"Our emotions always seek a
foothold
in what they form and shape, and always find it for a while.
Musil - Man Without Qualities - v2
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. It is, to be sure, only an opinion, but it appears as a conviction. It is merely a sudden idea, but acts as ifit were an unshakable will. Ages and centu- ries stand upright with legs firmly planted, but behind them a voice whispers: Rubbish! Never has the Hour Struck, never has the Time Come!
"It seems to be willfulness, but it enables me to understand what I see if I note in addition: This opposition between the self-obsession that puffs out the chest ofeverything we have created in all its splen- dor, and the secret trait of being given up and abandoned, which likewise begins with the first minute, is wholly and completely in agreement with my calling everything merely an opinion. By this means we recognize that we are in a peculiar situation. For every attribution of meaning shows the same double peculiarity: as long as it is new it makes us impatient with every opposing meaning (when red parasols are having their day, blue ones are 'impossible'-but something similar is also true of our convictions); yet it is the second peculiarity of every meaning that it is nevertheless given up with time, entirely ofits own accord and just as surely, when it is no longer new. I once said that reality does away with itself. It could now be put like this: I f man is for the most part only proclaiming meanings, he is
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 2 2 9
never entirely and enduringly proclaiming himself; but even ifhe can never completely express himself, he will try it in the most various ways, and in doing so acquires a history. So he has a history only out ofweakness, it seems to me, although the historians understandably enough consider the ability to make history a particular badge of distinction! "
Here Ulrich seemed to have embarked on a digression, but he continued in this direction: "And this is apparently the reason why I have to take note of this today: History happens, events happen- even art happens-from a lack ofhappiness. But such a lack does not lie in circumstances-in other words, in their not allowing happiness to reach us-but in our emotions. Our feeling bears the cross ofthis double aspect: it suffers no other beside itself and itself does not en- dure. By this means everything connected with it acquires the aspect of being valid for eternity, but we all nonetheless strive to abandon the creations of our feelings and change the meanings that are ex- pressed in them. For a feeling changes in the instant of its existence; it has no duration or identity; it must be consummated anew. Emo- tions are not only changeable and inconstant-as they are well taken to b e - b u t the instant they weren't, they would become so. They are not genuine when they last. They must always arise anew if they are to endure, and even in doing this they become different emotions. An anger that lasted five days would no longer be anger but be a mental disorder; it transforms itself into either forgiveness or pre- parations for revenge, and something similar goes on with all the emotions.
"Our emotions always seek a foothold in what they form and shape, and always find it for a while. But Agathe and I feel an impris- oned ghostliness in our surroundings, the reverse magnetism of two connected poles, the recall in the call, the mobility of supposedly fixed walls; we see and hear it suddenly. To have stumbled 'into a time' seems to us like an adventure, and dubious company. We find ourselves in the enchanted forest. And although we cannot encom- pass 'our own,' differently constituted feeling, indeed hardly know what it is, we suffer anxiety about it and would like to hold it fast. But how do you hold a feeling fast? How could one linger at the highest stage of rapture, if indeed there were any way of getting there at all? Basically this is the only question that preoccupies us. We have inti-
1230 • THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
mations of an emotion removed from the entropy of the other emo- tions. It stands like a miraculous, motionless shadow in the flow before us. But would it not have to arrest the world in its course in order to exist? I arrive at the conclusion that it cannot be a feeling in the same sense as the other feelings. "
And suddenly Ulrich concluded: "So I come back to the question: Is love an emotion? I think not. Love is an ecstasy. And God Himself, in order to be able to lastingly love the world and, with the love of God-the-Artist, also embrace what has already happened, must be in a constant state of ecstasy. This is the only form in which he may be imagined-"
Here he had broken off this entry.
GREA T CHANGES
Ulrich had personally escorted the General out with the intention of discovering what he might have to say in confidence. As he accompa- nied him down the stairs, he sought at first to offer a harmless expla- nation for having distanced himself from Diotima and the others, so that the real reason would remain unstated. But Stumm was not sat- isfied, and asked: 'W ere you insulted? "
"Not in the least. "
"Then you had no right to! " Stumm replied firmly.
