There was that idea again, so laden with
associations!
Musil - Man Without Qualities - v2
"
"Were you there today? "
"Yes. " Agathe looked steadily at her brother and noticed the resent-
ment in his eyes.
He strove to control himself and responded as tersely as possible: "I
don't like your doing that. "
"I don't like doing it myself," Agathe said, continuing after a brief
pause: "But I like what you write. The beginning and the end, and what's in between too. I didn't understand everything, but I read it all. I think you could explain a lot of things to me, and because I'm afraid of strain- ing myself, I'll believe a lot without any explanation at all. "
(Post datum. This is really an example of an inner form of cheerful- ness as distinct from outer. )
1356 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
She laughed again, and it pealed softly. She seemed to be laughing over nothing and only from joy; and although Ulrich could be quite sen- sitive to people's laughter when it was aroused by something, for then it sometimes seemed to him just as humdrum an occurrence as sneezing, it immediately enticed him into an impossible task, that of adequately describing this pleasant, unmotivated sound. If, into the bargain, one threw in a little poetic commonplace, the impression could then be com- pared with that of a small, low-tuned silver bell: a dark bass tone sub- merged in a soft overflowing sparkle. But while Ulrich was listening to these cheerful sounds spreading out in the quiet room, his eyes also thought they were seeing all its lamps burning that much more quietly I as brightly. Precisely the simplest sensory impressions that populate the world occasionally have surprises in store when it comes to describing them, as ifthey came from anotherworld.
Influenced by this weakness, Ulrich suddenly felt a confession on his tongue about which he himself had not thought for goodness knew how long. "I once made a devilish bet with our big cousin Tzi, which I will never write down and which I don't think I ever told you about," he began to confess. "He suspected that I would write books, and, as it seems to me, he considered books that did not praise his politics to be deleterious and those that did superfluous, aside from the historical lit- erature and memoirs a diplomat customarily employs. But I swore to him that I would kill myself before I succumbed to the temptation of writing a book; and I really meant it. For what I was able to write would do nothing more than prove that one is able to live differently in some specific fashion; but that I should write a book about it would at the very least be the counterproof that I'm not able to live in that fashion. I didn't expect it would turn out differently. "
His sister had listened to him without stirring, without even a muscle in her face twitching. 'W e can kill each other ifit turns into a book," she said. "But it seems to me we have less reason to than before. "
Ulrich involuntarily looked her in the eye.
"Rather more reason for the opposite," she went on.
"You can't yet say that (too)," Ulrich objected calmly.
Agathe found that the supporting pillow at her side needed rearrang-
ing, which turned her face away from him. "Don't be angry with me," she replied from this posture, "but even though I admire what you write, I still don't quite understand why you write. Indeed, sometimes I've found it enormously comical. You carefully dissect according to natural and moral laws the possibility of extending your hand. Why don't you simply reach out? "
From the Posthumous Papers · 1357
"It's ruinous simply to reach out. Did I ever tell you the story of the major's wife? "
Agathe nodded mutely.
"It can't end the way that did! "
The small furrow appeared between Agathe's brows. "The major's
wife was a commonplace person," she declared coolly.
"That's right. But whether one discovers a world or goes on a Don
Quixote adventure doesn't depend, unfortunately, on the worth of the person in whose honor one embarks on the trip. "
"Who knows! " Agathe replied. A moment later she impatiently aban- doned her comfortable position and sat down in the ordinary way right in front of her brother, as if she were going to test something. She looked at him (almost grimly) but said nothing. "Well? " Ulrich asked encouragingly, expecting an attack (that was awaiting him).
"Doesn't everything you've written down"-she pointed to the table and the papers lying on it-"answer everything we've been asking our- selves so often and have been so uncertain about? "
"I almost t:hin)<: so. "
"I have the feeling that everything we've been discussing back and forth for so long is resolved in these papers. But why didn't you hit on it sooner? I'm even immodest enough to maintain that you've left us both in the dark for quite a while. "
"We're still in the dark. You shouldn't overestimate these ideas. And it's been hard for me to open up to you. Sometimes in a dream you have delightful thoughts, but ifyou carry on with them after you wake up, they're ridiculous. "
"Really? But if I've understood you correctly, you're certain that for every emotion there are two worlds and that it depends on us which one we wish to live in! "
"Two images of the world! But only one reality! Within it, of course, you,can perhaps live in one way or the other. And that is when you ap- parently have the one or the other reality before you. "
"Apparently, but totally? Apparently, and with no gaps? But if every- thing were living in this other way, wouldn't that be the Millennium? "
Ulrich cautiously confirmed the possibility of this conclusion.
"So the intimation of this other world would also be what brought about beliefin a paradise? Don't laugh at me, but it's made me conclude that in this way one would of necessity arrive in paradise just by living according to the other part of one's feelings, as you call it. "
1358 ·THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
"Put correctly, paradise would then have to arrive on earth," Ulrich rectified.
''I'm not laughing at all. I just have to add: as far as one can! " I Or: mysticism as anomalous psychology of normal life: You believe that mys- ticism is a secret through which we enter another world; but it is only, or even, the secret of living differently in our world. "
"Oh? Yes, that's what you wrote. But didn't you even much earlier sometimes call it the concave, submerged world? " Agathe ascertained. "You spoke of an encompassing and an encompassed possibility of feel- ing as if they were old tales. Of gods and goddesses. Of two branches of development in life. Ofmoon-nights and day. Oftwo inseparable twins! "
It is the answer to all our conversations, all our peculiarities.
Agathe was pressing, but Ulrich yielded of his own accord: "You can add anything you like: everything that has truly moved me has its expla- nation here. The victories that come from acting in the world, and the emotions that go with them, have always been alien to me, even if at times I felt an obligation to them. An apparently inactive state I called love, without loving a woman, was opposed in me to the processes of knowledge that gave me the passion a rider has for his horse I which I called the world of love because I couldn't love in the everyday world! I We always imagined a different life before us. "
Agathe interrupted him animatedly. But it was hard for her to fmd the right words. At the beginning, although soon swept away by what she was saying, there was a little awkwardness in her voice, as when a boy tries to speak in a man's bass voice, or when a girl paints a mustache on her face, as she began: "You know that I'm no shrinking touch-me-not. And I've often reproached myself for my so-called passions, which have always left me completely unmoved. I clearly felt that I was being moved by them only because I hadn't found what could truly move us. " Possibly better this way: When she applied the expression "touch-me-not" to herself. She said Ulrich knew that she wasn't one and that she attached no importance to it. But also (that is: he knew) that she found her so- called passions most shameful after the fact. "You scrape yourself like a cow against a tree, just as happily, and suddenly stop in the same bewil- derment," she said.
Ulrich: A person is passionate in two senses. A kind of appetitive sense, which reaches out for everything and undertakes everything, and another, which is timid, has a hard time making up its mind to do things, and is full ofinexpressible longing. One probably has both within oneself.
Agathe: The man with qualities and the man without qualities! Mar-
From the Posthumous Papers · 1359
velous, marvelous. If someone understands you properly he has saved his life! What author wouldn't be flattered by such praise! Ulrich re- sponded: It's not immaterial that we are talking about a passionate per- son in two quite different senses. We've become accustomed to applying the term chiefly to people we really ought to call lustful, to gluttons in every kind of passion, while we rather tend to regard people who are profoundly passionate within themselves as weak in affect, people who ascetically serve some sort of nobler passion of life. That leads to stupid mixups.
