Chapter 2

I don’t understand him: he sits for hours at a time in front of his magic book, the metal book that plays for him the music I wrote all those years ago. And they make a fetish of it, those pieces I churned out for the Sunday services in Leipzig. Did anyone listen to them at the time? Probably not: the people drifted in and out of the church, chatting with their neighbors as they went, and never even paying attention to the sermon.

I’ve listened in with him, and the book plays the music beautifully—much better than my own musicians did in my day. But shouldn’t he have something to do? He listens and he writes—is that the work of a man?

You’ll say that I did much the same, when I was in the world—that I woke every morning and sat down to write, but that wasn’t all. I was a workingman, working in my trade as all my family did. We were all musicians, and my son, in fact was for many years more famous than I.

But this man—he paces and stares, sits down to the magic book, mumbles to himself. And his religion, it seems, is my music.

He has no belief—that I know. For all that I’ve seen him weep, I’ve never once seen him pray! And here he is, listening to the cantata that has the words, ”thy word is not upheld as true, and faith is also now quite dead,
among all mankind's children.”

Not in my day. I grew up surrounded by faith—what else did we have? And what luxury and waste this man has—his health, how he assumes that everybody, himself included, is going to be well! Not in Eisenach, where I was born; my parents died within months of each other when I was seven. And death was with us all the time—as much as life.

It’s stale, this world—a world that only has life, that has no sickness, no death, no darkness. And no God—who could live such a life? Without a God, where is your soul? And what do you turn to, when you wife or your child dies?

I buried seven, and a beloved wife as well. And this man? He is weeping for one child and the man he “loved?” Yes, we knew of this, this evil that everyone now takes for granted. A man lying with a man? An abomination, says the Bible. But who has time, now to read the Bible? Or even interest….

Curious about time—how little and yet how much of it we had. His magic book does so much for him, and imprisons him as well. He can go nowhere without it, and when he sees his friends, they sit with their books on their laps. In my day we talked, we smoked our pipes and drank and told stories. But for all the time he has, he doesn’t seem to have any at all. He’s in a rush and he does nothing!

Nothing but sit and cry, listen to my music, pace, stare in the mirror, and write into his book. My God, man—to work!