No More Learning

'Well, do we want to go on playing, or don't we? " the intern asked patiently.
"Of course we want to go on," Ffeifer responded, and picked up his cards. His eyes met Moosbrugger's. "Moreover, Moosbrugger and I are of the same opinion,'' he went on, looking at his hand with a worried expression. "How was it, Moosbrugger? The counselor at the trial asked you repeatedly why you put on your Sunday clothes and went to the tavern-"
"And got shaved," Moosbrugger corrected; Moosbrugger was ready to talk about it at any time, as if it was an act of state.
"Calmly got shaved," Pfeifer repeated. "'You shouldn't have done that! ' the counselor told you. Well! " He turned to the rest. 'We do ex- actly the same thing when we say that our mental patients wouldn't have done that. Is this the way to prove anything? " This time, his words were subdued and relaxed and only an echo of his earlier, more passionate protest, because the game had again begun to go around the table.
1636 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
A patronizing smile could be discerned on Moosbrugger's face for quite some time; it slowly faded in his absorption in the game, the way pleats in a stiff material soften with constant use. So Clarisse was not entirely wrong when she thought she was seeing several devils struggling for a soul, but the relaxed way in which this was happening deceived her, and she was especially confused by the manner in which Moosbrugger was behaving. He apparently did not much like the younger doctor, who wanted to help him; he put up with his efforts only reluctantly and be- came restless when he felt them. Perhaps he wasn't acting any differ- ently from any simple person who finds it impertinent when someone busies himself about him too earnestly; but he was delighted every time Dr. Pfeifer spoke. Presumably what he was expressing in this case was not exactly delight, for such a condition formed no part of Moosbrug- ger's demeanor, oriented as it was toward dignity and recognition, and much of what the doctors said among themselves he also found incom- prehensible; but if talk there had to be, then it should be like Dr. Pfeifer's. That this was, on the whole, his opinion was unmistakably evi- dent. The collision of the two doctors had made him cheerful; he began to count his tricks again out loud and in English, and in conspicuous repetition threw into the conversation or into the silence from time to time the obsetvation: "Ifit must be, it must be! " Even the good cleric, who had seen a good deal, shook his head at times, but the scorn heaped on earthly justice had pleased him not a little, and he was also pleased that the scholars ofworldly science were not able to agree. He no longer recalled how all these problems that they had been talking about were to be decided according to canon law, but he thought calmly: "Let them carry on, God has the last word," and since this conviction led him not to get involved in the verbal duel, he won the game.
So among these four men there was a quite cordial understanding. It was true that the prize being offered was Moosbrugger's head, but that was not in the least troublesome as long as each person was completely preoccupied with what he had to do first. After all, the men concerned with forging, polishing, and selling knives are not constantly thinking of what it might lead to. Moreover, Moosbrugger, as the only one person- ally and directly acquainted with the slaying of another person, and whose own execution was in the offing, found that it was not the worst thing that could befall a man of honor. Ufe is not the highest of values, Schiller says: Moosbrugger had heard that from Dr. Pfeifer, and it pleased him greatly. And so, as he could be touching or a raging animal depending on how his nature was appealed to or manipulated, the oth- ers too, as friends and executioners, were stretched over two differing spheres of action that had hardly a single point of contact. But this
From the Posthumous Papers · 1637
greatly disturbed Clarisse. She had seen right away that under the guise of cheerfulness something secret was going on, but she had grasped this only as a blurred picture and, confused by the content of the conversa- tion, was just now beginning to understand; but not only did she under- stand, she saw persistent evidence, ominous and indeed urgent in its uncanniness, that these men were surreptitiously observing Moosbrug- ger. But Moosbrugger, unsuspecting, was observing her, Clarisse. From time to time he furtively directed his eyes at her and tried to surprise and hold her glance. The visit of this beautiful lady who had come so far-it was only Clarisse's thinness and small size that were just a little too unimpressive-flattered him greatly, in spite of all the deference with which he was generally treated. When he found her extraordinary glance directed at him, he did not doubt for an instant that his bushy- bearded manliness had made her fall in love with him, and now and then a smile arose beneath his mustache that was meant to confirm this con- quest, and this, along with the superiority practiced on servant girls, made a quite remarkable impression on Clarisse. An inexpressible help- lessness squeezed her heart. She had the notion that Moosbrugger found himself in a trap, and the flesh on her body seemed to her a bait that had been cast before him while the hunters lurked around him.