But the changes in the Parallel Campaign, about which in his with-
drawal from the world Ulrich had not had the least inkling, now had an invigorating effect on him, as if a window had suddenly been thrown open in a stuffy hall, and he continued: "I would still like to find out what's really going on. Since you've decided to open my eyes halfway, please finish the job! "
Stumm stopped, supporting his sword on the stone of the step, and raised his glance to his friend's face; a broad gesture, which
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 2 3 1
lasted the longer in that Ulrich was standing one step higher: "Noth- ing I'd like better," he said. "That's the reason I came. "
Ulrich calmly began to interrogate him. "Who's working against Leinsdorf? Tuzzi and Diotima? Or the Ministry ofWar with you and Arnheim-? "
"My dear friend, you're stumbling through abysses! " Stumm inter- rupted him. "And blindly walking past the simple truth, the way all intellectuals seem to do! Above all, I beg you to be convinced that I have passed on Leinsdorf's wish to have you visit him and Diotima only as the most selfless favor-"
"Your officer's word of honor? "
The General's mood turned sunny. "Ifyou're going to remind me of the spartan honor of my profession, you conjure up the danger that I really will start lying to you; for there might be an order from above that would obligate me to do so. So I'd rather give you my private word of honor," he said with dignity, and continued by way of explanation: "I was even intending to confide to you that recently I have seen myself at times compelled to reflect upon such difficulties; I find myself lying often these days, with the ease of a hog wallowing in garbage. " Suddenly he turned completely toward his more ele- vated friend and added the question: "How does it happen that lying is so agreeable, assuming you have an excuse? Just speaking the truth seems absolutely unproductive and frivolous by comparison! If you could tell me that, it would be, straight out, one ofthe reasons I came to hunt you up. "
"Then tell me honestly what's going on," Ulrich asked, unyielding.
"In total honesty, and also quite simply: I don't know! " Stumm protested.
"But you have a mission! " Ulrich probed.
The General answered: "In spite of your truly unfriendly dis- appearance, I have stepped over the corpse of my self-respect to confide this mission to you. But it is a partial mission. A teeny com- mission. I am now a little wheel. A tiny thread. A little Cupid who has been left with only a single arrow in his quiver! " Ulrich observed the portly figure with the gold buttons. Stumm had definitely become more self-reliant; he did not wait for Ulrich's response but set him- self in motion toward the door, his sword clanking on every step. And as the entry hall, whose noble furnishings would otherwise have in-
1232 ·THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
stilled in him a reverence for the master ofthe house, arched up over the two of them as they came down, he said over his shoulder to this master: "It's clear you still have not quite grasped that the Parallel Campaign is now no longer a private or family undertaking but a po- litical process of international stature! "
"So now it's being run by the Foreign Minister? " Ulrich volleyed. "Apparently. "
"And consequently Tuzzi? ''
"Presumably; but I don't know," Stumm quickly added. "And of
course he acts as if he knows nothing at all! You know what he's like: these diplomats pretend to be ignorant even when they really are! "
They walked through the front door, and the carriage drove up. Suddenly Stumm turned, confidingly and comically pleading, to Ul- rich: "But that's why you should really start frequenting the house again, so that we have a quasi-confidant there! "
Ulrich smiled at this scheming, and laid his arm around the Gen- eral's shoulder; he felt reminded of Diotima. "What is she up to? '' he asked. "Does she now recognize the man in Tuzzi? ''
"What she's up to? " the General responded, vexed. "She gives the impression of being irritated. " And he added good-naturedly: "To the discriminating glance, perhaps even a moving impression. The Ministry of Education gives her hardly any other assignments than deciding whether the patriotic association Wiener Schnitzel should be allowed to march in the parade, or a group called Roast Beefwith Dumplings as well-"
Ulrich interrupted him suspiciously. "Now you're talking about the Ministry of Education? Weren't you just saying that the Foreign Ministry had appropriated the campaign? ''
"But look, maybe the Schnitzels are really the affair of the Interior Ministry. Or the Ministry of Trade. Who can predict? " Stumm in- structed him. "But in any case, the Congress for World Peace as a whole belongs to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to the extent that it's not already owned by the two Ministerial Presidiums. "
Ulrich interrupted him again. "And the War Ministry is nowhere in your thoughts at all? "
"Don't be so suspicious! " Stumm said calmly. "Ofcourse the War Ministry takes the most active interest in a congress for world peace; I would say no less an interest than police headquarters would take in
From the Posthumous Papers · 1233
an international congress of anarchists. But you know what these ci- vilian ministries are like: they won't grant even a toehold to the likes ofus! "
"And-? " Ulrich asked, for Stumm's innocence still made him suspicious.
