Page:Halek's Stories and Evensongs.pdf/94

 cultivation is like the playing of an indifferent actor. If you catch a few words you will soon know all the rest down to the last full stop. The actor himself does not know why he is made to talk as he does, his soul has no share in it all and his tones. are bristling with disgust: in place of soul memory plays the part.

Even Karla knew more or less, but just as a sleeping person hears a lively conversation—he hears the words but he does not understand their meaning. To know much is not happiness: but how we know something, how we ourselves add to it—in this lies the true test of knowledge. Karla visited the theatre, like others; she clapped, when she heard others clap. And when she went out of the theatre she was as little purified and exalted as when she entered.

That holy instinct which opens its thousand doors of inward life to a woman’s heart, the spring tide of feeling and of all sweet scents, with which the zephyrs of a gentle mind disport themselves: she had indeed some conception of it once, when the passion for Havel inspired her with the full breath of a warm spring. But this spiritual insight did not last long, the lamp was extinguished and if memory sometimes melted in the light of that dawning, it only vaguely smote her with a dim desire for the truth.

Even Havel was enshrined more in her memory than her soul and when she saw that fate had for ever separated him from her, she preserved him indeed in memory but was not constrained to tears.

With all her indifference, however, she felt extremely lonely and would have been unhappy had she been capable of feeling unhappiness. She was not herself alone to blame, the age in which she was brought up was at fault. If they had taught her less and striven rather to awaken her sleeping soul she would have even acquired more knowledge. She would also have acquired the power of self-analysis, and that is a priceless treasure in adversity. He is not happy who is merely incapable of feeling his unhappiness. Those who are incapable of great suffering are incapable of great pleasure. We delight in tragedies because they render us capable of the highest pleasure. Only the stunted generation of Karla’s contemporaries and with it Karla herself objected to seeing tragedy because everything turned out dolefully.

Karla’s spiritual inheritance was to her what alms are to a beggar. Do not blame her, she had many like her. They were