It was, of course, rather stranger that he had done so only for what he had labeled the appetitive aspect of emotions, but quite ignored how he could apply an
analogous
idea to the nonappetitive aspect, although at the beginning he had certainly considered them to be of equal importance.
Musil - Man Without Qualities - v2
This distinction between the self-assurance and the uncertainty of emotions is surely not tri- fling.
But if one observes the origin of the emotion in the context of its physiological as well as its social causes, this difference becomes quite natural.
These causes awaken in general terms, as one might say, merely the kind of emotion, without determining it in detail; for corresponding to every drive and every external situation that sets it in motion is a whole bundle of emotions that might satisfy them.
And whatever of this is initially present can be called the nucleus of the emotion that is still between being and nonbeing.
If one wanted to describe this nucleus, however it might be constituted, one could not come up with anything more apt than that it is something that in the course of its development, and independently of a great deal that may or may not be relevant, will develop into the emotion it was in- tended to become.
Thus every emotion has, besides its initial disposi- tion, a destiny as well; and therefore, since what it later develops into is highly dependent on accruing conditions, there is no emotion that would unerringly be itself from the very beginning; indeed, there is perhaps not even one that would indisputably and purely be an emotion.
Put another way, it follows from this working together of disposition and shaping that in the field of the emotions what predominates are not their pure occurrence and its unequivocal ful- fillment, but their progressive approximation and approximate fulfill- ment.
Something similar is also true of everything that requires emotion in order to be understood.
This was the end ofthe observation adduced by Ulrich, which con- tained approximately these explanations in this sequence. Hardly less brief and exaggerated than the assertion that emotion was the smallest part oflove, it could also be said that because it was an emo- tion, it was not to be recognized by emotion. This, moreover, shed
1322 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
some light on the question ofwhy he had called love a moral experi- ence. The three chief term~sposition, shaping, and consolida- tion-were, however, the main cruxes connecting the ordered understanding of the phenomenon of emotions: at least according to a particular fundamental view, to which Ulrich not unwillingly turned whenever he had need of such an explanation. But at this stage, because working this out properly had made greater and more profound claims than he was willing to take upon himself, claims that led into the didactic sphere, he broke offwhat had been begun.
The continuation reached out in two directions. According to the program of the conversation, it ought now to have been the turns of the object and the action of love to be discussed, in order to deter- mine what it was in them that gave rise to their highly dissimilar man- ifestations and to discover what, ultimately, love "really" is. This was why they had talked about the involvement of actions at the very be- ginning of the emotion in determining that emotion, which should be all the more repeatable in regard to what happened to it later. But Agathe asked an additional question: it might have been possible- and she had reasons, ifnot for distrust, at least to be afraid ofit-that the explanation her brother had selected was really valid only for a weak emotion, or for an experience that wanted to have nothing to do with strong ones.
Ulrich replied: "Not in the least! It is precisely when it is at its strongest that an emotion is most secure. In the greatest panic, one is paralyzed or screams instead of fleeing or defending oneself. In the greatest happiness there is often a peculiar pain. Great eagerness, too, 'can only harm,' as one says. And in general it can be maintained that at the highest pitch of feeling the emotions fade and disappear as in a dazzling light. It may be that the entire world of emotions that we know is designed for only a middling kind oflife and ceases at the highest stages, just as it does not begin at the lowest. " An indirect part of this, too, is what you experience when you observe your feel- ings, especially when you examine them closely: they become indis- tinct and are hard to distinguish. But what they lose in clarity of strength they need to gain, at least to some degree, through clarity of attentiveness, and they don't do even that. . . . This was Ulrich's reply, and this obliteration ofthe emotion juxtaposed in self-observa- tion and in its ultimate arousal was not accidental. For in both condi-
From the Posthumous Papers · 1323
tions action is excluded or disturbed; and because the connection be- tween feeling and acting is so close that many consider them a unit, it is not without significance that the two examples are complementary.
But what he avoided saying was precisely what they both knew about it from their own experience, that in actuality a condition of mental effacement and physical helplessness can be combined with the highest stage ofthe emotion oflove. This made him tum the con- versation with some violence away from the significance that acting has for feeling, apparently with the intention of again bringing up the division of love according to objects. At first glance, this rather whim- sical possibility also seemed better suited to bringing order to ambi- guity. For if, to begin with an example, it is blasphemy to label love of God with the same word as love of fishing, this doubtless lies in the differences between the objects this love is aimed at; and the signifi- cance of the object can likewise be measured by other examples. What makes the enormous difference in this relationship of loving something is therefore not so much the love as rather the something. Thus there are objects that make love rich and happy; others that make it poor and sickly, as if it were due entirely to them. There are objects that must requite the love if it is to develop all its power and character, and there are others in which any similar demand would be meaningless from the outset. This decisively separates the con- nection to living beings from the connection to inanimate things; but, even inanimate, the object is the proper adversary of love, and its qualities influence those of love.
The more disproportionate in value this adversary is, the more dis- torted, not to say passionately twisted, love itself becomes. "Com- pare," Ulrich admonished, "the healthy love of young people for each other with the ridiculously exaggerated love of the lonely per- son for a dog, cat, or dickeybird. Observe the passion between man and wife fade away, or become a nuisance like a rejected beggar, ifit is not requited, or not fully requited. Don't forget, either, that in un- equal associations, such as those between parents and children, or masters and servants, between a man and the object of his ambition or his vice, the relationship of requited love is the most uncertain, and without exception the fatal element. Wherever the governing natural exchange between the condition of love and its adversary is imperfect, love degenerates like unhealthy tissue! " . . . This idea
1324 · THE MAN WITH 0 U T QUALITIES
seemed to have something special that attracted him. Ulrich would have expounded on it at length and with numerous examples, but while he was still thinking these over, something unanticipated, which quickened his intended line of thought with expectation like a pleasant fragrance coming across fields, appeared to direct his reflec- tions almost inadvertently toward what in painting is called still life or, according to the contrary but just as fitting procedure of a foreign language, nature morte. "It is somehow ridiculous for a person to prize a well-painted lobster," Ulrich continued without transition, "highly polished grapes, and a hare strung up by the legs, always with a pheasant nearby; for human appetite is ridiculous, and painted ap- petite is even more ridiculous than natural appetite. " They both had the feeling that this association reached back in more profound ways than were evident, and belonged to the continuation of what they had omitted to say about themselves.
For in real still lifes-objects, animals, plants, landscapes, and human bodies conjured up within the sphere of art-something other than what they depict comes out: namely, the mysterious, demoniacal quality of painted life. There are famous pictures of this kind, so both knew what they were talking about; it would, however, be better to speak not of specific pictures but of a kind of picture, which, moreover, does not attract imitators but arises without rules from a flourish of creative activity. Agathe wanted to know how this could be recognized. Ulrich gave a sign refusing to indicate any definitive trait, but said slowly, smiling and without hesitation: "The exciting, vague, infinite echo! "
And Agathe understood him. Somehow one ·has the feeling of being on a beach. Small insects hum. The air bears a hundred meadow scents. Thoughts and feelings stroll busily hand in hand. But before one's eyes lies the unanswering desert of the sea, and what is important on the shore loses itself in the monotonous motion of the endless view. She was thinking how all true stilllifes can arouse this happy, insatiable sadness. The longer you look at them, the clearer it becomes that the things they depict seem to stand on the colorful shore of life, their eyes filled with monstrous things, their tongues paralyzed.
Ulrich responded with another paraphrase. "All still lifes really
From the Posthumous Papers · 1325
paint the world of the sixth day of creation, when God and the world were still by themselves, with no people! " And to his sister's ques- tioning smile he said: "So what they arouse in people would probably be jealousy, secret inquisitiveness, and grief! "
That was almost an aper~u, and not a bad one; he noted it with displeasure, for he was not fond of these ideas machined like bullets and hastily gilded. But he did nothing to correct it, nor did he ask his sister to do so. For the strange resemblance to their own life was an obstacle that kept both of them from adequately expressing them- selves about the uncanny art of the still life or nature morte.
This resemblance played a great role in their lives. Without it being necessary to repeat in detail something reaching back to the shared memories ofchildhood that had been reawakened at their re- union and since then had given a strange cast to all their experiences and most of their conversations, it cannot be passed over in silence that the anesthetized trace of the still life was always to be felt in it. Spontaneously, therefore, and without accepting anything specific that might have guided them, they were led to turn their curiosity toward everything that might be akin to the nature of the still life; and something like the following exchange of words resulted, charg- ing the conversation once more like a flywheel and giving it new energy:
Having to beg for something before an imperturbable counte- nance that grants no response drives a person into a frenzy of de- spair, attack, or worthlessness. On the other hand, it is equally unnerving, but unspeakably beautiful, to kneel before an immovable countenance from which life was extinguished a few hours before, leaving behind an aura like a sunset.
This second example is even a commonplace of the emotions, if ever anything could be said to be! The world speaks of the consecra- tion and dignity of death; the poetic theme of the beloved on his bier has existed for hundreds, if not thousands of years; there is a whole body of related, especially lyric, poetry of death. This obviously has something adolescent about it. Who imagines that death bestows upon him the noblest of beloveds for his very own? The person who lacks the courage or the possibility of having a living one!