"There's no 'and'! " Stumm assured him. "You're rushing things! If a dangerous business involves several ministries, then one of them wants to either shove it off on, or take it away from, one of the others; in both cases the result of these efforts is the creation of an inter- ministerial commission. You only need to remind yourself how many committees and subcommittees the Parallel Campaign had to create at the beginning, when Diotima was still in full command of its ener- gies; and I can assure you that our blessed council was a still life com- pared with what's being worked up today! " The carriage was waiting, the coachman sitting bolt upright on his coach box, but Stumm gazed irresolutely through the open vehicle into the bright-green garden that opened beyond. "Perhaps you can give me a little-known word with 'inter' in it? " he asked, and toted up with prompting nods of his head: "Interesting, interministerial, international, intercurrent, in- termediate, interpellation, interdicted, internal, and a few more; be- cause now you hear them at the General Staff mess more often than the word 'sausage. ' But if I were to come up with an entirely new word, I could create a sensation! "
Ulrich steered the General's thoughts back to Diotima. It made sense to him that the highest mandate came from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, from which it in all probability followed that the reins were in Tuzzi's hands: but then, how could another ministry offend this powerful man's wife? At this question Stumm disconso- lately shrugged his shoulders. "You still haven't got it through your head that the Parallel Campaign is an affair of state! " he responded, adding spontaneously: "Tuzzi is slyer than we thought. He himself would never have been able to ascribe such a thing to it, but inter- ministerial technology has allowed him to hand over his wife to an- other ministry! "
Ulrich began to laugh softly. From the message clothed in these rather odd words he could vividly imagine both people: magnificent Diotima-the power station, as Agathe called her-and the smaller, spare Section Chief, for whom he had an absolutely inexplicable
1234 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
sympathy, although he knew Tuzzi looked down on him. It was fear of the moon-nights of the soul that drew him to this man's rational feelings, which were as dryly masculine as an empty cigarette case. And yet, when they had broken over the head of this diplomat, the sufferings ofthe soul had brought him to the point of seeing in every- one and everything only pacifist intrigues; for pacifism was for Tuzzi the most intelligible representation of soulful tenderness! Ulrich re- called that Tuzzi had finally come to regard Arnheim's increasingly open efforts concerning the Galician oil fields-indeed, his efforts concerning his own wife-as merely a divertissement whose purpose was to deflect attention from a secret enterprise of a pacifistic nature: so greatly had the events in his house confused Tuzzi! He must have suffered unbearably, and it was understandable: the spiritual passion that he found himself unexpectedly confronting not only offended his concept of honor, just as physical adultery would have done, but struck directly and contemptuously at his very ability to fonn con- cepts, which in older men is the true retirement home of manly dignity.
And Ulrich cheerfully continued his thought aloud: "Apparently the moment his wife's patriotic campaign became the object of pub- lic teasing, Tuzzi completely regained control over his lost mental faculties, as befits a high official. It must have been then at the latest that he recognized all over again that more things are going on in the lap ofworld history than would find room in a woman's lap, and your Congress for World Peace, which turned up like a foundling, will have woken him with a start! " With coarse satisfaction, Ulrich de- picted to himself the murky, ghost-ridden state that must have come first, and then this awakening, which perhaps did not even have to be associated with a feeling of awakening; for the moment the souls of Arnheim and Diotima, wandering around in veils, started to touch down in reality, Tuzzi, freed from every haunting spirit, again found himself in that realm of necessity in which he had spent almost his entire life. "So now he's getting rid of all those friends of his wife's who are saving the world and uplifting the Fatherland? They always were a thorn in~ side! " Ulrich exclaimed with great satisfaction, and turned queryingly to his companion.
Stumm, portly and lost in thought, was still standing in the door- way. "So far as I know, he told his wife that she owed it to him and
From the Posthurrwus Papers · 1235
his position, especially under these changed conditions, to bring the Parallel Campaign to an honorable conclusion. She would get a decoration. But she had to entrust herself to the protection and in- sights of the ministry he had selected for that purpose," he reported conscientiously.
"And so he's made peace with y o u -I mean, with the Ministry of War and Arnheim? "
"It looks that way. Because of the Peace Congress, he seems to have argued with the government for support of the rapid modern- ization of our artillery, and with the Minister of War concerning the political consequences. It is said that he wants to push the necessary laws through Parliament with the help of the German parties, and for that reason is now counseling a German line in domestic politics. Di- otima told me that herself"
'Wait a minute! " Ulrich interrupted. "German line? I've forgotten everything! "
"Quite simple! He always said that everything German was a mis- fortune for us; and now he's saying the opposite. "
Ulrich objected that Section Chief Tuzzi never expressed himself so unambiguously.
"But he does to his wife," Stumm replied. "And between her and me there's a kind of bond ordained by fate. "
'Well, how do things stand between her and Arnheim? " asked Ul- rich, who was at the moment more interested in Diotima than in the concerns of the government. "He no longer needs her; and I suppose that's making his soul suffer! "
Stumm shook his head. "That's apparently not so simple either! " he declared with a sigh.