Agathe: I'm reproached for acting badly-
Who reproaches you? (a little suspiciously)
Agathe violently twitched her shoulders. "Professor Hagauer. Think
ofhis letters. Indeed, I've often reproached myselffor having done what I did with the will-"
"We'll make amends for it," Ulrich intervened.
"What a situation to be in, feeling that you're not a good person and yet not wanting it any other way! You yourself once reproached me about this, and I was insulted-"
Ulrich interrupted her with anapologetic, defensive gesture. Proba- bly (too) from the author, that it's important that they have now recog- nized that they've got to the center oftheir difficulties.
Agathe: "Oh, you've often talked about morality. You've set before me at least ten different definitions; every time, listening to you was a totally new experience. But now I'm reproached for being immoral, I'm made to believe it myself, but for all that I'm an absolute marvel of morality! "
Ulrich: And why a marvel?
Agathe: You showed me the way! The only condition I love and seek needs no morality, it is morality! Every twitch of the little toe that hap- pens in it is moral. Am I right? (laughs)
Ulrich: Yes, you're right.
Agathe: But first I want to ask you something else . . . Everything we've been talking about half jokingly and half seriously for the last few days: is it all settled?
Ulrich: Of course.
Agathe: T o love your neighbor as yourself is an ecstatic demand? Ulrich: It is the natural morality of mystic ecstasy, which teaches
something that never quite fits the ord[inary] activity of our lives.
EARLy-MORNING wALK
Part I
Around Clarisse's mouth laughter was struggling with the difficulties facing her; her mouth kept opening and then pressing itself tightly shut. She had got up too early: Walter was still sleeping; she had hastily thrown on a light dress and gone outside. The singing of birds reached her from the woods through the empty morning stillness. The hemi- sphere ofthe sky had not yet filled with warmth. Even the light was still shallowly dispersed. "It only reaches my ankles," Clarisse thought. "The cock of the morning has just been wound up! Everything is before its time! " Clarisse was deeply moved that she was wandering through the world before it was time. It almost made her cry.
Without saying anything about it to Walter or Ulrich, Clarisse had been to the asylum a second time. Since then she had been especially sensitive. She applied everything she had seen or heard during her two visits to herself. Three events especially preoccupied her. The first was that she had been addressed and greeted as the Emperor's son and a man. When this assertion had been repeated, she had quite distinctly felt her resistance to it yield, as if something ordinary that usually stood in the way of this royal quality was vanishing. And she was filled with an inexpressible desire. The second thing that excited her was that Mein- gast, too, was transforming himself, and was obviously using her and Walter's proximity in the process. Since she had surprised him in the vegetable garden-it might have been a few weeks agcr-and terrified him with her truly prophetic shout that she could transform herself too and also be a man, he had been avoiding her company. Since then she had not seen him often, even at meals; he locked himself in with his work or spent the whole day out of the house, and whenever he was hungry he secretly took something to eat from the pantry (without ask- ing). It had been just a short time ago that she had succeeded in talking to him again alone. She had told him: "Walter has forbidden me to talk about how you're undergoing a transformation in our house! " and had blinked her eyes. But even here Meingast kept himself concealed and acted surprised, indeed annoyed. He did not want to let her in on the secret he was busily working on. This seemed to be the explanation. But Clarisse had said to him: "Perhaps I'll steal a march on you! " And she connected that with the first event. There was little reflection in this, and on that account its relation to reality was unclear; but what was clearly palpable was the lustful emergence of a different being from within the foundation of her own.
From the Posthunwus Papers · 1361
Clarisse was now convinced that the insane people had found her out (that she had offered to Meingast that she could also be a man). And since then she had one secret more: when an invitation to repeat the interrupted visit did not arrive, either from the secretly resisting General von Stumm or from Ulrich, she had after long hesitation her- self called Dr. Friedenthal and announced that she would visit him at the hospital. And the doctor had promptly found time for Clarisse. When she asked him immediately upon her arrival whether mad peo- ple did not know a great deal that healthy people could not even guess at, he smiled and shook his head, but gazed deeply into her eyes and answered in a tone of complacency: "The doctors of the insane know a lot that healthy people don't even suspect! " And when he had to go on his rounds he had offered to take Clarisse along, and to begin where they had stopped the last time. As if it were already a matter of course, Clarisse again slipped into the white doctor's coat that Friedenthal held for her.
But-and this was the third event that still excited Clarisse after the fact, and even more than the others-she again did not get to see Moos- brugger. For something remarkable happened. They had left the last pavilion and were breathing in the spicy air of the grounds as they walked, during which Friedenthal ventured: "Now it's time for Moos- brugger! " when again a guard came running up with a message. Frie- denthal shrugged his shoulders and said: "Strange! It's not going to work out this time either! At this moment the Director and a Commission are with Moosbrugger. I can't take you with me. " And after he had assured her on his own initiative that he would invite her to continue her visit at the first opportunity, he left with rapid strides, while the guard con- ducted Clarisse back to the street.
Clarisse found it striking and extraordinary that her visits had twice come to nothing, and suspected that there was something behind it. She had the impression that she was intentionally not being allowed to see Moosbrugger and that a new excuse was being thought up each time, perhaps even with the purpose of making Moosbrugger disappear before she could get through to him.
But when Clarisse thought this over again, she nearly cried. She had let herself be outsmarted and felt quite ashamed; for she had heard nothing from Friedenthal. But while she was getting so upset, she was also calming down again. A thought occurred to her that often preoc- cupied her now, that in the course of the history of mankind many great men had been spirited away and tortured by their contemporaries, and that in the madhouse many had even disappeared. "They could neither defend themselves nor explain, because all they felt for their time was
1362 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
scorn! " she thought. And she recalled Nietzsche, whom she idolized, with his great, sad mustache and grown totally mute behind it.
But this gave her an uncanny feeling. What had just now insulted or provoked her, her defeat at the hands of the cunning doctor, was sud- denly revealed to her as a sign that the destiny ofsuch a great man might also have been preordained for her. Her eyes sought the direction in which the asylum lay, and she knew that she always felt this direction as something special, even when she wasn't thinking of it.
It was extremely oppressive to feel oneself so at one with madmen, but she told herself that "to put oneself on the level of the uncanny is to decide for genius! "
Meanwhile the sun had come up, and this made the landscape even emptier; it was green and cool, with bloody wisps; the world was still low, and reached up only to Clarisse's ankles on the little rise she was stand- ing on. Here and there a bird's voice shrieked like a lost soul. Her nar- row mouth expanded and smiled at the course of the morning. She stood girded round by her smile like the Blessed Virgin on the earth embraced by sin I crescent moon. She mulled over what she should do. She was under the sway of a peculiar mood of sacrifice: far too many things had recently been going through her head. She had repeatedly believed that it was now beginning with her: to do a great deed, something great with all her soul! But she did not know what.
She only felt that something was imminent. She stood in fear of it, but felt a longing for the fearful. It hovered in the emptiness of the morning like a cross above her shoulders. But really it was more an active hurt. A great deed. A transformation.
There was that idea again, so laden with associations! But, as it were, empty, like a rising first ball of light. And yet it was something active and aggressive. What it might be and her at- tempts to imagine it caromed through her head in all directions. The swallows, too, had meanwhile begun to dart back and forth through the air.
Suddenly Clarisse became cheerful again, although the uncanniness did not entirely disappear. It occurred to her that she had got quite far away from her house. She turned around, and began to dance on the way. She stretched her arms straight out and lifted her knee. That was how she traversed the entire last part of her route.
But before she got home, at a bend in the path, she came upon Gen- eral von Stumm.
From the Posthunwus Papers · 1363 Part II
(1) "Good morning, dear lady! How are things? " he called already from a distance offifteen yards.
"Quite well! " Clarisse replied with a stern face, in a toneless soft voice.
(2) Stumm was in uniform, and his little round legs were ensconced in boots and dun-colored riding breeches with a general's red stripes. At the Ministry he militantly pretended that he sometimes went on long rides in the morning before work, but in reality he went strolling with Clarisse over the banks and meadows that surrounded her house. At this hour Walter was still sleeping, or had to busy himself with his clothes and breakfast in joyless haste so he wouldn't be late to the office; and if Walter peeked out of the window, filled with jealousy he saw the sun sparkling on the buttons and colors of a uniform, alongside which a red or blue summer dress was usually to be seen billowing in the wind, as happens in old paintings to the garments of angels in the exuberance of their descending.
(3) "Shall we go to the ski jump? " Stumm asked cheerfully. The "ski jump" was a small quarry in the hills, and had nothing whatever to do with its name. But Stumm found this name, one that Clarisse had cho- sen, "exquisite and dynamic. " "As if it were winter! " he exclaimed. "It makes me laugh every time. And you would doubtless, my dear lady, call a snowbank a 'summer hill'? "
Clarisse liked being called "my dear lady" and immediately agreed to turn around with him, because once she had become accustomed to the general's company she found it quite agreeable. First, because he was, after all, a general; not "nothing," like Ulrich and Meingast and Walter. She now loved everything that was important in the world. Then, be- cause it had occurred to her that it was really a quite peculiar circum- stance to be always carrying a sword around, an odd relation to the world that corresponded to the great and fearful feelings that at times I often preoccupied her. Further, she esteemed the voluble von Stumm be- cause she unconsciously recognized that he did not, like the others, de- sire her in a way that, when she was not in the mood herself, demeaned her. "There's something strangely pure about him! " she had explained to her jealous husband. But as a final reason, she also needed a person with whom she could talk, for she was oppressed by myriad swarms of inner promptings that she had to keep to herself. And when the General was listening to her, she felt that everything she said and did was good. "You have, my dear lady," the General would often assure her, "some-
1364 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
thing that sets you apart from all women I have had the honor of getting to know. You positively teach me energy, martial courage, and the con- quering of Austrian negligence! " He smiled as if it were a joke, but she clearly noticed that he meant some of it seriously.
(4) But the major topic oftheir conversations was, as is also the rule in love, recollections of their common great experience, the visit to the in- sane asylum, and so this time Clarisse began to confide to the General that she had since been back a second time.
"With whom? " the General inquired, relieved to have escaped a hor- rible mission.
"Alone," Clarisse said.
"Good God! " Stumm exclaimed, and stopped, although they had only taken a few steps. "Really alone? You don't let anything give you the creeps! And did you see anything special? " he asked, curious.
"The murderers' house," Clarisse responded with a smile.
This was the designation that Dr. Friedenthal, a good stage director, had used as they had walked across the soundless moss under the trees of the old garden toward a group of small buildings from which horrible cries came echoing toward them with remarkable regularity. Frieden- thal, too, had smiled, and had told Clarisse, as Clarisse now told the General, that every inmate of this group of houses had killed at least one person, sometimes a number of people.
"And now they're screaming when it's too late! " Stumm said in a tone of reproachful acquiescence in the way of the world.
But Clarisse did not appreciate his response. She recalled that she, too, had asked what the cries meant. And Friedenthal had told her that they were manic fits; but he said this quite softly and cautiously, as if they were not to intrude. And just at that moment the gigantic guards had suddenly materialized around them and opened the reinforced doors; and Clarisse, repeating this and falling back into the mood, like being at an exciting play, softly whispered the term "manic fits" while looking meaningfully into the General's eyes.
She turned away and walked on a few paces ahead, so that Stumm almost had to run to catch up with her. When he was at her side again, she asked him what he thought about modern painting, but before he could gather his impressions, she surprised him with the information that there was an astonishing correspondence between this painting and an architecture born from the spirit ofthe madhouse: "The buildings are dice, and the patients live in hollowed-out concrete dice," she explained. "There is a corridor through the middle, and cube-shaped cells left and right, and in each cell there is nothing but one person and the space around him. Even the bench he's sittingon is part ofthe wall. Ofcourse
From the Posthumous Papers · 1365
all edges have been carefully rounded off so he can't hurt himself," she added with precision, for she had observed everything with the greatest attention.
She found no words for what she really wanted to say. Since she had been surrounded by art all her life and had listened to the concerns ex- pressed about art, this island had remained relatively resistant to the changes that had been slowly growing in other areas of her thinking; and especially since her own artistic activity did not spring directly from pas- sion but was merely an appendix of her ambition and a consequence of the circumstances in which she lived, her judgment in this area, despite the illness that had recently made new inroads on her personality, was no more perverse than is common, from time to time, in the develop- ment of art. She could, therefore, deal quite comfortably with an idea like "purpose-oriented architecture" or "a manner of building deriving from the mission of an insane asylum," and it was only the peopling of these up-to-date dwellings with the insane that surprised her as a new concept and tickled her like a scent kindled in the nose.
But Stumm von Bordwehr interrupted her with the modest observa- tion that he had always imagined that cells for manics had to be padded. Clarisse became uncertain, for perhaps the cells had been made of light-colored rubber, and so she cut offhis objection. "Maybe in the old days," she said finnly. "In the days ofupholstered furniture and tasseled drapes, maybe the cells were upholstered too. But today, when people think objectively and spatially, it's quite impossible. Cultural progress
doesn't stop, even in insane asylums! "
But Stumm would rather have heard something about the manics
themselves than be diverted by the problem of what connections there might be between them and painting and architecture, so he replied: "Most interesting! But now I'm really anxious to hear what happened in these modem spaces! "
"You'll be surprised," Clarisse said. "As quiet as a cemetery. "
"Interesting! I recall that in the courtyard of murderers that we saw, it was that still for a few moments too. "
"But this time only a single man had on a striped linen smock," Clarisse went on. "A weak, little old man with blinking eyes. " And suddenly she gave a loud laugh. "He dreamed that his wife had deceived him, and when he woke up in the morning he beat her to death with the bootjack! "
Stumm laughed too. "Right when he woke up? That's capital! " he agreed. "He was evidently in a hurry! And the others? Why do you say that he was the only one who had on a smock? "
"Because the others were in black. They were quieter than the dead," Clarisse replied, overcome with seriousness.
1366 · THE MAN WITH0 UT QUALITIES
"Murderers really don't seem to be merry people," Stumm hazarded. "Oh, you're thinking of the nutcracker! " Clarisse said.
For a moment the General did not know whom she meant.
"The one with nutcracker teeth who said to me that Vienna is a beau-
tiful city! "
"And what did this lot say to you? " the General asked with a smile. "But I told you, they were as silent as ghosts! "
"But, my dear lady," Stumm excused himself, "you can't call that
manic! "
"They were waiting for their attacks! "
"What do you mean, waiting? It's strange to wait for an attack of
mania the way you wait for an inspiring corps commander. And you say that they were dressed in black: ready to be reviewed, in a way? I'm afraid, dear lady, that you must have been mistaken in what you were seeing just then. I most humbly beg your pardon, but I am accustomed to imagining such things with the greatest precision! "
Clarisse, who found it not at all disagreeable that Stumm insisted on precision, for something was weighing her down that was not clear to her either, replied: "Dr. Friedenthal explained it to me that way, and I can only repeat, General, that that's the way it was. There were three men waiting there; all three had on black suits, and their hair and beards were black. One was a doctor, the second a lawyer, and the third a wealthy businessman. They looked like political martyrs about to be shot. "
"Why did they look that way? '' asked the incredulous Stumm. "Because they were wearing neither collar nor tie. "
"Perhaps they had just arrived? ''
"No! Friedenthal said they had been in the asylum a long time," Cla-
risse asserted warmly. "And yet that's the way they looked, as if they could stand up at any moment and go to the office or visit a patient. That's what was so strange. "
"Well, it's all the same to me," Stumm responded, to tum the conver- sation, and yet with a nobility that was new to him, while at the same time he struck his boots aggressively with his riding crop. ''I've seen fools in uniform, and consider more people crazy than one might think I would. But I imagined 'manic' as something more vivid, even if I con- cede that you can't ask ofa person that he be manic all the time. But that all three were so quiet . . . I'm sorry I wasn't there myself, for I think this Dr. Friedenthal is capable of pulling the wool over a person's eyes! "
"When he was speaking they listened quite mutely," Clarisse re- ported. "You wouldn't have noticed that they were ill at all ifyou hadn't happened to meet them there. And imagine, as we were leaving, the one
From the Posthumous Papers · 1367
who was a doctor stood up and motioned me, with a truly chivalrous gesture, to go first, saying to Friedenthal: 'Doctor, you often bring visi- tors. You are always showing guests around. Today for a change I'll come with you too. ' "
"And then of course those bullies, those toadies of guards, immedi- ately-" the General began heatedly, even though he might have been more touched by the tragedienne than the tragedy.
"No, they didn't grab him," Clarisse interrupted. "It was really with the greatest respect that they kept him from following me. And I assure you, it was all so moving in this polite and silent fashion. As if the world were hung with heavy, precious fabrics, and the words one would like to say have no resonance. It's hard to understand these people. You'd have to live in an asylum yourself for a long time to be able to enter their world! "
"What an exquisite idea! But God preserve us from it! " Stumm re- sponded quickly. "You know, dear lady, that I am indebted to you for a pretty good insight into the value of shaking up the bourgeois spirit by means ofillness and murder: but still, there are certain limits! "
With these words they had arrived at the hill that was their goal, and the General paused for breath before undertaking the pathless climb. Clarisse surveyed him with an expression of grateful solicitude and a tender mockery that she rarely showed. "But one ofthem did have a fit! " she informed him roguishly, the way one hauls out a present that had been concealed.
"Well, so there! " Stumm exclaimed. He could not think of anything else to say. But his mouth remained open as he mindlessly groped around for a word; suddenly he beat against his boots again with his crop. "But of course, the shouts! " he added. "Right at the beginning you spoke of the shouting you heard, and I overlooked that when you were talking about the deathly stillness. You tell a story so magnificently that one forgets everything! "
"As we stood in front of the door from which shouts and a strange moaning alternated," Clarisse began, "Friedenthal asked me once more whether I really wanted to go in. I was so excited I could hardly answer, but the guards paid no attention and began opening the doors. You may imagine, General, that at that moment I was terribly afraid, for I'm really only a woman. I had the feeling: when the door opens, the maniac is going to jump mel"
"One always hears that such mentally ill people have incredible strength," the General said by way of encouragement.
"Yes; but when the door was open and we all stood at the entrance, he paid absolutely no attention to us! "
1368 · THE MAN WITH0 UT QUALITIES
"Paid no attention? " Stumm asked.
"None at all! He was almost as tall as Ulrich, and perhaps my age. He was standing in the middle of the cell, with his head bent forward and his legs apart. Like this! " Clarisse imitated it.
General: Was he dressed in black too? Clarisse: No, stark naked.
General: Looks at Clarisse from head to toe.
''Thick strands of saliva were spread all over his young man's brown- ish-blond beard; the muscles literally jumped out of his scrawniness; he was naked, and his hair, I mean specific hairs-"
''You present everything so vividly one understands it all! " Stumm in- teiVened soothingly.
"-were dully bright, shamelessly bright; he fixed us with them as if they were an eye that looks at you without noticing anything about you! " Clarisse had reached the top, the General sat at her feet. From the "ski jump" one looked down on vineyards and meadows sloping away, on large and small houses that for a short distance rose in a jumble up the slope from below, and in one place the glance escaped into the charming depth of the hilly plateau that on the far horizon bordered high moun- tains. But if, like Stumm, you were sitting on a low tree stump, all you saw was an accidental hump of forest arching its back toward the sky, white clouds in the familiar, fatly drifting balls, and Clarisse. She stood with her legs apart in front of the General and mimicked a manic fit. She held one arm bent out at a right angle and stiffiy locked to her body; with her head bent forward, she was executing with her torso in an unvarying sequence a jerky motion that formed a shallow forward circle, while she bent one finger after another as if she were counting. And she allowed each of these motions to be accompanied by a pantingly uttered cry, whose force, however, she considerately restrained. ''You can't imitate the essential part," she explained. "'Ib. at's the incredible strain with every motion, which gives an impression as if each time the person is
tearing his body from a vise. . . . "
"But that's moral" the General exclaimed. ''You ! mow, that game of
chance? Whoever guesses the right number of fingers wins. Except that you can't bend one finger after another but have to show as many as you think of on the spur of the moment. All our peasants on the Italian bor- der play it. "
From the Posthu'TIWUs Papers · 1369
"It really is mora," said Clarisse, who had seen it on her travels. "And he also did it the way you described! "
"Well then, mora," Stumm repeated with satisfaction. "But I'd like to lmow where these insane people get their ideas," he added, and here commenced the strenuous part of the conversation.
Clarisse sat down on the tree stump beside the General, a little apart from him so that she could, if need be, "cast an eye" on him, and each time this happened he had a ridiculous horrible feeling, as if he were being pinched by a stag beetle. She was prepared to explain for his bene- fit the emotional life of the insane as she herself understood it after much reflection. One ofits most important elements-because she con- nected everything with herself-was the idea that the so-called mentally ill were some kind of geniuses who were spirited away and deprived of their rights, and for some reason that Clarisse had not yet discovered, this was something they were not able to defend themselves against. It was only natural that the General could not concur in this opinion, but this did not surprise either of them. "I am willing to concede that such an idiot might occasionally guess something that the likes of us don't lmow," he protested.