A short line leads from this poetic immaturity to the horrors of
1326 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
conjuring up spirits and the dead; a second line leads to the abomina- tion of actual necrophilia; perhaps a third to the pathological oppo- sites of exhibitionism and coercion by violence.
These comparisons may be strange, and in part they are extremely unappetizing. But if one does not allow oneself to be deterred but considers them from, as it were, a medical-psychological viewpoint, there is one element they all have in common: an impossibility, an inability, an absence of natural courage or the courage for a natural life.
They also supply the truth-should one already be embarked on daring comparisons-that silence, fainting, and every kind of incom- pleteness in the adversary is connected with the effect of mental exhaustion.
What is especially repeated in this way, as was mentioned before, is that an adversary who is not on the same level distorts love; it is only necessary to add that it is not infrequently a distorted attitude of the emotion that bids it make a choice at all. And inversely, it would be the responding, living, acting partner who determines the emo- tions and keeps them in order, without which they degenerate into shadowboxing.
But isn't the strange charm of the still life shadowboxing too? In- deed, almost an ethereal necrophilia?
And yet there is also a similar shadowboxing in the glances of happy lovers as an expression oftheir highest feelings. They look into each other's eyes, can't tear themselves away, and pine in an infinite emotion that stretches like rubber!
This was more or less how the exchange of words had begun, but at this point its thread was pretty much left hanging, and for quite a while before it was picked up again. For they had both really looked at each other, and this had caused them to lapse into silence.
But ifan observation is called for to explain this-and ifit is neces- sary to justify such conversations once again and express their sense-perhaps this much could be said, which at this moment Ul- rich understandably left as an unspoken idea: that loving was by no means as simple as nature would have us believe by bestowing on every bungler among her creatures the necessary tools.
BREATHS OF A SUMMER DAY
The sun, meanwhile, had risen higher; they had abandoned the chairs like stranded boats in the shallow shade near the house and were lying on a lawn in the garden, beneath the full depth of the summer day. They had been like this for quite some time, and al- though the circumstances had changed, this change hardly entered their consciousness. Not even the cessation of the conversation had accomplished this; it was left hanging, without a trace of a rift.
A noiseless, streaming snowfall of lusterless blossoms, emanating from a group of trees whose flowering was done, hovered through the sunshine, and the breath that bore it was so gentle that not a leaf stirred. It cast no shadow on the green of the lawn, but this green seemed to darken from within like an eye. Extravagantly leaved by the young summer, the tender trees and bushes standing at the sides or forming the backdrop gave the impression of being amazed spec- tators who, surprised and spellbound in their gay attire, were partici- pating in this funeral procession and celebration of nature. Spring and fall, speech and nature's silence, and the magic of life and death too, mingled in this picture; hearts seemed to stop, removed from their breasts to join the silent procession through the air. "My heart was taken from out my breast," a mystic had said: Agathe remem- bered it.
She knew, too, that she herself had read this saying to Ulrich from one of his books.
That had happened here in the garden, not far from the place where they were now. The recollection took shape. Other maxims too that she had recalled to his mind occurred to her: "Are you it, or are you not it? I know not where I am; nor do I wish to know! " "I have transcended all my abilities but for the dark power! I am in love, and know not in whom! My heart is full oflove and empty oflove at the same time! " Thus echoed in her again the laments of the mystics, into whose hearts God had penetrated as deeply as a thorn that no
1327
1328 • THE MAN WITH0 UT QUALITIES
fingertips can grasp. She had read many such holy laments aloud to Ulrich at that time. Perhaps their rendering now was not exact: memory behaves rather dictatorially with what it wishes to hear; but she understood what was meant, and made a resolve. As it now ap- peared at this moment of flowery procession, the garden had also once looked mysteriously abandoned and animated at the very hour when the mystical confessions Ulrich had in his library had fallen into her hands. Time stood still, a thousand years weighed as lightly as the opening and closing of an eye; she had attained the Millen- nium: perhaps God was even allowing his presence to be felt. And while she felt these things one after the other-although time was not supposed to exist anymore-and while her brother, so that she should not suffer anxiety during this dream, was beside her, although space did not seem to exist any longer either: despite these contra- dictions, the world seemed filled with transfiguration in all its parts.
What she had experienced since could not strike her as other than conversationally temperate by comparison with what had gone before; but what an expansion and reinforcement it gave to these later things as well, although it had lost the near-body-heat warmth of the immediacy of the first inspiration! Under these circumstances Agathe decided to approach with deliberation the delight that had formerly, in an almost dreamlike way, befallen her in this garden. She did not know why she associated it with the name of the Millen- nium. It was a word bright with feeling and almost as palpable as an object, yet it remained opaque to the understanding. That was why she could regard the idea as ifthe Millennium could come to pass at any moment. It is also called the Empire of Love: Agathe knew that too; but only then did it occur to her that both names had been handed down since biblical times and signified the kingdom of God on earth, whose imminent arrival they indicated in a completely real sense. Moreover, Ulrich too, without on that account believing in the Scriptures, sometimes employed these words as casually as his sister, and so she was not at all surprised that she seemed to know exactly how one should behave in the Millennium. ''You must keep quite still," her inspiration told her. ''You cannot leave room for any kind of desire; not even the desire to question. You must also shed the judi- ciousness with which you perform tasks. You must deprive the mind of all tools and not allow it to be used as a tool. Knowledge is to be
From the Posthumous Papers · 1329
discarded by the mind, and willing: you must cast off reality and the longing to turn to it. You must keep to yourself until head, heart, and limbs are nothing but silence. But if, in this way, you attain the high- est selflessness, then finally outer and inner will touch each other as if a wedge that had split the world had popped out! "
Perhaps this had not been premeditated in any clear way. But it seemed to her that if firmly willed, it must be attainable; and she pulled herself together as if she were trying to feign death. But it quickly proved as impossible to completely silence the impulses of thought, senses, and will as it had been in childhood not to commit any sins between confession and communion, and after a few efforts she completely abandoned the attempt. In the process, she discov- ered that she was only superficially holding fast to her purpose, and that her attention had long since slipped away; at the moment, it was occupied with a quite remote problem, a little monster of disaffec- tion. She asked herself in the most foolish way, reveling in the very foolishness of it: 'W as I really ever violent, mean, hateful, and un- happy? " A man without a name came to mind, his name missing be- cause she bore it herself and had carried it away with her. Whenever she thought of him, she felt her name like a scar; but she no longer harbored any hatred for Hagauer, and now repeated her question with the somewhat melancholy obstinacy with which one gazes after a wave that has ebbed away. Where had the desire come from to do him mortal harm? She had almost lost it in her distraction, and ap- peared to think it was still to be found somewhere nearby. Moreover, Undner might really be seen as a substitution for this desire for hos- tility; she asked herself this, too, and thought of him fleetingly. Per- haps she found aUthe things that had happened to her astonishing, young people always being more disposed to be surprised at how much they have already had to feel than older people, who have become accustomed to the changeability of life's passions and cir- cumstances, like changes in the weather. But what could have so af- fected Agathe as this: that in the very moment of sudden change in her life, as its passions and conditions took flight, the stone-clear sky reached again into the marvelous river of emotions-in which igno- rant youth sees its reflection as both natural and sublime-and lifted from it enigmatically that state out of which she had just awakened.
So her thoughts were still under the spell of the procession of
1330 ·THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
flowers and death; they were, however, no longer moving with it to its rhythms of mute solemnity; Agathe was "tliinking flittingly," as it might be called in contrast to the frame of mind in which life lasts "a thousand years" without a wing beating. This difference between two frames of mind was quite clear to her, and she recognized with some amazement how often just this difference, or something closely related to it, had already been touched on in her conversations with Ulrich. Involuntarily she turned toward him and, without losing sight of the spectacle unfolding around them, took a deep breath and asked: "Doesn't it seem to you, too, that in a moment like this, every- thing else seems feeble by comparison? "
These few words dispersed the cloudy weight of silence and mem- ory. For Ulrich, too, had been looking at the foam of blossoms sweeping by on their aimless journey; and because his thoughts and memories were tuned to the same string as those of his sister, he needed no further introduction to be told what would answer even her unspoken thoughts. He slowly stretched and replied: 'Tve been wanting to tell you something for a long time-even in the state when we were speaking of the meaning of stilllifes, and every day, really-even if it doesn't hit the center of the target: there are, to draw the contrast sharply, two ways of living passionately, and two sorts of passionate people. In one case, you let out a howl of rage or misery or enthusiasm each time like a child, and get rid ofyour feel- ings in a trivial swirl of vertigo. In that case, and it is the usual one, emotion is ultimately the everyday intermediary of everyday life; and the more violent and easily aroused it is, the more this kind of life is reminiscent of the restlessness in a cage of wild animals at feeding time, when the meat is carried past the bars, and the satiated fatigue that follows. Don't you think? The other way of being passionate and acting is this: You hold to yourself and give no impetus whatever to the action toward which every emotion is straining. In this case, life becomes like a somewhat ghostly dream in which the emotions rise to the treetops, to the peaks of towers, to the apex of the sky! It's more than likely that that's what we were thinking of when we were pretending to discuss paintings and nothing but paintings. "
Agathe propped herself up, curious. "Didn't you once say," she asked, "that there are two fundamentally different possibilities for living and that they resemble different registers of emotion? One
From the Posthumous Papers · 1331
would be 'worldly' emotion, which never finds peace or fulfillment; the other . . . I don't know whether you gave it a name, but it would probably have to be the emotion of a 'mystical' feeling that resonates constantly but never achieves 'full reality. ' " Although she spoke hesitantly, she had raced ahead too quickly, and finished with some embarrassment.