Up to now he had answered Ulrich's questions conscientiously but without emotion, and perhaps for that very reason relatively sensibly. But since the mention of Diotima and Arnheim, he looked as if he wanted to come out with a quite different story, which seemed to him more important than Tuzzi's finding himself. "You might have long thought that Arnheim had had enough of her," he now began. "But they're Great Souls! It may be that you can understand some- thing about such souls, but they are them! You can't say, was there something between them or was there nothing between them? Today they still talk the way they used to, except that you have the
1236 · THE MAN WITH 0 U T QUALITIES
feeling: now there definitely isn't anything between them: They're always talking in what you might call 'last words'! "
Ulrich, remembering what Bonadea, the practitioner of love, had told him about its theoretician, Diotima, held up to Stumm Stumm's own, more measured statement that Diotima was a manual of love. The General smiled thoughtfully at this. "Perhaps we aren't judging it from a broad enough perspective," he generalized discreetly. "Let me preface this by saying that before her I never heard a woman talk that way; and when she starts talking, it's like having ice bags all over me. Besides, she's doing this less often now; but when it occurs to her even today she speaks, for instance, of this World Peace Con- gress as a 'pan-erotic human experience,' and then I feel myself all of a sudden unmanned by her cleverness. But"- a n d he intensified the significance of his words by a brief pause-"there must be some- thing in it-some need, some so-called characteristic of the age- because even in the War Ministry they're beginning to talk that way now. Since this Congress has turned up, you can hear officers of the General Staff talking about love of peace and love of mankind the way they talk about the Model 7 machine gun or the Model82 medi- cal supply wagon! It's absolutely nauseating! "
"Is that why you called yourself a disappointed specialist in love just now? " Ulrich interjected.
"Yes, my friend. You have to excuse me: I couldn't stand hearing you talk so one-sidedly! But officially I derive great profit from all these things. "
"And you no longer have any enthusiasm for the Parallel Cam- paign, for the celebration of great ideas, and such things? " Ulrich probed out of curiosity.
"Even such an experienced woman as your cousin has had enough of culture," the General replied. "I mean culture for its own sake. Besides, even the greatest idea can't stop your ears from getting boxed! "
"But it can cause someone else's getting his ears boxed next time. "
"That's right," Stumm conceded. "But only ifyou use the spiritfor something, not if you serve it selflessly! " Then he looked up at Ul- rich, curious to enjoy along with him the effect ofhis next words, and lowering his voice expectantly, certain of success, he added: "But even ifI would like to, I can't anymore: I've been removed! "
From the Posthumous Papers · 1237
''I'm impressed! " Ulrich exclaimed, instinctively acknowledging the insight of the military authorities. But then he followed another sudden idea and said quickly: "Tuzzi got you into this mess! "
"Not a bit ofit! " Stumm protested, sure ofhimself.
Up to this point the conversation had taken place in the vicinity of the door, and besides the two men there was a third participant who was waiting for them to finish, staring straight ahead so motionlessly that for him the world stopped between the ears of two pairs of horses. Only his fists in their white cotton gloves, through which the reins ran, surreptitiously moved in irregular, soothing rhythms, be- cause the horses, not quite so accessible to military discipline as peo- ple, were getting more and more bored with waiting, and were pulling impatiently at their harnesses. At last the General com- manded this man to take the carriage to the gate and exercise the horses there until he got in; he then invited Ulrich to walk through the garden on foot, so that he could fill him in properly about what had gone on, without being overheard.
But Ulrich thought he saw vividly what it was all about, and at first didn't let Stumm get a word in. "It makes no difference whether Tuzzi took you out of the game or not," he said, "for in this matter you are, ifyou will excuse me, only a minor figure. What's important is that almost at the very moment when he began to get suspicious on account of the Congress and began to face a difficult and onerous test, he simplified his political as well as his personal situation the quickest way he could. He went to work like a sea captain who hears of a big storm coming and doesn't let himself be influenced by the still-dreaming ocean. Tuzzi has now allied himselfwith what repelled him before--Arnheim, your military policies, the German line-and he would also have allied himselfwith. the efforts ofhis wife if, in the circumstances, it had not been more useful to wreck them. I don't know how I should put it. Is it that life becomes easy if one doesn't bother with emotions but merely keeps to one's goal; or is it a mur- derous enjoyment to calculate with the emotions instead of suffering from them? It seems to me I know what the devil felt when he threw a fistful of salt into life's ambrosia! "
The General was all fired up. "But that's what I told you at the beginning! " he exclaimed. "I only happened to be talking about lies, but genuine malice is, in all its forms, an extraordinarily exciting
1238 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
thing! Even Leinsdorf, for instance, has rediscovered a predilection for realpolitik and says: Realpolitik is the opposite ofwhat you would like to do! "
Ulrich went on: "What makes the difference is that before, Tuzzi was always confused by what Diotima and Arnheim were talking about together; but now it can only make him happy, because the loquacity of people who aren't able to seal off their feelings always gives a third person all sorts of footholds. He no longer needs to lis- ten to it with his inner ear, which he was never good at, but only with the outer, and that's roughly the difference between swallowing a disgusting snake or beating it to death! "
"What? " Stumm asked.
"Swallowing it or beating it to death! "
"No, that bit about the ears! "
"I meant to say: it was fortunate for him that he retreated from the
inward side of feeling to the outward side. But perhaps that might still not make sense to you; it's just an idea I have. "
"No, you put it very well! " Stumm protested. "But why are we using others as examples? Diotima and Arnheim are Great Souls, and for that reason alone it'll never work right!
