But that's
something
you're even less capable of, you-you-' Well, I can't really say exactly; I had to hold myself a bit apart, because of my uniform.
Musil - Man Without Qualities - v2
Abashed and confused by the rejection of his unanswered feelings, he said, shaking his head:
"It's annoying how much you seem to expect from the goodness of such a man! "
"I suppose it is," Agathe admitted.
He looked at her. He realized that this encounter meant more to his sister than the attentions paid to her by other men since she had been under his protection. He even knew this man slightly. Lindner was a public figure of sorts; he was the man who, at the very first session of the Parallel Campaign, had made the brief speech, re- ceived with embarrassing silence, hailing the "historical moment" or something similar: awkward, sincere, and pointless. . . . On impulse Ulrich glanced around, but he did not recall seeing the man tonight, for he had not been asked again, as Ulrich knew. He must have come across him elsewhere from time to time, probably at some learned society, and have read one or another of his publications, for as he concentrated his memory, ultramicroscopic traces of images from the past condensed like a repulsive viscous drop into his verdict: "That dreary ass! The more anyone wants to be taken seriously, the less one can take such a man seriously, any more than Professor Hagauer! " So he said to Agathe.
Agathe met it with silence. She even pressed his hand.
He felt: There is something quite contradictory here, but there's no stopping it.
At this point people came into the anteroom, and the siblings drew slightly apart.
Into the Millennium (The Criminals) · I I I 5
"Shall I take you back in? " Ulrich asked.
Agathe said no and looked around for an escape.
It suddenly occurred to Ulrich that the only way they could get
away from the other guests was by retreating to the kitchen. Three batteries of glasses were being filled and trays loaded with cakes. The cook was bustling about with great zeal; Rachel and Soliman were waiting to be loaded up, standing apart and motionless and not whis- pering to each other as they used to do on such occasions. Little Ra- chel dropped a curtsy as they came in, Soliman merely saluted with his dark eyes, and Ulrich said: "It's too stuffy in there; can we get something to drink here? "
He sat down with Agathe on the window seat and put a glass and a plate down for show so that in case anyone should see them it would look as if two old friends of the family were having a private chat. When they were seated, he said with a little sigh: "So it's merely a matter offeeling whether one finds such a Professor Lindner good or insufferable? ''
Agathe was concentrating on unwrapping a piece of candy.
"Which is to say," Ulrich went on, "that the feeling is neither true nor false. Feeling has remained a private matter! It remains at the mercy of suggestion, fantasy, or persuasion. You and I are no differ- ent from those people in there. Do you know what these people want? ''
"No. But does it matter? "
"Perhaps it does. They are forming two parties, each ofwhich is as right or as wrong as the other. "
Agathe said she could not help thinking that it was better to be- lieve in human goodness than only in guns and politics, even if the manner ofthe beliefwas absurd.
"What's he like, this man you met? "
"Oh, that's impossible to say. He's good! " his sister answered with a laugh.
"You can no more depend on what looks good to you than on what looks good to Leinsdorf,'' Ulrich responded testily.
Both their faces were tense with excitement and laughter; the easy flow of humorous civility blocked deeper countercurrents. Rachel sensed it at the roots of her hair, under her little cap, but she was feeling so miserable herself that her perception was much dimmer
III6 • THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
than it used to be, like a memory of better days. The lovely curve of her cheeks was a shade hollow, the black blaze of her eyes dulled with discouragement. Had Ulrich been in a mood to compare her beauty with that of his sister, he would have been bound to notice that Rachel's former dark brilliance had crumbled like a piece of coal that had been run over by a heavy truck. But he had no eyes for her now. She was pregnant, and no one knew it except Soliman, who showed no understanding of the disastrous reality and responded with nothing but childish romantic schemes.
"For centuries now," Ulrich went on, "the world has known truth in thinking and accordingly, to a certain degree, rational freedom of thought. But during this same time the emotional life has had neither the strict discipline oftruth nor any freedom ofmovement. For every moral system has, in its time, regulated the feelings, and rigidly too, but only insofar as certain basic principles and feelings were needed for whatever action it favored; the rest was left to individual whim, to the private play of emotions, to the random efforts of art, and to aca- demic debate. So morality has adapted our feelings to the needs of moral systems and meanwhile neglected to develop them, even though it depends on feelings: morality is, after all, the order and integrity of the emotional life. " Here he broke off. He felt Rachel's fascinated stare on his animated face, even if she could no longer quite muster her former enthusiasm for the concerns of important people.
"I suppose it's funny how I go on talking about morality even here in the kitchen," he said in embarrassment.
Agathe was gazing at him intently and thoughtfully. He leaned over closer to his sister and added softly, with a flickering smile: "But it's only another way of expressing an impassioned state that takes up arms against the whole world! "
Without intending to, he was reenacting their confrontation ofthe morning, in which he had played the unpleasant role of the lecturing schoolmaster. He could not help it. For him morality was neither conformism nor philosophic wisdom, but living the infinite fullness of possibilities. He believed in morality's capacity for intensification, in stages of moral experience, and not merely, as most people do, in stages of moral understanding, as if it were something cut-and-dried for which people were just not pure enough. He believed in morality
Into the Millennium (The Criminals) · 1 1 1 7
without believing in any specific moral system. Morality is generally understood to be a sort ofpolice regulations for keeping life in order, and since life does not obey even these, they come to look as if they were really impossible to live up to and accordingly, in this sorry way, not really an ideal either. But morality must not be reduced to this level. Morality is imagination. This was what he wanted to make Agathe see. And his second point was: Imagination is not arbitrary. Once the imagination is left to caprice, there is a price to pay.
The words twitched in his mouth. He was on the verge ofbringing up the neglected difference between the way in which various histor- ical periods have developed the rational mind in their own fashion and the way they have kept the moral imagination static and closed off, also in their own fashion. He was on the verge of talking about this because it results in a line that rises, despite all skepticism, more or less steadily through all of history's transformations, representing the rational mind and its patterns, and contrasting with a mound of broken shards of feelings, ideas, and potentials of life that were heaped up in layers just the way they were when they came into being, as eternal side issues, and that were always discarded. And also because a further result is that this finally adds up to any number of possibilities for forming an opinion one way or another, as soon as they are extended into the realm ofprinciples; but that there is never a possibility of bringing them together. And because it follows that the various opinions lash out at each other since they have no way of communicating. And because it follows, finally, that the emotional life of mankind slops back and forth like water in an unsteady tub. Ulrich had an idea that had been haunting him all evening, an old idea of his, incidentally, but everything that had happened this eve- ning had somehow simply confirmed it, and he wanted to show Agathe where her error lay and how it could be put right, if everyone agreed. Actually, it was only his painful intention to prove that one could not, on the whole, even trust the discoveries of one's own imagination.
Agathe now said, with a little sigh, as a hard-pressed woman gets in one last, quick defensive move before surrendering:
"So one has to do everything 'on principle,' is that it? " And she looked at him, responding to his smile.
But he answered: "Yes, but only on one principle! "
1118 • THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
This was something quite different from what he had meant to say. It again came from the realm of the Siamese twins and the Millen- nium, where life grows in magical stillness like a flower, and even ifit were not a mere flight of fancy, it pointed to the frontiers of thought, which are solitary and treacherous. Agathe's eyes were like split agate. If at this instant he had said only a little more, or touched her with his hand, something would have happened-something that was gone a moment later, before she even knew what it was. For Ulrich did not want to say any more. He took a knife and a piece of fruit and began to peel. He was happy because the distance that had separated him from his sister shortly before had melted into an im- measurable closeness; but he was also glad that at this moment they were interrupted.
