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are reaching out to embrace the sunken Isle of Innocence; but you no longer do so at the wholehearted and heedless prompting of sorrow deeply felt. No—even this gesture is self-conscious, premeditated, a pose.”
    â€œWhat’s really on your mind?” Karl Hamelt asked, with a smile.
    â€œYou already know,” cried Hermann. “Yes, I’ll admit that the book I recently published troubles me. I must learn anew how to create out of the plenum, to go back to where all things begin. It’s not so much that I want to write something ‘new.’ What I need is new experiences, a fresh, clean, healthy strip of life to live. I want, as in my childhood, to lie down on the banks of streams, to climb mountains, to play my fiddle, to run after girls, to take whatever life—whatever each day—has to offer; I want to wait for my poems to come to me, instead of breathlessly and anxiously hunting them down.”
    â€œRight you are,” the voice of Turnabout suddenly chimed in. He had emerged from the woods and stood in the midst of the young men’s camp.
    â€œTurnabout!” they all exclaimed merrily. “Good day, Herr Philosopher! Good morning, Herr Ubiquitous!”
    The old man sat down, took a deep drag on his cigar, and turned his well-meaning, friendly face toward the poet Lauscher. “There’s still a young man inside me,” he began with a smile, “who would very much enjoy having a good long talk with the likes of you. If you’ll permit me, I’d like to join your discussion.”
    â€œWith pleasure,” said Karl Hamelt. “Our friend Lauscher was just saying that a poet has to return to the wellsprings of the unconscious, knowledge and learning being of little use to him.”
    â€œRather nicely put,” the old man replied slowly. “I’ve always felt a certain kinship with poets and have gotten to know quite a few on whom my friendship was not entirely wasted. Poets, even today, more so than other people, are inclined to believe in certain stable, eternal forces and concepts of Beauty which lie half-asleep in the womb of life. The intimation of which sometimes shines through the enigmatic present as summer lightning shines through the night. In such moments of illumination, it seems to them that all ordinary life and they with it are nothing more than pictures limned on a lovely curtain; and only behind this curtain does genuine, true life go on. The most supreme, the most eternal words of the great poets seem—even to me—but the babblings of a dreamer who, without knowing it, murmurs through heavy lips of the heights of the world beyond, heights he has only briefly glimpsed.”
    â€œVery beautiful,” Oscar Ripplein interjected, “very eloquently put, Herr Turnabout, but neither old nor new enough. These visionary sermons were preached some hundred years ago by the Romantics, as they were called: they, too, dreamed of such things, and of summer lightning. In schools today, one hears this referred to as a disease—fortunately eradicated—that only afflicts poets. But it’s been years since anyone’s dreamed such dreams, or, if he has, he understands that his brain…”
    â€œThat will do!” Karl Hamelt interrupted. “More than a hundred years ago, there also existed such … such ‘brains,’ who also bored everyone to tears with their long, dreary discussions. And nowadays those dreamers and visionaries seem even more charming and splendid than those all-too-readily understandable sly dogs. Speaking of dreams, I had an exceptional one today.”
    â€œLet’s hear it, then!” the old man entreated.
    â€œSome other time.”
    â€œYou don’t want to tell it? Then perhaps we can guess,” said Turnabout. Karl Hamelt laughed out loud.
    â€œNow, let’s give it a try!” Turnabout persisted. “Each one of us will ask a question, to