Quickly making up her mind, she laid her hand on Friedenthal's arm and told him that she had seen enough and felt tired.
"What did you really mean when you said he had always had only 'er- satz women'? '' Friedenthal asked after they had left the room.
"Nothing! " Clarisse, still upset at what she had been through, re- sponded with a dismissive gesture.
Friedenthal became melancholy and thought he needed to justify the strange performance. "Basically, of course, none of us are responsible for our actions," he sighed. Clarisse retorted: "He least of all! "
Friedenthallaughed at the "joke. " "Were you very much surprised? " he continued, in apparent astonishment. "Some of Moosbrugger's indi- vidual traits emerged quite nicely. "
Clarisse stopped. "You shouldn't allow that to continue! " she de- manded forcefully.
Her companion smiled and devoted himself to dramatizing his state of mind. "What do you expect! " he exclaimed. "For the medical man everything is medicine, and for the lawyer, law! The justice system is in the final analysis a function ofthe concept of'compulsion,' which is part of healthy life but is mostly applied without thinking to sick people as well. But in the same way, the concept of'sickness,' our starting point as
1638 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
doctors, and all its consequences, are also applicable to healthy life. These things can never be reconciled! "
"But there are no such things! " Clarisse exclaimed.
"Oh, but there are," the doctor complained gently. "The human sciences developed at different times and for different purposes, which have nothing to do with each other. So we have the most divergent con- cepts about the same thing. At most the only place it comes together is in the lexicon. And I bet it's not only the priest and myself but you, too, and, for instance, your brother or your husband and l-each one of us would know only one comer ofthe contents ofevery term we would look up in it, and of course each of us would know a different comer! The world hasn't been able to arrange things any better than that! " Frieden- thal had leaned over Clarisse, who was standing in a window alcove, and supported his arm against the windowbars. Some sort ofgenuine feeling resonated in his words. He was a doubter. The insecurity of his disci- pline had opened his eyes to the insecurity of all knowledge. He would have loved to be someone important, but in his best hours had an inkling that for him the paralyzing confusion of everything about which truth existed, did not yet exist, or would never exist, permitted nothing more than a vain and sterile subjectivity. He sighed, and added: "I sometimes feel as if the windows of this building were nothing more than magnify- ing glasses! "
Clarisse asked seriously: "Can we go to your office for a bit? I can't talk here. " Two arrows shot forth from beneath the shield ofher eyelids. Friedenthal slowly disengaged his hand from the window and his glance from her eyes. Then he also disengaged his thoughts from the absorp- tion he had revealed, and said, as they walked along the tiled corridor: "This fellow Pfeifer is an extraordinary figure. He lives without friends or girlfriends, but he has the biggest collection of paintings, mal pro- ceedings, and memorabilia connected with the death sentences of the last twenty or thirty years. I saw them once. Extraordinary. Drawers full of his 'victims': polished and brutal faces of men and women, some marked by crime, some quite ordinary-looking, smile up at you from yel- lowed newspapers and faded photographs, or gaze into their unknown future. Then there are scraps of clothing, rope ends-real gallows ropes--canes, vials of poison. Do you know the museum in Zermatt, where what's left behind by those who've fallen from the surrounding mountains is preserved? It's that kind of impression. He obviously has a tender feeling for these things. You notice it, too, whenever he talks of the 'victims' to whose legal murder, or whatever you want to call it, he himself has conbibuted. As astute observer might see in this something like a rivalry, the joy of intellectual superiority, sexual cunning. All of
From the Posthumous Papers · 1639
course entirely within the bounds of what is permissible and scientifi- cally admissible. But one could indeed say that being preoccupied with danger makes one dangerous-"
"He hunts them? " Clarisse asked in a choked voice.
