II

It is strange to think that at home in the drawer of my writing table there lies the beginning of a play called “Saul” and a bundle of poems. Many an evening I have worked over them⁠—we all did something of the kind⁠—but that has become so unreal to me I cannot comprehend it any more. Our early life is cut off from the moment we came here, and that without our lifting a hand. We often try to look back on it and to find an explanation, but never quite succeed. For us young men of twenty everything is extraordinarily vague, for Kropp, Müller, Leer, and for me, for all of us whom Kantorek calls the “Iron Youth.” All the older men are linked up with their previous life. They have wives, children, occupations, and interests, they have a background which is so strong that the war cannot obliterate it. We young men of twenty, however, have only our parents, and some, perhaps, a girl⁠—that is not much, for at our age the influence of parents is at its weakest and girls have not yet got a hold over us. Besides this there was little else⁠—some enthusiasm, a few hobbies, and our school. Beyond this our life did not extend. And of this nothing remains.