"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. It is, to be sure, only an opinion, but it appears as a conviction. It is merely a sudden idea, but acts as ifit were an unshakable will. Ages and centu- ries stand upright with legs firmly planted, but behind them a voice whispers: Rubbish! Never has the Hour Struck, never has the Time Come!
"It seems to be willfulness, but it enables me to understand what I see if I note in addition: This opposition between the self-obsession that puffs out the chest ofeverything we have created in all its splen- dor, and the secret trait of being given up and abandoned, which likewise begins with the first minute, is wholly and completely in agreement with my calling everything merely an opinion. By this means we recognize that we are in a peculiar situation. For every attribution of meaning shows the same double peculiarity: as long as it is new it makes us impatient with every opposing meaning (when red parasols are having their day, blue ones are 'impossible'-but something similar is also true of our convictions); yet it is the second peculiarity of every meaning that it is nevertheless given up with time, entirely ofits own accord and just as surely, when it is no longer new. I once said that reality does away with itself. It could now be put like this: I f man is for the most part only proclaiming meanings, he is
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 2 2 9
never entirely and enduringly proclaiming himself; but even ifhe can never completely express himself, he will try it in the most various ways, and in doing so acquires a history. So he has a history only out ofweakness, it seems to me, although the historians understandably enough consider the ability to make history a particular badge of distinction! "
Here Ulrich seemed to have embarked on a digression, but he continued in this direction: "And this is apparently the reason why I have to take note of this today: History happens, events happen- even art happens-from a lack ofhappiness. But such a lack does not lie in circumstances-in other words, in their not allowing happiness to reach us-but in our emotions. Our feeling bears the cross ofthis double aspect: it suffers no other beside itself and itself does not en- dure. By this means everything connected with it acquires the aspect of being valid for eternity, but we all nonetheless strive to abandon the creations of our feelings and change the meanings that are ex- pressed in them. For a feeling changes in the instant of its existence; it has no duration or identity; it must be consummated anew. Emo- tions are not only changeable and inconstant-as they are well taken to b e - b u t the instant they weren't, they would become so. They are not genuine when they last. They must always arise anew if they are to endure, and even in doing this they become different emotions. An anger that lasted five days would no longer be anger but be a mental disorder; it transforms itself into either forgiveness or pre- parations for revenge, and something similar goes on with all the emotions.
"Our emotions always seek a foothold in what they form and shape, and always find it for a while. But Agathe and I feel an impris- oned ghostliness in our surroundings, the reverse magnetism of two connected poles, the recall in the call, the mobility of supposedly fixed walls; we see and hear it suddenly. To have stumbled 'into a time' seems to us like an adventure, and dubious company. We find ourselves in the enchanted forest. And although we cannot encom- pass 'our own,' differently constituted feeling, indeed hardly know what it is, we suffer anxiety about it and would like to hold it fast. But how do you hold a feeling fast? How could one linger at the highest stage of rapture, if indeed there were any way of getting there at all? Basically this is the only question that preoccupies us. We have inti-
1230 • THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
mations of an emotion removed from the entropy of the other emo- tions. It stands like a miraculous, motionless shadow in the flow before us. But would it not have to arrest the world in its course in order to exist? I arrive at the conclusion that it cannot be a feeling in the same sense as the other feelings. "
And suddenly Ulrich concluded: "So I come back to the question: Is love an emotion? I think not. Love is an ecstasy. And God Himself, in order to be able to lastingly love the world and, with the love of God-the-Artist, also embrace what has already happened, must be in a constant state of ecstasy. This is the only form in which he may be imagined-"
Here he had broken off this entry.
GREA T CHANGES
Ulrich had personally escorted the General out with the intention of discovering what he might have to say in confidence. As he accompa- nied him down the stairs, he sought at first to offer a harmless expla- nation for having distanced himself from Diotima and the others, so that the real reason would remain unstated. But Stumm was not sat- isfied, and asked: 'W ere you insulted? "
"Not in the least. "
"Then you had no right to! " Stumm replied firmly.
