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What a torture are books written in German for the man who has a third ear! How reluctantly he stands beside the slowly revolving swamp of sounds without melody, of rhythms without dance, what among Germans is called a "book!" And as for the German who reads books! How lazily, how reluctantly, how badly he reads! How many Germans know and demand from themselves the knowledge that there is art in every good sentence, art which must be correctly grasped if the sentence is to be understood! With a misunderstanding about its tempo, for example, the sentence itself is misunderstood! That one must not be in doubt about the rhythmically decisive syllables, that one must feel the break in the extremely strict symmetry as intentional and charming, that one must lend a refined and patient ear to every staccato and every rubato, that one sorts out the sense in the series of vowels and diphthongs, how softly and richly they can colour and re-colour each other as they follow in their sequence - who among our book-reading Germans has enough good will to recognize these sorts of duties and demands and to listen for so much art and intentionality in the language? In the end we just "don't have the ear for that." And thus the most pronounced contrasts in style are not heard and the most refined artistry is wasted, as if on deaf people. These were my thoughts as I observed how crudely and naively people confused two masters of the art of prose with each other - one whose words drip down, hesitant and cold, as if from the roof of a damp cavern - he's relying on their dull sound and echo - and the other who handles his language like a flexible sword and feels from his arm down to his toes the dangerous joy in the excessively sharp, shimmering blade that wants to bite, hiss, and cut.-