It was the General, who came peering into the kitchen with the sly glance of a patrol leader surprising the enemy encampment. "Please forgive the intrusion," he called out as he entered, "but as it's only a tete-a-tete with your brother, dear lady, it can't be too great a crime! " And turning to Ulrich, he said: "They're looking for you high and low. "
And Ulrich told the General what he had meant to say to Agathe. But first he asked: 'Who are they? "
"I was supposed to bring you to the Minister! " Stumm said re- proachfully.
Ulrich waved that aside.
'Well, it's too late anyway," the good-natured General said. "The old boy just left. But on my own account, as soon as Madame has chosen some better company than yours, I shall have to interrogate you about what you meant with that 'religious war'-if you'll be so kind as to remember your own words. "
'W e were just talking about that," Ulrich said.
"How very interesting! " the General exclaimed. "Your sister is also interested in moral systems? "
"It's all my brother talks about," Agathe corrected him, smiling.
"That was virtually the whole agenda this evening! " Stumm sighed. "Leinsdorf, for instance, said only a few minutes ago that mo- rality is just as important as eating. I can't see it myself. " So saying, he bent with relish over the candies Agathe handed him. It was sup- posed to be a joke. Agathe said, to comfort him: "Neither can I. "
Into the Millennium (The Criminals) · 1 1 1 9
"An officer and a woman must have morals, but they don't like to talk about it," the General went on improvising. "Don't you agree, dear lady? "
Rachel had brought him a kitchen chair, which she was zealously dusting offwith her apron when these words ofhis stabbed her to the heart; she nearly broke into tears.
Stumm was prompting Ulrich again: "Now then, what's this about the religious war? " But before Ulrich could say anything, he fore- stalled him, saying: "Actually, I have the feeling that your cousin is also prowling around looking for you, and I have my military training to thank for finding you first. So I must make the most of my time. Things are not going well in there! It's supposed to be our fault. And your cousin-how shall I put it? She's simply let go of the reins. Do you know what they've decided? "
"Who decided? "
"A lot of people have already left. Some have stayed and are pay- ing very close attention," the General described the situation. "There's no telling who is deciding. "
"In that case it might be better if you told me first what they've decided," Ulrich said.
Stumm von Bordwehr shrugged his shoulders. "All right. But luckily it's not a resolution in the sense of committee business," he elucidated. "Since all the responsible people had left in time, thank heaven. So it's only what you might call a special-interest proposal, a suggestion, or a minority vote. I shall take the line that we have no official knowledge of it. But you'd better tell your secretary to watch the minutes so none of this gets into the record. Do forgive me," he said to Agathe, "for talking business like this! "
"But what happened? " she urged him on.
Stumm made a wide, sweeping gesture. "Feuermaul . . . if you remember the young man we really only invited because--how shall I put it? -because he is an exponent of the spirit of the times, and because we had to invite the opposing exponents anyway. We had hoped that nevertheless, and with the added stimulus of intellectual debate, we'd be able to get down to talking about the thin_g0hat, unfortunately, really matter. Your brother knows about it, dear lady; the idea was to get the Minister together with Leinsdorf and Arn- heim, to see whether Leinsdorfhas any objections to . . . certain pa-
1120 • THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
triotic views. And all in all I'm not really dissatisfied. " He turned con- fidentially to Ulrich. "So far so good. But while this was going on, Feuermaul and the others . . . " Here Stumm felt obliged to add for Agathe's benefit: ". . . that is, the exponent of the view that man is basically a good and peace-loving creature who responds best to kindness, and those who expound approximately the opposite view, that it takes a strong hand and all that to keep order in the world. This Feuermaul got into an argument with these others, and before anyone could stop them they had agreed on a joint proposal! "
"A joint proposal? '' Ulrich was incredulous.
"That's right. Perhaps I seem to be making light of it"-Stumm sounded rather pleased with himself at the unintended comic effect of his story-"but nobody could have predicted anything of the sort. And ifI tell you what their resolution was, you won't believe it! Since I was supposed to visit Moosbrugger this afternoon in a semi-official capacity, the whole Ministry will refuse to believe that I wasn't the one who put them up to it! "
Here Ulrich burst out laughing, and he interrupted him the same way from time to time as Stumm went on with his story; only Agathe understood why, while his friend commented somewhat huffily each time that he seemed to be wrought up. But what had happened cor- responded far too much to the pattern Ulrich had just laid out for his sister for him not to find it hilarious.
The Feuermaul group had appeared on the scene at the very last moment to save what could still be saved. In such cases the object tends to be less clear than the intention. The young poet Friedel Feuermaul-who was called Pepi by his intimates, and who went about trying to look like the young Schubert, for he doted on every- thing having to do with Old Vienna, though he had been born in a small provincial town in Hungary-happened to believe in Austria's mission, and he believed besides i. h. mankind. It was obvious that an undertaking like the Parallel Campaign that did not include him would from the beginning have made him uneasy. How could a hu- manitarian project in an Austrian key, or an Austrian project in a hu- manitarian key, flourish without him? It is true that he had said this, with a shrug, only in private to his friend Frau Drangsal, but she, the widow of a celebrity and a credit to her country, as the hostess pre- siding over a spiritual beauty salon overshadowed only during the last
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year by Diotima's, had repeated it to evel)' influential person with whom she came in contact. Hence a rumor had begun to make the rounds that the Parallel Campaign was in peril, unless . . . This "un- less" and the peril naturally enough remained rather unde:Bned, for first Diotima had to be made to invite Feuermaul, and after that one would see. But the news of some danger apparently connected with the patriotic campaign was noted by those alert politicians who ac- knowledged no fatherland, but only an ethnic motherfolk living in enforced wedlock with the State as an abused wife; they had long suspected that the Parallel Campaign would only produce some new form of oppression. And even though they were civil enough to con- ceal this suspicion, they attached far less importance to the intention of diverting it-for there had always been despairing humanists among the Germans, but as a whole they would always be oppressors and bureaucratic parasites! -than to the useful hint that even Ger- mans admitted how dangerous their people's nationalism was. Con- sequently Frau Drangsal and the poet Feuermaul felt buoyed up by sympathies for their aims, which they accepted without bothering to investigate, and Feuermaul, who was a recognized man of feeling,
, was obsessed with the notion that something compelling about love and peace had to be said to the Minister ofWar in person. Why the Minister ofWar, and what he was expected to do about it, remained unclear; but the idea itself was so dazzlingly original and dramatic that it really needed no additional support. On this point they had even won the approval of Stumm von Bordwehr, the fickle General, whose devotion to culture sometimes took him to Frau Drangsal's salon, unbeknownst to Diotima; it was his doing, moreover, that the original perception of Arnheim the munitions maker as part of the danger gave way to the view of Arnheim the thinker as an important element of everything good.