"Yes; you could almost say he's a hunter in love with his prey. " Clarisse froze; she did not know what was happening to her. Frieden-
thal had conducted her back along a somewhat different route, and as he was speaking opened the door of a ward they had to traverse, which seemed to contain the most glorious thing she had ever seen. It was a large hall, and she thought she was looking into a living flower bed. They were crossing the ward for hysterical women. These women were stand- ing around singly and in small clusters, and lying in beds. They all ap- peared to be wearing snow-white clothes and to have loosened and flowing inky-black hair. Clarisse couldn't take in a single detail; the total- ity resembled something unutterably beautiful and dramatically agitated. "Sisters! " Clarisse felt softly but powerfully in that moment when atten- tion streamed in irregular pulses toward her and Friedenthal; she had the feeling of being able to fly higher with a swarm of wondrous lovebirds than all the excitements of life and art allow. Her companion made only slow fmward progress with her, for all sorts of humble enamored souls approached him from every side, or wandered in his path with a strength oferotic gentleness such as Clarisse had never before experienced. Frie- denthal directed placating or severe words to them, and with soft move- ments pushed them away; and meanwhile other women lay in their beds in their white jackets, having spread out their hair darkly over the pillows, women whose bellies and legs under their thin blankets performed the drama oflove. Sinning figures. Paired with a partner who remained invis- ible but was palpably present, against whom they pushed their arms with exaggerated resistance, who exaggeratedly stimulated the swelling of their breasts, from whose mouths they withdrew with superhuman effort and toward whom their bellies vaulted with superhuman effort, while in the midst of this obscene play their eyes shone innocently with the en- chanting inert beauty of large, dark flowers.
Clarisse was still deeply confused by this flower bed of love and suf- fering, by its morbid and yet intoxicating aroma, by its aura, by the glid- ing-through and not-being-allowed-to-stop, when she was sitting in Friedenthal's office being observed by him with an unflagging smile. Collecting herself and returning from her almost spatially deep distrac- tion, she clung to something she managed to get out in a raw, almost mechanical voice: "Declare him not accountable for his actions! "
Friedenthal looked at her with astonishment. "My dear lady," he asked in a joking tone, "of what concern is that to you? "
1640 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
Clarisse recoiled because she could not think of an answer. But since nothing occurred to her, she said simply and suddenly: "Because he can't help it! "
Dr. Friedenthal now scrutinized her more closely. "What makes you so sure of that? "
Clarisse energetically withstood his glance and answered haughtily, as if she was not certain whether to condescend to giving him such a re- sponse: "But he's here only because he's standing in for someone else! " Annoyed, she shrugged her shoulders, jumped up, and looked out the window. When after a short while she perceived that this did not have any effect, she turned around again and came down a peg. "You can't understand me: he reminds me of someone! " she observed, half at- tenuating the truth. She did not want to say too much and held back.
"But that's not a scientific reason," Friedenthal drawled.
"I thought you'd do it if I asked you to," she now said simply.
"You're too casual about that. " The doctor was reproachful. He
leaned back in his armchair like Faust and went on with a glance at his studio: "Have you at all considered whether you are doing the man a favor by wanting him committed instead of punished? It's no fun living within these walls. " He shook his head disconsolately.
His visitor replied clearly: "First the executioner must leave him alone! "
"Look," Friedenthal said. "In my opinion, Moosbrugger is probably an epileptic. But he also shows symptoms of paraphrenia systematica and perhaps of dementia paranoides. He just happens to be in every re- spect a borderline case. His attacks, in which excruciatingly terrifying delusions and sensory disorientation certainly do play a role, can last minutes or weeks, but they often pass over imperceptibly into complete mental clarity, just as they are also capable of arising with no fixed boundaries from this same clarity, and besides, even in the paroxysmal stage consciousness never quite disappears but is only diminished in varying degrees. So something probably could be done for him, but the case is by no means one in which it would be necessary for a doctor to exclude his responsibility as a physician! "
"So you'll do something for him? " Clarisse urged.
Friedenthal smiled. "I don't know yet. "
"You have to! "
"You're strange," Friedenthal drawled. "But . . . one could weaken. " "You don't nave the slightest doubt that the man is sick! " the young
woman asserted emphatically.
