This book is sheer past. Homeland and childhood – both of them long remote – form its background. – Today I would not have written it this way, and so I probably would not have written it at all. But back then, when I wrote it, it was necessary for me. It made half-forgotten things dear to me and thus enriched me; for all we possess of the past is that which we love. And we want to possess all that we have experienced.