Nov. 13, 1839. Dearest Guilielme, why don’t you write? You all belong to the category of idlers and loungers. But I am a different fellow! Not only do I write to you more than you deserve, not only am I acquiring an exceptional acquaintance with all literatures of the world, I am also quietly making for myself in short stories and poems a memorial of glory which, unless the censor’s breath turns the bright gleam of steel to ugly rust, will shine in brilliant, youthful radiance through all German lands, Austria excepted. In my breast it ferments and boils, in my sometimes drunken head it glows quite exceptionally; I long to find a great thought which will clear the ferment and blow the glow into a bright flame. A splendid subject, compared with which all my previous ones are mere childishness, is working upwards in my mind. What I want to do is to reveal in a “fairy story” or something like that those foreshadowings of the modern world that showed themselves in the Middle Ages; I want to uncover those spirits who knocked under the hard crust of the earth for release, buried beneath the foundations of churches and dungeons. I want to try and resolve at least part of Gutzkow’s task: the true second part of Faust — Faust no longer an egoist but sacrificing himself for mankind — has yet to be written. There is Faust, there is the Wandering Jew, there is the Wild Huntsman, three types of the anticipated spiritual freedom which can easily be placed in connection and relation with Jan Huss. What a poetic background is given to me there, against which these three demons work their will! The idea of the Wild Huntsman, formerly begun in metre, has merged into it. These three types (why don’t you write, you fellows? Nov. 14) I shall treat in a most original manner; I promise myself a particular effect from the interpretation of Ahasuerus and the Wild Huntsman. To make the subject more poetic and the details more significant I can easily weave in other things from German tradition — but there is time for that yet. While the short story I am working on at present is more of a mere study in style and character portraying, this is to be the real thing on which I found my hopes for my name.

Nov. 15. No letter today either? What shall I do? What shall I think of you? I can’t understand you. Nov. 20. And if you don’t write today I shall geld you in thoughts and make you wait as long as you do me. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a letter for a letter. But you hypocrites say: Not an eye for an eye, not a tooth for a tooth, not a letter for a letter, and fob me off with your damned Christian sophistry. No, better a good pagan than a bad Christian. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire