The Tyrolean militia will march down the Ringstrasse, because they al- ways look
picturesque
with their green suspenders, the rooster feath- ers in their hats, and their long beards; and then the beers and wines of the Monarchy are to pay tribute to the beers and wines of the rest of the world.
Musil - Man Without Qualities - v2
" Ulrich, happy because he had finally achieved a more exact description, drew the conclusion: "So apparently to be surrounded by a swarm of truths means nothing other than that the lover is open to everything that has been loved, and also willed, thought, and put down in words; open to all contradictions, which are after all those of sentient beings; open even to every shared experience, if a word exists that can lift it
1210 • THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
tenderly to the point ofarticulation. The distinctive signs oftruth and morality have been suppressed for him by the gentle power of life stirring all around him; they remain present, but fruitfulness and fullness have out- and overgrown them. For the lover, truth and deception are equally trivial, and yet this does not strike him as ca- price: Now, this is probably no more than a changed personal atti- tude, but I would say that it still finally depends on countless possibilities underlying whatever reality has conquered them, possi- bilities that could also have become realities. The lover awakens them. Everything suddenly appears different to him from what you think. Instead of a citizen of this world, he becomes a creature of countless worlds-"
"But that is another reality! " Agathe exclaimed.
"No! " said Ulrich hesitantly. "At least I don't know. It's merely the age-old opposition between knowledge and love, which has always been supposed to exist. "
Agathe gave him a confused but encouraging smile.
"No! " Ulrich repeated. "That's still not the right one. "
Her smile disappeared. "So we have to pick up our business once
again, otherwise we won't get to the end this way either," Agathe suggested with comic distress, and with a sigh she began anew: "What is love of money? "
"You said things like that weren't love at all," Ulrich interjected. "But you said there were transitions," Agathe countered.
"Love of beauty? " Ulrich asked, ignoring this.
"Love is also supposed to make an ugly person beautiful," Agathe
replied, following a sudden inspiration. "Do you love something be- cause it's beautiful or is it beautiful because it's loved? "
Ulrich found this question important but unpleasant. So he re- sponded: "Perhaps beauty is nothing other than having been loved. If something was once loved, its ability to be beautiful is directed outward. And beauty presumably arises in no other way but this: that something pleases a person who also has the power to give other peo- ple a kind of set of directions for repetition. " Then he added sharply: "Nevertheless, men who, like friend Lindner, waylay beauty are sim- ply funny! "
"Love one's enemy? '' Agathe asked, smiling.
From the Posthurrwus Papers · 1 2 1 1
"Difficult! " said Ulrich. "Perhaps a leftover from magical-religious cannibalism. "
"Compared to that, loving life is simple," Agathe stated. "No idea at all is connected with it; it's simply a blind instinct. "
"Passion for hunting? "
"Love of fatherland? Love of home? Necrophilia? Love of nature? Love of ponies? Idolatry? Puppy love? Hate-love? " Agathe shook them all out together, raising her arms in a circle and letting them fall to her lap with a gesture of discouragement.
Ulrich answered with a shrug of the shoulders and a smile. "Love becomes real in many ways and in the most varied connections. But what is the common denominator? What in all these loves is the es- sential fluid and what merely its crystallization? And what, especially, is that 'love! ' that can also occur spontaneously and fill the whole world? " he asked, showing little hope of an answer. "Even if some- one were to compare the various forms more seriously," he went on, "he would presumably find only as many emotions as there are exter- nal conditions and attitudes. Under all these circumstances one can love; but only because one can also despise or remain indifferent: in this way whatever is shared in common surfaces as something vaguely like love. "
"But doesn't that just mean that full love doesn't correspond to experience? " Agathe interrupted. "But who questions that? That's the decisive point! If love exists, in order to become manifest it will be entirely different from everything it is alloyed with! "
Now Ulrich interrupted. ''What would that prove? As feeling and action, this love would have no limits, and therefore there is no atti- tude or behavior that would correspond to it. "
Agathe listened eagerly. She was waiting for a final word. "And what do you do if there is no attitude or behavior? " she asked.
Ulrich understood her artless question. But he showed himself prepared for these reconnaissance expeditions to last even longer; he merely shrugged his shoulders resignedly and answered with a jest: "It doesn't seem nearly so simple to love as nature would have us believe, just because she's provided every bungler with the tools! "
1212
49
GENERAL VON STUMM DROPS A BOMB. CONGRESS FOR WORLD PEACE
A soldier must not let anything deter him. So General Stumm von Bordwehr was the only person to push his way through to Ulrich and Agathe; but then he was perhaps the only person for whom they did not make it absolutely impossible, since even refugees from the world can see to it that their mail is forwarded to them periodically. And as he burst in to interrupt their continuing their conversation, he crowed: "It wasn't easy to penetrate all the perimeter defenses and fight my way into the fortress! ", gallantly kissed Agathe's hand, and, addressing himself to her in particular, said: 'Til be a famous man, just because I've seen you! Everyone is asking what event could have swallowed up the Inseparables, and is asking after you; and in a certain sense I am the emissary of society, indeed of the Fatherland, sent to discover the cause ofyour disappearance! Please excuse me if I appear importunate! "
Agathe bade him a polite welcome, but neither she nor her brother was immediately able to conceal their distractedness from their visitor, who stood before them as the embodiment of the weak- ness and imperfection of their dreams; and as General Stumm again stepped back from Agathe, a remarkable silence ensued. Agathe was standing on one long side of the desk, Ulrich on the other, and the General, like a suddenly becalmed sailing vessel, was at a point ap- proximately halfway between them. Ulrich meant to come forward to meet his visitor, but could not stir from the spot. Stumm now noticed that he really had butted in, and considered how he might save the situation. The twisted beginnings of a friendly smile lay on all three faces. This stiff silence lasted barely a fraction of a second; it was just then that Stumm's glance fell on the small papier-mache horse standing isolated among them, like a monument, in the center of the empty desk.
Clicking his heels together, he pointed to it solemnly with the flat
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 2 1 3
of his hand and exclaimed with relief: "But what's this? Do I perceive in this house the great animal idol, the holy animal, the revered deity of the cavalry? ''
At Stumm's remark, Ulrich's inhibition, too, dissolved, and moving quickly over to Stumm but at the same time turning toward his sister, he said animatedly: "Admittedly it's just a coach horse, but you have wonderfully guessed the rest! W e were really just talking about idols and how they originate. Now tell me: What is it one loves, which part, what reshaping and transformation does one love, when one loves one's neighbor without knowing him? In other words, to what extent is love dependent on the world and reality, and to what extent is it the other way round? "
Stumm von Bordwehr had directed his glance questioningly to Agathe.
"Ulrich is talking about this little thing," she assured him, some- what disconcerted, pointing to the candy horse. "He used to have a passion for it. "
"That was, I hope, quite a long time ago," Stumm said in astonish- ment. "For if I'm not mistaken, it's a candy jar? ''
"It is not a candy jar! Friend Stumm! " Ulrich implored, seized by the disgraceful desire to chat with him about it. "If you fall in love with a saddle and harness that are too expensive for you, or a uniform or a pair of riding boots you see in a shop window: what are you in love with? "
"You're being outrageous! I don't love things like that! " the Gen- eral protested.
"Don't deny it! " Ulrich replied. "There are people who can dream day and night of a suit fabric or a piece of luggage they have seen in a shop; everyone's known something like that; and the same thing will have happened to you, at least with your first lieutenant's uniform! And you'll have to admit that you might have no use for this material or this suitcase, and that you don't even have to be in the position of being able to really desire it: so nothing is easier than loving some- thing before you know it and without knowing it. May I, moreover, remind you that you loved Diotima at first sight? "
This time, the General looked up cunningly. Agathe had in the meantime asked him to sit down and also procured a cigar for him, since her brother had forgotten his duty. Stumm, fringed with blue
1214 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
clouds, said innocently: "Since then she's become a textbook of love, and I didn't much like textbooks in school, either. But I still admire and respect this woman," he added with a dignified composure that was new to him.