But Ulrich recognized quite well what he seemed to have said; he swallowed as if he had something too hot in his mouth, and at- tempted a smile. He said: "Ifthat's what I meant, I'll have to express myself less pretentiously now! So I'll simply use a familiar example and call the two kinds of passionate existence the appetitive and, as its counterpart, the nonappetitive, even if it sounds awkward. For in every person there is a hunger, and it behaves like a greedy animal; yet it is not a hunger but something ripening sweetly, like grapes in the autumn sun, free from greed and satiety. Indeed, in every one of his emotions, the one is like the other. "
"In other words, a vegetable-perhaps even a vegetarian--dispo- sition alongside the animal one? " There was a trace of amusement and teasing in this question of Agathe's.
"Almost! " Ulrich replied. "Perhaps the animalistic and the vegeta- tive, understood as the basic opposition of desires, would even strike a philosopher as the most profound discovery! But would that make me want to be one? All I would venture is simply what I have said, and especially what I said last, that both kinds of passionate being have a model, perhaps even their origin, in every emotion. These two aspects can be distinguished in every emotion," he continued. But oddly, he then went on to speak only of what he understood by the appetitive. It urges to action, to motion, to enjoyment; through its effect, emotion is transformed into a work, or into an idea and con- viction, or into a disappointment. All these are ways in which it dis- charges, but they can also be forms of recharging, for in this manner the emotion changes, uses itself up, dissipates in its success and comes to an end; or it encapsulates itself in this success and trans- forms its vital energy into stored energy that gives up the vital energy later, and occasionally often with multiple interest. "And doesn't this explain that the energetic activity ofour everyday feelings and its fee- bleness, which you were so pleasantly sighing about, don't make any great difference to us, even if it is a profound difference? "
1332 • THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
''You may be all too right! " Agathe agreed. "My God, this entire work of the emotions, its worldly wealth, this wanting and rejoicing, activity and unfaithfulness, all only because of the existence of this drive! Including everything you experience and forget, think and passionately desire, and yet forget again. It's as beautiful as a tree full of apples of every color, but it's also formlessly monotonous, like ev- erything that ripens and falls the same way each year! "
Ulrich nodded at his sister's answer, which exuded a breath ofim- petuousness and renunciation. "The world has the appetitive part of the emotions to thank for all its works and all beauty and progress, but also all the unrest, and ultimately all its senseless running around! " he corroborated. "Do you know, by the way, that 'appeti- tive' means simply the share that our innate drives have in every emotion? Therefore," he added, "what we have said is that it is the drives that the world has to thank for beauty and progress. "
"And its chaotic restlessness," Agathe echoed.
"Usually that's exactly what one says; so it seems to me useful not to ignore the other! For that man should thank for his progress pre- cisely what really belongs on the level of the animal is, at the very least, unexpected. " He smiled as he said this. He, too, had propped himself up on his elbow, and he turned completely toward his sister, as ifhe wished to enlighten her, but he went on speaking hesitantly, like a person who first wants to be instructed by the words he is searching for. ''You were right to speak of an animalistic disposition," he said. "Doubtless there are at its core the same few instincts as the animal has. This is quite clear in the major emotions: in hunger, anger, joy, willfulness, or love, the soul's veil barely covers the most naked desire! "
It seemed that he wanted to continue in the same vein. But al- though the conversation-which had issued from a dream of nature, the sight of the parade of blossoms that still seemed to be drifting through the middle of their minds with a peculiar uneventfulness- did not permit any misconstruing of the fateful question of the rela- tion of brother and sister to each other, it was rather that from beginning to end the conversation was under the influence of this idea and dominated by the surreptitious notion of a "happening without anything happening," and took place in a mood of gentle af-
From the Posthumous Papers · 1333
fliction; although this was the way it was, finally the conversation had led to the opposite of such a pervasive idea and its emotional mood: to the point where Ulrich could not avoid emphasizing the construc- tive activity of strong drives alongside their disturbing activity. Such a clear indication of the drives, including the instinctive, and of the active person in general-for it signified that too-might well be part of an "Occidental, Western, Faustian life feeling," as it was called in the language of books, in contrast to everything that, according to the same self-fertilizing language, was supposed to be "Oriental" or "Asiatic. " He recalled these patronizing vogue words. But it was not his or his sister's intention, nor would it have been in keeping with their habits, to give a misleading significance to an experience that moved them deeply by employing such adventitious, poorly grounded notions; rather, everything they discussed with each other was meant as true and real, even if it may have arisen from walking on clouds.
That was why Ulrich had found it amusing to substitute an expla- nation of a scientific kind for the caressing fog of the emotions; and in truth he did so just because-even if it appeared to abet the "Faustian"- t h e mind faithful to nature promised to exclude every- thing that was excessively fanciful. At least he had sketched out the basis for such an explanation.
It was, of course, rather stranger that he had done so only for what he had labeled the appetitive aspect of emotions, but quite ignored how he could apply an analogous idea to the nonappetitive aspect, although at the beginning he had certainly considered them to be of equal importance. This did not come about without a reason. Whether the psychological and biological analysis of this aspect of emotion seemed harder to him, or whether he con- sidered it in toto only a bothersome aid-both might have been the case--what chiefly influenced him was something else, of which he had, moreover, shown a glimpse since the moment when Agathe's sigh had betrayed the painful yet joyous opposition between the past restless passions of life and the apparently imperishable ones that were at home in the timeless stillness under the stream of blossoms. For-to repeat what he had already repeated in various ways-not only are two dispositions discernible in every single emotion, through which, and in its own fashion, the emotion can be fleshed
1334 · THE MAN WITH0 UT QUALITIES
out to the point of passion, but there are also two sorts of people, or different periods of destiny within each person, which differ in that one or the other disposition predominates.
He saw a great distinction here. People of the one sort, as already mentioned, reach out briskly for everything and set about every- thing; they rush over obstacles like a torrent, or foam into a new course; their passions are strong and constantly changing, and the result is a strongly segmented career that leaves nothing behind but its own stormy passage. This was the sort of person Ulrich had had in mind with the concept ofthe appetitive when he had wanted to make it one major notion of the passionate life; for the other sort of person is, in contrast to this, nothing less than the corresponding opposite of the first kind: the second is timid, pensive, vague; has a hard time making up its mind; is full of dreams and longings, and internalized in its passion. Sometimes-in ideas they were not now discussing- Ulrich also called this sort of person "contemplative," a word that is ordinarily used in another sense and that perhaps has merely the tepid meaning of "thoughtful"; but for him it had more than this or- dinary meaning, was indeed equivalent to the previously mentioned Oriental/non-Faustian. Perhaps a major distinction in life was marked in this contemplative aspect, and especially in conjunction with the appetitive as its opposite: this attracted Ulrich more vitally than a didactic rule. But it was also a satisfaction to him, this elemen- tary possibility of explanation, that all such highly composite and de- manding notions of life could be reduced to a dual classification found in every emotion.
Of course it was also clear to him that both sorts of people under discussion could signify nothing other than a man "without quali- ties," in contrast to one who has every quality that a man can show. The one sort could also be called a nihilist, who dreams of God's dreams, in opposition to the activist, who in his impatient mode of conduct is, however, also a kind of God-dreamer and nothing less than a realist, who bestirs himself, clear about the world and active in it. "Why, then, aren't we realists? " Ulrich asked himself. Neither of them was, neither he nor she: their ideas and their conduct had long left no doubt of that; but they were nihilists and activists, sometimes one and sometimes the other, whichever happened to come up.
FURTHER SKETCHES
A MENTALITY DIRECTED TOWARD THE SIGNIFICANT, AND THE BEGINNING OF A CONVERSATION ON THE SUBJECT
If you speak of the double-sided and disorderly way the human being is constituted, the assumption is that you think you can come up with a better one.
