# Tenth Act, two versions

CAPESIUS:  
A little house, this bench. — — — —  
I don't know them; but they —  
They press upon me as if they were calling,  
You must know us;  
You must also believe us to be real.  
And I can clearly feel  
That they are merely images —  
They must be images —  
I know what they came from,  
They were born of my longing —  
Of the longing that tormented me so,  
That permeated me like a burning thirst.  
I had to thirst for existence,  
It was a terrible state,  
As if I had to cry out for life,  
And yet this life wanted to flee from me.  
And before the horror of longing  
I experienced the cause of the horror —  
It was a sea of bliss.  
I felt immersed in it.  
My self was one with it.  
I felt myself poured out into infinity,  
Before the longing approached me  
And showed me my self  
And then bound me to this self.  
And in the immeasurable bliss  
I recognized the spirit world,  
From which beings bowed to me,  
They placed an entire world before me.  
Terrible was the creation of this world;  
The spirit beings took from me  
From which they created the world.  
Oh, how impoverished I became,  
As that world came into being.  
I felt so poor in the end,  
Of all my own being.  
In return, that world  
Became full reality out of a thin mist.  
My own being was snatched from me  
And placed into the world,  
Which stood before my eyes.  
I saw how I committed grave errors  
In this world.  
First I felt how great the errors were,  
And only from this feeling  
Did I gain the ability to imagine  
Where the errors lay.  
And whenever I saw the mistake,  
I longed for the strength to make amends.  
I could not do this.  
But the mistakes became creative  
And they created me anew.

CAPESIUS:  
Oh, this strange place, a bench,  
A little house and a forest floor before me.  
Do I know them? They urgently demand  
That I know them; they oppress me.  
They seem to be real; but no,  
All this can only be an image to me.  
I know where the image came from.  
It was woven from my longing.  
I emerged from longing,  
As if from the immeasurable sea of worlds.  
Shuddering, startled, the memory  
Of this longing rises from the depths of my soul.  
How terribly this thirst for longing burned.  
I had to yearn stormily for being  
And all existence wanted only to flee me,  
A moment that seems like eternity to me,  
Poured storms of suffering into my soul,  
Which only a whole life can produce.  
And before the horror of longing stood before me,  
What had created this terror for me.

Expanded myself to the entire universe  
And robbed of all my own being:  
That's how I felt, but no, that's how  
Another being felt, one that arose from me.  
Grown up, I saw humans and human works  
From world thoughts that raced through space  
And, being, urged themselves toward revelation.  
They presented a whole world of life  
Before my eyes, and took from me  
The power of my existence for this creation.  
The more the world gained in being before me,  
The more I lost my own essence.  
It could come into being as reality  
Because I was condemned to empty nothingness.  
Thoughts sprayed out of reality,  
They penetrated me, thinking themselves.  
They created an image from life's mistakes.  
The room was filled on all sides  
With forces of sound that revealed themselves  
And composed solemn words:  
O human, recognize yourself in your world.  
I saw the human being who stood before me  
And had to feel himself as my own being.  
And those forces of sound continued to speak,  
As long as you cannot feel this being  
Completely interwoven into your life cycles,  
You are a dream that can only dream itself.  
And as if into nothingness, the magical world disappeared.  
It soon recreated itself out of nothingness.