But the changes in the Parallel Campaign, about which in his with-
drawal from the world Ulrich had not had the least inkling, now had an invigorating effect on him, as if a window had suddenly been thrown open in a stuffy hall, and he continued: "I would still like to find out what's really going on. Since you've decided to open my eyes halfway, please finish the job! "
Stumm stopped, supporting his sword on the stone of the step, and raised his glance to his friend's face; a broad gesture, which
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 2 3 1
lasted the longer in that Ulrich was standing one step higher: "Noth- ing I'd like better," he said. "That's the reason I came. "
Ulrich calmly began to interrogate him. "Who's working against Leinsdorf? Tuzzi and Diotima? Or the Ministry ofWar with you and Arnheim-? "
"My dear friend, you're stumbling through abysses! " Stumm inter- rupted him. "And blindly walking past the simple truth, the way all intellectuals seem to do! Above all, I beg you to be convinced that I have passed on Leinsdorf's wish to have you visit him and Diotima only as the most selfless favor-"
"Your officer's word of honor? "
The General's mood turned sunny. "Ifyou're going to remind me of the spartan honor of my profession, you conjure up the danger that I really will start lying to you; for there might be an order from above that would obligate me to do so. So I'd rather give you my private word of honor," he said with dignity, and continued by way of explanation: "I was even intending to confide to you that recently I have seen myself at times compelled to reflect upon such difficulties; I find myself lying often these days, with the ease of a hog wallowing in garbage. " Suddenly he turned completely toward his more ele- vated friend and added the question: "How does it happen that lying is so agreeable, assuming you have an excuse? Just speaking the truth seems absolutely unproductive and frivolous by comparison! If you could tell me that, it would be, straight out, one ofthe reasons I came to hunt you up. "
"Then tell me honestly what's going on," Ulrich asked, unyielding.
"In total honesty, and also quite simply: I don't know! " Stumm protested.
"But you have a mission! " Ulrich probed.
The General answered: "In spite of your truly unfriendly dis- appearance, I have stepped over the corpse of my self-respect to confide this mission to you. But it is a partial mission. A teeny com- mission. I am now a little wheel. A tiny thread. A little Cupid who has been left with only a single arrow in his quiver! " Ulrich observed the portly figure with the gold buttons. Stumm had definitely become more self-reliant; he did not wait for Ulrich's response but set him- self in motion toward the door, his sword clanking on every step. And as the entry hall, whose noble furnishings would otherwise have in-
1232 ·THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
stilled in him a reverence for the master ofthe house, arched up over the two of them as they came down, he said over his shoulder to this master: "It's clear you still have not quite grasped that the Parallel Campaign is now no longer a private or family undertaking but a po- litical process of international stature! "
"So now it's being run by the Foreign Minister? " Ulrich volleyed. "Apparently. "
"And consequently Tuzzi? ''
"Presumably; but I don't know," Stumm quickly added. "And of
course he acts as if he knows nothing at all! You know what he's like: these diplomats pretend to be ignorant even when they really are! "
They walked through the front door, and the carriage drove up. Suddenly Stumm turned, confidingly and comically pleading, to Ul- rich: "But that's why you should really start frequenting the house again, so that we have a quasi-confidant there! "
Ulrich smiled at this scheming, and laid his arm around the Gen- eral's shoulder; he felt reminded of Diotima. "What is she up to? '' he asked. "Does she now recognize the man in Tuzzi? ''
"What she's up to? " the General responded, vexed. "She gives the impression of being irritated. " And he added good-naturedly: "To the discriminating glance, perhaps even a moving impression. The Ministry of Education gives her hardly any other assignments than deciding whether the patriotic association Wiener Schnitzel should be allowed to march in the parade, or a group called Roast Beefwith Dumplings as well-"
Ulrich interrupted him suspiciously. "Now you're talking about the Ministry of Education? Weren't you just saying that the Foreign Ministry had appropriated the campaign? ''
"But look, maybe the Schnitzels are really the affair of the Interior Ministry. Or the Ministry of Trade. Who can predict? " Stumm in- structed him. "But in any case, the Congress for World Peace as a whole belongs to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to the extent that it's not already owned by the two Ministerial Presidiums. "
Ulrich interrupted him again. "And the War Ministry is nowhere in your thoughts at all? "
"Don't be so suspicious! " Stumm said calmly. "Ofcourse the War Ministry takes the most active interest in a congress for world peace; I would say no less an interest than police headquarters would take in
From the Posthumous Papers · 1233
an international congress of anarchists. But you know what these ci- vilian ministries are like: they won't grant even a toehold to the likes ofus! "
"And-? " Ulrich asked, for Stumm's innocence still made him suspicious.