So far all had gone as befitted the participants, even including the fact that, despite Frau Drangsal's help, the Minister's encounter with Feuermaul unfolded as is usual in the course of human events, pro- ducing nothing more than some flashes of Feuermaulian brilliance, to which His Excellency lent a tolerant ear. But Feuermaul was far from spent, and because the troops he could summon to arms con- sisted ofliterary men young and old, councillors, Hofrate,librarians, and some pacifists, in short, people of all ages and in all sorts of posi-
1122 • THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
tions, united in their feeling for their old Fatherland and its mission in the world-a sentiment as readily marshaled in the cause ofbring- ing back the historic three-horse omnibus as in that of Viennese porcelain-and because all these faithful had in the course of the evening made many diverse contacts with their opponents, who also did not go around showing their claws, many discussions had sprung up in which opinions crisscrossed wildly in all directions. Such was the temptation facing Feuermaul when the Minister ofWar had fin- ished with him and Frau Drangsal's attention had been distracted for a while through some unknown occurrence. Stumm von Bordwehr could only report that Feuermaul had got into an extremely lively exchange with ayoung man who, from his description, might well have been Hans Sepp. The young man was in any case one of those who find a scapegoat on which to blame all the evils they cannot cope with themselves; nationalist arrogance is only that special case of it in which honest conviction makes one choose a scapegoat not of one's own breed and as unlike oneself as possible. Now, everyone knows what a great relief it is when one is upset to work off one's anger on someone, even if it has nothing to do with him; but it is less well known that this also applies to love. For love, too, must often be worked off in the same way on someone not really involved, for lack of a more suitable outlet. Feuermaul, for instance, was an industri- ous young man who could be quite unpleasant in the struggle for his own advantage, but his lovegoat happened to be "Man," and the mo- ment he thought of Man in general, there was no restraining his un- satisfied benevolence. Hans Sepp, on the other hand, was basically a decent fellow who could not even bring himself to deceive Director Fischel,- and so his scapegoat was "non-German man," on whom he blamed everything beyond his power to change. Lord knows what they had started to talk to each other about; they must have instantly mounted their respective goats and charged at each other, for as Stumm put it:
'Tve really no idea how it happened; suddenly they were sur- rounded, and the next minute there was a real crowd, and finally ev- eryone still here was standing around them. "
"Do you know what they were arguing about? " Ulrich asked him. Stumm shrugged his shoulders. "Feuermaul shouted at the other
Into the Millennium (The Criminals) · I 1 2 3
fellow: 'You want to hate, but you can't do it! Because we're all born with love inside! ' or something like that. And the other one shouted back at him: 'And you want to love?
But that's something you're even less capable of, you-you-' Well, I can't really say exactly; I had to hold myself a bit apart, because of my uniform. "
"Oh," Ulrich said. "I see the point. " He turned to Agathe, trying to catch her eye.
"No-the point was the resolution! " Stumm reminded him. "There they were, ready to bite each other's heads off, and then, as if nothing had happened, they agreed to make common cause, and I do mean common! "
With his rounded figur~ Stumm gave the impression of unwaver- ing gravity. "The Minister left on the spot," he reported.
"But what was it they agreed on? " Ulrich and Agathe asked.
"I can't exactly say," Stumm replied, "because of course I took off myselfbefore they were finished. Besides, it's always hard to remem- ber that sort of thing clearly. It's something in favor of Moosbrugger and against the army. "
"Moosbrugger? How on earth . . . " Ulrich laughed again.
"How on earth? " the General echoed venomously. "It's easy for you to laugh, but I'm the one who's going to be called on the carpet for it! At the very least it'll mean days of paperwork! How does any- one know 'how on earth' with such people? Maybe it was that old professor's fault, the one who was talking to everyone in favor of hanging and against leniency. Or it could have been because the pa- pers have been making such a fuss again lately about the problem of that monster. Anyway, they were suddenly talking about him. This has got to be undone again! " he declared with unwonted severity.
At this moment the kitchen was invaded in quick succession by Amheim, Diotima, and even Tuzzi and Count Leinsdorf. Amheim had heard voices in the foyer. He had been on the point of slipping away quietly, hoping that the disturbance would enable him to es- cape another heart-to-heart talk with Diotima; and tomorrow he would be leaving town again for some time. But his curiosity made him glance into the kitchen, and since Agathe had seen him, polite- ness prevented him from withdrawing. Stumm instantly besieged him with questions about how things stood.
I124 • THE MAN WITH0 UT QUALITIES
"I can even give it to you verbatim," Amheim replied with a smile. "Some of it was so quaint that I simply had to write it down on the sly. "
He drew a small card from his wallet and slowly read, deciphering his shorthand, the contents of the proposed manifesto:
" 'The patriotic campaign has passed the following resolution, as proposed by Herr Feuermaul and Herr-' I didn't catch the other name. 'Any man may choose to die for his own ideas, but whoever induces men to die for ideas not their own is a murderer! ' That was the proposal," he added, "and my impression was that it was final. "
"That's it! " the General exclaimed. "That's the way I heard it too! They're enough to make you sick, these intellectual debates! "
Amheim said gently: "It's the desire ofyoung people today for sta- bility and leadership. "
"But it wasn't only young people," Stumm said in disgust. "Even baldheads were agreeing! "
"Then it's a need for leadership in general," Amheim said with a friendly nod. "It's widespread these days. Incidentally, the resolution was borrowed from a recent book, if I remember rightly. "
"Indeed? " Stumm said.
"Yes," Arnheim said. "And of course we'll pretend it never hap- pened. But ifwe could find a way to direct the sentiment it expresses into some useful channel, it would certainly be of help. "
The General appeared somewhat relieved and, turning to Ulrich, asked:
"Do you have any idea what could be done? "
"Ofcourse! " Ulrich said.
Arnheim's attention was diverted by Diotima.
"In that case," the General said in a low voice, "fire away! I would
prefer it ifwe could remain in control. "
"You have to focus on what actually happened," Ulrich said, taking
his time. "These people aren't so far wrong, you know, when one of them accuses the other of wanting to love if he only could, and the other retorts that it's the same with wanting to hate. It's true ofall the feelings. Hatred today has something companionable about it, and on the other hand, in order to feel what would really be love for an- other human being-I maintain," Ulrich said abruptly, "that two such people have never yet existed! "
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"That's certainly most interesting," the General interrupted quickly, "especially as I completely fail to understand how you can assert such a thing. But I have to write a protocol tomorrow about everything that happened here tonight, and I implore you to bear this in mind! In the army, what counts most is being able to report progress; a certain optimism is indispensable even in defeat-that's part of the profession. So how can I report what happened here as a step forward? "
'Write," Ulrich advised him with a wink, "that the moral imagina- tion has taken its revenge! "
"But you can't write that sort of thing in the military! " Stumm re- plied indignantly.
"Then let's put it another way," Ulrich said seriously, "and write: All creative periods have been serious. There is no profound happi- ness without a profound ethos. There is no morality that is not derived from a firm basis. There is no happiness that does not rest on a strong belief. Not even animals live without morality. But today human beings no longer know on what-"
Stumm broke in on this calmly flowing dictation too: "My dear friend, I can speak of a troop's morale, or morale in battle, or a woman's morals; but always only in specific instances. I cannot dis- cuss morality without such a restriction in a military report, any more than I could imagination or God Almighty. You know that as well as I do! "
Diotima saw Amheim standing at the window of her kitchen, an oddly domestic sight after they had exchanged only a few circum- spect words during the entire evening. Paradoxically, it only made her suddenly wish to continue her unfinished chat with Ulrich. Her mind was dominated by that comforting despair which, breaking in from several directions at once, had almost become sublimated into an amiable and serene state of expectation. The long-foreseen col- lapse of her Council left her cold. Amheim's faithlessness also left her, as she thought, almost equally indifferent. He looked at her as she came in, and for a moment it brought back the old feeling of a living space in which they were united. But she remembered that he had been avoiding her for weeks, and the thought "Sexual coward! " stiffened her knees again so that she could move toward him regally.
Arnheim saw it: her seeing him, her faltering, the distance be-
1126 • THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
tween them melting; over frozen roads connecting them in innumer- able ways hovered an intimation that they might thaw out again. He had moved away from the others, but at the last moment both he and Diotima made a tum that brought them together with Ulrich, Gen- eral Stumm, and the rest, who were on the other side.
In all its manifestations, from the inspired ideas of original think- ers to the kitsch that unites all peoples, what Ulrich called the moral imagination, or, more simply, feeling, has for centuries been in a state of ferment without turning into wine. Man is a being who can- not smvive without enthusiasm. And enthusiasm is that state of mind in which all his feelings and thoughts have the same spirit. You think it is rather the opposite, that it is a condition in which one overpow- ering feeling-of being carried away! -sweeps all the others along with it? You weren't going to say anything at all? Anyway, that's how it is. Or one way it is. But there is nothing to sustain such an enthusi- asm. Feelings and thoughts become lasting only with each other's help, in their totality; they must somehow be aligned with each other and carry each other onward. And by every available means, through drugs, liquor, fantasies, hypnosis, faith, conviction, often even through the simplifying effect of stupidity, man is always trying to achieve a condition like it. He believes in ideas not because they are sometimes true but because he needs to believe; because he has to keep his feelings in order. Because he must have an illusion to stop up the gap between the walls of his life, through which his feelings would otherwise fly off in every direction. The answer is probably at least to seek the conditions of an authentic enthusiasm, instead of giving oneself up to transient delusory states. But although, all in all, the number of choices based on feeling is infinitely greater than those based on clear logic, and every event that moves mankind arises from the imagination, only the purely rational problems have achieved an objective order, while nothing deserving the name of a joint effort, or even hinting at any insight into the desperate need for it, has been done for the world of feeling and imagination.
This was more or less what Ulrich said, interspersed with under- standable protests from the General.
All Ulrich saw in the events of the evening, even though they had been impetuous enough and were destined through malicious mis- representation to have grave consequences, was the example of an
Into the Millennium (The Criminals) · 1 1 2 7
infinite disorder. Feuennaul seemed at this moment to matter to him as little as the love of mankind, nationalism as little as Feuer- maul, and Stumm was asking him in vain how to distill a sense of some tangible progress out of an attitude so very personal.
"Why don't you simply report," Ulrich responded, "that it's the Millennia! War of Religion. And that people have never been as un- prepared to fight it as now, when the rubble of 'ineffectual feelings,' which every period bequeaths to the next, has grown into mountains without anything being done about it. So the War Ministry can sit back and serenely await the next mass catastrophe. "
Ulrich was foretelling the future, with no inkling of it. His concern was not with real events at all; he was struggling for his salvation. He was trying to throw in everything that could get in its way, and it was for that reason that he laughed so much and tried to mislead them into thinking he was joking and exaggerating. He was exaggerating for Agathe's benefit, carrying on his long-standing dialogue with her, not just this most recent one. Actually, he was throwing up a bulwark of ideas against her, knowing that in a certain place there was a little bolt, and that if this bolt were drawn back, everything would be flooded and buried by feeling. In truth he was thinking incessantly of this bolt.
Diotima was standing near him and smiling. She sensed some- thing of Ulrich's efforts on behalf of his sister, and was sadly moved; she forgot sexual enlightenment, and something in her opened up: it was doubtless the future, but in any case, her lips were slightly open too.
Amheim asked Ulrich: "And you think . . . that something might be done about it? " The tone of his question suggested that he had caught the seriousness behind the exaggeration, but that he regarded even the seriousness as an exaggeration.
Tuzzi said to Diotima: "Something must in any case be done to prevent this affair from leaking out. "
"Isn't it obvious? '' Ulrich said in reply to Amheim. "Today we are facing too many possibilities of feeling, too many possible ways of living. But isn't it like the kind of problem our intellect deals with whenever it is confronted with a vast number of facts and a history of the relevant theories? And for the intellect we have developed an open-ended but precise procedure, which I don't need to describe to
1128 • THE MAN WITH0 UT QUALITIES
you. Now tell me whether something of the kind isn't equally possi- ble for the feelings. We certainly need to find out what we're here for; it's one of the main sources of all violence in the world. Earlier centuries tried to answer it with their own inadequate means, but the great age ofempiricism has done nothing ofits own, so far. . . . "
Arnheim, who caught on quickly and liked to interrupt, laid his hand on Ulrich's shoulder as if to restrain him. "This implies an in- creasing relationship with God! " he said in a low tone of warning.
'Would that be so terrible? " Ulrich asked, not without a hint of mockery at such premature alarm. "But I haven't gone that far yet! " Arnheim promptly checked himself and smiled. "How delightful
after a long absence to find someone unchanged. Such a rarity, these days! " he said. He was genuinely glad, in fact, once he felt safe again behind his defensive front of benevolence. Ulrich might, after all, have very well taken him up on that rash offer of a position, and Arn- heim was grateful that Ulrich, in his irresponsible intransigence, dis- dained touching the earth with his feet. "We must have a talk about this sometime," he added cordially. "It's not clear to me how you conceive of applying our theoretical attitude to practical affairs. "
Ulrich knew very well that it was still unclear. What he meant was not a life of "research," or a life "in the light of science," but a "quest for feeling" similar to a quest for truth, except that truth was not the issue here. He watched Arnheim moving over to Agathe. Diotima was standing there too; Tuzzi and Count Leinsdorf came and went. Agathe was chatting with everyone and thinking: "Why is he talking with all these people? He ought to have left with me! He's cheapen- ing what he said to me! " She liked many of the things she heard him say from across the room, and yet they hurt her. Everything that came from Ulrich was hurting her again, and for the second time that day she suddenly felt the need to get away from him. She despaired of ever being able, with her limitations, to be what he wanted, and the prospect that they would soon be going home like any other cou- ple, gossiping about the evening behind them, was intolerable.
Meanwhile Ulrich was illinking: "Arnheim will never understand that. " And he added: "It is precisely in his feelings that the scientist is limited, and the practical man even more so. It's as necessary as hav- ing your legs finnly planted ifyou intend to lift something with your arms. " In ordinary circumstances he was that way himself; the mo-
Into the Millennium (The Criminals) · 1 1 2 9
ment he began thinking about anything, even if it was about feeling itself, he was very cautious about letting any feeling into it. Agathe called this coldness, but he knew that in order to be wholly otherwise one has to be prepared to renounce life, as if on a mortal adventure, for one has no idea what its course will be! He was in the mood for it, and for the moment no longer feared it. He gazed for a long time at his sister: the lively play of conversation on the deeper, untouched face. He was about to ask her to leave with him, but before he could move, Stumm had come back and was intent on talking with him.
The good General was fond of Ulrich. He had already forgiven him his witticisms about the War Ministry, and was actually rather taken with the phrase "religious war": it had such a festively military air, like oak leaves on a helmet, or shouts of hurrah on the Emperor's birthday. With his arm pressed to Ulrich's, he steered him out of ear- shot of the others. "You know, I like what you said about all events originating in the imagination," he said. "Of course, that's more my private opinion than my official attitude," and he offered Ulrich a cigarette.
''I've got to go home," Ulrich said.
"Your sister is having a fine time; don't disturb her," Stumm said. "Arnheim's outdoing himself to pay court to her. But what I was going to say: the joy seems to have gone out of mankind's great ideas. You ought to put some life back into them. I mean, there's a new spirit in the air, and you're the man to take charge! "
"What gives you that idea? '' Ulrich asked guardedly.
"That's how it strikes me. " Stumm passed over it and went on in- tently: "You're for order too; everything you say shows it. And so then I ask myself: which is more to the point-that man is good, or that he needs a firm hand? It's all tied in with our present-day need to take a stand. I've already told you it would put my mind at rest ifyou would take charge of the campaign again. With all this talk, there's simply no knowing what may happen otherwise! "
Ulrich laughed. "Do you know what I'm going to do now? I'm not coming here anymore! " he said happily:
"But why? '' Stumm protested hotly. "All those people will be right who've been saying that you've never been a real power! "
"If I told them what I really think, they would really say so. " Ul- rich answered, laughing, and disengaged himself from his friend.
1130 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
Stumm was vexed, but then his good humor prevailed, and he said in parting: "These things are so damned complicated. Sometimes I've actually thought it would be best if a real idiot came along to tackle all these insoluble problems-I mean some sort ofJoan ofArc. A person like that might be able to help! "
Ulrich's eyes searched for his sister but did not find her. While he was asking Diotima about her, Leinsdorf and Tuzzi returned from the salon and announced that everyone was leaving.