Ulrich, unfortunately, didn't notice it immediately. "All those things are idols," he went on, pursuing the questions he had directed at Stumm. "And now you see where they came from. The instincts embedded in our nature need only a minimum of external motiva- tion and justification; they are enormous machines set in motion by a tiny switch. But they equip the object they are applied to with only as many ideas that can bear investigation as perhaps correspond to the flickering oflight and shadow in the light ofan emergency lamp-"
"Stop! " Stumm begged from his cloud ofsmoke. 'What is 'object'? Are you talking about the boots and that suitcase again? "
''I'm speaking of passion. Of longing for Diotima, just as much as longing for a forbidden cigarette. I want to make clear to you that every emotional relationship had the groundwork laid for it by pre- liminary perceptions and ideas that belong to reality; but that such a relationship also immediately conjures up perceptions and ideas that it fits out in its own way. In short, affect sets up the object the way it needs it to be, indeed it creates it so that the affect finally applies to an object that, having come about in such a way, is no longer recog- nizable. But affect isn't destined for knowledge, either, but really for passion! This object that is born of passion and hovers in it," Ulrich concluded, returning to his starting point, "is of course something different from the object on which it is outwardly fastened and which it can reach out to grasp, and this is therefore also true oflove. 'I love you' is mistaken; for 'you,' this person who has evoked the passion and whom you can seize in your arms, is the one you think you love; the person evoked by passion, this wildly religious invention, is the one you really love, but it is a different person. "
"Ustening to you"-Agathe interrupted her brother with a re- proach that betrayed her inner sympathies-"you might think you don't really love the real person, but really love an unreal person! "
"That's precisely what I meant to say, and I've also heard you say- ing much the same. "
"But in reality both are ultimately one person! "
"That's exactly the major complication, that the hovering image of
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 2 1 5
the person you love has to be represented in every outward connec- tion by the person himself and is indeed one and the same. That's what leads to all the confusions that give the simple business of love such an excitingly ghostly quality! "
"But perhaps it's only love that makes the real person entirely real? Perhaps he's not complete before then? ''
"But the boot or the suitcase you dream about is in reality none other than the one you could actually buy! "
"Perhaps the suitcase only becomes completely real ifyou love it! "
"In a word, we come to the question of what is real. Love's old question! " Ulrich exclaimed impatiently, yet somehow satisfied.
"Oh, let's forget the suitcase! " To the astonishment of both, it was the General's voice that interrupted their sparring. Stumm had com- fortably squeezed one leg over the other, which, once achieved, lent him great security. "Let's stay with the person," he went on, and praised Ulrich: "So far you've said some things terrifically well! Peo- ple always believe that nothing is easier than loving each other, and then you have to remind them every day: 'Dearest, it's not as easy as it is for the apple woman! ' " In explanation of this more military than civilian expression, he turned politely to Agathe. "The 'apple woman,' dear lady, is an army expression for when someone thinks something is easier than it is: in higher mathematics, for example, when you're doing short division so short that, willy-nilly, you come up with a false result! Then the appple woman is held up to you, and it's applied the same way in other places as well, where an ordinary person might just say: that's not so simple! " Now he turned back to Ulrich and continued: "Your doctrine of the two persons interests me a good deal, because I'm also always telling people that you can love people only in two parts: in theory, or, as you put it, as a hovering person, is the way you ought to love someone, as I see it; but in prac- tice, you have to treat a person strictly and, in the last analysis, harshly too! That's the way it is between man and woman, and that's the way it is in life in general! The pacifists, for instance, with their love that has no soles on its shoes, haven't the slightest notion of this; a lieutenant knows ten times as much about love as these dilettantes! "
Through his earnestness, through his carefully weighed manner of speaking, and not least through the boldness with which, despite
1216 • THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
Agathe's presence, he had condemned woman to obedience, Stumm von Bordwehr gave the impression of a man to whom something im- portant had happened and who had striven, not without success, to master it. But Ulrich still had not grasped this, and proposed: 'Well, you decide which person is truly worth loving and which has the walk-on part! "
"That's too deep for me! " Stumm stated calmly, and, inhaling from his cigar, added with the same composure: "It's a pleasure to hear again how well you speak; but on the whole you speak in such a way that one really must ask oneself whether it's your only occupation. I must confess that after you disappeared I expected to find you, God knows, busy with more important matters! "
"Stumm, this is important! " Ulrich exclaimed. "Because at least halfthe history ofthe world is a love story! Ofcourse you have to take all the varieties of love together! "
The General nodded his resistance. "That may well be. " He bar- ricaded himself behind the busyness of cutting and lighting a fresh cigar, and grumbled: "But then the other halfis a story ofanger. And one shouldn't underestimate anger! I have been a specialist in love for some time, and I know! "
Now at last Ulrich understood that his friend had changed and, curious, asked him to tell what had befallen him.
Stumm von Bordwehr looked at him f¢ a while without answer- ing, then looked at Agathe, and finally replied in a way that made it impossible to distinguish whether he was hesitating from irritation or enjoyment: "Oh, it will hardly seem worth mentioning in comparison with your occupations. Just one thing has happened: the Parallel Campaign has found a goal! "
This news about something to which so much sympathy, even if counterfeit, had been accorded would have broken through even a fully guarded state of seclusion, and when Stumm saw the effect he had achieved he was reconciled with fortune, and found again for quite a while his old, guileless joy in spreading news. "Ifyou'd rather, I could just as well say: the Parallel Campaign has come to an end! " he offered obligingly.
It had happened quite incidentally: 'W e all of us had got so used to nothing happening, while thinking that something ought to hap- pen," Stumm related. "And then all of a sudden, instead of a new
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 2 1 7
proposal, someone brought the news that this coming autumn a Con- gress for World Peace is to meet, and here in Austria! "
"That's odd! " Ulrich said.
"What's odd? We didn't know the least thing about it! "
"That's just what I mean. "
'Well, there you're not entirely off the track," Stumm von B9rd-
wehr agreed. "It's even being asserted that the news was a plant from abroad. Leinsdorf and Tuzzi went so far as to suspect that it might be a Russian plot against our patriotic campaign, ifnot ultimately even a Gennan plot. For you must consider that we have four years before we have to be ready, so it's entirely possible that someone wants to rush us into something we hadn't planned. Beyond that, the different versions part company; but it's no longer possible to find out what the truth of the matter is, although of course we immediately wrote off everywhere to learn more. Remarkably enough, it seems that people all over already knew about this pacifistic Congress-I assure you: in the whole world! And private individuals as well as newspaper and government offices! But it was assumed, or bandied about, that it emanated from us and was part of our great world campaign, and people were merely surprised because they couldn't get any kind of rational response from us to their questions and queries. Maybe someone was playing a joke on us; Tuzzi was discreetly able to get hold of a few invitations to this Peace Congress; the signatures were quite naive forgeries, but the letter paper and the style were good as gold! Of course we then called in the police, who quickly discovered that the whole manner of execution pointed to a domestic origin, and in the course of this it emerged that there really are people here who would like to convene a World Peace Congress here in the autumn- because some woman who has written a pacifist novel is going to cel- ebrate her umpteenth birthday or, in case she's died, would have: But it quickly became clear that these people quite evidently had not the least connection with disseminating the material that was aimed at us, and so the origin of the affair has remained in the dark," Stumm said resignedly, but with the satisfaction that every well-told tale provides. The effortful exposition of the difficulties had drawn shadows over his face, but now the sun of his smile burst through this perplexity, and with a trace of scorn that was as unconstrained as it was candid, he added: 'What's most remarkable is that everyone
1218 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
agreed that there should be such a congress, or at least no one wanted to say no! And now I ask you: what are we to do, especially since we have already announced that we are undertaking something meant to serve as a model for the whole world and have constantly been spreading the slogan 'Action! ' around? For two weeks we've simply had to work like savages, so that retroactively at least it looks the way it would have looked prospectively, so to speak, under other circumstances. And so we showed ourselves equal to the organi- zational superiority of the Prussians-assuming that it was the Prussians! We're now calling it a preliminary celebration. The gov- ernment is keeping an eye on the political part, and those of us in the campaign are working more on the ceremonial and cultural-human aspects, because that is simply too burdensome for a ministry-"
"But what a strange story it is! " Ulrich asserted seriously, although he had to laugh at this development.
"A real accident of history," the General said with satisfaction. "Such mystifications have often been important. "
"And Diotima? " Ulrich inquired cautiously.
'Well, she has speedily had to jettison Amor and Psyche and is now, together with a painter, designing the parade of regional cos- tumes. It will be called: 'The clans of Austria and Hungary pay hom- age to internal and external peace,' " Stumm reported, and now turned pleadingly toward Agathe as he noticed that she, too, was parting her lips to smile. "I entreat you, dear lady, please don't say anything against it, and don't permit any objection to it either! " he begged. "For the parade of regional costumes, and apparently a mili- tary parade, are all that is definite so far about the festivities.
The Tyrolean militia will march down the Ringstrasse, because they al- ways look picturesque with their green suspenders, the rooster feath- ers in their hats, and their long beards; and then the beers and wines of the Monarchy are to pay tribute to the beers and wines of the rest of the world. But even here there is still no unanimity on whether, for instance, only Austro-Hungarian beers and wines shall pay trib- ute to those of the rest of the world, which would allow the charming Austrian character to stand out more hospitably by renouncing a trib- ute from the other side, or whether the foreign beers and wines should be allowed to march along as well so that they can pay hom- age to ours, and whether they have to pay customs duties on them or
From the Posthmrwus Papers · 1 2 19
not. At any rate, one thing is certain: that there never has been and never can be a parade in this country without people in Old Ger- manic costumes sitting on carts with casks and on beer wagons drawn by horses; and I just can't imagine what it must have been like in the actual Middle Ages, when the Germanic costumes weren't yet old and wouldn't even have looked any older than a tuxedo does today! "
But after this question had been sufficiently appreciated, Ulrich asked a more delicate one. ''I'd like to know what our non-German nationalities will say to the whole thing! "
"That's simple: they'll be in the parade! " Stumm assured him cheerfully. "Because if they won't, we'll commandeer a regiment of Bohemian dragoons into the parade and make Hussite warriors out of them, and we'll drag in a regiment of Ulans as the Polish liberators of Vienna from the Turks. "
"And what does Leinsdorf say to these plans? '' Ulrich asked hesitantly.
Stumm placed his crossed leg beside the other and turned serious. "He's not exactly delighted," he conceded, relating that Count Leinsdorf never used the word "parade" but, in the most stubborn way possible, insisted on calling it a "demonstration. " "He's appar- ently still thinking of the demonstrations he experienced," Ulrich said, and Stumm agreed. "He has often said to me," he reported, " Whoever brings the masses into the street is taking a heavy respon- sibility upon himself, General! ' As if I could do anything for or against it! But you should also know that for some time we've been getting together fairly often, he and I. . . . "
Stumm paused, as if he wanted to leave space for a question, but when neither Agathe nor Ulrich asked it, he went on cautiously: "You see, His Excellency ran into another demonstration. Quite recently, on a trip, he was nearly beaten up in B - - by the Czechs as well as the Germans. "
"But why? " Agathe exclaimed, intrigued, and Ulrich, too, showed his curiosity.
"Because he is known as the bringer of peace! " Stumm pro- claimed. "Loving peace and people is not so simple in reality-"
"Like with the apple woman! " Agathe broke in, laughing.
"I really wanted to say, like with a candy jar," Stumm corrected her, adding to this discreet reproach for Ulrich the observation on
1220 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
Leinsdorf: "Still, a man like him, once he has made up his mind, will totally and completely exercise the office he has been given. "
"What office? " Ulrich asked.
"Every office! " the General stated. "On the festival reviewing stand he will sit beside the Emperor, only in the event, of course, that His Majesty sits on the reviewing stand; and, moreover, he is drafting the address ofhomage from our peoples, which he will hand to the All-Highest Ruler. But even ifthat should be all for the time being, I'm convinced it won't stay that way, because if he doesn't have any other worries, he creates some: such an active nature! By the way, he would like to speak with you," Stumm injected tenta- tively. ,
Ulrich seemed not to have heard this, but had become alert. "Leinsdorfis not 'given' an office! " he said mistrustfully. "He's been the knob on top of the flagstaff all his life! "
'Well," the General said reservedly. "I really didn't mean to say anything; of course he is and always was a high aristocrat. But look, for example, not long ago Tuzzi took me aside and said to me confi- dentially: 'General! If a man brushes past me in a dark alley, I step aside; but if in the same situation he asks me in a friendly way what time it is, then I not only reach for my watch but grope for my gun too! ' What do you say to that? ''
'What should I say to that? I don't see the connection. "
"That's just the government's caution," Stumm explained. "In re- lation to a World Peace Congress it thinks of all the possibilities, while Leinsdorfhas always been one to have his own ideas. "
Ulrich suddenly understood. "So in a word: Leinsdorf is to be removed from leadership because people are afraid ofhim? "
The General did not answer this directly. "He asks you through me to please resume your friendly relations with your cousin Tuzzi, in order to find out what's going on. I'm saying it straight out; he, of course, expressed it in a more reserved fashion," Stumm reported. And after a brief hesitation, he added by way of excuse: "They're not telling him everything! But then that's the habit of ministries: we don't tell each other everything among ourselves either! "
'What relationship did my brother really have with our cousin? " Agathe wanted to know.
Stumm, snared in the friendly delusion that he was pleasantly jok-
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 2 2 1
ing, unsuspectingly assured her: "He's one of her secret loves! " add- ing immediately to encourage Ulrich: "I have no idea what happened between you, but she certainly regrets it! She says that you are such an indispensable bad patriot that all the enemies of the Fatherland, whom we are trying to make feel at home here, must really love you. Isn't that nice ofher? But ofcourse she can't take the first step after you withdrew so willfully! "
From then on the leave-taking became rather monosyllabic, and Stumm was mightily oppressed at such a dim sunset after he had stood at the zenith.
Thus it was that Ulrich and Agathe got to hear something that brightened their faces again and also brought a friendly blush to the General's cheeks. 'We've got rid ofFeuermaul! " he reported, happy that he had remembered it in time and adding, full of scorn for that poet's love of mankind: "In any event, it's become meaningless. " Even the "nauseating'' resolution from the last session, that no one should be forced to die for other people's ideas, whereas on the other hand everyone should die for his own-even this resolution, which would fundamentally ensure peace, had, as was now apparent, been dropped, along with everything belonging to the past, and at the General's instigation was no longer even on the agenda. 'We sup- pressed a journal that printed it; no one believes such exaggerated rumors anymore! " Stumm added to this news, which seemed not quite clear in view ofthe preparations under way for a pacifistic con- gress. Agathe then inteivened a little on behalf of the young people, and even Ulrich finally reminded his friend that the incident had not been Feuermaul's fault. Stumm made no difficulties about this, and admitted that Feuermaul, whom he had met at the house of his pa- troness, was a charming person. "So full of sympathy with every- thing! And so spontaneously, absolutely, really good! " he exclaimed appreciatively.
"But then he would most certainly be an estimable addition to this Congress! " Ulrich again threw in.
But Stumm, who had meanwhile been making serious prepara- tions to leave, shook his head animatedly. "No! I can't explain so briefly what's involved," he said resolutely, "but this Congress ought not to be blown out ofproportion! "
1222
so
AGA THE FINDS ULRICH'S DIARY
While Ulrich was personally escorting the parting guest to the door, Agathe, defying an inner self-reproach, carried out something she had decided on with lightning speed. Even before Stumm's intru- sion, and again a second time in his presence, her eye had been caught by a pile of loose papers lying in one of the drawers of the desk, on both occasions through a suppressed motion of her brother's, which had given the impression that he would have liked to refer to these papers during the conversation but could not make up his mind-indeed, deliberately refrained from doing so. Her inti- macy with him had allowed her to sense this more than guess it on any substantive basis, and in the same way she also understood that this concealment must be connected with the two of them. So when he was barely out of the room she opened the drawer, doing so, whether it was justified or not, with that feeling which furthers quick decisions and does not admit moral scruples. But the notes that she took up in her hands, with many things crossed out, loosely con- nected and not always easily decipherable, immediately imposed a slower tempo on her passionate curiosity.
"Is love an emotion? This question may at first glance seem non- sensical, since it appears so certain that the entire nature oflove is a process of feeling; the correct answer is the more surprising: for emotion is really the least part oflove! Looked at merely as emotion, love is hardly as intense and overwhelming, and in any event not as strongly marked, as a toothache. "
The second, equally odd note ran: "A man may love his dog and his wife. A child may love a dog more dearly than a man his wife. One person loves his profession, another politics. Mostly, we seem to love general conditions; I mean-ifwe don't happen to hate them-their inscrutable way of working in concert, which I might call their 'horse-stall feeling': we are contentedly at home in our life the way a horse is in its stall!
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 2 2 3
"But what does it mean to bring all these things that are so dispar- ate together under the same word, 'love'? A primordial idea has set- tled in my mind, alongside doubt and derision: Everything in the world is love! Love is the gentle, divine nature of the world, covered by ashes but inextinguishable! I wouldn't know how to express what I understand by 'nature'; but if I abandon myself to the idea as a whole without worrying about it, I feel it with a remarkably natural cer- tainty. At least at moments. "
Agathe blushed, for the following entries began with her name. "Agathe once showed me places in the Bible; I still vaguely remem- ber how they ran and have decided to write them down: 'Everything that happens in love happens in God, for God is love. ' And a second says: 'Love is from God, and whosoever loves God is born of God. ' Both these places stand in obvious contradiction to each other: in one, love comes from God; in the other, it is God!
"Therefore the attempts to express the relationship of 'love' to the world seem fraught with difficulty even for the enlightened person; how should the uninstructed understanding not fail to grasp it? That I called love the nature of the world was nothing but an excuse; it leaves the choice entirely open to say that the pen and inkpot I am writing with consist oflove in the moral realm of truth, or in the em- pirical realm of reality. But then how in reality? Would they then consist of love or would they be its consequences, the embodying phenomenon or intimation? Are they already themselves love, or is love only what they would be in their totality? Are they love by na- ture, or are we talking about a supranatural reality? And what about this 'in truth'? Is it a truth for the more heightened understanding, or for the blessedly ignorant? Is it the truth of thinking, or an incom- plete symbolic connection that will reveal its meaning completely only in the universality of mental events assembled around God? What of this have I expressed? More or less everything and nothing!