"There's no 'and'! " Stumm assured him. "You're rushing things! If a dangerous business involves several ministries, then one of them wants to either shove it off on, or take it away from, one of the others; in both cases the result of these efforts is the creation of an inter- ministerial commission. You only need to remind yourself how many committees and subcommittees the Parallel Campaign had to create at the beginning, when Diotima was still in full command of its ener- gies; and I can assure you that our blessed council was a still life com- pared with what's being worked up today! " The carriage was waiting, the coachman sitting bolt upright on his coach box, but Stumm gazed irresolutely through the open vehicle into the bright-green garden that opened beyond. "Perhaps you can give me a little-known word with 'inter' in it? " he asked, and toted up with prompting nods of his head: "Interesting, interministerial, international, intercurrent, in- termediate, interpellation, interdicted, internal, and a few more; be- cause now you hear them at the General Staff mess more often than the word 'sausage. ' But if I were to come up with an entirely new word, I could create a sensation! "
Ulrich steered the General's thoughts back to Diotima. It made sense to him that the highest mandate came from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, from which it in all probability followed that the reins were in Tuzzi's hands: but then, how could another ministry offend this powerful man's wife? At this question Stumm disconso- lately shrugged his shoulders. "You still haven't got it through your head that the Parallel Campaign is an affair of state! " he responded, adding spontaneously: "Tuzzi is slyer than we thought. He himself would never have been able to ascribe such a thing to it, but inter- ministerial technology has allowed him to hand over his wife to an- other ministry! "
Ulrich began to laugh softly. From the message clothed in these rather odd words he could vividly imagine both people: magnificent Diotima-the power station, as Agathe called her-and the smaller, spare Section Chief, for whom he had an absolutely inexplicable
1234 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
sympathy, although he knew Tuzzi looked down on him. It was fear of the moon-nights of the soul that drew him to this man's rational feelings, which were as dryly masculine as an empty cigarette case. And yet, when they had broken over the head of this diplomat, the sufferings ofthe soul had brought him to the point of seeing in every- one and everything only pacifist intrigues; for pacifism was for Tuzzi the most intelligible representation of soulful tenderness! Ulrich re- called that Tuzzi had finally come to regard Arnheim's increasingly open efforts concerning the Galician oil fields-indeed, his efforts concerning his own wife-as merely a divertissement whose purpose was to deflect attention from a secret enterprise of a pacifistic nature: so greatly had the events in his house confused Tuzzi! He must have suffered unbearably, and it was understandable: the spiritual passion that he found himself unexpectedly confronting not only offended his concept of honor, just as physical adultery would have done, but struck directly and contemptuously at his very ability to fonn con- cepts, which in older men is the true retirement home of manly dignity.
And Ulrich cheerfully continued his thought aloud: "Apparently the moment his wife's patriotic campaign became the object of pub- lic teasing, Tuzzi completely regained control over his lost mental faculties, as befits a high official. It must have been then at the latest that he recognized all over again that more things are going on in the lap ofworld history than would find room in a woman's lap, and your Congress for World Peace, which turned up like a foundling, will have woken him with a start! " With coarse satisfaction, Ulrich de- picted to himself the murky, ghost-ridden state that must have come first, and then this awakening, which perhaps did not even have to be associated with a feeling of awakening; for the moment the souls of Arnheim and Diotima, wandering around in veils, started to touch down in reality, Tuzzi, freed from every haunting spirit, again found himself in that realm of necessity in which he had spent almost his entire life. "So now he's getting rid of all those friends of his wife's who are saving the world and uplifting the Fatherland? They always were a thorn in~ side! " Ulrich exclaimed with great satisfaction, and turned queryingly to his companion.
Stumm, portly and lost in thought, was still standing in the door- way. "So far as I know, he told his wife that she owed it to him and
From the Posthurrwus Papers · 1235
his position, especially under these changed conditions, to bring the Parallel Campaign to an honorable conclusion. She would get a decoration. But she had to entrust herself to the protection and in- sights of the ministry he had selected for that purpose," he reported conscientiously.
"And so he's made peace with y o u -I mean, with the Ministry of War and Arnheim? "
"It looks that way. Because of the Peace Congress, he seems to have argued with the government for support of the rapid modern- ization of our artillery, and with the Minister of War concerning the political consequences. It is said that he wants to push the necessary laws through Parliament with the help of the German parties, and for that reason is now counseling a German line in domestic politics. Di- otima told me that herself"
'Wait a minute! " Ulrich interrupted. "German line? I've forgotten everything! "
"Quite simple! He always said that everything German was a mis- fortune for us; and now he's saying the opposite. "
Ulrich objected that Section Chief Tuzzi never expressed himself so unambiguously.
"But he does to his wife," Stumm replied. "And between her and me there's a kind of bond ordained by fate. "
'Well, how do things stand between her and Arnheim? " asked Ul- rich, who was at the moment more interested in Diotima than in the concerns of the government. "He no longer needs her; and I suppose that's making his soul suffer! "
Stumm shook his head. "That's apparently not so simple either! " he declared with a sigh.