"I said all along," His Grace remarked cheerfully to the lady ofthe house, "that what those people were saying was not what they really meant.
"It's annoying how much you seem to expect from the goodness of such a man! "
"I suppose it is," Agathe admitted.
He looked at her. He realized that this encounter meant more to his sister than the attentions paid to her by other men since she had been under his protection. He even knew this man slightly. Lindner was a public figure of sorts; he was the man who, at the very first session of the Parallel Campaign, had made the brief speech, re- ceived with embarrassing silence, hailing the "historical moment" or something similar: awkward, sincere, and pointless. . . . On impulse Ulrich glanced around, but he did not recall seeing the man tonight, for he had not been asked again, as Ulrich knew. He must have come across him elsewhere from time to time, probably at some learned society, and have read one or another of his publications, for as he concentrated his memory, ultramicroscopic traces of images from the past condensed like a repulsive viscous drop into his verdict: "That dreary ass! The more anyone wants to be taken seriously, the less one can take such a man seriously, any more than Professor Hagauer! " So he said to Agathe.
Agathe met it with silence. She even pressed his hand.
He felt: There is something quite contradictory here, but there's no stopping it.
At this point people came into the anteroom, and the siblings drew slightly apart.
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"Shall I take you back in? " Ulrich asked.
Agathe said no and looked around for an escape.
It suddenly occurred to Ulrich that the only way they could get
away from the other guests was by retreating to the kitchen. Three batteries of glasses were being filled and trays loaded with cakes. The cook was bustling about with great zeal; Rachel and Soliman were waiting to be loaded up, standing apart and motionless and not whis- pering to each other as they used to do on such occasions. Little Ra- chel dropped a curtsy as they came in, Soliman merely saluted with his dark eyes, and Ulrich said: "It's too stuffy in there; can we get something to drink here? "
He sat down with Agathe on the window seat and put a glass and a plate down for show so that in case anyone should see them it would look as if two old friends of the family were having a private chat. When they were seated, he said with a little sigh: "So it's merely a matter offeeling whether one finds such a Professor Lindner good or insufferable? ''
Agathe was concentrating on unwrapping a piece of candy.
"Which is to say," Ulrich went on, "that the feeling is neither true nor false. Feeling has remained a private matter! It remains at the mercy of suggestion, fantasy, or persuasion. You and I are no differ- ent from those people in there. Do you know what these people want? ''
"No. But does it matter? "
"Perhaps it does. They are forming two parties, each ofwhich is as right or as wrong as the other. "
Agathe said she could not help thinking that it was better to be- lieve in human goodness than only in guns and politics, even if the manner ofthe beliefwas absurd.
"What's he like, this man you met? "
"Oh, that's impossible to say. He's good! " his sister answered with a laugh.
"You can no more depend on what looks good to you than on what looks good to Leinsdorf,'' Ulrich responded testily.
Both their faces were tense with excitement and laughter; the easy flow of humorous civility blocked deeper countercurrents. Rachel sensed it at the roots of her hair, under her little cap, but she was feeling so miserable herself that her perception was much dimmer
III6 • THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
than it used to be, like a memory of better days. The lovely curve of her cheeks was a shade hollow, the black blaze of her eyes dulled with discouragement. Had Ulrich been in a mood to compare her beauty with that of his sister, he would have been bound to notice that Rachel's former dark brilliance had crumbled like a piece of coal that had been run over by a heavy truck. But he had no eyes for her now. She was pregnant, and no one knew it except Soliman, who showed no understanding of the disastrous reality and responded with nothing but childish romantic schemes.
"For centuries now," Ulrich went on, "the world has known truth in thinking and accordingly, to a certain degree, rational freedom of thought. But during this same time the emotional life has had neither the strict discipline oftruth nor any freedom ofmovement. For every moral system has, in its time, regulated the feelings, and rigidly too, but only insofar as certain basic principles and feelings were needed for whatever action it favored; the rest was left to individual whim, to the private play of emotions, to the random efforts of art, and to aca- demic debate. So morality has adapted our feelings to the needs of moral systems and meanwhile neglected to develop them, even though it depends on feelings: morality is, after all, the order and integrity of the emotional life. " Here he broke off. He felt Rachel's fascinated stare on his animated face, even if she could no longer quite muster her former enthusiasm for the concerns of important people.
"I suppose it's funny how I go on talking about morality even here in the kitchen," he said in embarrassment.
Agathe was gazing at him intently and thoughtfully. He leaned over closer to his sister and added softly, with a flickering smile: "But it's only another way of expressing an impassioned state that takes up arms against the whole world! "
Without intending to, he was reenacting their confrontation ofthe morning, in which he had played the unpleasant role of the lecturing schoolmaster. He could not help it. For him morality was neither conformism nor philosophic wisdom, but living the infinite fullness of possibilities. He believed in morality's capacity for intensification, in stages of moral experience, and not merely, as most people do, in stages of moral understanding, as if it were something cut-and-dried for which people were just not pure enough. He believed in morality
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without believing in any specific moral system. Morality is generally understood to be a sort ofpolice regulations for keeping life in order, and since life does not obey even these, they come to look as if they were really impossible to live up to and accordingly, in this sorry way, not really an ideal either. But morality must not be reduced to this level. Morality is imagination. This was what he wanted to make Agathe see. And his second point was: Imagination is not arbitrary. Once the imagination is left to caprice, there is a price to pay.
The words twitched in his mouth. He was on the verge ofbringing up the neglected difference between the way in which various histor- ical periods have developed the rational mind in their own fashion and the way they have kept the moral imagination static and closed off, also in their own fashion. He was on the verge of talking about this because it results in a line that rises, despite all skepticism, more or less steadily through all of history's transformations, representing the rational mind and its patterns, and contrasting with a mound of broken shards of feelings, ideas, and potentials of life that were heaped up in layers just the way they were when they came into being, as eternal side issues, and that were always discarded. And also because a further result is that this finally adds up to any number of possibilities for forming an opinion one way or another, as soon as they are extended into the realm ofprinciples; but that there is never a possibility of bringing them together. And because it follows that the various opinions lash out at each other since they have no way of communicating. And because it follows, finally, that the emotional life of mankind slops back and forth like water in an unsteady tub. Ulrich had an idea that had been haunting him all evening, an old idea of his, incidentally, but everything that had happened this eve- ning had somehow simply confirmed it, and he wanted to show Agathe where her error lay and how it could be put right, if everyone agreed. Actually, it was only his painful intention to prove that one could not, on the whole, even trust the discoveries of one's own imagination.
Agathe now said, with a little sigh, as a hard-pressed woman gets in one last, quick defensive move before surrendering:
"So one has to do everything 'on principle,' is that it? " And she looked at him, responding to his smile.
But he answered: "Yes, but only on one principle! "
1118 • THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
This was something quite different from what he had meant to say. It again came from the realm of the Siamese twins and the Millen- nium, where life grows in magical stillness like a flower, and even ifit were not a mere flight of fancy, it pointed to the frontiers of thought, which are solitary and treacherous. Agathe's eyes were like split agate. If at this instant he had said only a little more, or touched her with his hand, something would have happened-something that was gone a moment later, before she even knew what it was. For Ulrich did not want to say any more. He took a knife and a piece of fruit and began to peel. He was happy because the distance that had separated him from his sister shortly before had melted into an im- measurable closeness; but he was also glad that at this moment they were interrupted.
It was the General, who came peering into the kitchen with the sly glance of a patrol leader surprising the enemy encampment. "Please forgive the intrusion," he called out as he entered, "but as it's only a tete-a-tete with your brother, dear lady, it can't be too great a crime! " And turning to Ulrich, he said: "They're looking for you high and low. "
And Ulrich told the General what he had meant to say to Agathe. But first he asked: 'Who are they? "
"I was supposed to bring you to the Minister! " Stumm said re- proachfully.
Ulrich waved that aside.
'Well, it's too late anyway," the good-natured General said. "The old boy just left. But on my own account, as soon as Madame has chosen some better company than yours, I shall have to interrogate you about what you meant with that 'religious war'-if you'll be so kind as to remember your own words. "
'W e were just talking about that," Ulrich said.
"How very interesting! " the General exclaimed. "Your sister is also interested in moral systems? "
"It's all my brother talks about," Agathe corrected him, smiling.
"That was virtually the whole agenda this evening! " Stumm sighed. "Leinsdorf, for instance, said only a few minutes ago that mo- rality is just as important as eating. I can't see it myself. " So saying, he bent with relish over the candies Agathe handed him. It was sup- posed to be a joke. Agathe said, to comfort him: "Neither can I. "
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"An officer and a woman must have morals, but they don't like to talk about it," the General went on improvising. "Don't you agree, dear lady? "
Rachel had brought him a kitchen chair, which she was zealously dusting offwith her apron when these words ofhis stabbed her to the heart; she nearly broke into tears.
Stumm was prompting Ulrich again: "Now then, what's this about the religious war? " But before Ulrich could say anything, he fore- stalled him, saying: "Actually, I have the feeling that your cousin is also prowling around looking for you, and I have my military training to thank for finding you first. So I must make the most of my time. Things are not going well in there! It's supposed to be our fault. And your cousin-how shall I put it? She's simply let go of the reins. Do you know what they've decided? "
"Who decided? "
"A lot of people have already left. Some have stayed and are pay- ing very close attention," the General described the situation. "There's no telling who is deciding. "
"In that case it might be better if you told me first what they've decided," Ulrich said.
Stumm von Bordwehr shrugged his shoulders. "All right. But luckily it's not a resolution in the sense of committee business," he elucidated. "Since all the responsible people had left in time, thank heaven. So it's only what you might call a special-interest proposal, a suggestion, or a minority vote. I shall take the line that we have no official knowledge of it. But you'd better tell your secretary to watch the minutes so none of this gets into the record. Do forgive me," he said to Agathe, "for talking business like this! "
"But what happened? " she urged him on.
Stumm made a wide, sweeping gesture. "Feuermaul . . . if you remember the young man we really only invited because--how shall I put it? -because he is an exponent of the spirit of the times, and because we had to invite the opposing exponents anyway. We had hoped that nevertheless, and with the added stimulus of intellectual debate, we'd be able to get down to talking about the thin_g0hat, unfortunately, really matter. Your brother knows about it, dear lady; the idea was to get the Minister together with Leinsdorf and Arn- heim, to see whether Leinsdorfhas any objections to . . . certain pa-
1120 • THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
triotic views. And all in all I'm not really dissatisfied. " He turned con- fidentially to Ulrich. "So far so good. But while this was going on, Feuermaul and the others . . . " Here Stumm felt obliged to add for Agathe's benefit: ". . . that is, the exponent of the view that man is basically a good and peace-loving creature who responds best to kindness, and those who expound approximately the opposite view, that it takes a strong hand and all that to keep order in the world. This Feuermaul got into an argument with these others, and before anyone could stop them they had agreed on a joint proposal! "
"A joint proposal? '' Ulrich was incredulous.
"That's right. Perhaps I seem to be making light of it"-Stumm sounded rather pleased with himself at the unintended comic effect of his story-"but nobody could have predicted anything of the sort. And ifI tell you what their resolution was, you won't believe it! Since I was supposed to visit Moosbrugger this afternoon in a semi-official capacity, the whole Ministry will refuse to believe that I wasn't the one who put them up to it! "
Here Ulrich burst out laughing, and he interrupted him the same way from time to time as Stumm went on with his story; only Agathe understood why, while his friend commented somewhat huffily each time that he seemed to be wrought up. But what had happened cor- responded far too much to the pattern Ulrich had just laid out for his sister for him not to find it hilarious.
The Feuermaul group had appeared on the scene at the very last moment to save what could still be saved. In such cases the object tends to be less clear than the intention. The young poet Friedel Feuermaul-who was called Pepi by his intimates, and who went about trying to look like the young Schubert, for he doted on every- thing having to do with Old Vienna, though he had been born in a small provincial town in Hungary-happened to believe in Austria's mission, and he believed besides i. h. mankind. It was obvious that an undertaking like the Parallel Campaign that did not include him would from the beginning have made him uneasy. How could a hu- manitarian project in an Austrian key, or an Austrian project in a hu- manitarian key, flourish without him? It is true that he had said this, with a shrug, only in private to his friend Frau Drangsal, but she, the widow of a celebrity and a credit to her country, as the hostess pre- siding over a spiritual beauty salon overshadowed only during the last
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year by Diotima's, had repeated it to evel)' influential person with whom she came in contact. Hence a rumor had begun to make the rounds that the Parallel Campaign was in peril, unless . . . This "un- less" and the peril naturally enough remained rather unde:Bned, for first Diotima had to be made to invite Feuermaul, and after that one would see. But the news of some danger apparently connected with the patriotic campaign was noted by those alert politicians who ac- knowledged no fatherland, but only an ethnic motherfolk living in enforced wedlock with the State as an abused wife; they had long suspected that the Parallel Campaign would only produce some new form of oppression. And even though they were civil enough to con- ceal this suspicion, they attached far less importance to the intention of diverting it-for there had always been despairing humanists among the Germans, but as a whole they would always be oppressors and bureaucratic parasites! -than to the useful hint that even Ger- mans admitted how dangerous their people's nationalism was. Con- sequently Frau Drangsal and the poet Feuermaul felt buoyed up by sympathies for their aims, which they accepted without bothering to investigate, and Feuermaul, who was a recognized man of feeling,
, was obsessed with the notion that something compelling about love and peace had to be said to the Minister ofWar in person. Why the Minister ofWar, and what he was expected to do about it, remained unclear; but the idea itself was so dazzlingly original and dramatic that it really needed no additional support. On this point they had even won the approval of Stumm von Bordwehr, the fickle General, whose devotion to culture sometimes took him to Frau Drangsal's salon, unbeknownst to Diotima; it was his doing, moreover, that the original perception of Arnheim the munitions maker as part of the danger gave way to the view of Arnheim the thinker as an important element of everything good.