"I could also just as well have said about love that it is divine rea- son, the Neoplatonic logos. Or just as well something else: Love is the lap ofthe world: the gentle lap ofunselfconscious happening. Or, again differently: 0 sea oflove, about which only the drowning man, not the ship-borne traveler, knows! All these allusive exclamations can transmit their meaning only because one is as untrustworthy as another.
1224 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
"Most honest is the feeling: how tiny the earth is in space, and how man, mere nothing compared with the merest child, is thrown on the resources of love! But that is nothing more than the naked cry for love, without a trace of an answer!
"Yet I might perhaps speak in this way without exaggerating my words into emptiness: There is a condition in the world the sight of which is barred to us, but that things sometimes expose here or there when we fmd ourselves in a state that is excited in a particular way. And only in this state do we glimpse that things are 'made of love. ' And only in it, too, do we grasp what it signifies. And only this state is then real, and we would only then be true.
"That would be a description I would not have to retract in any part. But then, I also have nothing to add to it! "
Agathe was astonished. In these secret entries Ulrich was holding himself back much less than usual. And although she understood that he allowed himself to do this, even for himself, only under the reservation of secrecy, she still imagined she could see him before her, stirred and irresolute, in the act of opening his arms toward something.
The notes went on: "That, too, is a notion reason itself might al- most chance upon, although to be sure only reason that has to some extent managed to get out of its passive position: imagining the All- Loving as the Eternal Artist. He loves creation as long as he is creat- ing it, but his love turns away from the finished portions. For the artist must also love what is most hateful in order to shape it, but what he has already shaped, even if it is good, cools him off; it be- comes so bereft of love that he hardly still understands himself in it, and the moments when his love returns to delight in what it has done are rare and unpredictable. And so one could also think: What lords over us loves what it creates; but this love approaches and withdraws from the finished part of creation in a long ebbing flow and a short returning swell. This idea fits the fact that souls and things of the world are like dead people who are sometimes reawakened for seconds. "
Then came a few other quick entries, which looked as ifthey were only tentative.
"A lion under the morning sky! A unicorn in the moonlight! You have the choice between love's fire and rifle fire. Therefore there are
From the Posthunwus Papers · 1 2 2 5
at least two basic conditions: love and violence. And without doubt it is violence, not love, that keeps the world moving and from going to sleep!
"Here the assumption might also, of course, be woven in that the world has become sinful. Before, love and paradise. That means: the world as it is, sin! The possible world, love!
"Another dubious question: The philosophers imagine God as a philosopher, as pure spirit; wouldn't it make sense, then, for officers to imagine Him as an officer? But I, a mathematician, imagine the divine being as love? How did I arrive at that?
"And how are we to participate without more ado in one of the Eternal Artist's most intimate experiences? ''
The writing broke off. But then Agathe's face was again suffused with a blush when, without raising her eyes, she took up the next page and read on:
"Lately Agathe and I have frequently had a remarkable experi- ence! When we undertook our expeditions into town. When the weather is especially fine the world looks quite cheerful and harmo- nious, so that you really don't pay attention to how different all its component parts are, according to their age and nature. Everything stands and moves with the greatest naturalness. And yet, remarkably, there is in such an apparently incontrovertible condition of the pres- ent something that leads into a desert; something like an unsuccess- ful proposal of love, or some similar exposure, the moment one does not unreservedly participate in it.
"Along our way we find ourselves walking through the narrow vio- let-blue streets of the city, which above, where they open to the light, bum like fire. Or we step out of this tactile blue into a square over which the sun freely pours its light; then the houses around the square stand there looking taken back and, as it were, placed against the wall, but no less expressively, and as if someone had scratched them with the fine lines of an engraving tool, lines that make every- thing too distinct. And at such a moment we do not know whether all this self-fulfilled beauty excites us profoundly or has nothing at all to do with us. Both are the case. This beauty stands on a razor's edge between desire and grief.
"But does not the sight of beauty always have this effect of bright- ening the griefofordinary life and darkening its gaiety? It seems that
1226 ·THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
beauty belongs to a world whose depths hold neither grief nor gaiety. Perhaps in that world even beauty itself does not exist, but merely some kind of almost indescribable, cheerful gra~ty, and its name arises only through the refraction of its nameless splendor in our or- dinary atmosphere. We are both seeking this world, Agathe and I, without yet being able to make up our minds; we move along its bor- ders and cautiously enjoy the profound emanation at those points where it is still mingled with the powerful lights of every day and is almost invisible! "
It seemed as if Ulrich, through his sudden idea of speaking of an Eternal Artist, had been led to bring the question of beauty into his observations, especially since, for its part, beauty also expressed the oversensitivity that had arisen between brother and sister. But at the same time he had changed his manner of thinking. In this new se- quence ofentries he proceeded no longer from his dominant ideas as they faded down to the vanishing point of his experiences, but from the foreground, which was clearer but, in a few places that he noted, really too clear, and again almost permeable by the background.
Thus Ulrich went on. "I said to Agathe: 'Apparently beauty is nothing other than having been loved. ' For to love something and beautify it is one and the same. And to propagate its love and make others see its beauty is also one and the same. That's why everything can appear beautiful, and everything beautiful, ugly; in both cases it will depend on us no less than it compels us from outside, because love has no causality and knows no fixed sequence. I'm not certain how much I've said about that, but it also explains this other impres- sion that we have so vividly on our walks: We look at people and want to share in the joy that is in their faces; but these faces also radiate a discomfiture and an almost uncanny repulsion. It emanates, too, from the houses, clothes, and everything that they have created for themselves. When I considered what the explanation for this might be, I was led to a further group of ideas, and through that back to my first notes, which were apparently so fantastic.
"A city such as ours, lovely and old, with its superb architectural stamp, which over the course of ages has arisen from changing taste, is a single great witness to the capacity for loving and the incapacity for loving long. The proud sequence of this city's structures repre- sents not only a great history but also a constant change in the direc-
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 2 2 7
tion ofthought. Looked at in this manner, the city is a mutability that has become a chain of stone and that surveys itself differently every quarter century in order to be right, in the end, for eternal ages. Its mute eloquence is that of dead lips, and the more enchantingly se- ductive it is, the more violently it must evoke, in its most profound moment of pleasing and of expropriation, blind resistance and horror. "
"It's ridiculous, but tempting," Agathe responded to that. "In that case the swallowtail coats of these dawdlers, or the funny caps offi- cers wear on their heads like pots, would have to be beautiful, for they are most decidedly loved by their owners and displayed for love, and enjoy the favor ofwomen! "
'We made a game of it too. In a kind of merry bad temper we enjoyed it to the utmost and for a while asked ourselves at every step, in opposition to life: What, for example, does the red on that dress over there mean by oeing so red? Or what are these blues and yel- lows and whites really doing on the collars of those uniforms? And why in God's name are the ladies' parasols round and not square? We asked ourselves what the Greek pediment ofthe Parliament building was after, with its legs astraddle? Either 'doing a split,' as only a dancer or a pair of compasses can, or disseminating classical beauty? If you put yourself back that way into a preliminary state in which you are not touched by feelings, and where you do not infuse things with the emotions that they complacently expect, you destroy the faith and loyalty of existence. It's like watching someone eat silently, without sharing his appetite: You suddenly perceive only swallowing movements, which look in no way enviable.
"I call that cutting oneselfofffrom the 'meaning' oflife. To clarify this, I might begin with how we unquestionably seek the firm and solid in life as urgently as a land animal that has fallen into the water. This makes us overestimate the significance of knowledge, justice, and reason, as well as the necessity of compulsion and violence. Per- haps I shouldn't say overestimate; but in any case, by far the greatest number of manifestations of our life rest on the mind's insecurity. Faith, supposition, assumption, intimation, wish, doubt, inclination, demand, prejudice, persuasion, exemplification, personal views, and other conditions of semi-certainty predominate among them. And because meaning, on this scale, lies roughly halfway between reason-
1228 • THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
ing and capriciousness, I am applying its name to the whole. If what we express with words, no matter how magnificent they are, is mostly just a meaning, an opinion, then what we express without words is always one.
"Therefore I say: Our reality, as far as it is dependent on us, is for the most part only an expression of opinion, although we ascribe every imaginable kind of importance to it. We may give our lives a specific manifestation in the stones of buildings: it is always done for the sake of a meaning we impute to it. We may kill or sacrifice our- selves: we are acting only on the basis of a supposition. I might even say that all our passions are mere suppositions; how often we err in them; we can fall into them merely out of a longing for decisiveness! And also, doing something out of 'free' will really assumes that it is merely being done at the instigation of an opinion. For some time Agathe and I have been sensitive to a certain hauntedness in the em- pirical world. Every detail in which our surroundings manifest them- selves 'speaks to us. ' It means something. It shows that it has come into being with a purpose that is by no means fleeting.