Up to now he had answered Ulrich's questions conscientiously but without emotion, and perhaps for that very reason relatively sensibly. But since the mention of Diotima and Arnheim, he looked as if he wanted to come out with a quite different story, which seemed to him more important than Tuzzi's finding himself. "You might have long thought that Arnheim had had enough of her," he now began. "But they're Great Souls! It may be that you can understand some- thing about such souls, but they are them! You can't say, was there something between them or was there nothing between them? Today they still talk the way they used to, except that you have the
1236 · THE MAN WITH 0 U T QUALITIES
feeling: now there definitely isn't anything between them: They're always talking in what you might call 'last words'! "
Ulrich, remembering what Bonadea, the practitioner of love, had told him about its theoretician, Diotima, held up to Stumm Stumm's own, more measured statement that Diotima was a manual of love. The General smiled thoughtfully at this. "Perhaps we aren't judging it from a broad enough perspective," he generalized discreetly. "Let me preface this by saying that before her I never heard a woman talk that way; and when she starts talking, it's like having ice bags all over me. Besides, she's doing this less often now; but when it occurs to her even today she speaks, for instance, of this World Peace Con- gress as a 'pan-erotic human experience,' and then I feel myself all of a sudden unmanned by her cleverness. But"- a n d he intensified the significance of his words by a brief pause-"there must be some- thing in it-some need, some so-called characteristic of the age- because even in the War Ministry they're beginning to talk that way now. Since this Congress has turned up, you can hear officers of the General Staff talking about love of peace and love of mankind the way they talk about the Model 7 machine gun or the Model82 medi- cal supply wagon! It's absolutely nauseating! "
"Is that why you called yourself a disappointed specialist in love just now? " Ulrich interjected.
"Yes, my friend. You have to excuse me: I couldn't stand hearing you talk so one-sidedly! But officially I derive great profit from all these things. "
"And you no longer have any enthusiasm for the Parallel Cam- paign, for the celebration of great ideas, and such things? " Ulrich probed out of curiosity.
"Even such an experienced woman as your cousin has had enough of culture," the General replied. "I mean culture for its own sake. Besides, even the greatest idea can't stop your ears from getting boxed! "
"But it can cause someone else's getting his ears boxed next time. "
"That's right," Stumm conceded. "But only ifyou use the spiritfor something, not if you serve it selflessly! " Then he looked up at Ul- rich, curious to enjoy along with him the effect ofhis next words, and lowering his voice expectantly, certain of success, he added: "But even ifI would like to, I can't anymore: I've been removed! "
From the Posthumous Papers · 1237
''I'm impressed! " Ulrich exclaimed, instinctively acknowledging the insight of the military authorities. But then he followed another sudden idea and said quickly: "Tuzzi got you into this mess! "
"Not a bit ofit! " Stumm protested, sure ofhimself.
Up to this point the conversation had taken place in the vicinity of the door, and besides the two men there was a third participant who was waiting for them to finish, staring straight ahead so motionlessly that for him the world stopped between the ears of two pairs of horses. Only his fists in their white cotton gloves, through which the reins ran, surreptitiously moved in irregular, soothing rhythms, be- cause the horses, not quite so accessible to military discipline as peo- ple, were getting more and more bored with waiting, and were pulling impatiently at their harnesses. At last the General com- manded this man to take the carriage to the gate and exercise the horses there until he got in; he then invited Ulrich to walk through the garden on foot, so that he could fill him in properly about what had gone on, without being overheard.
But Ulrich thought he saw vividly what it was all about, and at first didn't let Stumm get a word in. "It makes no difference whether Tuzzi took you out of the game or not," he said, "for in this matter you are, ifyou will excuse me, only a minor figure. What's important is that almost at the very moment when he began to get suspicious on account of the Congress and began to face a difficult and onerous test, he simplified his political as well as his personal situation the quickest way he could. He went to work like a sea captain who hears of a big storm coming and doesn't let himself be influenced by the still-dreaming ocean. Tuzzi has now allied himselfwith what repelled him before--Arnheim, your military policies, the German line-and he would also have allied himselfwith. the efforts ofhis wife if, in the circumstances, it had not been more useful to wreck them. I don't know how I should put it. Is it that life becomes easy if one doesn't bother with emotions but merely keeps to one's goal; or is it a mur- derous enjoyment to calculate with the emotions instead of suffering from them? It seems to me I know what the devil felt when he threw a fistful of salt into life's ambrosia! "
The General was all fired up. "But that's what I told you at the beginning! " he exclaimed. "I only happened to be talking about lies, but genuine malice is, in all its forms, an extraordinarily exciting
1238 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
thing! Even Leinsdorf, for instance, has rediscovered a predilection for realpolitik and says: Realpolitik is the opposite ofwhat you would like to do! "
Ulrich went on: "What makes the difference is that before, Tuzzi was always confused by what Diotima and Arnheim were talking about together; but now it can only make him happy, because the loquacity of people who aren't able to seal off their feelings always gives a third person all sorts of footholds. He no longer needs to lis- ten to it with his inner ear, which he was never good at, but only with the outer, and that's roughly the difference between swallowing a disgusting snake or beating it to death! "
"What? " Stumm asked.
"Swallowing it or beating it to death! "
"No, that bit about the ears! "
"I meant to say: it was fortunate for him that he retreated from the
inward side of feeling to the outward side. But perhaps that might still not make sense to you; it's just an idea I have. "
"No, you put it very well! " Stumm protested. "But why are we using others as examples? Diotima and Arnheim are Great Souls, and for that reason alone it'll never work right!