So far all had gone as befitted the participants, even including the fact that, despite Frau Drangsal's help, the Minister's encounter with Feuermaul unfolded as is usual in the course of human events, pro- ducing nothing more than some flashes of Feuermaulian brilliance, to which His Excellency lent a tolerant ear. But Feuermaul was far from spent, and because the troops he could summon to arms con- sisted ofliterary men young and old, councillors, Hofrate,librarians, and some pacifists, in short, people of all ages and in all sorts of posi-
1122 • THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
tions, united in their feeling for their old Fatherland and its mission in the world-a sentiment as readily marshaled in the cause ofbring- ing back the historic three-horse omnibus as in that of Viennese porcelain-and because all these faithful had in the course of the evening made many diverse contacts with their opponents, who also did not go around showing their claws, many discussions had sprung up in which opinions crisscrossed wildly in all directions. Such was the temptation facing Feuermaul when the Minister ofWar had fin- ished with him and Frau Drangsal's attention had been distracted for a while through some unknown occurrence. Stumm von Bordwehr could only report that Feuermaul had got into an extremely lively exchange with ayoung man who, from his description, might well have been Hans Sepp. The young man was in any case one of those who find a scapegoat on which to blame all the evils they cannot cope with themselves; nationalist arrogance is only that special case of it in which honest conviction makes one choose a scapegoat not of one's own breed and as unlike oneself as possible. Now, everyone knows what a great relief it is when one is upset to work off one's anger on someone, even if it has nothing to do with him; but it is less well known that this also applies to love. For love, too, must often be worked off in the same way on someone not really involved, for lack of a more suitable outlet. Feuermaul, for instance, was an industri- ous young man who could be quite unpleasant in the struggle for his own advantage, but his lovegoat happened to be "Man," and the mo- ment he thought of Man in general, there was no restraining his un- satisfied benevolence. Hans Sepp, on the other hand, was basically a decent fellow who could not even bring himself to deceive Director Fischel,- and so his scapegoat was "non-German man," on whom he blamed everything beyond his power to change. Lord knows what they had started to talk to each other about; they must have instantly mounted their respective goats and charged at each other, for as Stumm put it:
'Tve really no idea how it happened; suddenly they were sur- rounded, and the next minute there was a real crowd, and finally ev- eryone still here was standing around them. "
"Do you know what they were arguing about? " Ulrich asked him. Stumm shrugged his shoulders. "Feuermaul shouted at the other
Into the Millennium (The Criminals) · I 1 2 3
fellow: 'You want to hate, but you can't do it! Because we're all born with love inside! ' or something like that. And the other one shouted back at him: 'And you want to love?
But that's something you're even less capable of, you-you-' Well, I can't really say exactly; I had to hold myself a bit apart, because of my uniform. "
"Oh," Ulrich said. "I see the point. " He turned to Agathe, trying to catch her eye.
"No-the point was the resolution! " Stumm reminded him. "There they were, ready to bite each other's heads off, and then, as if nothing had happened, they agreed to make common cause, and I do mean common! "
With his rounded figur~ Stumm gave the impression of unwaver- ing gravity. "The Minister left on the spot," he reported.
"But what was it they agreed on? " Ulrich and Agathe asked.
"I can't exactly say," Stumm replied, "because of course I took off myselfbefore they were finished. Besides, it's always hard to remem- ber that sort of thing clearly. It's something in favor of Moosbrugger and against the army. "
"Moosbrugger? How on earth . . . " Ulrich laughed again.
"How on earth? " the General echoed venomously. "It's easy for you to laugh, but I'm the one who's going to be called on the carpet for it! At the very least it'll mean days of paperwork! How does any- one know 'how on earth' with such people? Maybe it was that old professor's fault, the one who was talking to everyone in favor of hanging and against leniency. Or it could have been because the pa- pers have been making such a fuss again lately about the problem of that monster. Anyway, they were suddenly talking about him. This has got to be undone again! " he declared with unwonted severity.
At this moment the kitchen was invaded in quick succession by Amheim, Diotima, and even Tuzzi and Count Leinsdorf. Amheim had heard voices in the foyer. He had been on the point of slipping away quietly, hoping that the disturbance would enable him to es- cape another heart-to-heart talk with Diotima; and tomorrow he would be leaving town again for some time. But his curiosity made him glance into the kitchen, and since Agathe had seen him, polite- ness prevented him from withdrawing. Stumm instantly besieged him with questions about how things stood.
I124 • THE MAN WITH0 UT QUALITIES
"I can even give it to you verbatim," Amheim replied with a smile. "Some of it was so quaint that I simply had to write it down on the sly. "
He drew a small card from his wallet and slowly read, deciphering his shorthand, the contents of the proposed manifesto:
" 'The patriotic campaign has passed the following resolution, as proposed by Herr Feuermaul and Herr-' I didn't catch the other name. 'Any man may choose to die for his own ideas, but whoever induces men to die for ideas not their own is a murderer! ' That was the proposal," he added, "and my impression was that it was final. "
"That's it! " the General exclaimed. "That's the way I heard it too! They're enough to make you sick, these intellectual debates! "
Amheim said gently: "It's the desire ofyoung people today for sta- bility and leadership. "
"But it wasn't only young people," Stumm said in disgust. "Even baldheads were agreeing! "
"Then it's a need for leadership in general," Amheim said with a friendly nod. "It's widespread these days. Incidentally, the resolution was borrowed from a recent book, if I remember rightly. "
"Indeed? " Stumm said.
"Yes," Arnheim said. "And of course we'll pretend it never hap- pened. But ifwe could find a way to direct the sentiment it expresses into some useful channel, it would certainly be of help. "
The General appeared somewhat relieved and, turning to Ulrich, asked:
"Do you have any idea what could be done? "
"Ofcourse! " Ulrich said.
Arnheim's attention was diverted by Diotima.
"In that case," the General said in a low voice, "fire away! I would
prefer it ifwe could remain in control. "
"You have to focus on what actually happened," Ulrich said, taking
his time. "These people aren't so far wrong, you know, when one of them accuses the other of wanting to love if he only could, and the other retorts that it's the same with wanting to hate. It's true ofall the feelings. Hatred today has something companionable about it, and on the other hand, in order to feel what would really be love for an- other human being-I maintain," Ulrich said abruptly, "that two such people have never yet existed! "
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"That's certainly most interesting," the General interrupted quickly, "especially as I completely fail to understand how you can assert such a thing. But I have to write a protocol tomorrow about everything that happened here tonight, and I implore you to bear this in mind! In the army, what counts most is being able to report progress; a certain optimism is indispensable even in defeat-that's part of the profession. So how can I report what happened here as a step forward? "
'Write," Ulrich advised him with a wink, "that the moral imagina- tion has taken its revenge! "
"But you can't write that sort of thing in the military! " Stumm re- plied indignantly.
"Then let's put it another way," Ulrich said seriously, "and write: All creative periods have been serious. There is no profound happi- ness without a profound ethos. There is no morality that is not derived from a firm basis. There is no happiness that does not rest on a strong belief. Not even animals live without morality. But today human beings no longer know on what-"
Stumm broke in on this calmly flowing dictation too: "My dear friend, I can speak of a troop's morale, or morale in battle, or a woman's morals; but always only in specific instances. I cannot dis- cuss morality without such a restriction in a military report, any more than I could imagination or God Almighty. You know that as well as I do! "
Diotima saw Amheim standing at the window of her kitchen, an oddly domestic sight after they had exchanged only a few circum- spect words during the entire evening. Paradoxically, it only made her suddenly wish to continue her unfinished chat with Ulrich. Her mind was dominated by that comforting despair which, breaking in from several directions at once, had almost become sublimated into an amiable and serene state of expectation. The long-foreseen col- lapse of her Council left her cold. Amheim's faithlessness also left her, as she thought, almost equally indifferent. He looked at her as she came in, and for a moment it brought back the old feeling of a living space in which they were united. But she remembered that he had been avoiding her for weeks, and the thought "Sexual coward! " stiffened her knees again so that she could move toward him regally.
Arnheim saw it: her seeing him, her faltering, the distance be-
1126 • THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
tween them melting; over frozen roads connecting them in innumer- able ways hovered an intimation that they might thaw out again. He had moved away from the others, but at the last moment both he and Diotima made a tum that brought them together with Ulrich, Gen- eral Stumm, and the rest, who were on the other side.
