The Sleepwalkers (109 page)

And
so on. The list of friends turned into enemies ends with the pathetic
remark:

"Lastly,
religion
divided
Crellius
from
me,
but
he
also
broke
faith;
henceforth
I
was
enraged
with
him.
God
decreed
that
he
should
be
the
last.
And
so
the
cause
was
partly
in
me
and
partly
in
fate.
On
my
part
anger,
intolerance
of
bores,
an
excessive
love
of
annoying
and
of
teasing,
in
short
of
checking
presumptions..."

Even
more pathetic is the one exception in the list:

"Lorhard never
communicated with me. I admired him, but he never knew this, nor did
anyone else."

Immediately
following
this
dismal
recital,
Kepler
put
down,
with
add
amusement,
this
portrait
of
himself
–
where
the
past
tense
alternates
revealingly
with
the
present
⁹
:

"That
man
[i.e.
Kepler]
has
in
every
way
a
dog-like
nature.
His
appearance
is
that
of
a
little
lap-dog.
His
body
is
agile,
wiry
and
well-proportioned.
Even
his
appetites
were
alike:
he
liked
gnawing
bones
and
dry
crusts
of
bread,
and
was
so
greedy
that
whatever
his
eyes
chanced
on,
he
grabbed;
yet,
like
a
dog,
he
drinks
little
and
is
content
with
the
simplest
food.
His
habits
were
similar.
He
continually
sought
the
goodwill
of
others,
was
dependent
on
others
for
everything,
ministered
to
their
wishes,
never
got
angry
when
they
reproved
him
and
was
anxious
to
get
back
into
their
favour.
He
was
constantly
on
the
move,
ferreting
among
the
sciences,
politics
and
private
affairs,
including
the
lowest
kind;
always
following
someone
else,
and
imitating
his
thoughts
and
actions.
He
is
bored
with
conversation,
but
greets
visitors
just
like
a
little
dog;
yet
when
the
last
thing
is
snatched
away
from
him,
he
flares
up
and
growls.
He
tenaciously
persecutes
wrong-doers
–
that
is,
he
barks
at
them.
He
is
malicious
and
bites
people
with
his
sarcasms.
He
hates
many
people
exceedingly
and
they
avoid
him,
but
his
masters
are
fond
of
him.
He
has
a
dog-like
horror
of
baths,
tinctures
and
lotions.
His
recklessness
knows
no
limits,
which
is
surely
due
to
Mars
in
quadrature
with
Mercury,
and
in
trine
with
the
moon;
yet
he
takes
good
care
of
his
life...
[He
has]
a
vast
appetite
for
the
greatest
things.
His
teachers
praised
him
for
his
good
dispositions,
though
morally
he
was
the
worst
among
his
contemporaries...
He
was
religious
to
the
point
of
superstition.
As
a
boy
of
ten
years
when
he
first
read
Holy
Scripture
...
he
grieved
that
on
account
of
the
impurity
of
his
life,
the
honour
to
be
a
prophet
was
denied
him.
When
he
committed
a
wrong,
he
performed
an
expiatory
rite,
hoping
it
would
save
him
from
punishment:
this
consisted
in
reciting
his
faults
in
public.

In
this
man
there
are
two
opposite
tendencies:
always
to
regret
any
wasted
time,
and
always
to
waste
it
willingly.
For
Mercury
makes
one
inclined
to
amusements,
games,
and
other
light
pleasures...
Since
his
caution
with
money
kept
him
away
from
play,
he
often
played
by
himself.
[The
word
for
'play',
lusu,
may
refer
here
either
to
gambling
or
to
sex.]
It
must
be
noted
that
his
miserliness
did
not
aim
at
acquiring
riches,
but
at
removing
his
fear
of
poverty
–
although,
perhaps
avarice
results
from
an
excess
of
this
fear..."

Of
love, there is no mention, with two scant exceptions: the painful
episode with the virgin on New Year's Eve, and an isolated obscure
entry, referring to his twentieth year:

"
1591.
The
cold
brought
on
prolonged
mange.
When
Venus
went
through
the
Seventh
House,
I
was
reconciled
with
Ortholphus:
when
she
returned,
I
showed
her
to
him;
when
she
came
back
a
third
time,
I
still
struggled
on,
wounded
by
love.
The
beginning
of
love:
April
26."

That
is
all.
We
are
told
no
more
about
that
nameless
"she".
We
remember
that
Kepler
wrote
this
at
the
age
of
twenty-six.
It
would
be
a
harsh
self-portrait
even
for
a
modern
young
man,
reared
in
the
age
of
psychiatry,
anxiety,
masochism
and
the
rest;
coming
from
a
young
German
at
the
close
of
the
sixteenth
century,
the
product
of
a
coarse,
brutal
and
callow
civilization,
it
is
an
astonishing
document.
It
shows
the
ruthless
intellectual
honesty
of
a
man
whose
childhood
was
spent
in
hell
and
who
had
fought
his
way
out
of
it.