"Ofcourse not. But it's not myjob to judge that," the doctor defended
himself. "You've already heard: I am to judge whether his free will was
From the Posthumous Papers · I 64 I
excluded during the deed, whether his consciousness was present dur- ing the deed, whether he had any insight into his wrongdoing: nothing but metaphysical questions, which put this way have no meaning for me as a physician, but in which I do have to show some consideration for the judge! "
In her excitement Clarisse strode up and down the room like a man.
"Then you oughtn't to let yourself be used like that! " she exclaimed harshly. "If you can't prevail against the judge, it has to be attempted some other way! "
Friedenthal tried another tack to dissuade his visitor from her annoy- ing ideas. "Have you ever really tried to picture to yourselfwhat a horri- ble raging beast this momentarily calm half-sick man can be? " he asked.
''What's that to us now? " Clarisse retorted, cutting off his effort. ''When confronted with a case of pneumonia, you don't ask whether you can help a good person go on living! Your only task now is to prevent yourself from becoming accessory to a murder! "
Friedenthal sadly threw up his hands. ''You're crazy! " he said rudely and dejectedly.
"One has to have the courage to be crazy if the world is to be set right again! From time to time there have to be people who refuse to go along with the lies! " Clarisse asserted.
He took this to be a witty joke, which in the rush he had not quite understood. From the start this little person had made an impression on him, especially since, dazzled by General von Stumm, he overestimated her social position; and in any case, many young people these days give a rather confused impression. He found her to be something special, and felt himself restlessly stirred by her spontaneous eagerness as if by something relentlessly, even nobly, radiant. To be sure, he perhaps ought to have seen this radiance as diamondlike, for it also had some- thing of the quality of an overheated stove: something distinctly unpleas- ant that made one hot and icy. He unobtrusively assessed his visitor: stigmata of a heightened nervousness were doubtless to be perceived in her. But who today did not have such stigmata! Friedenthal's response was no different from the usual one-for when there are hazy notions of what is really meaningful, what is confused always has the same chance to excel that the con artist has in a hazily defined society-and although he was a pretty good observer, he had always managed to regain his composure no matter what Clarisse said. In the last analysis, one can always regard any person as a small-scale swatch of mental illness; that's the job of theory, how one looks at a person at one time psychologically and at another chemically; and since after Clarisse's last words a chasm of silence yawned, Friedenthal again sought "contact" and at the same
I642 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
time sought once more to divert her from her insistent demands. "Did you really like the women we saw? " he asked.
"Oh, enormously! " Clarisse exclaimed. She stood quietly before him, and the hardness was suddenly gone from her face. "I don't know what to tell you," she added softly. "That ward is like a monstrous magnifying glass held over a woman's triumph and suffering! "
Friedenthal smiled with satisfaction. ''Well, so now you see," he said. "Now you'll have to concede that the attraction that illness exercises is not alien to me either. But I must observe limits, I have to keep things in their places. Then I wanted to ask you whether you have ever considered that love, too, is a disturbance of the mind. There is hardly anyone who does not conceal something in his most private and proper love life that he reveals only to his guilty partner, some craziness or weakness: why not simply call it perversity and madness? In public you have to take measures against it, but in your inner life you can't always arm yourself against such things with the same rigor. And psychiatrists-psychiatry is ultimately an art too-will celebrate their greatest success when they have a certain sympathy and rapport with the medium in which they are working. " He had seized his visitor's hand, and Clarisse ceded to him its outermost fingertips, which she felt lying between his fingers as softly and helplessly as if they had fallen from her like the petals a flower drops. Suddenly she was completely a woman, full of that tender capri- ciousness in the face of a man's beseeching, and what she had experi- enced in the morning was forgotten. A soundless sigh parted her lips. It seemed to her that she had never felt this way, or not for the longest time, and evidently at this moment something from the magic of his realm rubbed off on Friedenthal, whom she by no means especially liked. But she pulled herself together and asked sternly: ''What have you made up your mind to do? "
"I have to make my rounds now," the doctor replied, "but I would like to see you again. But not here.