"Were you there today? "
"Yes. " Agathe looked steadily at her brother and noticed the resent-
ment in his eyes.
He strove to control himself and responded as tersely as possible: "I
don't like your doing that. "
"I don't like doing it myself," Agathe said, continuing after a brief
pause: "But I like what you write. The beginning and the end, and what's in between too. I didn't understand everything, but I read it all. I think you could explain a lot of things to me, and because I'm afraid of strain- ing myself, I'll believe a lot without any explanation at all. "
(Post datum. This is really an example of an inner form of cheerful- ness as distinct from outer. )
1356 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
She laughed again, and it pealed softly. She seemed to be laughing over nothing and only from joy; and although Ulrich could be quite sen- sitive to people's laughter when it was aroused by something, for then it sometimes seemed to him just as humdrum an occurrence as sneezing, it immediately enticed him into an impossible task, that of adequately describing this pleasant, unmotivated sound. If, into the bargain, one threw in a little poetic commonplace, the impression could then be com- pared with that of a small, low-tuned silver bell: a dark bass tone sub- merged in a soft overflowing sparkle. But while Ulrich was listening to these cheerful sounds spreading out in the quiet room, his eyes also thought they were seeing all its lamps burning that much more quietly I as brightly. Precisely the simplest sensory impressions that populate the world occasionally have surprises in store when it comes to describing them, as ifthey came from anotherworld.
Influenced by this weakness, Ulrich suddenly felt a confession on his tongue about which he himself had not thought for goodness knew how long. "I once made a devilish bet with our big cousin Tzi, which I will never write down and which I don't think I ever told you about," he began to confess. "He suspected that I would write books, and, as it seems to me, he considered books that did not praise his politics to be deleterious and those that did superfluous, aside from the historical lit- erature and memoirs a diplomat customarily employs. But I swore to him that I would kill myself before I succumbed to the temptation of writing a book; and I really meant it. For what I was able to write would do nothing more than prove that one is able to live differently in some specific fashion; but that I should write a book about it would at the very least be the counterproof that I'm not able to live in that fashion. I didn't expect it would turn out differently. "
His sister had listened to him without stirring, without even a muscle in her face twitching. 'W e can kill each other ifit turns into a book," she said. "But it seems to me we have less reason to than before. "
Ulrich involuntarily looked her in the eye.
"Rather more reason for the opposite," she went on.
"You can't yet say that (too)," Ulrich objected calmly.
Agathe found that the supporting pillow at her side needed rearrang-
ing, which turned her face away from him. "Don't be angry with me," she replied from this posture, "but even though I admire what you write, I still don't quite understand why you write. Indeed, sometimes I've found it enormously comical. You carefully dissect according to natural and moral laws the possibility of extending your hand. Why don't you simply reach out? "
From the Posthumous Papers · 1357
"It's ruinous simply to reach out. Did I ever tell you the story of the major's wife? "
Agathe nodded mutely.
"It can't end the way that did! "
The small furrow appeared between Agathe's brows. "The major's
wife was a commonplace person," she declared coolly.
"That's right. But whether one discovers a world or goes on a Don
Quixote adventure doesn't depend, unfortunately, on the worth of the person in whose honor one embarks on the trip. "
"Who knows! " Agathe replied. A moment later she impatiently aban- doned her comfortable position and sat down in the ordinary way right in front of her brother, as if she were going to test something. She looked at him (almost grimly) but said nothing. "Well? " Ulrich asked encouragingly, expecting an attack (that was awaiting him).
"Doesn't everything you've written down"-she pointed to the table and the papers lying on it-"answer everything we've been asking our- selves so often and have been so uncertain about? "
"I almost t:hin)<: so. "
"I have the feeling that everything we've been discussing back and forth for so long is resolved in these papers. But why didn't you hit on it sooner? I'm even immodest enough to maintain that you've left us both in the dark for quite a while. "
"We're still in the dark. You shouldn't overestimate these ideas. And it's been hard for me to open up to you. Sometimes in a dream you have delightful thoughts, but ifyou carry on with them after you wake up, they're ridiculous. "
"Really? But if I've understood you correctly, you're certain that for every emotion there are two worlds and that it depends on us which one we wish to live in! "
"Two images of the world! But only one reality! Within it, of course, you,can perhaps live in one way or the other. And that is when you ap- parently have the one or the other reality before you. "
"Apparently, but totally? Apparently, and with no gaps? But if every- thing were living in this other way, wouldn't that be the Millennium? "
Ulrich cautiously confirmed the possibility of this conclusion.
"So the intimation of this other world would also be what brought about beliefin a paradise? Don't laugh at me, but it's made me conclude that in this way one would of necessity arrive in paradise just by living according to the other part of one's feelings, as you call it. "
1358 ·THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
"Put correctly, paradise would then have to arrive on earth," Ulrich rectified.
''I'm not laughing at all. I just have to add: as far as one can! " I Or: mysticism as anomalous psychology of normal life: You believe that mys- ticism is a secret through which we enter another world; but it is only, or even, the secret of living differently in our world. "
"Oh? Yes, that's what you wrote. But didn't you even much earlier sometimes call it the concave, submerged world? " Agathe ascertained. "You spoke of an encompassing and an encompassed possibility of feel- ing as if they were old tales. Of gods and goddesses. Of two branches of development in life. Ofmoon-nights and day. Oftwo inseparable twins! "
It is the answer to all our conversations, all our peculiarities.
Agathe was pressing, but Ulrich yielded of his own accord: "You can add anything you like: everything that has truly moved me has its expla- nation here. The victories that come from acting in the world, and the emotions that go with them, have always been alien to me, even if at times I felt an obligation to them. An apparently inactive state I called love, without loving a woman, was opposed in me to the processes of knowledge that gave me the passion a rider has for his horse I which I called the world of love because I couldn't love in the everyday world! I We always imagined a different life before us. "
Agathe interrupted him animatedly. But it was hard for her to fmd the right words. At the beginning, although soon swept away by what she was saying, there was a little awkwardness in her voice, as when a boy tries to speak in a man's bass voice, or when a girl paints a mustache on her face, as she began: "You know that I'm no shrinking touch-me-not. And I've often reproached myself for my so-called passions, which have always left me completely unmoved. I clearly felt that I was being moved by them only because I hadn't found what could truly move us. " Possibly better this way: When she applied the expression "touch-me-not" to herself. She said Ulrich knew that she wasn't one and that she attached no importance to it. But also (that is: he knew) that she found her so- called passions most shameful after the fact. "You scrape yourself like a cow against a tree, just as happily, and suddenly stop in the same bewil- derment," she said.
Ulrich: A person is passionate in two senses. A kind of appetitive sense, which reaches out for everything and undertakes everything, and another, which is timid, has a hard time making up its mind to do things, and is full ofinexpressible longing. One probably has both within oneself.
Agathe: The man with qualities and the man without qualities! Mar-
From the Posthumous Papers · 1359
velous, marvelous. If someone understands you properly he has saved his life! What author wouldn't be flattered by such praise! Ulrich re- sponded: It's not immaterial that we are talking about a passionate per- son in two quite different senses. We've become accustomed to applying the term chiefly to people we really ought to call lustful, to gluttons in every kind of passion, while we rather tend to regard people who are profoundly passionate within themselves as weak in affect, people who ascetically serve some sort of nobler passion of life. That leads to stupid mixups.