A person who is a believer can do that, but Ulrich was not a be- liever. On the contrary: he suspected faith of inclining to the over- hasty, and whether the content of this spiritual attitude was an earthly inspiration or a supra-earthly notion, even as a mechanism for the for- ward movement of the soul it reminded him of the impotent attempts of the domestic chicken to fly. Only Agathe caused him to make an ex- ception; he claimed to envy in her that she was able to believe precipi- tately and with ardor, and he sometimes felt the femininity of her lack of rational discretion as physically as he did one of those other sexual differentiations, knowledge of which arouses a dazzling bliss. He for- gave her this unpredictability even when it really seemed to him un- forgivable, as in her association with the ridiculous person of Professor Lindner, about whom there was much that his sister did not tell him. He felt the reticence of her bodily warmth beside him and was re- minded of a passionate assertion which had it that no person is beauti- ful or ugly, good or bad, significant or soul-destroying in himself, but his value always depends on whether one believes in him or is skepti- cal of him. That was an extravagant observation, full of magnanimity but also undermined by vagueness, which allowed all sorts of infer-
1336 • THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
ences; and the hidden question of whether this observation was not ul- timately traceable to that billy goat of credulity, this fellow Lindner, of whom he knew little more than his shadow, caused a wave to eddy up jealously in the rapid underground river of his thoughts. But as Ulrich thought about this, he could not recall whether it had been Agathe who had made this observation or he himself; the one seemed as possi- ble as the other. As a result of this heady confusion, the wave of jeal- ousy ebbed over all spiritual and physical distinctions in a delicate foam, and he would have liked to voice what his real reservations were about every predisposition to faith. To believe something and to be- lieve in something are spiritual conditions that derive their power from another condition, which they make use of or squander; but this other condition not only was, as seemed most obvious, the solid condition of knowledge but could, on the contrary, be an even more ephemeral state than that of faith itself: and that everything that moved his sister and him pointed precisely in this direction urged Ulrich to speak out, but his ideas were still far from the prospect of pledging himself to it, and therefore he said nothing, but rather changed the subject before he reached that point.
Even a man of genius bears within himself a standard that could em- power him to the judgment that in some totally inexplicable fashion things in the world go backward as well as forward; but who is such a man? Originally Ulrich had not had the slightest desire to think about it, but the problem would not let him go, he had no idea why.
"One must separate genius in general from genius as an individual superlative," he began, but still had not found the right expression. "I sometimes used to think that the only two important species of humans were the geniuses and the blockheads, which don't intermingle very well. But people of the species 'genius,' or people of genius, don't actu- ally need to be geniuses. The genius one gapes at is actually born in the marketplace of the vanities; his splendor is radiated in the mirrors of the stupidity that surround him; it is always connected with something that bestows on it one merit the more, like money or medals: no matter how great his deserts, his appearance is really that of stuffed genius. "
Agathe interrupted him, curious about the other: "Fine, but genius itself? "
"If you pull out of the stuffed scarecrow what is just straw, it would probably have to be what's left," Ulrich said, but then bethought himself and added distrustfully: 'Til never really know what genius is, or who should decide! "
"A senate ofwise men! " Agathe said, smiling. She knew her brother's often quite idiosyncratic way of thinking; he had plagued her with it in
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 3 3 7
many conversations. Her words were meant to remind him rather hypo- critically of the famous demand of philosophy, which had not been fol- lowed in two thousand years, that the governance of the world ought to be entrusted to an academy of the wisest men.
Ulrich nodded. "That goes back to Plato. And if it could have been brought about, presumably a Platonist would have followed him as leader of the reigning spirit until one day-God knows why-the Ploti- nists would have been seen as the true philosophers. That's the way it is, too, with what passes for genius. And what would the Plotinists have made of the Platonists, and before that the Platonists of them, if not what every truth does with error: mercilessly root it out? God proceeded cautiously when he directed that an elephant bring forth only another elephant, and a cat a cat: but a philosopher produces a blind adherent and a counterphilosopher! "
"So God himself had to decide what genius was! " Agathe exclaimed impatiently, not without feeling a soft, proud shudder at this idea and awareness of its precipitate/childish/vehemence.
"I fear it bores him! " Ulrich said. "At least the Christian God. He's out for hearts, without caring whether they have a lot of understanding or a little. Moreover, I believe that there's a lot to be said for the church's contempt for the genius oflaymen. "
Agathe waited a bit; then she simply replied: "You used to have a dif- ferent opinion. "
"I could answer you that the heathen belief that all ideas that move people rested beforehand in the divine spirit must have been quite beautiful; but it's hard to think of divine emanations, since among the things that mean a lot to us there are ideas called guncotton or tires," Ulrich countered at once. But then he seemed to waver and to have grown tired of this jocular tone, and suddenly he revealed to his sister what she wanted to know. He said: "I have always believed, and almost as ififs my nature to, that the spirit, because one feels its power in one- self, also imposes the obligation to make it carry weight in the world. I have believed that to live meaningfully is the only reward, and have wanted never to do anything that was indifferent. And the consequence of this for culture in general may seem an arrogant distortion but is unavoidably this: Only genius is bearable, and average people have to be squeezed to either produce it or allow it to prevail! Mixed in with a thou- sand other things, something of this is also part of the general persua- sion: It's really humiliating for me to have to respond that I never could say what genius was, and don't know now either, although just now I indicated casually that I would ascribe this quality less to a particular individual than to a human modality. "
1338 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
He didn't seem to mean it so seriously, and Agathe carefully kept the conversation going when he fell silent. "Don't you yourself find it pretty easy to speak ofan acrobat with genius? " she asked. "It seems that today the difficult, the unusual, and whatever is especially successful ordinar- ily figure in the notion. "
"It began with singers; and if a singer who sings higher than the rest is called a genius, why not someone who jumps higher? By this reasoning you end up with the genius of a pointing dog; and people consider men who won't let themselves be intimidated by anything to be more worthy than a man who can tear his vocal cords out of his throat. Evidently, what's vague here is a twofold use oflanguage: aside from the genius of success, which can be made to cover everything, so that even the stupid- est joke can be, 'in its fashion,' a work of genius, there is also the sub- limity, dignity, or significance of what succeeds: in other words, some kind of ranking of genius. " A cheerful expression had replaced the seri- ousness in Ulrich's eyes, so that Agathe asked what came next, which he seemed to be suppressing.
"It occurs to me that I once discussed the question of genius with our friend Stumm," Ulrich related, "and he insisted on the usefulness ofdis- tinguishing between a military and a civilian notion of genius. But to grasp this distinction, I'll probably have to tell you something about the world of the Imperial and Royal military. The companies of engineers;·• he went on, "are there to build fortifications and for similar work, and are made up of soldiers and subalterns and officers who don't have any particular future unless they pass a 'Higher Engineer[/Genius] Course,' after which they land on the 'Engineering[/Genius] Staff. ' 'So in the military, the Engineer [/Genius] Staffer stands above the engineer [/genius],' says Stumm von Bordwehr. 'And at the very top, of course, there is the General Staff, because that is absolutely the cleverest thing God has done. ' So although Stumm always enjoys playing the antimili- tarist, he tried to convince me that the proper usage of'genius' can really be found only in the military and is graded in steps, while all civilian chatter about genius is regrettably lacking in such order. And the way he twists everything so that you really see to the bottom of truth, it wouldn't be at all a bad idea for us to follow his primer! "
But what Ulrich added to this concerning the dissimilar notions of ge- nius was aimed less at the highest degree ofgenius than at its basic form, thesignificant, whose doubtfulness seemed to him more painful and confusing. It seemed to him easier to arrive at a judgment about what
•The German Genie means both "genius" and "engineer. "-TRANs.
From the Posthumous Papers · 1339
was exceptionally significant than about the significant in general. The first is merely a step beyond something whose value is already unques- tioned, that is, something which is always grounded in a more or less traditional order of spiritual values; the latter, on the other hand, calls for taking the first step into an indefinite and infinite space, which offers almost no prospect of allowing a cogent distinction to be made between what is significant and what is not. So it is natural for language instead to have stuck with the genius of degree and success rather than with the genius value ofwhat succeeds; yet it is also understandable that the cus- tom that has developed of calling any aptitude that is hard to imitate "genius" is connected with a bad conscience, and of course none other than that of a dropped task or a forgotten duty. This scandalized the two of them in a joking and incidental way, but they went on speaking seri- ously. "This is clearest," Ulrich said to his sister, "when, although it mostly happens only by accident, one becomes conscious of an external sign to which scant attention is paid: namely, our habit of pronouncing the noun Genie and its adjective, genial, differently, and not in a way to indicate that the adjective derives from the noun. "
As happens to everyone who is made aware of a practice to which scant attention is paid, Agathe was somewhat surprised.