1210 • THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
tenderly to the point ofarticulation. The distinctive signs oftruth and morality have been suppressed for him by the gentle power of life stirring all around him; they remain present, but fruitfulness and fullness have out- and overgrown them. For the lover, truth and deception are equally trivial, and yet this does not strike him as ca- price: Now, this is probably no more than a changed personal atti- tude, but I would say that it still finally depends on countless possibilities underlying whatever reality has conquered them, possi- bilities that could also have become realities. The lover awakens them. Everything suddenly appears different to him from what you think. Instead of a citizen of this world, he becomes a creature of countless worlds-"
"But that is another reality! " Agathe exclaimed.
"No! " said Ulrich hesitantly. "At least I don't know. It's merely the age-old opposition between knowledge and love, which has always been supposed to exist. "
Agathe gave him a confused but encouraging smile.
"No! " Ulrich repeated. "That's still not the right one. "
Her smile disappeared. "So we have to pick up our business once
again, otherwise we won't get to the end this way either," Agathe suggested with comic distress, and with a sigh she began anew: "What is love of money? "
"You said things like that weren't love at all," Ulrich interjected. "But you said there were transitions," Agathe countered.
"Love of beauty? " Ulrich asked, ignoring this.
"Love is also supposed to make an ugly person beautiful," Agathe
replied, following a sudden inspiration. "Do you love something be- cause it's beautiful or is it beautiful because it's loved? "
Ulrich found this question important but unpleasant. So he re- sponded: "Perhaps beauty is nothing other than having been loved. If something was once loved, its ability to be beautiful is directed outward. And beauty presumably arises in no other way but this: that something pleases a person who also has the power to give other peo- ple a kind of set of directions for repetition. " Then he added sharply: "Nevertheless, men who, like friend Lindner, waylay beauty are sim- ply funny! "
"Love one's enemy? '' Agathe asked, smiling.
From the Posthurrwus Papers · 1 2 1 1
"Difficult! " said Ulrich. "Perhaps a leftover from magical-religious cannibalism. "
"Compared to that, loving life is simple," Agathe stated. "No idea at all is connected with it; it's simply a blind instinct. "
"Passion for hunting? "
"Love of fatherland? Love of home? Necrophilia? Love of nature? Love of ponies? Idolatry? Puppy love? Hate-love? " Agathe shook them all out together, raising her arms in a circle and letting them fall to her lap with a gesture of discouragement.
Ulrich answered with a shrug of the shoulders and a smile. "Love becomes real in many ways and in the most varied connections. But what is the common denominator? What in all these loves is the es- sential fluid and what merely its crystallization? And what, especially, is that 'love! ' that can also occur spontaneously and fill the whole world? " he asked, showing little hope of an answer. "Even if some- one were to compare the various forms more seriously," he went on, "he would presumably find only as many emotions as there are exter- nal conditions and attitudes. Under all these circumstances one can love; but only because one can also despise or remain indifferent: in this way whatever is shared in common surfaces as something vaguely like love. "
"But doesn't that just mean that full love doesn't correspond to experience? " Agathe interrupted. "But who questions that? That's the decisive point! If love exists, in order to become manifest it will be entirely different from everything it is alloyed with! "
Now Ulrich interrupted. ''What would that prove? As feeling and action, this love would have no limits, and therefore there is no atti- tude or behavior that would correspond to it. "
Agathe listened eagerly. She was waiting for a final word. "And what do you do if there is no attitude or behavior? " she asked.
Ulrich understood her artless question. But he showed himself prepared for these reconnaissance expeditions to last even longer; he merely shrugged his shoulders resignedly and answered with a jest: "It doesn't seem nearly so simple to love as nature would have us believe, just because she's provided every bungler with the tools! "
1212
49
GENERAL VON STUMM DROPS A BOMB. CONGRESS FOR WORLD PEACE
A soldier must not let anything deter him. So General Stumm von Bordwehr was the only person to push his way through to Ulrich and Agathe; but then he was perhaps the only person for whom they did not make it absolutely impossible, since even refugees from the world can see to it that their mail is forwarded to them periodically. And as he burst in to interrupt their continuing their conversation, he crowed: "It wasn't easy to penetrate all the perimeter defenses and fight my way into the fortress! ", gallantly kissed Agathe's hand, and, addressing himself to her in particular, said: 'Til be a famous man, just because I've seen you! Everyone is asking what event could have swallowed up the Inseparables, and is asking after you; and in a certain sense I am the emissary of society, indeed of the Fatherland, sent to discover the cause ofyour disappearance! Please excuse me if I appear importunate! "
Agathe bade him a polite welcome, but neither she nor her brother was immediately able to conceal their distractedness from their visitor, who stood before them as the embodiment of the weak- ness and imperfection of their dreams; and as General Stumm again stepped back from Agathe, a remarkable silence ensued. Agathe was standing on one long side of the desk, Ulrich on the other, and the General, like a suddenly becalmed sailing vessel, was at a point ap- proximately halfway between them. Ulrich meant to come forward to meet his visitor, but could not stir from the spot. Stumm now noticed that he really had butted in, and considered how he might save the situation. The twisted beginnings of a friendly smile lay on all three faces. This stiff silence lasted barely a fraction of a second; it was just then that Stumm's glance fell on the small papier-mache horse standing isolated among them, like a monument, in the center of the empty desk.
Clicking his heels together, he pointed to it solemnly with the flat
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 2 1 3
of his hand and exclaimed with relief: "But what's this? Do I perceive in this house the great animal idol, the holy animal, the revered deity of the cavalry? ''
At Stumm's remark, Ulrich's inhibition, too, dissolved, and moving quickly over to Stumm but at the same time turning toward his sister, he said animatedly: "Admittedly it's just a coach horse, but you have wonderfully guessed the rest! W e were really just talking about idols and how they originate. Now tell me: What is it one loves, which part, what reshaping and transformation does one love, when one loves one's neighbor without knowing him? In other words, to what extent is love dependent on the world and reality, and to what extent is it the other way round? "
Stumm von Bordwehr had directed his glance questioningly to Agathe.
"Ulrich is talking about this little thing," she assured him, some- what disconcerted, pointing to the candy horse. "He used to have a passion for it. "
"That was, I hope, quite a long time ago," Stumm said in astonish- ment. "For if I'm not mistaken, it's a candy jar? ''
"It is not a candy jar! Friend Stumm! " Ulrich implored, seized by the disgraceful desire to chat with him about it. "If you fall in love with a saddle and harness that are too expensive for you, or a uniform or a pair of riding boots you see in a shop window: what are you in love with? "
"You're being outrageous! I don't love things like that! " the Gen- eral protested.
"Don't deny it! " Ulrich replied. "There are people who can dream day and night of a suit fabric or a piece of luggage they have seen in a shop; everyone's known something like that; and the same thing will have happened to you, at least with your first lieutenant's uniform! And you'll have to admit that you might have no use for this material or this suitcase, and that you don't even have to be in the position of being able to really desire it: so nothing is easier than loving some- thing before you know it and without knowing it. May I, moreover, remind you that you loved Diotima at first sight? "
This time, the General looked up cunningly. Agathe had in the meantime asked him to sit down and also procured a cigar for him, since her brother had forgotten his duty. Stumm, fringed with blue
1214 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
clouds, said innocently: "Since then she's become a textbook of love, and I didn't much like textbooks in school, either. But I still admire and respect this woman," he added with a dignified composure that was new to him.