Agathe: I'm reproached for acting badly-
Who reproaches you? (a little suspiciously)
Agathe violently twitched her shoulders. "Professor Hagauer. Think
ofhis letters. Indeed, I've often reproached myselffor having done what I did with the will-"
"We'll make amends for it," Ulrich intervened.
"What a situation to be in, feeling that you're not a good person and yet not wanting it any other way! You yourself once reproached me about this, and I was insulted-"
Ulrich interrupted her with anapologetic, defensive gesture. Proba- bly (too) from the author, that it's important that they have now recog- nized that they've got to the center oftheir difficulties.
Agathe: "Oh, you've often talked about morality. You've set before me at least ten different definitions; every time, listening to you was a totally new experience. But now I'm reproached for being immoral, I'm made to believe it myself, but for all that I'm an absolute marvel of morality! "
Ulrich: And why a marvel?
Agathe: You showed me the way! The only condition I love and seek needs no morality, it is morality! Every twitch of the little toe that hap- pens in it is moral. Am I right? (laughs)
Ulrich: Yes, you're right.
Agathe: But first I want to ask you something else . . . Everything we've been talking about half jokingly and half seriously for the last few days: is it all settled?
Ulrich: Of course.
Agathe: T o love your neighbor as yourself is an ecstatic demand? Ulrich: It is the natural morality of mystic ecstasy, which teaches
something that never quite fits the ord[inary] activity of our lives.
EARLy-MORNING wALK
Part I
Around Clarisse's mouth laughter was struggling with the difficulties facing her; her mouth kept opening and then pressing itself tightly shut. She had got up too early: Walter was still sleeping; she had hastily thrown on a light dress and gone outside. The singing of birds reached her from the woods through the empty morning stillness. The hemi- sphere ofthe sky had not yet filled with warmth. Even the light was still shallowly dispersed. "It only reaches my ankles," Clarisse thought. "The cock of the morning has just been wound up! Everything is before its time! " Clarisse was deeply moved that she was wandering through the world before it was time. It almost made her cry.
Without saying anything about it to Walter or Ulrich, Clarisse had been to the asylum a second time. Since then she had been especially sensitive. She applied everything she had seen or heard during her two visits to herself. Three events especially preoccupied her. The first was that she had been addressed and greeted as the Emperor's son and a man. When this assertion had been repeated, she had quite distinctly felt her resistance to it yield, as if something ordinary that usually stood in the way of this royal quality was vanishing. And she was filled with an inexpressible desire. The second thing that excited her was that Mein- gast, too, was transforming himself, and was obviously using her and Walter's proximity in the process. Since she had surprised him in the vegetable garden-it might have been a few weeks agcr-and terrified him with her truly prophetic shout that she could transform herself too and also be a man, he had been avoiding her company. Since then she had not seen him often, even at meals; he locked himself in with his work or spent the whole day out of the house, and whenever he was hungry he secretly took something to eat from the pantry (without ask- ing). It had been just a short time ago that she had succeeded in talking to him again alone. She had told him: "Walter has forbidden me to talk about how you're undergoing a transformation in our house! " and had blinked her eyes. But even here Meingast kept himself concealed and acted surprised, indeed annoyed. He did not want to let her in on the secret he was busily working on. This seemed to be the explanation. But Clarisse had said to him: "Perhaps I'll steal a march on you! " And she connected that with the first event. There was little reflection in this, and on that account its relation to reality was unclear; but what was clearly palpable was the lustful emergence of a different being from within the foundation of her own.
From the Posthunwus Papers · 1361
Clarisse was now convinced that the insane people had found her out (that she had offered to Meingast that she could also be a man). And since then she had one secret more: when an invitation to repeat the interrupted visit did not arrive, either from the secretly resisting General von Stumm or from Ulrich, she had after long hesitation her- self called Dr. Friedenthal and announced that she would visit him at the hospital. And the doctor had promptly found time for Clarisse. When she asked him immediately upon her arrival whether mad peo- ple did not know a great deal that healthy people could not even guess at, he smiled and shook his head, but gazed deeply into her eyes and answered in a tone of complacency: "The doctors of the insane know a lot that healthy people don't even suspect! " And when he had to go on his rounds he had offered to take Clarisse along, and to begin where they had stopped the last time. As if it were already a matter of course, Clarisse again slipped into the white doctor's coat that Friedenthal held for her.
But-and this was the third event that still excited Clarisse after the fact, and even more than the others-she again did not get to see Moos- brugger. For something remarkable happened. They had left the last pavilion and were breathing in the spicy air of the grounds as they walked, during which Friedenthal ventured: "Now it's time for Moos- brugger! " when again a guard came running up with a message. Frie- denthal shrugged his shoulders and said: "Strange! It's not going to work out this time either! At this moment the Director and a Commission are with Moosbrugger. I can't take you with me. " And after he had assured her on his own initiative that he would invite her to continue her visit at the first opportunity, he left with rapid strides, while the guard con- ducted Clarisse back to the street.
Clarisse found it striking and extraordinary that her visits had twice come to nothing, and suspected that there was something behind it. She had the impression that she was intentionally not being allowed to see Moosbrugger and that a new excuse was being thought up each time, perhaps even with the purpose of making Moosbrugger disappear before she could get through to him.
But when Clarisse thought this over again, she nearly cried. She had let herself be outsmarted and felt quite ashamed; for she had heard nothing from Friedenthal. But while she was getting so upset, she was also calming down again. A thought occurred to her that often preoc- cupied her now, that in the course of the history of mankind many great men had been spirited away and tortured by their contemporaries, and that in the madhouse many had even disappeared. "They could neither defend themselves nor explain, because all they felt for their time was
1362 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
scorn! " she thought. And she recalled Nietzsche, whom she idolized, with his great, sad mustache and grown totally mute behind it.
But this gave her an uncanny feeling. What had just now insulted or provoked her, her defeat at the hands of the cunning doctor, was sud- denly revealed to her as a sign that the destiny ofsuch a great man might also have been preordained for her. Her eyes sought the direction in which the asylum lay, and she knew that she always felt this direction as something special, even when she wasn't thinking of it.
It was extremely oppressive to feel oneself so at one with madmen, but she told herself that "to put oneself on the level of the uncanny is to decide for genius! "
Meanwhile the sun had come up, and this made the landscape even emptier; it was green and cool, with bloody wisps; the world was still low, and reached up only to Clarisse's ankles on the little rise she was stand- ing on. Here and there a bird's voice shrieked like a lost soul. Her nar- row mouth expanded and smiled at the course of the morning. She stood girded round by her smile like the Blessed Virgin on the earth embraced by sin I crescent moon. She mulled over what she should do. She was under the sway of a peculiar mood of sacrifice: far too many things had recently been going through her head. She had repeatedly believed that it was now beginning with her: to do a great deed, something great with all her soul! But she did not know what.
She only felt that something was imminent. She stood in fear of it, but felt a longing for the fearful. It hovered in the emptiness of the morning like a cross above her shoulders. But really it was more an active hurt. A great deed. A transformation.
