Letters and Papers From Prison (48 page)

Joy is rich in fears;
sorrow has its sweetness.
Indistinguishable from each other
they approach us from eternity,
equally potent in their power and terror.

From every quarter
mortals come hurrying,
part envious, part awe-struck,
swarming, and peering
into the portent,

where the mystery sent from above us
is transmuting into the inevitable
order of earthly human drama.

What, then, is joy? What, then, is sorrow?
Time alone can decide between them,
when the immediate poignant happening
lengthens out to continuous wearisome suffering,
when the laboured creeping moments of daylight
slowly uncover the fullness of our disaster,
sorrow’s unmistakable features.

Then do most of our kind,
sated, if only by the monotony
of unrelieved unhappiness,
turn away from the drama, disillusioned,
uncompassionate.

O you mothers and loved ones - then, ah, then
comes your hour, the hour for true devotion.
Then your hour comes, you friends and brothers!
Loyal hearts can change the face of sorrow,
softly encircle it with love’s most gentle
unearthly radiance.

To Eberhard Bethge

[Tegel] 27 June 1944

Dear Eberhard,

Maria has just been with me; I heard from her that the last news of you was from Verona and since then there has been nothing more. Although I’ve no idea whether or when the post is reaching you, I’m still writing to you under the old field post number. Before I go on with the theological reflections, I should prefer to wait till I hear from you; and the same goes for the verses -especially my latest, a rather long poem
⁵⁷
about my impressions
here - which are more suitable for an evening’s talk than for a long journey by post …

I’m at present writing an exposition of the first three commandments.
⁵⁸
I find No. 2 particularly difficult. The usual interpretation of idolatry as ‘wealth, sensuality, and pride’ seems to me quite unbiblical. That is a piece of moralizing. Idols are worshipped, and idolatry implies that people still worship something. But we don’t worship anything now, not even idols. In that respect we’re truly nihilists.

Now for some further thoughts about the Old Testament. Unlike the other oriental religions, the faith of the Old Testament isn’t a religion of redemption. It’s true that Christianity has always been regarded as a religion of redemption. But isn’t this a cardinal error, which separates Christ from the Old Testament and interprets him on the lines of the myths about redemption? To the objection that a crucial importance is given in the Old Testament to redemption (from Egypt, and later from Babylon - cf. Deutero-Isaiah) it may be answered that the redemptions referred to here are
historical,
i.e. on
this
side of death, whereas everywhere else the myths about redemption are concerned to overcome the barrier of death. Israel is delivered out of Egypt so that it may live before God as God’s people on earth. The redemption myths try unhis-torically to find an eternity after death. Sheol and Hades are no metaphysical constructions, but images which imply that the ‘past’, while it still exists, has only a shadowy existence in the present.

The decisive factor is said to be that in Christianity the hope of resurrection is proclaimed, and that that means the emergence of a genuine religion of redemption, the main emphasis now being on the far side of the boundary drawn by death. But it seems to me that this is just where the mistake and the danger lie. Redemption now means redemption from cares, distress, fears, and longings, from sin and death, in a better world beyond the grave. But is this really the essential character of the proclamation of Christ in the gospels and by Paul? I should say it is not. The difference between the Christian hope of resurrection and the mythological hope is that the former sends a man back to his life on earth in a
wholly new way which is even more sharply defined than it is in the Old Testament. The Christian, unlike the devotees of the redemption myths, has no last line of escape available from earthly tasks and difficulties into the eternal, but, like Christ himself (‘My God, why hast thou forsaken me?’), he must drink the earthly cup to the dregs, and only in his doing so is the crucified and risen Lord with him, and he crucified and risen with Christ. This world must not be prematurely written off; in this the Old and New Testaments are at one. Redemption myths arise from human boundary-experiences, but Christ takes hold of a man at the centre of his life.

You see how my thoughts are constantly revolving round the same theme. Now I must substantiate them in detail from the New Testament; that will follow later.