"After my conversation with Stumm that time, I looked it up in Grimm's dictionary," Ulrich offered by way of excuse. "The military word Genie-in other words, the engineering soldier-came to us, of course, like many military expressions, from the French. In French, the art of the engineer is called le genie, and connected with it is geniecorps, anne du genie, and Ecole du genie, as well as the English engine, the French engin, and the Italian ingenio macchina, the artful tool; the whole clan goes back to the late Latin ingenium, whose hard g became in its travels a soft g and whose fundamental connotation is dexterity and inventiveness: a summation, like the now rather old and creaky expres- sion, 'arts and crafts,' with which official communications and inscrip- tions still sometimes bless us. From there a decayed path also leads to the soccer player of genius, indeed even to the hunting dog of genius or the steeplechase horse of genius, but it would be consistent to pro- nounce adjective and noun the same way. For there is a second Genie and genial, whose meaning is likewise to be found in every language and does not derive from genium but from genius, the more-than-human, or
at least, in reverence for mind and spirit, the culmination of what is human. I hardly need point out that for centuries these two meanings have been dreadfully confused and mixed up everywhere, in language as in life, and not only in German; but, characteristically, in German most of all, so that not being able to keep genius and ingenious apart can be
1340 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
called a particularly German problem. Moreover, it has in German a his- tory that in one place affects me greatly-"
Agathe had followed this extended explanation, as is usual in such cases, with some mistrust and a readiness for boredom, while waiting for a turn that would free her from this uncertainty. "Would you consider me a linguistic grouch if I were to propose that from now on we both start using the expression 'inspiriting'? '' Ulrich asked.
A smile and a movement of her head spontaneously indicated his sis- ter's resistance to this archaic term, which has fallen out of use and now bears the scent of old trunks and costumes.
"It is an archaic word," Ulrich admitted, "but this would be a good occasion to use it! And as I said, I did read up on it. If it doesn't bother you to do this in the street, let me have a look at what else I can tell you about it. " With a smile, he pulled a piece ofpaper from his pocket and deciphered various notes he had made in pencil. "Goethe," he an- nounced. " 'Here I saw regret and penitence pushed to caricature, and because all passion replaces genius, really inspiriting. ' In another place: 'Your inspiriting composure often advanced to meet me with magnifi- cent enthusiasm. ' Wieland: 'The fruit of inspiriting hours. ' Holderlin: 'The Greeks are still a beautiful, inspiriting, and happy people. ' And you'll find a similar 'inspiriting' in Schleiermacher, in his earlier years. But already with Immermann you find 'inspired economy' and 'inspired debauchery. ' So there you already have the disconcerting transforma- tion of the notion into the· kettle-patching and slovenly, which is how 'inspired' is understood today. '' He turned the piece of paper this way and that, stuck it back in his pocket, and then took it out once more for assistance. "But its prehistory and preconditions are found earlier," he added. "Kant was already criticizing 'the fashionable tone ofa geniuslike freedom in thinking' and speaks with annoyance of 'genius-men' and 'genius-apes. ' What annoyed him so much is a respectable piece of Ger- man intellectual history. For before him as well as after him people in Germany talked, partly ecstatically, partly disapprovingly, of 'genius urge,' 'genius fever,' 'storm of genius,' 'leaps of genius,' 'calls of genius,' and 'screams of genius,' and even philosophy's fingernails were notal- ways clean, least of all when it believed it could suck the independent
truth from its fingers. "
"And how does Kant decide what a genius is? '' Agathe asked. All she
associated with his famous name was that she remembered having heard that he surpassed everything.
"What he emphasized in the nature of genius was the creative ele- ment and originality, the 'spirit of originality,' which has remained ex- traordinarily influential up to the present day,'' Ulrich replied. "Goethe
From the Posthumous Papers · 1341
later was relying on Kant when he defined the geniative with the words: 'to have many objects present and easily relate the most remote ones to each other: this free of egotism and self-complacency. ' But that's a view that was very much designed for the achievements of reason, and it leads to the rather gymnastic conception of genius we have succumbed to. "
Agathe asked with laughing disbelief: "So now do you know what ge- nius and geniative are? "
Ulrich took the joshing with a shrug of his shoulders. "Anyway, we've found that among Germans, ifwe don't see the strictly Kantian 'spirit of originality,' we feel that eccentric and conspicuous behavior indicates genius," he said.
49
GENERAL VON STUMM ON GENIUS
The conversation with Stumm that Ulrich mentioned had occurred at a chance meeting and had been brief. The General seemed worried; he did not indicate why, but he began to grumble over the nonsense that in civilian life there were so many geniuses. "What is a genius, really? " he asked. "No one has ever called a general a genius! "
"Except Napoleon," Ulrich inteljected.
"Maybe him," Stumm admitted. "But that appears to happen more because his whole evolution was paradoxical! "
Ulrich didn't know what to say to this.
"At your cousin's, I had lots of opportunity to meet people who are designated as geniuses," Stumm declared pensively, and went on: "I be- lieve I can tell you what a genius is: a person who not only enjoys great success but also, in some sense, has to get hold of his subject backward! " And Stumm immediately expounded on this, using the great examples of psychoanalysis and the theory of relativity:
"In the old days it was also often true that you didn't know some- thing," he began in his characteristic fashion. "But you didn't think any- thing of it, and ifit didn't happen during an examination it didn't harm anyone. But suddenly this was turned into the so-called unconscious, and now everyone's unconscious is the size of all the things he doesn't know, and it's much more important to know why you don't know some- thing than what it is you don't know! Humanly speaking, this has, as one says, turned things topsy-turvy, and it's apparently a lot simpler too. ''
1342 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
Since Ulrich still did not react, Stumm went on:
"But the man who invented that also established the following law: You will remember that in the regiment one used to admonish the younger men when there had been too much barnyard talk by telling them: 'Don't say it, just do it! ' And what's the opposite of that? In some sense, the challenge: If, because you're a civilized human being, you can't do what you want, at least talk it over with a learned man; for he will convince you that everything that exists rests on something that ought not to exist! Of course I can't judge this from a scientific point of view, but in any case you can see from this that the new rules are abso- lutely the reverse ofthose that prevailed before, and the man who intro- duced them is praised today as a top-notch genius! "
Since Ulrich was apparently still not convinced, and Stumm himself did not feel he had got where he wanted, he repeated his argument using "relativity theory," as he conceived of it: "Like me, you learned at school that everything that moves happens in 'space and time,' " was where his thinking started. "But what is it like in practice? Permit me to say something quite ordinary: You are supposed to be with the front of your squadron at a particular place on the map at such and such a time. Or when you get the order, you're supposed to bring your cavalry from a formation to form a new front, which bears no relation at all to the straight lines on the exercise field. It happens in space and time, but it never happens without incident and never works out the way you want. I, at least, received a hundred reprimands so long as I was with the troops, I tell you that candidly. Even at school I always, so to speak, re- sisted when I had to calculate a mechanical motion in space and time on the blackboard. So I found it a real inspiration of genius the instant I heard that someone had finally discovered that space and time are quite relative concepts, which change at every moment whenever they are put to serious use, although since the creation of the world they have been regarded as the solidest thing there is. That's why this man, and in my view quite rightly, is at least as famous as the other. But it can also be said of him that he's tethered the horse by its tail, which, at least today, is what more or less amounts to the fixed main idea of what a genius is! And that's what I would like to make you see, ifyou place any value on my experience," Stumm concluded.
Ulrich, in his partiality for him, had conceded that the most important scientific teachings ofthe present had their eccentric aspects, or at least showed no fear of them. It might not mean much; but if one is so in- clined, a sign can be seen in this as well. Fearless showiness, a predispo- sition for the paradoxical, self-starting ambition, surprise, and revision of everything on the basis of contradictory details that previously had
From the Posthumous Papers · z343
hardly been noticed, all this had doubtless been part of the fashion in thinking for some time, for with their great achievements these things had just begun to crown precisely those fields where one would not have expected it and where one had been accustomed to the steady adminis- tration and constant increase of an enormous intellectual estate.
"But why? " Stumm asked. "How did it happen? "
Ulrich shrugged his shoulders. He thought of his own abandoned sci- ence, the broaching of its basic questions, their being skewered when their logic was checked out. It had not been much different with other sciences; they felt their edifices shaken through discoveries they had a hard time accommodating. That was the dispensation and the violence of truth. Nevertheless, it still seemed possible to speak of a boredom with everyday, never-ending progress, which up to now, and for the longest time, had been the ideal ofreal, silent faith amid the racket ofall convictions. There was no denying a creeping doubt in all fields about the rightness of the bare, exact process of taking one step before an- other. That, too, might be a cause. Finally, Ulrich answered: "Perhaps it's simply the same as when you get tired: you need a prospect that re- freshes you, or a shove in the back ofyour knees. "
"Why not sit down instead? '' Stumm asked.
"I don't know. In any event, after the longish calm flowering of the mind, you prefer to flirt with revolution. Some such thing seems to be in the offing. By way of comparison, you might perhaps think of the pre- vailing disjointedness in the arts. I don't understand much about politics, but perhaps sometime in the future someone will say that this intellec- tual restlessness already held signs of a revolution. "
"The hell you say! " Stumm exclaimed, arts and revolutionary unrest reminding him of his impressions at Diotima's.
"Perhaps only as a transition to a new stability to come! " Ulrich said soothingly.