There was that idea again, so laden with associations! But, as it were, empty, like a rising first ball of light. And yet it was something active and aggressive. What it might be and her at- tempts to imagine it caromed through her head in all directions. The swallows, too, had meanwhile begun to dart back and forth through the air.
Suddenly Clarisse became cheerful again, although the uncanniness did not entirely disappear. It occurred to her that she had got quite far away from her house. She turned around, and began to dance on the way. She stretched her arms straight out and lifted her knee. That was how she traversed the entire last part of her route.
But before she got home, at a bend in the path, she came upon Gen- eral von Stumm.
From the Posthunwus Papers · 1363 Part II
(1) "Good morning, dear lady! How are things? " he called already from a distance offifteen yards.
"Quite well! " Clarisse replied with a stern face, in a toneless soft voice.
(2) Stumm was in uniform, and his little round legs were ensconced in boots and dun-colored riding breeches with a general's red stripes. At the Ministry he militantly pretended that he sometimes went on long rides in the morning before work, but in reality he went strolling with Clarisse over the banks and meadows that surrounded her house. At this hour Walter was still sleeping, or had to busy himself with his clothes and breakfast in joyless haste so he wouldn't be late to the office; and if Walter peeked out of the window, filled with jealousy he saw the sun sparkling on the buttons and colors of a uniform, alongside which a red or blue summer dress was usually to be seen billowing in the wind, as happens in old paintings to the garments of angels in the exuberance of their descending.
(3) "Shall we go to the ski jump? " Stumm asked cheerfully. The "ski jump" was a small quarry in the hills, and had nothing whatever to do with its name. But Stumm found this name, one that Clarisse had cho- sen, "exquisite and dynamic. " "As if it were winter! " he exclaimed. "It makes me laugh every time. And you would doubtless, my dear lady, call a snowbank a 'summer hill'? "
Clarisse liked being called "my dear lady" and immediately agreed to turn around with him, because once she had become accustomed to the general's company she found it quite agreeable. First, because he was, after all, a general; not "nothing," like Ulrich and Meingast and Walter. She now loved everything that was important in the world. Then, be- cause it had occurred to her that it was really a quite peculiar circum- stance to be always carrying a sword around, an odd relation to the world that corresponded to the great and fearful feelings that at times I often preoccupied her. Further, she esteemed the voluble von Stumm be- cause she unconsciously recognized that he did not, like the others, de- sire her in a way that, when she was not in the mood herself, demeaned her. "There's something strangely pure about him! " she had explained to her jealous husband. But as a final reason, she also needed a person with whom she could talk, for she was oppressed by myriad swarms of inner promptings that she had to keep to herself. And when the General was listening to her, she felt that everything she said and did was good. "You have, my dear lady," the General would often assure her, "some-
1364 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
thing that sets you apart from all women I have had the honor of getting to know. You positively teach me energy, martial courage, and the con- quering of Austrian negligence! " He smiled as if it were a joke, but she clearly noticed that he meant some of it seriously.
(4) But the major topic oftheir conversations was, as is also the rule in love, recollections of their common great experience, the visit to the in- sane asylum, and so this time Clarisse began to confide to the General that she had since been back a second time.
"With whom? " the General inquired, relieved to have escaped a hor- rible mission.
"Alone," Clarisse said.
"Good God! " Stumm exclaimed, and stopped, although they had only taken a few steps. "Really alone? You don't let anything give you the creeps! And did you see anything special? " he asked, curious.
"The murderers' house," Clarisse responded with a smile.
This was the designation that Dr. Friedenthal, a good stage director, had used as they had walked across the soundless moss under the trees of the old garden toward a group of small buildings from which horrible cries came echoing toward them with remarkable regularity. Frieden- thal, too, had smiled, and had told Clarisse, as Clarisse now told the General, that every inmate of this group of houses had killed at least one person, sometimes a number of people.
"And now they're screaming when it's too late! " Stumm said in a tone of reproachful acquiescence in the way of the world.
But Clarisse did not appreciate his response. She recalled that she, too, had asked what the cries meant. And Friedenthal had told her that they were manic fits; but he said this quite softly and cautiously, as if they were not to intrude. And just at that moment the gigantic guards had suddenly materialized around them and opened the reinforced doors; and Clarisse, repeating this and falling back into the mood, like being at an exciting play, softly whispered the term "manic fits" while looking meaningfully into the General's eyes.
She turned away and walked on a few paces ahead, so that Stumm almost had to run to catch up with her. When he was at her side again, she asked him what he thought about modern painting, but before he could gather his impressions, she surprised him with the information that there was an astonishing correspondence between this painting and an architecture born from the spirit ofthe madhouse: "The buildings are dice, and the patients live in hollowed-out concrete dice," she explained. "There is a corridor through the middle, and cube-shaped cells left and right, and in each cell there is nothing but one person and the space around him. Even the bench he's sittingon is part ofthe wall. Ofcourse
From the Posthumous Papers · 1365
all edges have been carefully rounded off so he can't hurt himself," she added with precision, for she had observed everything with the greatest attention.
She found no words for what she really wanted to say. Since she had been surrounded by art all her life and had listened to the concerns ex- pressed about art, this island had remained relatively resistant to the changes that had been slowly growing in other areas of her thinking; and especially since her own artistic activity did not spring directly from pas- sion but was merely an appendix of her ambition and a consequence of the circumstances in which she lived, her judgment in this area, despite the illness that had recently made new inroads on her personality, was no more perverse than is common, from time to time, in the develop- ment of art. She could, therefore, deal quite comfortably with an idea like "purpose-oriented architecture" or "a manner of building deriving from the mission of an insane asylum," and it was only the peopling of these up-to-date dwellings with the insane that surprised her as a new concept and tickled her like a scent kindled in the nose.
But Stumm von Bordwehr interrupted her with the modest observa- tion that he had always imagined that cells for manics had to be padded. Clarisse became uncertain, for perhaps the cells had been made of light-colored rubber, and so she cut offhis objection. "Maybe in the old days," she said finnly. "In the days ofupholstered furniture and tasseled drapes, maybe the cells were upholstered too. But today, when people think objectively and spatially, it's quite impossible. Cultural progress
doesn't stop, even in insane asylums! "
But Stumm would rather have heard something about the manics
themselves than be diverted by the problem of what connections there might be between them and painting and architecture, so he replied: "Most interesting! But now I'm really anxious to hear what happened in these modem spaces! "
"You'll be surprised," Clarisse said. "As quiet as a cemetery. "
"Interesting! I recall that in the courtyard of murderers that we saw, it was that still for a few moments too. "
"But this time only a single man had on a striped linen smock," Clarisse went on. "A weak, little old man with blinking eyes. " And suddenly she gave a loud laugh. "He dreamed that his wife had deceived him, and when he woke up in the morning he beat her to death with the bootjack! "
Stumm laughed too. "Right when he woke up? That's capital! " he agreed. "He was evidently in a hurry! And the others? Why do you say that he was the only one who had on a smock? "
"Because the others were in black. They were quieter than the dead," Clarisse replied, overcome with seriousness.
1366 · THE MAN WITH0 UT QUALITIES
"Murderers really don't seem to be merry people," Stumm hazarded. "Oh, you're thinking of the nutcracker! " Clarisse said.
