A few days later, Banaka turned up in the cafe. Staggering drunk, he fell off a barstool twice before managing to stay on it, order a calvados, and put his head down on the counter. Tamina noticed he was crying.

âœWhatâs the matter, Mr. Banaka?❠she asked him. Banaka looked up at her tearfully and pointed to his chest: âœIâm nothing, do you understand? Iâm nothing! I donât exist!❠Then he went to the toilet and from the toilet straight out into the street, without paying.

When Tamina told Hugo what had happened, he showed her, by way of explanation, a newspaper page with book reviews, among them a sarcastic four-line note on Banakaâs entire output.

The episode of Banakaâs pointing to his chest and crying because he did not exist reminds me of a line from Goetheâs West-East Divan: âœIs one alive when other men are living?❠Hidden within Goetheâs question is the mystery of the writerâs condition: By writing books, a man turns into a universe (donât we speak of the universe of Balzac, the universe of Chekhov, the universe of Kafka?), and it is precisely the nature of a universe to be unique. The existence of another universe threatens it in its very essence. Provided their shops are not on the same street, two cobblers can live in perfect harmony. But if they start writing books on the cobblerâs lot, they are soon going to get in each otherâs way and ask: âœIs a cobbler alive when other cobblers are living?â

Tamina has the impression that a single outsiderâs glance can destroy the entire worth of her intimate notebooks, and Goethe is convinced that a single glance of a single human being which fails to fall on lines written by Goethe calls into question Goetheâs very existence. The difference between Tamina and Goethe is the difference between human being and writer.