"Looking back at the end of the year created a little more serious mood than before. To bring children [his son ] in the world is no trifling matter! Over the entire horizon, bluish, phosphorescent flashes of sheet shining.. ..In fact, I really do go out into the snow [near Munich] in all seriousness, station myself there, freeze, freeze stiff, but work. I accomplish little in comparison with the abundance around me, but I accomplish a great deal in comparison with the poverty and simplicity of a small bourgeois homestead."