Can't we meet somewhere else? "
"Perhaps," Clarisse responded. ''When you have carried out my re- quest! "
Her lips narrowed, the blood drained from her skin, and this made her cheeks look like two small leather balls; there was too much pressure in her eyes. Friedenthal suddenly felt exploited. It is extraordinary, but when a person sees another as merely a means to an end, it is much easier for him to take on that impenetrable look ofsomeone who is men- tally ill, the more natural it seems to him that consideration ought to be shown him. "Every hour here we see souls suffer, but we have to stay within our bounds," he countered. He became circumspect.
Clarisse said: "Good, you don't want to. Let me make you another
From the Posthurrwus Papers · 1643
proposition. " She stood before him, small, legs apart, hands behind her back, and looked at him with a bashfully sarcastic, urgent smile: "I'll join the clinic as a nurse! "
The doctor stood up and asked her to talk it over with her brother, who would make clear to her how many necessary prerequisites for such a position she was lacking. As he spoke, the sarcasm that was squeezed into her eyes drained out of them and they filled with tears. "Then I want," she said, almost voiceless from excitement, "to be accepted as a patient! I have a mission! " Because she was afraid of spoiling her chances if she looked directly at the doctor, she looked to one side and up a little, and perhaps her eyes even wandered around. A shudder heated her skin, which swelled up red. Now she looked lovely and in need of tenderness, but it was too late; irritation at her importunity had sobered the doctor and made him reserved. He did not even ask her any more questions, for it seemed politic not to know too much about her out of consideration for the General and Ulrich, who had brought her here, and also in view of the almost forbidden favors he had granted her. And it was only out of old medical habit that from this point on his speech became still gentler and more emphatic as he expressed to Cla- risse his regret that there was no way he could meet her second request, and he advised her to confide this wish to her brother too. He even in- formed her that before that happened he could not allow her to con- tinue her visits to the clinic, much as this would be a loss to him personally.
Clarisse offered no real resistance to what he said. She had already imputed worse to Friedenthal. "He's an impeccable medical bureau- crat," she told herself. That eased her departure: she casually extended her hand to the physician, and her eyes laughed cunningly. She was not at all depressed, and even as she went down the steps was thinking about other possibilities.
FISCHEL I GERDA I HANS SEPP I ULRICH
LATE 19. 20S
It was Ulrich's bad conscience that drove him to Gerda; since the melan- choly scene between them, he had not heard anything from her and did not know how she had come to terms with herself. To his swprise, he found Papa Leo at the Fischels' house; Mama Clementine had gone out with Gerda. Leo Fischel would not let Ulrich go; he had rushed out to the hall himselfwhen he recognized his voice. Ulrich had the impression of changes. Director Fischel seemed to have changed his tailor; his in- come must have increased and his convictions diminished. Then too, he had usually stayed later at the bank; he had never worked at home after the air there had become so irksome. But today he seemed to have been sitting at his desk, although this "roaring loom of time" had not been used for years; a packet ofletters lay on the baize cloth, and the chrome- plated telephone, otherwise used only by the ladies, was standing askew, as if it had just been in use. After Ulrich had sat down, Fischel turned toward him in his desk chair and polished his pince-nez with a handker- chief that he drew from his breast pocket, although earlier he would cer- tainly have objected to such a foppish action, saying that it had been sufficient for a Goethe, a Schiller, and a Beethoven to cany their hand- kerchiefs in their trouser pocket-whether that was the case or not.
-It's been a long time, said Director Fischel. -Y es, Ulrich said.
- D i d you inherit a great deal? Fischel asked. -Oh, Ulrich said. -Enough.
- Y e s , there are problems.
- B u t you look splendid. You somehow seem to have got younger. -Oh, thanks; professionally there have never been any problems.
But look- He pointed in a melancholyway to a pile ofletters that lay on the desk. You do know Hans Sepp?
- O f course. You took me into your confidence- -Right! Fischel said.
From the Posthumous Papers · 1645
- A r e those love letters?
The telephone rang. Fischel put on his pince-nez, which he had taken off to listen, extracted a paper with notes from his coat, and said: - B u y ! Then the inaudible voice at the other end spoke to him for quite a while. From time to time Fischel looked over his spectacles at Ulrich, and once he even said: -Excuse me! Then he said into the instrument: -No, thank you, I don't like the second business! Talk about it? Yes, of course we can talk about it again-and with a short, satisfied pause for reflec- tion, he hung up.
