheless remain a part of nature, for culture is only a long drawn-out process of inventing, spread over the ages, and performed by creatures who must always cling to nature. If you paint a picture, Kaspar, that will be nature, for you paint using your senses and fingers, which nature has given you. No, we do well to love nature and remain mindful of it — even, if I may be permitted to say so, to worship nature — for human beings must do their praying somewhere, otherwise they turn bad. If only we can love what is nearest at hand! That’s a blessing that makes us roll thoughtfully along with the earth, driving our centuries tempestuously on, a blessing that makes us feel our lives more intensely and with greater bliss — and so we must seize and grab hold of it a thousand times over, in a thousand moments — oh, what do I know!”

She had become inflamed as she spoke. “Does that make any sense, what I just said?” she asked Kaspar.

Kaspar did not reply. They had long since left the theater behind and were on their way home. Simon had walked on a bit ahead with Herr Agappaia.

“Tell me something,” Klara asked her companion.