Cloudburst. Rain runs slantwise across the train windows as we rush through the stations of southwest without stopping. Trees in full leaf. Fields spreading. I think the countryside is very beautiful, very lush, but W.'s in no mood to appreciate it.
'Nature is a corpse', he says, and shows me the lines from Schelling he translated and copied out: 'A veil of sadness is spread over all nature, a deep unappeasable melancholy'. It's the mirror of our melancholy, according to Schelling, W. says. The darkest and deepest ground in human nature is melancholy, just as the darkest and deepest ground in nature is melancholy. Nature is a corpse just as we are corpses, W. says.
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