It is a frequently corroborated experience that a triviality, a little thing, a careless utterance, an unguarded exclamation, a casual glance, an involuntary gesture have provided the opportunity to slip into a person and discover something that had escaped more careful observation. Lest, however, this insignificant remark be distorted and become pompous, I shall for the moment forego further pursuit of it and get on with my project. 2In relation to a book a prologue is a triviality, and yet by means of a more careful comparison of prologues, would one not gain an opportunity for observation at a bargain price! In the scholarly world much is made of classifying literature and assigning the writing of each individual author to its proper place in the age and the writing of the age in that of the human race. Yet no one thinks about what might be gained if one or another literatus [literary type] could be trained to read only prologues, but to do it so thoroughly that he would begin with the earliest times and advance through all the centuries down to our own day. Prologues are characterized by the accidental, like dialects, idioms, colloquialisms; they are dominated by fashion in a way entirely different from the way works are—they change like clothing. Now they are long, now short; now bold, now shy; now stiffly formal, now slapdash; now worried and almost repentant, now self-confident and almost brash; now not entirely without an eye for the weaknesses of the book, now stricken with blindness, now perceiving these better than anyone else; now the preface is the first distillation of the product, now an aftertaste of it. And all of this is purely ceremonial. Even an author who in his work defies the times may nevertheless in the preface accommodate himself to custom in trivial matters and is thereby put to the test in many a collision—very droll for the observer—with regard to how far and how. Indeed, the more I think of this, the richer the yield promised by such a study seems to me. Just think of the contrast: the Greek naïveté that would furnish a superb basis for the presentation of the results. But I halt this flight of thought, which would probably lead me astray since I lack the equipment.

The preface has received its deathblow in recent scholarship. Looked at from its point of view, an older author easily becomes a pitiful figure over whom one does not know whether to laugh or to cry, because his halting manner in getting to the point makes him comic, and his naïveté, as if there were anyone who cared about him, makes him pathetic. Nowadays a situation like this cannot be repeated, because when one begins the book with the subject and the system with nothing there apparently is nothing left over to say in a prologue. This state of affairs has given me occasion to become aware that the preface is an altogether unique kind of literary production, and since it is elbowed aside it is high time for it to liberate itself like everything else. In this way it can still come to be something good. The incommensurable, which in an earlier period was placed in the preface to a book, can now find its place in a preface that is not the preface to any book. I believe that in this way the conflict will be settled to mutual satisfaction and benefit; if the preface and the book cannot be hitched up together, then let the one give the other a decree of divorce.

The most recent scholarly method has made me aware that it would have to come to a break. My merit will be this, to make the break in earnest; now there is only a phenomenon that points to the deeper reason. Every esthetically cultivated author surely has had moments when he did not care to write a book but when he really wanted to write a preface to a book, no matter whether it was by himself or by someone else. This indicates that a preface is essentially different from a book and that to write a preface is something entirely different from writing a book; if not, this need would express itself only when one had written a book, or when one imagined that one would write it just as one superficially imagines it, and thus raises the question of whether one should write the preface first or last. Nonetheless, as soon as a person is in one of these situations, he either has had a subject or imagines having it. But now when lacking also this he desires to write a preface, it is easy to perceive that this must not deal with a subject, because in that case the preface itself would become a book, and the question of the preface and the book would be pushed aside. The preface as such, the liberated preface, must then have no subject to treat but must deal with nothing, and insofar as it seems to discuss something and deal with something, this must nevertheless be an illusion and a fictitious motion.

The preface is thereby defined purely lyrically and defined according to its concept, while in the popular and traditional sense the preface is a ceremony according to period and custom. A preface is a mood. Writing a preface is like sharpening a scythe, like tuning a guitar, like talking with a child, like spitting out of the window. One does not know how it comes about; the desire comes upon one, the desire to throb fancifully in a productive mood, the desire to write a preface, the desire to do these things leves sub noctem susurri [in a low whisper as night falls]. Writing a preface is like ringing someone's doorbell to trick him, like walking by a young lady's window and gazing at the paving stones; it is like swinging one's cane in the air to hit the wind, like doffing one's hat although one is greeting nobody. Writing a preface is like having done something that justifies claiming a certain attention, like having something on one's conscience that tempts confidentiality, like bowing invitingly in the dance although one does not move, like pressing hard with the left leg, pulling the reins to the right, hearing the steed say "Pst," and oneself not caring a straw for the whole world; it is like being along without having the slightest inconvenience of being along, like standing on Valdby Hill and gazing at the wild geese. Writing a preface is like arriving by stagecoach at the first station, stopping in the dark shed, having a presentiment of what will appear, seeing the gate and then the open sky, gazing at the continually receding road beyond, catching a glimmer of the pregnant mystery of the forest, the alluring fading away of the footpath; it is like hearing the sound of the posthorn and the beckoning invitation of the echo, like hearing the powerful crack of the...