That’s enough for today. Good-bye, Eberhard, God bless you every day. In loyalty and gratitude,

ever your Dietrich

I read in the paper about tropical heat in Italy - you poor man! It reminds me of August 1936. Ps. 121.6!
⁵⁹

From Eberhard Bethge

‘Il Balcone’
Montevettolini
(Pistoia)
27 June 1944

Dear Dietrich,

By now I hope that you will have heard that all has gone well with me, with the journey, its interruption and finally the arrival at my unit. The pass which was finally handed out to me in Munich brought me through the dangerous rocks of the assembly points in Verona and Bologna. So I spent only one day in Verona and had a splendid tour of the city with a corporal as guide. I’ve not had such a good introduction before … People seemed very friendly, and despite being over-tired I was very happy. Of course there was a certain amount of chaos in Bologna and I spent a night on a bare stone floor without any covering. After that things
turned out very well. The following day the heavens threw down all the moisture they had at their disposal, collected over a long period. So I could happily hitch-hike the next day to reach our new position in glorious Tuscany without seeing a single plane. At first we were told here that we would be going northwards again very soon, but we’re still here. So far I’ve had to plunge into the records, which have got into complete disorder, and haven’t had any time … Now I’m almost through. The retreat of our people must have been quite chaotic and dreadful. Nevertheless, they all got safely through the traps with all the vehicles. Everything happened so quickly that the military hospitals in Rome and Civitacastellana (near us) had to be surrendered to the enemy; only very light casualties were sent away on foot. It’s much quieter and more beautiful here than in the last months in Rignano. The road is a long way away, and so we see the planes only at a considerable distance, above all in the morning and in the evening … I’ve a good office with a northward aspect, i.e. that’s good because of the heat. The only unpleasant thing is when one has to make a car journey by day. In that case one takes a comrade on the running board who has to act as observer. On my arrival, on the very first morning I was surprised by an unusual ‘parade’. The reason: I’ve been promoted to lance-corporal. The reason was given as my skilful work in returning to my unit. I’d already thought of that in Munich …

There was letter upon letter from you here to meet me and make everything nice. Some from before my leave, 22 April, 5 and 6 May, and some after it, 6 and 8 June. The latter with the very good and detailed theological definitions of your thoughts on religionlessness. I’ll now try to give at least some reply … First of all, however, I must say again that my leave, as a really successful whole, is still a source of joy and comfort; the days with Renate … the hours with you which we enjoyed without any wasted time … your good letters, which put me back on the right lines (the unrest and sense of oppression which wouldn’t go away after the experiences of the first days are now really only a memory and no longer have any power); the baptism and the boy …

Unfortunately I quite forgot to ask you about your novel and the short work for myself. And I would so like to see them.

The letter with the discussion about Bultmann about which you spoke is surely that of the 5 May, which I found waiting here, so it’s not lost. Would you allow me to give extracts from these letters, above all the longer passages, to people like Albrecht Schönherr, Winfried Maechler, Dieter Zimmermann
⁶⁰
some time? It would certainly please them very much - or are you against that? Tell me some time. I find everything in them much clearer than previous remarks of yours on the question, and your location of the position in the history of doctrine is very interesting … I wait eagerly for the continuation which you promised about the non-religious interpretation of the great Christian concepts.

Now the great events develop from day to day, and one delights in every day that one can spend in a degree of peace and quiet, glad of news from home.

My writing has been very disturbed, but I want to send it off so that the report doesn’t reach you late.

Keep your spirits up. Many greetings.

