The third letter, was written from Chylice like the previous ones, on two separate sheets with fine perforation along the top edge (bottom edge for verso pages, as in the case of the other letters). All the pages are written over. Notes are handwritten by the addressee (probably made many years after receiving the letters): "3", indicating the number of the letter. Full text of the letter:
Renia,
I was indeed a bit surprised by your "pace", but please believe me, not only am I not afraid that it will "become a habit", but on the contrary, this is precisely what I keenly wish.
There is no greater pleasure for me now to get "such" letters, because "this" is what I am thirsty of. Please do not be afraid that one or another reckless word of yours will make me think I am more than I really am. No, there is no fear, because while I am moderately conceited by nature on the one hand, I am an old practitioner in taming self-love and all megalomaniac tendencies on the other hand. Besides, the way I live now constantly forces me to oppose the outside world which is brutally denying my values and raison d’être and simply trying to trample it down. Such dear, heartfelt words like yours are a great help in this fight against the outside.
So I am in trouble because now I have to answer two of your letters at once: the first one hysterical (indeed, but very much loved), the other one sunny, but sometimes designedly enigmatic.
Renia, I do not hold hysteria against you: an emotional state as bad as all the others (God, why have you invented emotional states ?!), the only thing I could take against you is the calligraphy which, in an inept endeavour of keeping up with fast-flying thoughts, forces me to put on both pairs of my glasses at the same time.
When I read your letters (and I read them very often) and simply bask in your affection and tenderness, I blame myself for the tone of my letters to you – generally calm, reserved and expressing feelings in a rather indirect and dispassionate form. I write about myself rather than from myself, and I write about you rather than to you. Because you see, as a man, I am even more afraid of falling apart into prime elements than you are, besides I am restrained and distant by nature, and if sometimes, like recently, something opens up in me and finds an outlet, I am then forced to appeal to reason (which, after all, cannot deny the raison d’être to feelings) so as not to feel a certain embarrassment. Having said this as my excuse and fearing that the pedanticity and the cool calm of my letters would not freeze you (which would mean ingratitude and cry out to heaven for vengeance), I assure you, dear child (also an insolence, eh?), of my best feelings for you. What is most important in them cannot be expressed anyway.
Moving on to the exterior, life is so monotonous that even the nervous crises attacking from time to time emphasise this monotony, as it were, by their certain regularity.
As you can easily understand for sure, I feel very lonely in the environment, not by any "you-know-what" differences in mentality, which, in the end, are a fiction (a shallow generalisation in any case), but due to the meagre level of intelligence and emotional culture of the environment. You certainly know this feeling of not being able to "get along" with someone, the need to choose a special expression for your thoughts, which is very tiring and not only does not give any intellectual satisfaction, but also discourages from mental contact with the environment. It all gives me a feeling of "uselessness" of any mental culture, any deeper reflection. I get wild with rage when I am forced to participate in endless discussions of the advantages and disadvantages of one or another kind of peas, vodka, sausage and potatoes. In addition, mind you, all this conducted by men, alleged intelligentsia, even titled. I feel that I am formally choking and suffocating with the excess, the hypertrophy of the inner life, which is expanding downright monstrously, both due to the almost complete lack of external experiences ("almost", because there are also "you-know-which" experiences, but those are only intensifying the storm), and due to the inability to discharge it in contact with people. Hence my taenial letters; if you find them (which would be quite natural) overwhelming due to their gloomy psychologisation, you must forgive me, Darling. Very painful feelings are billowing and swirling in me, I feel tormented by relentless, tragic experiences, so painful and animalistic-embarrassing that cannot be expressed at all. It has bitten into me so hard and so deep that it is impossible to break free from it, it is constantly tugging and tearing me apart and does not even let me sleep in the night. I have always considered sensitivity to good and evil, to beauty and monstrosity, as the greatest good in man, but this sensitivity is a curse in bestial times.
You are calling yourself an "unfledged puppy" and you have not, fortunately, lived through the worst horrors of a damned life. You have not experienced desperate, helpless anxiety over the lives of beloved people, the closest ones in whose existence our entire existence is enclosed. You have not experienced the tragic moments of taking responsibility for the life and death of a beloved man above all else, and may God protect you from ever experiencing such moments in your life.
But your ability to sense it all and feel that you cannot help lending your supportive hands makes me most deeply and heartily grateful to You. And this is why you are close to me.
I am with you right now and I say "good night!" to you (because it is late already) and I kiss you (your hands too).
A
And I am looking forward to your letter with longing, my good fairy.