That made no difference to Stumm. "Since that tactless business in front of the War Minister I've avoided Diotima's parties," he related. "Don't get me wrong, I have no objection whatever to all those geniuses we've been talking about, who are already preserved in amber-or if I do, it's only that the way they're revered seems to me exaggerated. But I really have it in for the rest of that rabble! " And after a brief but obvi- ously bitter moment he brought himself to ask the question: "Tell me honestly, is genius really so valuable? ''
Ulrich had to smile, and disregarding what he had said before, he now mentioned the enormous-he even called it the magically simpleminded-sense of release that one recognized in the solution to any kind of problem that the most talented and even the greatest spe-
1344 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
cialists had vainly striven to find. Genius is the single unconditional human value, it is human value, he said. Without the involvement of genius there would not even be the animal group ofthe higher primates. In his eagerness, he even passionately praised that genius which he was later to call merely the genius of degree and dexterity, to the extent that it was not fundamentally genius by nature.
Stumm nodded with satisfaction. "I know: the invention of fire and the wheel, gunpowder and printing, and so on! In short, from log canoe to logarithms! " But after he had demonstrated his sympathy he went on: "Now let me tell you something, and it's from the conversations at Di- otima's: 'From Sophocles to Feuermaull' Some young dolt once shouted that in complete seriousness! "
"What bothers you about Sophocles? "
"Ah! I don't know anything about him. But Feuermaul! And here you are claiming that genius is an unconditional value. "
"The touch of genius is the only moment in which that ugly and obdu- rate pupil of God, man, is beautiful and candid! " Ulrich intensified his statement. "But I did not say that it's easy to decide what's genius and what merely fantasy. I'm just saying that wherever a new value really enters the human game, genius is behind it! "
"How can you know whether something is 'really a new value'? " Ulrich hesitated, smiling.
"And then, in any case, whether the value really is worth anything! "
Stumm added with curiosity and concern.
"You often feel it at first sight," Ulrich said.
'Tve been told that people have been mistaken at first sight! "
The conversation faltered. Stumm was perhaps preparing a funda-
mentally different question.
This was the end ofthe observation adduced by Ulrich, which con- tained approximately these explanations in this sequence. Hardly less brief and exaggerated than the assertion that emotion was the smallest part oflove, it could also be said that because it was an emo- tion, it was not to be recognized by emotion. This, moreover, shed
1322 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
some light on the question ofwhy he had called love a moral experi- ence. The three chief term~sposition, shaping, and consolida- tion-were, however, the main cruxes connecting the ordered understanding of the phenomenon of emotions: at least according to a particular fundamental view, to which Ulrich not unwillingly turned whenever he had need of such an explanation. But at this stage, because working this out properly had made greater and more profound claims than he was willing to take upon himself, claims that led into the didactic sphere, he broke offwhat had been begun.
The continuation reached out in two directions. According to the program of the conversation, it ought now to have been the turns of the object and the action of love to be discussed, in order to deter- mine what it was in them that gave rise to their highly dissimilar man- ifestations and to discover what, ultimately, love "really" is. This was why they had talked about the involvement of actions at the very be- ginning of the emotion in determining that emotion, which should be all the more repeatable in regard to what happened to it later. But Agathe asked an additional question: it might have been possible- and she had reasons, ifnot for distrust, at least to be afraid ofit-that the explanation her brother had selected was really valid only for a weak emotion, or for an experience that wanted to have nothing to do with strong ones.
Ulrich replied: "Not in the least! It is precisely when it is at its strongest that an emotion is most secure. In the greatest panic, one is paralyzed or screams instead of fleeing or defending oneself. In the greatest happiness there is often a peculiar pain. Great eagerness, too, 'can only harm,' as one says. And in general it can be maintained that at the highest pitch of feeling the emotions fade and disappear as in a dazzling light. It may be that the entire world of emotions that we know is designed for only a middling kind oflife and ceases at the highest stages, just as it does not begin at the lowest. " An indirect part of this, too, is what you experience when you observe your feel- ings, especially when you examine them closely: they become indis- tinct and are hard to distinguish. But what they lose in clarity of strength they need to gain, at least to some degree, through clarity of attentiveness, and they don't do even that. . . . This was Ulrich's reply, and this obliteration ofthe emotion juxtaposed in self-observa- tion and in its ultimate arousal was not accidental. For in both condi-
From the Posthumous Papers · 1323
tions action is excluded or disturbed; and because the connection be- tween feeling and acting is so close that many consider them a unit, it is not without significance that the two examples are complementary.
But what he avoided saying was precisely what they both knew about it from their own experience, that in actuality a condition of mental effacement and physical helplessness can be combined with the highest stage ofthe emotion oflove. This made him tum the con- versation with some violence away from the significance that acting has for feeling, apparently with the intention of again bringing up the division of love according to objects. At first glance, this rather whim- sical possibility also seemed better suited to bringing order to ambi- guity. For if, to begin with an example, it is blasphemy to label love of God with the same word as love of fishing, this doubtless lies in the differences between the objects this love is aimed at; and the signifi- cance of the object can likewise be measured by other examples. What makes the enormous difference in this relationship of loving something is therefore not so much the love as rather the something. Thus there are objects that make love rich and happy; others that make it poor and sickly, as if it were due entirely to them. There are objects that must requite the love if it is to develop all its power and character, and there are others in which any similar demand would be meaningless from the outset. This decisively separates the con- nection to living beings from the connection to inanimate things; but, even inanimate, the object is the proper adversary of love, and its qualities influence those of love.
The more disproportionate in value this adversary is, the more dis- torted, not to say passionately twisted, love itself becomes. "Com- pare," Ulrich admonished, "the healthy love of young people for each other with the ridiculously exaggerated love of the lonely per- son for a dog, cat, or dickeybird. Observe the passion between man and wife fade away, or become a nuisance like a rejected beggar, ifit is not requited, or not fully requited. Don't forget, either, that in un- equal associations, such as those between parents and children, or masters and servants, between a man and the object of his ambition or his vice, the relationship of requited love is the most uncertain, and without exception the fatal element. Wherever the governing natural exchange between the condition of love and its adversary is imperfect, love degenerates like unhealthy tissue! " . . . This idea
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seemed to have something special that attracted him. Ulrich would have expounded on it at length and with numerous examples, but while he was still thinking these over, something unanticipated, which quickened his intended line of thought with expectation like a pleasant fragrance coming across fields, appeared to direct his reflec- tions almost inadvertently toward what in painting is called still life or, according to the contrary but just as fitting procedure of a foreign language, nature morte. "It is somehow ridiculous for a person to prize a well-painted lobster," Ulrich continued without transition, "highly polished grapes, and a hare strung up by the legs, always with a pheasant nearby; for human appetite is ridiculous, and painted ap- petite is even more ridiculous than natural appetite. " They both had the feeling that this association reached back in more profound ways than were evident, and belonged to the continuation of what they had omitted to say about themselves.
For in real still lifes-objects, animals, plants, landscapes, and human bodies conjured up within the sphere of art-something other than what they depict comes out: namely, the mysterious, demoniacal quality of painted life. There are famous pictures of this kind, so both knew what they were talking about; it would, however, be better to speak not of specific pictures but of a kind of picture, which, moreover, does not attract imitators but arises without rules from a flourish of creative activity. Agathe wanted to know how this could be recognized. Ulrich gave a sign refusing to indicate any definitive trait, but said slowly, smiling and without hesitation: "The exciting, vague, infinite echo! "
And Agathe understood him. Somehow one ·has the feeling of being on a beach. Small insects hum. The air bears a hundred meadow scents. Thoughts and feelings stroll busily hand in hand. But before one's eyes lies the unanswering desert of the sea, and what is important on the shore loses itself in the monotonous motion of the endless view. She was thinking how all true stilllifes can arouse this happy, insatiable sadness. The longer you look at them, the clearer it becomes that the things they depict seem to stand on the colorful shore of life, their eyes filled with monstrous things, their tongues paralyzed.
Ulrich responded with another paraphrase. "All still lifes really
From the Posthumous Papers · 1325
paint the world of the sixth day of creation, when God and the world were still by themselves, with no people! " And to his sister's ques- tioning smile he said: "So what they arouse in people would probably be jealousy, secret inquisitiveness, and grief! "
That was almost an aper~u, and not a bad one; he noted it with displeasure, for he was not fond of these ideas machined like bullets and hastily gilded. But he did nothing to correct it, nor did he ask his sister to do so. For the strange resemblance to their own life was an obstacle that kept both of them from adequately expressing them- selves about the uncanny art of the still life or nature morte.
This resemblance played a great role in their lives. Without it being necessary to repeat in detail something reaching back to the shared memories ofchildhood that had been reawakened at their re- union and since then had given a strange cast to all their experiences and most of their conversations, it cannot be passed over in silence that the anesthetized trace of the still life was always to be felt in it. Spontaneously, therefore, and without accepting anything specific that might have guided them, they were led to turn their curiosity toward everything that might be akin to the nature of the still life; and something like the following exchange of words resulted, charg- ing the conversation once more like a flywheel and giving it new energy:
Having to beg for something before an imperturbable counte- nance that grants no response drives a person into a frenzy of de- spair, attack, or worthlessness. On the other hand, it is equally unnerving, but unspeakably beautiful, to kneel before an immovable countenance from which life was extinguished a few hours before, leaving behind an aura like a sunset.