-You see, Fischel said. -That was someone in Amsterdam; much too expensive! Three weeks ago the thing wasn't worth half as much, and in three weeks it won't be worth half what it costs now. But in between there's a deal to be made. A great risk!
- B u t you didn't want to, Ulrich said.
- O h , that's not really settled. But a great risk . . . ! But still, let me tell you, that's building in marble, stone on stone! Can you build on the mind, the love, the ideals of a person? He was thinking of his wife and of Gerda. How different it had been at the beginning! The telephone rang again, but this time it was a wrong number.
-You used to put more worth on solid moral values than on a solid purse, Ulrich said. -How often you held it against me that I couldn't follow you in that!
-Oh-he responded-ideals are like air that changes, you don't know how, with closed windows! Twenty-five years ago, who had any notion of anti-Semitism? No, then there were the great perspectives of Humanity! You're too young. But I still managed to hear some of the great parliamentary debates. The last ones! The only thing that's de- pendable is what you can say with numbers. Believe me, the world would be a lot more reasonable if it were simply left to the free play of supply and demand, instead of being equipped with armored ships, bayonets, diplomats who know nothing about economics, and so-called national ideals.
Ulrich interrupted with the objection that it was precisely heavy in- dustry and the banks whose demands were urging peoples on to arma- ment.
- W e l l , shouldn't they? Fischel replied. - I f the world is the way it is, and runs around in fool's outfits in broad daylight, they shouldn't take account of that? When the military just happens to be convenient for customs dealings, or against strikers? Money, you know, has its own ra- tionale, and it's not to be trifled with. By the way, apropos, have you heard anything new about Arnheim's ore deposits? Again the phone rang; but with his hand on the instrument, Fischel waited for Ulrich's
1646 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
answer. The conversation was brief, and Fischel did not lose the thread of their conversation; since Ulrich lmew nothing new about Amheim, he repeated that money had its own rationale. - P a y attention, he added. - I f I were to offer Hans Sepp five hundred marks to move to one of the universities of his revered-above-all Germania (Germany), he would re- ject them indignantly. If I offered him a thousand, ditto. But if I were to offer him ten thousand-though I never in my life would, even if I had so much money! It almost seemed as ifFischel, horrified at such an idea, had lost the connection, but he was only reflecting, and went on: - O n e just can't do that, because money has its own rationale. For a man who spends insane amounts, the money won't stick; it will fly from him, make him a spendthrift. That the ten thousand marks refuse to be offered to Hans Sepp proves that this Hans Sepp is not real, is of no value, but an awful, swindling scourge with which God is chastising me.
Again Fischel was interrupted. This time by longer communications. That he was conducting such transactions at home instead of at the of- fice struck Ulrich. Fischel gave three orders to buy and one to sell. In between he had time to think about his wife. - I f I were to offer her money so she would divorce me-he asked himself-would Clementine do it? An inner certainty answered: No. Leo Fischel mentally doubled the amount. Ridiculous! said the inner voice. Fischel quadrupled. No, on principle, occurred to him. Then in one swoop he breathlessly in- creased the sum beyond any human resistance or capability, and angrily stopped. He speedily had to switch his mind to smaller fortunes, which literally shrank in his mind the way the pupils narrow with a sudden change of light; but he did not forget his affairs for an instant, and made no mistakes.
- B u t now tell me, finally-Ulrich asked, having already become im- patient-what kind of letters these are that you wanted to show me. They appear to be love letters. Did you intercept Gerda's love letters?
- I wanted to show you these letters. You should read them. I would just like to lmow now what you would say about them. Fischel handed Ulrich the whole packet and sat back, preoccupied meanwhile with other thoughts, gazing into the air through his pince-nez.
Ulrich glanced at the letters; then he took one out and slowly read it through. Director Fischel asked: -Tell me, Herr Doktor, you used to lmow this singer Leontine, or Leona, who looks like the late Empress Elizabeth; may God punish me, this woman really has the appetite of a lion!