Ulrich, unfortunately, didn't notice it immediately. "All those things are idols," he went on, pursuing the questions he had directed at Stumm. "And now you see where they came from. The instincts embedded in our nature need only a minimum of external motiva- tion and justification; they are enormous machines set in motion by a tiny switch. But they equip the object they are applied to with only as many ideas that can bear investigation as perhaps correspond to the flickering oflight and shadow in the light ofan emergency lamp-"
"Stop! " Stumm begged from his cloud ofsmoke. 'What is 'object'? Are you talking about the boots and that suitcase again? "
''I'm speaking of passion. Of longing for Diotima, just as much as longing for a forbidden cigarette. I want to make clear to you that every emotional relationship had the groundwork laid for it by pre- liminary perceptions and ideas that belong to reality; but that such a relationship also immediately conjures up perceptions and ideas that it fits out in its own way. In short, affect sets up the object the way it needs it to be, indeed it creates it so that the affect finally applies to an object that, having come about in such a way, is no longer recog- nizable. But affect isn't destined for knowledge, either, but really for passion! This object that is born of passion and hovers in it," Ulrich concluded, returning to his starting point, "is of course something different from the object on which it is outwardly fastened and which it can reach out to grasp, and this is therefore also true oflove. 'I love you' is mistaken; for 'you,' this person who has evoked the passion and whom you can seize in your arms, is the one you think you love; the person evoked by passion, this wildly religious invention, is the one you really love, but it is a different person. "
"Ustening to you"-Agathe interrupted her brother with a re- proach that betrayed her inner sympathies-"you might think you don't really love the real person, but really love an unreal person! "
"That's precisely what I meant to say, and I've also heard you say- ing much the same. "
"But in reality both are ultimately one person! "
"That's exactly the major complication, that the hovering image of
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 2 1 5
the person you love has to be represented in every outward connec- tion by the person himself and is indeed one and the same. That's what leads to all the confusions that give the simple business of love such an excitingly ghostly quality! "
"But perhaps it's only love that makes the real person entirely real? Perhaps he's not complete before then? ''
"But the boot or the suitcase you dream about is in reality none other than the one you could actually buy! "
"Perhaps the suitcase only becomes completely real ifyou love it! "
"In a word, we come to the question of what is real. Love's old question! " Ulrich exclaimed impatiently, yet somehow satisfied.
"Oh, let's forget the suitcase! " To the astonishment of both, it was the General's voice that interrupted their sparring. Stumm had com- fortably squeezed one leg over the other, which, once achieved, lent him great security. "Let's stay with the person," he went on, and praised Ulrich: "So far you've said some things terrifically well! Peo- ple always believe that nothing is easier than loving each other, and then you have to remind them every day: 'Dearest, it's not as easy as it is for the apple woman! ' " In explanation of this more military than civilian expression, he turned politely to Agathe. "The 'apple woman,' dear lady, is an army expression for when someone thinks something is easier than it is: in higher mathematics, for example, when you're doing short division so short that, willy-nilly, you come up with a false result! Then the appple woman is held up to you, and it's applied the same way in other places as well, where an ordinary person might just say: that's not so simple! " Now he turned back to Ulrich and continued: "Your doctrine of the two persons interests me a good deal, because I'm also always telling people that you can love people only in two parts: in theory, or, as you put it, as a hovering person, is the way you ought to love someone, as I see it; but in prac- tice, you have to treat a person strictly and, in the last analysis, harshly too! That's the way it is between man and woman, and that's the way it is in life in general! The pacifists, for instance, with their love that has no soles on its shoes, haven't the slightest notion of this; a lieutenant knows ten times as much about love as these dilettantes! "
Through his earnestness, through his carefully weighed manner of speaking, and not least through the boldness with which, despite
1216 • THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
Agathe's presence, he had condemned woman to obedience, Stumm von Bordwehr gave the impression of a man to whom something im- portant had happened and who had striven, not without success, to master it. But Ulrich still had not grasped this, and proposed: 'Well, you decide which person is truly worth loving and which has the walk-on part! "
"That's too deep for me! " Stumm stated calmly, and, inhaling from his cigar, added with the same composure: "It's a pleasure to hear again how well you speak; but on the whole you speak in such a way that one really must ask oneself whether it's your only occupation. I must confess that after you disappeared I expected to find you, God knows, busy with more important matters! "
"Stumm, this is important! " Ulrich exclaimed. "Because at least halfthe history ofthe world is a love story! Ofcourse you have to take all the varieties of love together! "
The General nodded his resistance. "That may well be. " He bar- ricaded himself behind the busyness of cutting and lighting a fresh cigar, and grumbled: "But then the other halfis a story ofanger. And one shouldn't underestimate anger! I have been a specialist in love for some time, and I know! "
Now at last Ulrich understood that his friend had changed and, curious, asked him to tell what had befallen him.
Stumm von Bordwehr looked at him f¢ a while without answer- ing, then looked at Agathe, and finally replied in a way that made it impossible to distinguish whether he was hesitating from irritation or enjoyment: "Oh, it will hardly seem worth mentioning in comparison with your occupations. Just one thing has happened: the Parallel Campaign has found a goal! "
This news about something to which so much sympathy, even if counterfeit, had been accorded would have broken through even a fully guarded state of seclusion, and when Stumm saw the effect he had achieved he was reconciled with fortune, and found again for quite a while his old, guileless joy in spreading news. "Ifyou'd rather, I could just as well say: the Parallel Campaign has come to an end! " he offered obligingly.
It had happened quite incidentally: 'W e all of us had got so used to nothing happening, while thinking that something ought to hap- pen," Stumm related. "And then all of a sudden, instead of a new
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 2 1 7
proposal, someone brought the news that this coming autumn a Con- gress for World Peace is to meet, and here in Austria! "
"That's odd! " Ulrich said.
"What's odd? We didn't know the least thing about it! "
"That's just what I mean. "
'Well, there you're not entirely off the track," Stumm von B9rd-
wehr agreed. "It's even being asserted that the news was a plant from abroad. Leinsdorf and Tuzzi went so far as to suspect that it might be a Russian plot against our patriotic campaign, ifnot ultimately even a Gennan plot. For you must consider that we have four years before we have to be ready, so it's entirely possible that someone wants to rush us into something we hadn't planned. Beyond that, the different versions part company; but it's no longer possible to find out what the truth of the matter is, although of course we immediately wrote off everywhere to learn more. Remarkably enough, it seems that people all over already knew about this pacifistic Congress-I assure you: in the whole world! And private individuals as well as newspaper and government offices! But it was assumed, or bandied about, that it emanated from us and was part of our great world campaign, and people were merely surprised because they couldn't get any kind of rational response from us to their questions and queries. Maybe someone was playing a joke on us; Tuzzi was discreetly able to get hold of a few invitations to this Peace Congress; the signatures were quite naive forgeries, but the letter paper and the style were good as gold! Of course we then called in the police, who quickly discovered that the whole manner of execution pointed to a domestic origin, and in the course of this it emerged that there really are people here who would like to convene a World Peace Congress here in the autumn- because some woman who has written a pacifist novel is going to cel- ebrate her umpteenth birthday or, in case she's died, would have: But it quickly became clear that these people quite evidently had not the least connection with disseminating the material that was aimed at us, and so the origin of the affair has remained in the dark," Stumm said resignedly, but with the satisfaction that every well-told tale provides. The effortful exposition of the difficulties had drawn shadows over his face, but now the sun of his smile burst through this perplexity, and with a trace of scorn that was as unconstrained as it was candid, he added: 'What's most remarkable is that everyone
1218 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
agreed that there should be such a congress, or at least no one wanted to say no! And now I ask you: what are we to do, especially since we have already announced that we are undertaking something meant to serve as a model for the whole world and have constantly been spreading the slogan 'Action! ' around? For two weeks we've simply had to work like savages, so that retroactively at least it looks the way it would have looked prospectively, so to speak, under other circumstances. And so we showed ourselves equal to the organi- zational superiority of the Prussians-assuming that it was the Prussians! We're now calling it a preliminary celebration. The gov- ernment is keeping an eye on the political part, and those of us in the campaign are working more on the ceremonial and cultural-human aspects, because that is simply too burdensome for a ministry-"
"But what a strange story it is! " Ulrich asserted seriously, although he had to laugh at this development.
"A real accident of history," the General said with satisfaction. "Such mystifications have often been important. "
"And Diotima? " Ulrich inquired cautiously.
'Well, she has speedily had to jettison Amor and Psyche and is now, together with a painter, designing the parade of regional cos- tumes. It will be called: 'The clans of Austria and Hungary pay hom- age to internal and external peace,' " Stumm reported, and now turned pleadingly toward Agathe as he noticed that she, too, was parting her lips to smile. "I entreat you, dear lady, please don't say anything against it, and don't permit any objection to it either! " he begged. "For the parade of regional costumes, and apparently a mili- tary parade, are all that is definite so far about the festivities.
The Tyrolean militia will march down the Ringstrasse, because they al- ways look picturesque with their green suspenders, the rooster feath- ers in their hats, and their long beards; and then the beers and wines of the Monarchy are to pay tribute to the beers and wines of the rest of the world. But even here there is still no unanimity on whether, for instance, only Austro-Hungarian beers and wines shall pay trib- ute to those of the rest of the world, which would allow the charming Austrian character to stand out more hospitably by renouncing a trib- ute from the other side, or whether the foreign beers and wines should be allowed to march along as well so that they can pay hom- age to ours, and whether they have to pay customs duties on them or
From the Posthmrwus Papers · 1 2 19
not. At any rate, one thing is certain: that there never has been and never can be a parade in this country without people in Old Ger- manic costumes sitting on carts with casks and on beer wagons drawn by horses; and I just can't imagine what it must have been like in the actual Middle Ages, when the Germanic costumes weren't yet old and wouldn't even have looked any older than a tuxedo does today! "
But after this question had been sufficiently appreciated, Ulrich asked a more delicate one. ''I'd like to know what our non-German nationalities will say to the whole thing! "
"That's simple: they'll be in the parade! " Stumm assured him cheerfully. "Because if they won't, we'll commandeer a regiment of Bohemian dragoons into the parade and make Hussite warriors out of them, and we'll drag in a regiment of Ulans as the Polish liberators of Vienna from the Turks. "
"And what does Leinsdorf say to these plans? '' Ulrich asked hesitantly.
