I paced in my room until late in the night, Wide opened my eyes, thought and took sight. Someone sang somewhere of blazing luck, Their...

Fragment 1 Upon my soul’s own grave I built a tent of reed* Now I live there--out of need. Afn keyver fun mayn neshome hob ikh a getselt...

(Note: This is the final entry in Moyshe Varshe's diary, written less than 10 days before he committed suicide. The remainder of the book...

Do I bow my head, silence myself, pray? And do I then do the opposite--raise my head, speak, curse? No, not that. I have a feeling that I...

Who knows? Perhaps it’s all for the good. May I murmur: (משלי ג, פרק יב) כי את אשר יאהב יהוה יוכיח For whom the LORD loves, He rebukes?...

December 19--January 2. A new year. Symbolic dates. Hygiene: Silence. Not speaking and not thinking. Everything is declamation: Studying,...

Has it not all happened to me before my time? Really, it hasn’t. But a suffocating and suffocating haze envelops all.* Did I not expect...

I don’t want to dream in waking life. Dream is lie’s truth. In dream, everything is finished and done. But in an environment that puts...

My sensitivity is my enemy. I am a mass of sick nerves, reacting to sensations.

Another two weeks gone. Why don’t I break [out of] the enchanted circle? Am I destined to spend my life muttering about my fate? There...

Two weeks. I’ve been living without self-consciousness. I’m almost well. But something is missing. What? I do ugly things, for I am full...

What is it? Why am I not thinking? Am I now nothing more than a nest for cheap thoughts? I choke them out--they come without end. And it...

Long since I touched my diary--[I had] no thoughts. Why? Are there external causes? Why do I let myself be shaped from without? I need to...

Living stoically--I cannot. I have already looked over there, on the other side. The stoics say: everything ends--wait quietly, and don’t...

I must work, without end, towards feeling whatever it is in myself that constitutes unity. And if I give up, I should be carried by the...

There are times when I live entirely without self-consciousness, times when I live all but without mind. I vegetate. I listen to myself,...

A protracted ebbing.* Everything revolves around the one: how can one live on their own grave? You cannot break the chains of sin/the...

It’s fall. Heavy droplets drip sad and terminal--it seems this rain will be eternal.* That’s sentimental. There is no fall--for me. I...

I am pessimistic, and that is something fundamentally base--one must not be pessimistic; only base natures of know not of joy. Is not...

I am weak, and my life is unneeded. But I want to believe: work is waiting for me. True, it’s black work--but it is work for Yiddish...