Ulrich looked up, frowning; he liked the letter, and the interruption bothered him.
-W ell, you don't have to answer, Fischel placated him. - I was just
From the Posthumous Papers · z64 7
asking. You needn't be ashamed. She's no royalty. I met her a little while ago through an acquaintance; we found out that you and she were friends. She eats a lot. Let her eat! Who doesn't like to eat? Fischel laughed.
Ulrich dropped his gaze to the letter again, without responding. Fischel again gazed dreamily into the firmament of the room.
The letter began: -Beloved person! Human goddess! We are con- demned to live in an extinguished century. No one has the courage to believe in the reality of myth. You must realize that this applies to you too. You do not have the courage ofyour nature as goddess. Fear ofpeo- ple holds you back. You are right to consider ordinary human lust as vulgar; indeed, worse than that, as a ridiculous regression from the life of us people ofthe future into mere atavism! And you are right again when you say that love for a person, animal, or thing is already the beginning of taking possession of it! And we don't even need to mention that possess- ing is the beginning of despiritualization! But still you have to distin- guish: being felt, perhaps also being sensed, is called being mine. I only feel what is mine; I don't hear what is not meant for me! Were this not so, we would be intellectualists. It's perhaps an inescapable tragedy that when we love we are forced to possess with eyes, ears, breath, and thoughts! But consider: I feel that I am not, so long as I am only I myself, I-self. It's only in the things outside me that I first discover myself. That, too, is a truth. I love a flower, a person, because without them I would be nothing. The grand thing about the experience of"mine" is feeling one- self melt away entirely, like a pile of snow under the rays of the sun, drifting upward like a gentle dissipating vapor! The most beautiful thing about "mine" is the ultimate extirpation of the possession of my self! That's the pure sense of "mine," that I possess nothing but am possessed by the entire world. All brooks flow from the heights to the valleys, and you too, 0 my soul, will not be mine before you have become a drop in the ocean of the world, totally a link in the world brotherhood and world community! This mystery no longer has anything in common with the insipid exaggeration that individual love experiences. In spite of the lust of this age one must have the courage for ardor, for inner fire! Virtue makes action virtuous; actions don't make virtue! Try it! The Beyond reveals itself in fits and starts, and we will not be transported in one jump into the regions of untrammeled life. But moments will come when we who are remote from people will experience moments ofgrace that are remote from people. Don't throw sensuality and suprasensuality into a pot of what has been! Have the courage to be a goddess! That's Germani . . .
-W ell? Fischel asked.
1648 • THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
Ulrich's face had turned red He found this letter ridiculous but mov- ing. Did these young people have no inhibitions at all about what was exaggerated, impossible, about the word that will not let itself be re- deemed? Words constantly hitched up with new words, and a kernel of truth hazed over with their peculiar web. - S o that's what Gerda's like now, he thought. But within this thought he thought a second, un- spoken, shaming one; it went something like: - A r e n ' t you insufficiently exaggerated and impossible?
-Well? Fischel repeated.
- A r e all the letters like that? Ulrich asked, giving them back to him. - H o w do I know which ones you've read! Fischel answered.
-They're all like that!
- T h e n they are quite beautiful, Ulrich said.
- I thought as much! Fischel exploded. - O f course that's why I
showed them to you! My wife found them. But no one expects me to have any clever advice in such questions ofthe soul. So fine! Tell that to my wife!
I would rather talk to Gerda herselfabout it; there's a lot in the letter that is, of course, quite misguided-
-Misguided? To say the least! But talk to her! And tell Gerda that I can't understand a single word of this jargon, but that I'm ready to pay five thousand marks-no! Better not to say anything! Tell her only that I love her anyway and am ready to forgive her!
The telephone again called Fischel to business. He, who all his life had been only a solid clerk, had begun some time ago to operate on the stock exchange on his own: -from time to time and with only small amounts, the scanty savings he possessed and a few stocks belonging to his spouse, Clementine. He could not talk to her about it, but he could be quite satisfied at his success; it was a real recreation from the depress- ing circumstances at home.
Ulrich is driven to see Gerda. He hadn't spoken to her since the hys- terical scene.