Stumm placed his crossed leg beside the other and turned serious. "He's not exactly delighted," he conceded, relating that Count Leinsdorf never used the word "parade" but, in the most stubborn way possible, insisted on calling it a "demonstration. " "He's appar- ently still thinking of the demonstrations he experienced," Ulrich said, and Stumm agreed. "He has often said to me," he reported, " Whoever brings the masses into the street is taking a heavy respon- sibility upon himself, General! ' As if I could do anything for or against it! But you should also know that for some time we've been getting together fairly often, he and I. . . . "
Stumm paused, as if he wanted to leave space for a question, but when neither Agathe nor Ulrich asked it, he went on cautiously: "You see, His Excellency ran into another demonstration. Quite recently, on a trip, he was nearly beaten up in B - - by the Czechs as well as the Germans. "
"But why? " Agathe exclaimed, intrigued, and Ulrich, too, showed his curiosity.
"Because he is known as the bringer of peace! " Stumm pro- claimed. "Loving peace and people is not so simple in reality-"
"Like with the apple woman! " Agathe broke in, laughing.
"I really wanted to say, like with a candy jar," Stumm corrected her, adding to this discreet reproach for Ulrich the observation on
1220 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
Leinsdorf: "Still, a man like him, once he has made up his mind, will totally and completely exercise the office he has been given. "
"What office? " Ulrich asked.
"Every office! " the General stated. "On the festival reviewing stand he will sit beside the Emperor, only in the event, of course, that His Majesty sits on the reviewing stand; and, moreover, he is drafting the address ofhomage from our peoples, which he will hand to the All-Highest Ruler. But even ifthat should be all for the time being, I'm convinced it won't stay that way, because if he doesn't have any other worries, he creates some: such an active nature! By the way, he would like to speak with you," Stumm injected tenta- tively. ,
Ulrich seemed not to have heard this, but had become alert. "Leinsdorfis not 'given' an office! " he said mistrustfully. "He's been the knob on top of the flagstaff all his life! "
'Well," the General said reservedly. "I really didn't mean to say anything; of course he is and always was a high aristocrat. But look, for example, not long ago Tuzzi took me aside and said to me confi- dentially: 'General! If a man brushes past me in a dark alley, I step aside; but if in the same situation he asks me in a friendly way what time it is, then I not only reach for my watch but grope for my gun too! ' What do you say to that? ''
'What should I say to that? I don't see the connection. "
"That's just the government's caution," Stumm explained. "In re- lation to a World Peace Congress it thinks of all the possibilities, while Leinsdorfhas always been one to have his own ideas. "
Ulrich suddenly understood. "So in a word: Leinsdorf is to be removed from leadership because people are afraid ofhim? "
The General did not answer this directly. "He asks you through me to please resume your friendly relations with your cousin Tuzzi, in order to find out what's going on. I'm saying it straight out; he, of course, expressed it in a more reserved fashion," Stumm reported. And after a brief hesitation, he added by way of excuse: "They're not telling him everything! But then that's the habit of ministries: we don't tell each other everything among ourselves either! "
'What relationship did my brother really have with our cousin? " Agathe wanted to know.
Stumm, snared in the friendly delusion that he was pleasantly jok-
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 2 2 1
ing, unsuspectingly assured her: "He's one of her secret loves! " add- ing immediately to encourage Ulrich: "I have no idea what happened between you, but she certainly regrets it! She says that you are such an indispensable bad patriot that all the enemies of the Fatherland, whom we are trying to make feel at home here, must really love you. Isn't that nice ofher? But ofcourse she can't take the first step after you withdrew so willfully! "
From then on the leave-taking became rather monosyllabic, and Stumm was mightily oppressed at such a dim sunset after he had stood at the zenith.
Thus it was that Ulrich and Agathe got to hear something that brightened their faces again and also brought a friendly blush to the General's cheeks. 'We've got rid ofFeuermaul! " he reported, happy that he had remembered it in time and adding, full of scorn for that poet's love of mankind: "In any event, it's become meaningless. " Even the "nauseating'' resolution from the last session, that no one should be forced to die for other people's ideas, whereas on the other hand everyone should die for his own-even this resolution, which would fundamentally ensure peace, had, as was now apparent, been dropped, along with everything belonging to the past, and at the General's instigation was no longer even on the agenda. 'We sup- pressed a journal that printed it; no one believes such exaggerated rumors anymore! " Stumm added to this news, which seemed not quite clear in view ofthe preparations under way for a pacifistic con- gress. Agathe then inteivened a little on behalf of the young people, and even Ulrich finally reminded his friend that the incident had not been Feuermaul's fault. Stumm made no difficulties about this, and admitted that Feuermaul, whom he had met at the house of his pa- troness, was a charming person. "So full of sympathy with every- thing! And so spontaneously, absolutely, really good! " he exclaimed appreciatively.
"But then he would most certainly be an estimable addition to this Congress! " Ulrich again threw in.
But Stumm, who had meanwhile been making serious prepara- tions to leave, shook his head animatedly. "No! I can't explain so briefly what's involved," he said resolutely, "but this Congress ought not to be blown out ofproportion! "
1222
so
AGA THE FINDS ULRICH'S DIARY
While Ulrich was personally escorting the parting guest to the door, Agathe, defying an inner self-reproach, carried out something she had decided on with lightning speed. Even before Stumm's intru- sion, and again a second time in his presence, her eye had been caught by a pile of loose papers lying in one of the drawers of the desk, on both occasions through a suppressed motion of her brother's, which had given the impression that he would have liked to refer to these papers during the conversation but could not make up his mind-indeed, deliberately refrained from doing so. Her inti- macy with him had allowed her to sense this more than guess it on any substantive basis, and in the same way she also understood that this concealment must be connected with the two of them. So when he was barely out of the room she opened the drawer, doing so, whether it was justified or not, with that feeling which furthers quick decisions and does not admit moral scruples. But the notes that she took up in her hands, with many things crossed out, loosely con- nected and not always easily decipherable, immediately imposed a slower tempo on her passionate curiosity.
"Is love an emotion? This question may at first glance seem non- sensical, since it appears so certain that the entire nature oflove is a process of feeling; the correct answer is the more surprising: for emotion is really the least part oflove! Looked at merely as emotion, love is hardly as intense and overwhelming, and in any event not as strongly marked, as a toothache. "
The second, equally odd note ran: "A man may love his dog and his wife. A child may love a dog more dearly than a man his wife. One person loves his profession, another politics. Mostly, we seem to love general conditions; I mean-ifwe don't happen to hate them-their inscrutable way of working in concert, which I might call their 'horse-stall feeling': we are contentedly at home in our life the way a horse is in its stall!
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 2 2 3
"But what does it mean to bring all these things that are so dispar- ate together under the same word, 'love'? A primordial idea has set- tled in my mind, alongside doubt and derision: Everything in the world is love! Love is the gentle, divine nature of the world, covered by ashes but inextinguishable! I wouldn't know how to express what I understand by 'nature'; but if I abandon myself to the idea as a whole without worrying about it, I feel it with a remarkably natural cer- tainty. At least at moments. "
Agathe blushed, for the following entries began with her name. "Agathe once showed me places in the Bible; I still vaguely remem- ber how they ran and have decided to write them down: 'Everything that happens in love happens in God, for God is love. ' And a second says: 'Love is from God, and whosoever loves God is born of God. ' Both these places stand in obvious contradiction to each other: in one, love comes from God; in the other, it is God!
"Therefore the attempts to express the relationship of 'love' to the world seem fraught with difficulty even for the enlightened person; how should the uninstructed understanding not fail to grasp it? That I called love the nature of the world was nothing but an excuse; it leaves the choice entirely open to say that the pen and inkpot I am writing with consist oflove in the moral realm of truth, or in the em- pirical realm of reality. But then how in reality? Would they then consist of love or would they be its consequences, the embodying phenomenon or intimation? Are they already themselves love, or is love only what they would be in their totality? Are they love by na- ture, or are we talking about a supranatural reality? And what about this 'in truth'? Is it a truth for the more heightened understanding, or for the blessedly ignorant? Is it the truth of thinking, or an incom- plete symbolic connection that will reveal its meaning completely only in the universality of mental events assembled around God? What of this have I expressed? More or less everything and nothing!