Your Eberhard

To Eberhard Bethge

[Tegel] 30 June 1944

Dear Eberhard,

Today was a hot summer’s day here, and I could enjoy the sun only with mixed feelings, as I can imagine what ordeals you’re having to go through. Probably you’re stuck somewhere or other, tired and up to your eyes in dust and sweat, and perhaps with no chance of washing or cooling down. I suppose you sometimes almost loathe the sun. And yet, you know, I should like to feel the full force of it again, making the skin hot and the whole body glow, and reminding me that I’m a corporeal being. I should like to be tired by the sun, instead of by books and thoughts. I should like to have it awaken my animal existence - not the kind that
degrades a man, but the kind that delivers him from the stuffiness and artificiality of a purely intellectual existence and makes him purer and happier. I should like, not just to see the sun and sip at it a little, but to experience it bodily. Romantic sun-worshipping that just gets intoxicated over sunrise and sunset, while it knows something of the power of the sun, does not know it as a reality, but only as a symbol. It can never understand why people worshipped the sun as a god; to do so one needs experience, not only of light and colours, but also of heat. The hot countries, from the Mediterranean to India and Central America, have been the intellectually creative countries. The colder lands have lived on the intellectual creativeness of the others, and anything original that they have produced, namely technology, serves in the last resort the material needs of life rather than the mind. Is that what repeatedly draws us to the hot countries? And may not such thoughts do something to compensate for the discomforts of the heat?

But I expect you’re feeling that that is all the same to you, and that you’re just longing to be out of that hell, back to Grunewald and a glass of Berlin beer. I remember very well how I longed to get out of Italy in June 1923, and didn’t breathe freely again till I was out on a day’s ramble in pouring rain in the Black Forest. And there was no war on then, and all I had to do was to enjoy myself. I remember, too, how in August 1936 you rejected in horror the idea of going to Naples. How are you standing up to it now physically? Formerly one simply couldn’t do without the ‘espresso’, and Klaus, to my youthful annoyance, threw away a lot of money on it. Besides that, we took a coach even for the shortest distances, and consumed vast quantities of
granitos
and
cassatas
on the way.

I’ve just had the most welcome news - that you have written, and that you’ve kept your old field post number, from which I conclude that you’ve rejoined your old unit. You can’t think how reassuring - relatively, at any rate - that is for me …

A few hours ago Uncle Paul
⁶¹
called here to inquire personally about my welfare. It’s most comical how everyone goes about flapping his wings and - with a few notable exceptions - tries to
outdo everyone else in undignified ways. It’s painful, but some of them are in such a state now that they can’t help it.

Now I will try to go on with the theological reflections that I broke off not long since. I had been saying that God is being increasingly pushed out of a world that has come of age, out of the spheres of our knowledge and life, and that since Kant he has been relegated to a realm beyond the world of experience. Theology has on the one hand resisted this development with apologetics, and has taken up arms - in vain - against Darwinism, etc. On the other hand, it has accommodated itself to the development by restricting God to the so-called ultimate questions as a
deus ex machina;
that means that he becomes the answer to life’s problems, and the solution of its needs and conflicts. So if anyone has no such difficulties, or if he refuses to go into these things, to allow others to pity him, then either he cannot be open to God; or else he must be shown that he is, in fact, deeply involved in such problems, needs, and conflicts, without admitting or knowing it. If that can be done - and existentialist philosophy and psychotherapy have worked out some quite ingenious methods in that direction - then this man can now be claimed for God, and methodism can celebrate its triumph. But if he cannot be brought to see and admit that his happiness is really an evil, his health sickness, and his vigour despair, the theologian is at his wits’ end. It’s a case of having to do either with a hardened sinner of a particularly ugly type, or with a man of ‘bourgeois complacency’, and the one is as far from salvation as the other.

You see, that is the attitude that I am contending against. When Jesus blessed sinners, they were real sinners, but Jesus did not make everyone a sinner first. He called them away from their sin, not into their sin. It is true that encounter with Jesus meant the reversal of all human values. So it was in the conversion of Paul, though in his case the encounter with Jesus preceded the realization of sin. It is true that Jesus cared about people on the fringe of human society, such as harlots and tax-collectors, but never about them alone, for he sought to care about man as such. Never did he question a man’s health, vigour, or happiness, regarded in themselves, or regard them as evil fruits; else why should he heal the
sick and restore strength to the weak? Jesus claims for himself and the Kingdom of God the whole of human life in all its manifestations.