For a moment the General did not know whom she meant.
"The one with nutcracker teeth who said to me that Vienna is a beau-
tiful city! "
"And what did this lot say to you? " the General asked with a smile. "But I told you, they were as silent as ghosts! "
"But, my dear lady," Stumm excused himself, "you can't call that
manic! "
"They were waiting for their attacks! "
"What do you mean, waiting? It's strange to wait for an attack of
mania the way you wait for an inspiring corps commander. And you say that they were dressed in black: ready to be reviewed, in a way? I'm afraid, dear lady, that you must have been mistaken in what you were seeing just then. I most humbly beg your pardon, but I am accustomed to imagining such things with the greatest precision! "
Clarisse, who found it not at all disagreeable that Stumm insisted on precision, for something was weighing her down that was not clear to her either, replied: "Dr. Friedenthal explained it to me that way, and I can only repeat, General, that that's the way it was. There were three men waiting there; all three had on black suits, and their hair and beards were black. One was a doctor, the second a lawyer, and the third a wealthy businessman. They looked like political martyrs about to be shot. "
"Why did they look that way? '' asked the incredulous Stumm. "Because they were wearing neither collar nor tie. "
"Perhaps they had just arrived? ''
"No! Friedenthal said they had been in the asylum a long time," Cla-
risse asserted warmly. "And yet that's the way they looked, as if they could stand up at any moment and go to the office or visit a patient. That's what was so strange. "
"Well, it's all the same to me," Stumm responded, to tum the conver- sation, and yet with a nobility that was new to him, while at the same time he struck his boots aggressively with his riding crop. ''I've seen fools in uniform, and consider more people crazy than one might think I would. But I imagined 'manic' as something more vivid, even if I con- cede that you can't ask ofa person that he be manic all the time. But that all three were so quiet . . . I'm sorry I wasn't there myself, for I think this Dr. Friedenthal is capable of pulling the wool over a person's eyes! "
"When he was speaking they listened quite mutely," Clarisse re- ported. "You wouldn't have noticed that they were ill at all ifyou hadn't happened to meet them there. And imagine, as we were leaving, the one
From the Posthumous Papers · 1367
who was a doctor stood up and motioned me, with a truly chivalrous gesture, to go first, saying to Friedenthal: 'Doctor, you often bring visi- tors. You are always showing guests around. Today for a change I'll come with you too. ' "
"And then of course those bullies, those toadies of guards, immedi- ately-" the General began heatedly, even though he might have been more touched by the tragedienne than the tragedy.
"No, they didn't grab him," Clarisse interrupted. "It was really with the greatest respect that they kept him from following me. And I assure you, it was all so moving in this polite and silent fashion. As if the world were hung with heavy, precious fabrics, and the words one would like to say have no resonance. It's hard to understand these people. You'd have to live in an asylum yourself for a long time to be able to enter their world! "
"What an exquisite idea! But God preserve us from it! " Stumm re- sponded quickly. "You know, dear lady, that I am indebted to you for a pretty good insight into the value of shaking up the bourgeois spirit by means ofillness and murder: but still, there are certain limits! "
With these words they had arrived at the hill that was their goal, and the General paused for breath before undertaking the pathless climb. Clarisse surveyed him with an expression of grateful solicitude and a tender mockery that she rarely showed. "But one ofthem did have a fit! " she informed him roguishly, the way one hauls out a present that had been concealed.
"Well, so there! " Stumm exclaimed. He could not think of anything else to say. But his mouth remained open as he mindlessly groped around for a word; suddenly he beat against his boots again with his crop. "But of course, the shouts! " he added. "Right at the beginning you spoke of the shouting you heard, and I overlooked that when you were talking about the deathly stillness. You tell a story so magnificently that one forgets everything! "
"As we stood in front of the door from which shouts and a strange moaning alternated," Clarisse began, "Friedenthal asked me once more whether I really wanted to go in. I was so excited I could hardly answer, but the guards paid no attention and began opening the doors. You may imagine, General, that at that moment I was terribly afraid, for I'm really only a woman. I had the feeling: when the door opens, the maniac is going to jump mel"
"One always hears that such mentally ill people have incredible strength," the General said by way of encouragement.
"Yes; but when the door was open and we all stood at the entrance, he paid absolutely no attention to us! "
1368 · THE MAN WITH0 UT QUALITIES
"Paid no attention? " Stumm asked.
"None at all! He was almost as tall as Ulrich, and perhaps my age. He was standing in the middle of the cell, with his head bent forward and his legs apart. Like this! " Clarisse imitated it.
General: Was he dressed in black too? Clarisse: No, stark naked.
General: Looks at Clarisse from head to toe.
''Thick strands of saliva were spread all over his young man's brown- ish-blond beard; the muscles literally jumped out of his scrawniness; he was naked, and his hair, I mean specific hairs-"
''You present everything so vividly one understands it all! " Stumm in- teiVened soothingly.
"-were dully bright, shamelessly bright; he fixed us with them as if they were an eye that looks at you without noticing anything about you! " Clarisse had reached the top, the General sat at her feet. From the "ski jump" one looked down on vineyards and meadows sloping away, on large and small houses that for a short distance rose in a jumble up the slope from below, and in one place the glance escaped into the charming depth of the hilly plateau that on the far horizon bordered high moun- tains. But if, like Stumm, you were sitting on a low tree stump, all you saw was an accidental hump of forest arching its back toward the sky, white clouds in the familiar, fatly drifting balls, and Clarisse. She stood with her legs apart in front of the General and mimicked a manic fit. She held one arm bent out at a right angle and stiffiy locked to her body; with her head bent forward, she was executing with her torso in an unvarying sequence a jerky motion that formed a shallow forward circle, while she bent one finger after another as if she were counting. And she allowed each of these motions to be accompanied by a pantingly uttered cry, whose force, however, she considerately restrained. ''You can't imitate the essential part," she explained. "'Ib. at's the incredible strain with every motion, which gives an impression as if each time the person is
tearing his body from a vise. . . . "
"But that's moral" the General exclaimed. ''You ! mow, that game of
chance? Whoever guesses the right number of fingers wins. Except that you can't bend one finger after another but have to show as many as you think of on the spur of the moment. All our peasants on the Italian bor- der play it. "
From the Posthu'TIWUs Papers · 1369
"It really is mora," said Clarisse, who had seen it on her travels. "And he also did it the way you described! "
"Well then, mora," Stumm repeated with satisfaction. "But I'd like to lmow where these insane people get their ideas," he added, and here commenced the strenuous part of the conversation.
Clarisse sat down on the tree stump beside the General, a little apart from him so that she could, if need be, "cast an eye" on him, and each time this happened he had a ridiculous horrible feeling, as if he were being pinched by a stag beetle. She was prepared to explain for his bene- fit the emotional life of the insane as she herself understood it after much reflection. One ofits most important elements-because she con- nected everything with herself-was the idea that the so-called mentally ill were some kind of geniuses who were spirited away and deprived of their rights, and for some reason that Clarisse had not yet discovered, this was something they were not able to defend themselves against. It was only natural that the General could not concur in this opinion, but this did not surprise either of them. "I am willing to concede that such an idiot might occasionally guess something that the likes of us don't lmow," he protested.