In all its manifestations, from the inspired ideas of original think- ers to the kitsch that unites all peoples, what Ulrich called the moral imagination, or, more simply, feeling, has for centuries been in a state of ferment without turning into wine. Man is a being who can- not smvive without enthusiasm. And enthusiasm is that state of mind in which all his feelings and thoughts have the same spirit. You think it is rather the opposite, that it is a condition in which one overpow- ering feeling-of being carried away! -sweeps all the others along with it? You weren't going to say anything at all? Anyway, that's how it is. Or one way it is. But there is nothing to sustain such an enthusi- asm. Feelings and thoughts become lasting only with each other's help, in their totality; they must somehow be aligned with each other and carry each other onward. And by every available means, through drugs, liquor, fantasies, hypnosis, faith, conviction, often even through the simplifying effect of stupidity, man is always trying to achieve a condition like it. He believes in ideas not because they are sometimes true but because he needs to believe; because he has to keep his feelings in order. Because he must have an illusion to stop up the gap between the walls of his life, through which his feelings would otherwise fly off in every direction. The answer is probably at least to seek the conditions of an authentic enthusiasm, instead of giving oneself up to transient delusory states. But although, all in all, the number of choices based on feeling is infinitely greater than those based on clear logic, and every event that moves mankind arises from the imagination, only the purely rational problems have achieved an objective order, while nothing deserving the name of a joint effort, or even hinting at any insight into the desperate need for it, has been done for the world of feeling and imagination.
This was more or less what Ulrich said, interspersed with under- standable protests from the General.
All Ulrich saw in the events of the evening, even though they had been impetuous enough and were destined through malicious mis- representation to have grave consequences, was the example of an
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infinite disorder. Feuennaul seemed at this moment to matter to him as little as the love of mankind, nationalism as little as Feuer- maul, and Stumm was asking him in vain how to distill a sense of some tangible progress out of an attitude so very personal.
"Why don't you simply report," Ulrich responded, "that it's the Millennia! War of Religion. And that people have never been as un- prepared to fight it as now, when the rubble of 'ineffectual feelings,' which every period bequeaths to the next, has grown into mountains without anything being done about it. So the War Ministry can sit back and serenely await the next mass catastrophe. "
Ulrich was foretelling the future, with no inkling of it. His concern was not with real events at all; he was struggling for his salvation. He was trying to throw in everything that could get in its way, and it was for that reason that he laughed so much and tried to mislead them into thinking he was joking and exaggerating. He was exaggerating for Agathe's benefit, carrying on his long-standing dialogue with her, not just this most recent one. Actually, he was throwing up a bulwark of ideas against her, knowing that in a certain place there was a little bolt, and that if this bolt were drawn back, everything would be flooded and buried by feeling. In truth he was thinking incessantly of this bolt.
Diotima was standing near him and smiling. She sensed some- thing of Ulrich's efforts on behalf of his sister, and was sadly moved; she forgot sexual enlightenment, and something in her opened up: it was doubtless the future, but in any case, her lips were slightly open too.
Amheim asked Ulrich: "And you think . . . that something might be done about it? " The tone of his question suggested that he had caught the seriousness behind the exaggeration, but that he regarded even the seriousness as an exaggeration.
Tuzzi said to Diotima: "Something must in any case be done to prevent this affair from leaking out. "
"Isn't it obvious? '' Ulrich said in reply to Amheim. "Today we are facing too many possibilities of feeling, too many possible ways of living. But isn't it like the kind of problem our intellect deals with whenever it is confronted with a vast number of facts and a history of the relevant theories? And for the intellect we have developed an open-ended but precise procedure, which I don't need to describe to
1128 • THE MAN WITH0 UT QUALITIES
you. Now tell me whether something of the kind isn't equally possi- ble for the feelings. We certainly need to find out what we're here for; it's one of the main sources of all violence in the world. Earlier centuries tried to answer it with their own inadequate means, but the great age ofempiricism has done nothing ofits own, so far. . . . "
Arnheim, who caught on quickly and liked to interrupt, laid his hand on Ulrich's shoulder as if to restrain him. "This implies an in- creasing relationship with God! " he said in a low tone of warning.
'Would that be so terrible? " Ulrich asked, not without a hint of mockery at such premature alarm. "But I haven't gone that far yet! " Arnheim promptly checked himself and smiled. "How delightful
after a long absence to find someone unchanged. Such a rarity, these days! " he said. He was genuinely glad, in fact, once he felt safe again behind his defensive front of benevolence. Ulrich might, after all, have very well taken him up on that rash offer of a position, and Arn- heim was grateful that Ulrich, in his irresponsible intransigence, dis- dained touching the earth with his feet. "We must have a talk about this sometime," he added cordially. "It's not clear to me how you conceive of applying our theoretical attitude to practical affairs. "
Ulrich knew very well that it was still unclear. What he meant was not a life of "research," or a life "in the light of science," but a "quest for feeling" similar to a quest for truth, except that truth was not the issue here. He watched Arnheim moving over to Agathe. Diotima was standing there too; Tuzzi and Count Leinsdorf came and went. Agathe was chatting with everyone and thinking: "Why is he talking with all these people? He ought to have left with me! He's cheapen- ing what he said to me! " She liked many of the things she heard him say from across the room, and yet they hurt her. Everything that came from Ulrich was hurting her again, and for the second time that day she suddenly felt the need to get away from him. She despaired of ever being able, with her limitations, to be what he wanted, and the prospect that they would soon be going home like any other cou- ple, gossiping about the evening behind them, was intolerable.
Meanwhile Ulrich was illinking: "Arnheim will never understand that. " And he added: "It is precisely in his feelings that the scientist is limited, and the practical man even more so. It's as necessary as hav- ing your legs finnly planted ifyou intend to lift something with your arms. " In ordinary circumstances he was that way himself; the mo-
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ment he began thinking about anything, even if it was about feeling itself, he was very cautious about letting any feeling into it. Agathe called this coldness, but he knew that in order to be wholly otherwise one has to be prepared to renounce life, as if on a mortal adventure, for one has no idea what its course will be! He was in the mood for it, and for the moment no longer feared it. He gazed for a long time at his sister: the lively play of conversation on the deeper, untouched face. He was about to ask her to leave with him, but before he could move, Stumm had come back and was intent on talking with him.
The good General was fond of Ulrich. He had already forgiven him his witticisms about the War Ministry, and was actually rather taken with the phrase "religious war": it had such a festively military air, like oak leaves on a helmet, or shouts of hurrah on the Emperor's birthday. With his arm pressed to Ulrich's, he steered him out of ear- shot of the others. "You know, I like what you said about all events originating in the imagination," he said. "Of course, that's more my private opinion than my official attitude," and he offered Ulrich a cigarette.
''I've got to go home," Ulrich said.
"Your sister is having a fine time; don't disturb her," Stumm said. "Arnheim's outdoing himself to pay court to her. But what I was going to say: the joy seems to have gone out of mankind's great ideas. You ought to put some life back into them. I mean, there's a new spirit in the air, and you're the man to take charge! "
"What gives you that idea? '' Ulrich asked guardedly.
"That's how it strikes me. " Stumm passed over it and went on in- tently: "You're for order too; everything you say shows it. And so then I ask myself: which is more to the point-that man is good, or that he needs a firm hand? It's all tied in with our present-day need to take a stand. I've already told you it would put my mind at rest ifyou would take charge of the campaign again. With all this talk, there's simply no knowing what may happen otherwise! "
Ulrich laughed. "Do you know what I'm going to do now? I'm not coming here anymore! " he said happily:
"But why? '' Stumm protested hotly. "All those people will be right who've been saying that you've never been a real power! "
"If I told them what I really think, they would really say so. " Ul- rich answered, laughing, and disengaged himself from his friend.
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Stumm was vexed, but then his good humor prevailed, and he said in parting: "These things are so damned complicated. Sometimes I've actually thought it would be best if a real idiot came along to tackle all these insoluble problems-I mean some sort ofJoan ofArc. A person like that might be able to help! "
Ulrich's eyes searched for his sister but did not find her. While he was asking Diotima about her, Leinsdorf and Tuzzi returned from the salon and announced that everyone was leaving.
"I said all along," His Grace remarked cheerfully to the lady ofthe house, "that what those people were saying was not what they really meant.