"I could also just as well have said about love that it is divine rea- son, the Neoplatonic logos. Or just as well something else: Love is the lap ofthe world: the gentle lap ofunselfconscious happening. Or, again differently: 0 sea oflove, about which only the drowning man, not the ship-borne traveler, knows! All these allusive exclamations can transmit their meaning only because one is as untrustworthy as another.
1224 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
"Most honest is the feeling: how tiny the earth is in space, and how man, mere nothing compared with the merest child, is thrown on the resources of love! But that is nothing more than the naked cry for love, without a trace of an answer!
"Yet I might perhaps speak in this way without exaggerating my words into emptiness: There is a condition in the world the sight of which is barred to us, but that things sometimes expose here or there when we fmd ourselves in a state that is excited in a particular way. And only in this state do we glimpse that things are 'made of love. ' And only in it, too, do we grasp what it signifies. And only this state is then real, and we would only then be true.
"That would be a description I would not have to retract in any part. But then, I also have nothing to add to it! "
Agathe was astonished. In these secret entries Ulrich was holding himself back much less than usual. And although she understood that he allowed himself to do this, even for himself, only under the reservation of secrecy, she still imagined she could see him before her, stirred and irresolute, in the act of opening his arms toward something.
The notes went on: "That, too, is a notion reason itself might al- most chance upon, although to be sure only reason that has to some extent managed to get out of its passive position: imagining the All- Loving as the Eternal Artist. He loves creation as long as he is creat- ing it, but his love turns away from the finished portions. For the artist must also love what is most hateful in order to shape it, but what he has already shaped, even if it is good, cools him off; it be- comes so bereft of love that he hardly still understands himself in it, and the moments when his love returns to delight in what it has done are rare and unpredictable. And so one could also think: What lords over us loves what it creates; but this love approaches and withdraws from the finished part of creation in a long ebbing flow and a short returning swell. This idea fits the fact that souls and things of the world are like dead people who are sometimes reawakened for seconds. "
Then came a few other quick entries, which looked as ifthey were only tentative.
"A lion under the morning sky! A unicorn in the moonlight! You have the choice between love's fire and rifle fire. Therefore there are
From the Posthunwus Papers · 1 2 2 5
at least two basic conditions: love and violence. And without doubt it is violence, not love, that keeps the world moving and from going to sleep!
"Here the assumption might also, of course, be woven in that the world has become sinful. Before, love and paradise. That means: the world as it is, sin! The possible world, love!
"Another dubious question: The philosophers imagine God as a philosopher, as pure spirit; wouldn't it make sense, then, for officers to imagine Him as an officer? But I, a mathematician, imagine the divine being as love? How did I arrive at that?
"And how are we to participate without more ado in one of the Eternal Artist's most intimate experiences? ''
The writing broke off. But then Agathe's face was again suffused with a blush when, without raising her eyes, she took up the next page and read on:
"Lately Agathe and I have frequently had a remarkable experi- ence! When we undertook our expeditions into town. When the weather is especially fine the world looks quite cheerful and harmo- nious, so that you really don't pay attention to how different all its component parts are, according to their age and nature. Everything stands and moves with the greatest naturalness. And yet, remarkably, there is in such an apparently incontrovertible condition of the pres- ent something that leads into a desert; something like an unsuccess- ful proposal of love, or some similar exposure, the moment one does not unreservedly participate in it.
"Along our way we find ourselves walking through the narrow vio- let-blue streets of the city, which above, where they open to the light, bum like fire. Or we step out of this tactile blue into a square over which the sun freely pours its light; then the houses around the square stand there looking taken back and, as it were, placed against the wall, but no less expressively, and as if someone had scratched them with the fine lines of an engraving tool, lines that make every- thing too distinct. And at such a moment we do not know whether all this self-fulfilled beauty excites us profoundly or has nothing at all to do with us. Both are the case. This beauty stands on a razor's edge between desire and grief.
"But does not the sight of beauty always have this effect of bright- ening the griefofordinary life and darkening its gaiety? It seems that
1226 ·THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
beauty belongs to a world whose depths hold neither grief nor gaiety. Perhaps in that world even beauty itself does not exist, but merely some kind of almost indescribable, cheerful gra~ty, and its name arises only through the refraction of its nameless splendor in our or- dinary atmosphere. We are both seeking this world, Agathe and I, without yet being able to make up our minds; we move along its bor- ders and cautiously enjoy the profound emanation at those points where it is still mingled with the powerful lights of every day and is almost invisible! "
It seemed as if Ulrich, through his sudden idea of speaking of an Eternal Artist, had been led to bring the question of beauty into his observations, especially since, for its part, beauty also expressed the oversensitivity that had arisen between brother and sister. But at the same time he had changed his manner of thinking. In this new se- quence ofentries he proceeded no longer from his dominant ideas as they faded down to the vanishing point of his experiences, but from the foreground, which was clearer but, in a few places that he noted, really too clear, and again almost permeable by the background.
Thus Ulrich went on. "I said to Agathe: 'Apparently beauty is nothing other than having been loved. ' For to love something and beautify it is one and the same. And to propagate its love and make others see its beauty is also one and the same. That's why everything can appear beautiful, and everything beautiful, ugly; in both cases it will depend on us no less than it compels us from outside, because love has no causality and knows no fixed sequence. I'm not certain how much I've said about that, but it also explains this other impres- sion that we have so vividly on our walks: We look at people and want to share in the joy that is in their faces; but these faces also radiate a discomfiture and an almost uncanny repulsion. It emanates, too, from the houses, clothes, and everything that they have created for themselves. When I considered what the explanation for this might be, I was led to a further group of ideas, and through that back to my first notes, which were apparently so fantastic.
"A city such as ours, lovely and old, with its superb architectural stamp, which over the course of ages has arisen from changing taste, is a single great witness to the capacity for loving and the incapacity for loving long. The proud sequence of this city's structures repre- sents not only a great history but also a constant change in the direc-
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 2 2 7
tion ofthought. Looked at in this manner, the city is a mutability that has become a chain of stone and that surveys itself differently every quarter century in order to be right, in the end, for eternal ages. Its mute eloquence is that of dead lips, and the more enchantingly se- ductive it is, the more violently it must evoke, in its most profound moment of pleasing and of expropriation, blind resistance and horror. "
"It's ridiculous, but tempting," Agathe responded to that. "In that case the swallowtail coats of these dawdlers, or the funny caps offi- cers wear on their heads like pots, would have to be beautiful, for they are most decidedly loved by their owners and displayed for love, and enjoy the favor ofwomen! "
'We made a game of it too. In a kind of merry bad temper we enjoyed it to the utmost and for a while asked ourselves at every step, in opposition to life: What, for example, does the red on that dress over there mean by oeing so red? Or what are these blues and yel- lows and whites really doing on the collars of those uniforms? And why in God's name are the ladies' parasols round and not square? We asked ourselves what the Greek pediment ofthe Parliament building was after, with its legs astraddle? Either 'doing a split,' as only a dancer or a pair of compasses can, or disseminating classical beauty? If you put yourself back that way into a preliminary state in which you are not touched by feelings, and where you do not infuse things with the emotions that they complacently expect, you destroy the faith and loyalty of existence. It's like watching someone eat silently, without sharing his appetite: You suddenly perceive only swallowing movements, which look in no way enviable.
"I call that cutting oneselfofffrom the 'meaning' oflife. To clarify this, I might begin with how we unquestionably seek the firm and solid in life as urgently as a land animal that has fallen into the water. This makes us overestimate the significance of knowledge, justice, and reason, as well as the necessity of compulsion and violence. Per- haps I shouldn't say overestimate; but in any case, by far the greatest number of manifestations of our life rest on the mind's insecurity. Faith, supposition, assumption, intimation, wish, doubt, inclination, demand, prejudice, persuasion, exemplification, personal views, and other conditions of semi-certainty predominate among them. And because meaning, on this scale, lies roughly halfway between reason-
1228 • THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
ing and capriciousness, I am applying its name to the whole. If what we express with words, no matter how magnificent they are, is mostly just a meaning, an opinion, then what we express without words is always one.
"Therefore I say: Our reality, as far as it is dependent on us, is for the most part only an expression of opinion, although we ascribe every imaginable kind of importance to it. We may give our lives a specific manifestation in the stones of buildings: it is always done for the sake of a meaning we impute to it. We may kill or sacrifice our- selves: we are acting only on the basis of a supposition. I might even say that all our passions are mere suppositions; how often we err in them; we can fall into them merely out of a longing for decisiveness! And also, doing something out of 'free' will really assumes that it is merely being done at the instigation of an opinion. For some time Agathe and I have been sensitive to a certain hauntedness in the em- pirical world. Every detail in which our surroundings manifest them- selves 'speaks to us. ' It means something. It shows that it has come into being with a purpose that is by no means fleeting.