This second example is even a commonplace of the emotions, if ever anything could be said to be! The world speaks of the consecra- tion and dignity of death; the poetic theme of the beloved on his bier has existed for hundreds, if not thousands of years; there is a whole body of related, especially lyric, poetry of death. This obviously has something adolescent about it. Who imagines that death bestows upon him the noblest of beloveds for his very own? The person who lacks the courage or the possibility of having a living one!
A short line leads from this poetic immaturity to the horrors of
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conjuring up spirits and the dead; a second line leads to the abomina- tion of actual necrophilia; perhaps a third to the pathological oppo- sites of exhibitionism and coercion by violence.
These comparisons may be strange, and in part they are extremely unappetizing. But if one does not allow oneself to be deterred but considers them from, as it were, a medical-psychological viewpoint, there is one element they all have in common: an impossibility, an inability, an absence of natural courage or the courage for a natural life.
They also supply the truth-should one already be embarked on daring comparisons-that silence, fainting, and every kind of incom- pleteness in the adversary is connected with the effect of mental exhaustion.
What is especially repeated in this way, as was mentioned before, is that an adversary who is not on the same level distorts love; it is only necessary to add that it is not infrequently a distorted attitude of the emotion that bids it make a choice at all. And inversely, it would be the responding, living, acting partner who determines the emo- tions and keeps them in order, without which they degenerate into shadowboxing.
But isn't the strange charm of the still life shadowboxing too? In- deed, almost an ethereal necrophilia?
And yet there is also a similar shadowboxing in the glances of happy lovers as an expression oftheir highest feelings. They look into each other's eyes, can't tear themselves away, and pine in an infinite emotion that stretches like rubber!
This was more or less how the exchange of words had begun, but at this point its thread was pretty much left hanging, and for quite a while before it was picked up again. For they had both really looked at each other, and this had caused them to lapse into silence.
But ifan observation is called for to explain this-and ifit is neces- sary to justify such conversations once again and express their sense-perhaps this much could be said, which at this moment Ul- rich understandably left as an unspoken idea: that loving was by no means as simple as nature would have us believe by bestowing on every bungler among her creatures the necessary tools.
BREATHS OF A SUMMER DAY
The sun, meanwhile, had risen higher; they had abandoned the chairs like stranded boats in the shallow shade near the house and were lying on a lawn in the garden, beneath the full depth of the summer day. They had been like this for quite some time, and al- though the circumstances had changed, this change hardly entered their consciousness. Not even the cessation of the conversation had accomplished this; it was left hanging, without a trace of a rift.
A noiseless, streaming snowfall of lusterless blossoms, emanating from a group of trees whose flowering was done, hovered through the sunshine, and the breath that bore it was so gentle that not a leaf stirred. It cast no shadow on the green of the lawn, but this green seemed to darken from within like an eye. Extravagantly leaved by the young summer, the tender trees and bushes standing at the sides or forming the backdrop gave the impression of being amazed spec- tators who, surprised and spellbound in their gay attire, were partici- pating in this funeral procession and celebration of nature. Spring and fall, speech and nature's silence, and the magic of life and death too, mingled in this picture; hearts seemed to stop, removed from their breasts to join the silent procession through the air. "My heart was taken from out my breast," a mystic had said: Agathe remem- bered it.
She knew, too, that she herself had read this saying to Ulrich from one of his books.
That had happened here in the garden, not far from the place where they were now. The recollection took shape. Other maxims too that she had recalled to his mind occurred to her: "Are you it, or are you not it? I know not where I am; nor do I wish to know! " "I have transcended all my abilities but for the dark power! I am in love, and know not in whom! My heart is full oflove and empty oflove at the same time! " Thus echoed in her again the laments of the mystics, into whose hearts God had penetrated as deeply as a thorn that no
1327
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fingertips can grasp. She had read many such holy laments aloud to Ulrich at that time. Perhaps their rendering now was not exact: memory behaves rather dictatorially with what it wishes to hear; but she understood what was meant, and made a resolve. As it now ap- peared at this moment of flowery procession, the garden had also once looked mysteriously abandoned and animated at the very hour when the mystical confessions Ulrich had in his library had fallen into her hands. Time stood still, a thousand years weighed as lightly as the opening and closing of an eye; she had attained the Millen- nium: perhaps God was even allowing his presence to be felt. And while she felt these things one after the other-although time was not supposed to exist anymore-and while her brother, so that she should not suffer anxiety during this dream, was beside her, although space did not seem to exist any longer either: despite these contra- dictions, the world seemed filled with transfiguration in all its parts.
What she had experienced since could not strike her as other than conversationally temperate by comparison with what had gone before; but what an expansion and reinforcement it gave to these later things as well, although it had lost the near-body-heat warmth of the immediacy of the first inspiration! Under these circumstances Agathe decided to approach with deliberation the delight that had formerly, in an almost dreamlike way, befallen her in this garden. She did not know why she associated it with the name of the Millen- nium. It was a word bright with feeling and almost as palpable as an object, yet it remained opaque to the understanding. That was why she could regard the idea as ifthe Millennium could come to pass at any moment. It is also called the Empire of Love: Agathe knew that too; but only then did it occur to her that both names had been handed down since biblical times and signified the kingdom of God on earth, whose imminent arrival they indicated in a completely real sense. Moreover, Ulrich too, without on that account believing in the Scriptures, sometimes employed these words as casually as his sister, and so she was not at all surprised that she seemed to know exactly how one should behave in the Millennium. ''You must keep quite still," her inspiration told her. ''You cannot leave room for any kind of desire; not even the desire to question. You must also shed the judi- ciousness with which you perform tasks. You must deprive the mind of all tools and not allow it to be used as a tool. Knowledge is to be
From the Posthumous Papers · 1329
discarded by the mind, and willing: you must cast off reality and the longing to turn to it. You must keep to yourself until head, heart, and limbs are nothing but silence. But if, in this way, you attain the high- est selflessness, then finally outer and inner will touch each other as if a wedge that had split the world had popped out! "
Perhaps this had not been premeditated in any clear way. But it seemed to her that if firmly willed, it must be attainable; and she pulled herself together as if she were trying to feign death. But it quickly proved as impossible to completely silence the impulses of thought, senses, and will as it had been in childhood not to commit any sins between confession and communion, and after a few efforts she completely abandoned the attempt. In the process, she discov- ered that she was only superficially holding fast to her purpose, and that her attention had long since slipped away; at the moment, it was occupied with a quite remote problem, a little monster of disaffec- tion. She asked herself in the most foolish way, reveling in the very foolishness of it: 'W as I really ever violent, mean, hateful, and un- happy? " A man without a name came to mind, his name missing be- cause she bore it herself and had carried it away with her. Whenever she thought of him, she felt her name like a scar; but she no longer harbored any hatred for Hagauer, and now repeated her question with the somewhat melancholy obstinacy with which one gazes after a wave that has ebbed away. Where had the desire come from to do him mortal harm? She had almost lost it in her distraction, and ap- peared to think it was still to be found somewhere nearby. Moreover, Undner might really be seen as a substitution for this desire for hos- tility; she asked herself this, too, and thought of him fleetingly. Per- haps she found aUthe things that had happened to her astonishing, young people always being more disposed to be surprised at how much they have already had to feel than older people, who have become accustomed to the changeability of life's passions and cir- cumstances, like changes in the weather. But what could have so af- fected Agathe as this: that in the very moment of sudden change in her life, as its passions and conditions took flight, the stone-clear sky reached again into the marvelous river of emotions-in which igno- rant youth sees its reflection as both natural and sublime-and lifted from it enigmatically that state out of which she had just awakened.
So her thoughts were still under the spell of the procession of
1330 ·THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
flowers and death; they were, however, no longer moving with it to its rhythms of mute solemnity; Agathe was "tliinking flittingly," as it might be called in contrast to the frame of mind in which life lasts "a thousand years" without a wing beating. This difference between two frames of mind was quite clear to her, and she recognized with some amazement how often just this difference, or something closely related to it, had already been touched on in her conversations with Ulrich. Involuntarily she turned toward him and, without losing sight of the spectacle unfolding around them, took a deep breath and asked: "Doesn't it seem to you, too, that in a moment like this, every- thing else seems feeble by comparison? "
These few words dispersed the cloudy weight of silence and mem- ory. For Ulrich, too, had been looking at the foam of blossoms sweeping by on their aimless journey; and because his thoughts and memories were tuned to the same string as those of his sister, he needed no further introduction to be told what would answer even her unspoken thoughts. He slowly stretched and replied: 'Tve been wanting to tell you something for a long time-even in the state when we were speaking of the meaning of stilllifes, and every day, really-even if it doesn't hit the center of the target: there are, to draw the contrast sharply, two ways of living passionately, and two sorts of passionate people. In one case, you let out a howl of rage or misery or enthusiasm each time like a child, and get rid ofyour feel- ings in a trivial swirl of vertigo. In that case, and it is the usual one, emotion is ultimately the everyday intermediary of everyday life; and the more violent and easily aroused it is, the more this kind of life is reminiscent of the restlessness in a cage of wild animals at feeding time, when the meat is carried past the bars, and the satiated fatigue that follows. Don't you think? The other way of being passionate and acting is this: You hold to yourself and give no impetus whatever to the action toward which every emotion is straining. In this case, life becomes like a somewhat ghostly dream in which the emotions rise to the treetops, to the peaks of towers, to the apex of the sky! It's more than likely that that's what we were thinking of when we were pretending to discuss paintings and nothing but paintings. "
Agathe propped herself up, curious. "Didn't you once say," she asked, "that there are two fundamentally different possibilities for living and that they resemble different registers of emotion? One
From the Posthumous Papers · 1331
would be 'worldly' emotion, which never finds peace or fulfillment; the other . . . I don't know whether you gave it a name, but it would probably have to be the emotion of a 'mystical' feeling that resonates constantly but never achieves 'full reality. ' " Although she spoke hesitantly, she had raced ahead too quickly, and finished with some embarrassment.
But Ulrich recognized quite well what he seemed to have said; he swallowed as if he had something too hot in his mouth, and at- tempted a smile. He said: "Ifthat's what I meant, I'll have to express myself less pretentiously now! So I'll simply use a familiar example and call the two kinds of passionate existence the appetitive and, as its counterpart, the nonappetitive, even if it sounds awkward. For in every person there is a hunger, and it behaves like a greedy animal; yet it is not a hunger but something ripening sweetly, like grapes in the autumn sun, free from greed and satiety. Indeed, in every one of his emotions, the one is like the other. "
"In other words, a vegetable-perhaps even a vegetarian--dispo- sition alongside the animal one? " There was a trace of amusement and teasing in this question of Agathe's.
"Almost! " Ulrich replied. "Perhaps the animalistic and the vegeta- tive, understood as the basic opposition of desires, would even strike a philosopher as the most profound discovery! But would that make me want to be one? All I would venture is simply what I have said, and especially what I said last, that both kinds of passionate being have a model, perhaps even their origin, in every emotion. These two aspects can be distinguished in every emotion," he continued. But oddly, he then went on to speak only of what he understood by the appetitive. It urges to action, to motion, to enjoyment; through its effect, emotion is transformed into a work, or into an idea and con- viction, or into a disappointment. All these are ways in which it dis- charges, but they can also be forms of recharging, for in this manner the emotion changes, uses itself up, dissipates in its success and comes to an end; or it encapsulates itself in this success and trans- forms its vital energy into stored energy that gives up the vital energy later, and occasionally often with multiple interest. "And doesn't this explain that the energetic activity ofour everyday feelings and its fee- bleness, which you were so pleasantly sighing about, don't make any great difference to us, even if it is a profound difference? "
1332 • THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
''You may be all too right! " Agathe agreed. "My God, this entire work of the emotions, its worldly wealth, this wanting and rejoicing, activity and unfaithfulness, all only because of the existence of this drive! Including everything you experience and forget, think and passionately desire, and yet forget again. It's as beautiful as a tree full of apples of every color, but it's also formlessly monotonous, like ev- erything that ripens and falls the same way each year! "
Ulrich nodded at his sister's answer, which exuded a breath ofim- petuousness and renunciation. "The world has the appetitive part of the emotions to thank for all its works and all beauty and progress, but also all the unrest, and ultimately all its senseless running around! " he corroborated. "Do you know, by the way, that 'appeti- tive' means simply the share that our innate drives have in every emotion? Therefore," he added, "what we have said is that it is the drives that the world has to thank for beauty and progress. "
"And its chaotic restlessness," Agathe echoed.
"Usually that's exactly what one says; so it seems to me useful not to ignore the other! For that man should thank for his progress pre- cisely what really belongs on the level of the animal is, at the very least, unexpected. " He smiled as he said this. He, too, had propped himself up on his elbow, and he turned completely toward his sister, as ifhe wished to enlighten her, but he went on speaking hesitantly, like a person who first wants to be instructed by the words he is searching for. ''You were right to speak of an animalistic disposition," he said. "Doubtless there are at its core the same few instincts as the animal has. This is quite clear in the major emotions: in hunger, anger, joy, willfulness, or love, the soul's veil barely covers the most naked desire! "
It seemed that he wanted to continue in the same vein. But al- though the conversation-which had issued from a dream of nature, the sight of the parade of blossoms that still seemed to be drifting through the middle of their minds with a peculiar uneventfulness- did not permit any misconstruing of the fateful question of the rela- tion of brother and sister to each other, it was rather that from beginning to end the conversation was under the influence of this idea and dominated by the surreptitious notion of a "happening without anything happening," and took place in a mood of gentle af-
From the Posthumous Papers · 1333
fliction; although this was the way it was, finally the conversation had led to the opposite of such a pervasive idea and its emotional mood: to the point where Ulrich could not avoid emphasizing the construc- tive activity of strong drives alongside their disturbing activity. Such a clear indication of the drives, including the instinctive, and of the active person in general-for it signified that too-might well be part of an "Occidental, Western, Faustian life feeling," as it was called in the language of books, in contrast to everything that, according to the same self-fertilizing language, was supposed to be "Oriental" or "Asiatic. " He recalled these patronizing vogue words. But it was not his or his sister's intention, nor would it have been in keeping with their habits, to give a misleading significance to an experience that moved them deeply by employing such adventitious, poorly grounded notions; rather, everything they discussed with each other was meant as true and real, even if it may have arisen from walking on clouds.
That was why Ulrich had found it amusing to substitute an expla- nation of a scientific kind for the caressing fog of the emotions; and in truth he did so just because-even if it appeared to abet the "Faustian"- t h e mind faithful to nature promised to exclude every- thing that was excessively fanciful. At least he had sketched out the basis for such an explanation.
It was, of course, rather stranger that he had done so only for what he had labeled the appetitive aspect of emotions, but quite ignored how he could apply an analogous idea to the nonappetitive aspect, although at the beginning he had certainly considered them to be of equal importance. This did not come about without a reason. Whether the psychological and biological analysis of this aspect of emotion seemed harder to him, or whether he con- sidered it in toto only a bothersome aid-both might have been the case--what chiefly influenced him was something else, of which he had, moreover, shown a glimpse since the moment when Agathe's sigh had betrayed the painful yet joyous opposition between the past restless passions of life and the apparently imperishable ones that were at home in the timeless stillness under the stream of blossoms. For-to repeat what he had already repeated in various ways-not only are two dispositions discernible in every single emotion, through which, and in its own fashion, the emotion can be fleshed
1334 · THE MAN WITH0 UT QUALITIES
out to the point of passion, but there are also two sorts of people, or different periods of destiny within each person, which differ in that one or the other disposition predominates.
He saw a great distinction here. People of the one sort, as already mentioned, reach out briskly for everything and set about every- thing; they rush over obstacles like a torrent, or foam into a new course; their passions are strong and constantly changing, and the result is a strongly segmented career that leaves nothing behind but its own stormy passage. This was the sort of person Ulrich had had in mind with the concept ofthe appetitive when he had wanted to make it one major notion of the passionate life; for the other sort of person is, in contrast to this, nothing less than the corresponding opposite of the first kind: the second is timid, pensive, vague; has a hard time making up its mind; is full of dreams and longings, and internalized in its passion. Sometimes-in ideas they were not now discussing- Ulrich also called this sort of person "contemplative," a word that is ordinarily used in another sense and that perhaps has merely the tepid meaning of "thoughtful"; but for him it had more than this or- dinary meaning, was indeed equivalent to the previously mentioned Oriental/non-Faustian. Perhaps a major distinction in life was marked in this contemplative aspect, and especially in conjunction with the appetitive as its opposite: this attracted Ulrich more vitally than a didactic rule. But it was also a satisfaction to him, this elemen- tary possibility of explanation, that all such highly composite and de- manding notions of life could be reduced to a dual classification found in every emotion.
Of course it was also clear to him that both sorts of people under discussion could signify nothing other than a man "without quali- ties," in contrast to one who has every quality that a man can show. The one sort could also be called a nihilist, who dreams of God's dreams, in opposition to the activist, who in his impatient mode of conduct is, however, also a kind of God-dreamer and nothing less than a realist, who bestirs himself, clear about the world and active in it. "Why, then, aren't we realists? " Ulrich asked himself. Neither of them was, neither he nor she: their ideas and their conduct had long left no doubt of that; but they were nihilists and activists, sometimes one and sometimes the other, whichever happened to come up.
FURTHER SKETCHES
A MENTALITY DIRECTED TOWARD THE SIGNIFICANT, AND THE BEGINNING OF A CONVERSATION ON THE SUBJECT
If you speak of the double-sided and disorderly way the human being is constituted, the assumption is that you think you can come up with a better one.
A person who is a believer can do that, but Ulrich was not a be- liever. On the contrary: he suspected faith of inclining to the over- hasty, and whether the content of this spiritual attitude was an earthly inspiration or a supra-earthly notion, even as a mechanism for the for- ward movement of the soul it reminded him of the impotent attempts of the domestic chicken to fly. Only Agathe caused him to make an ex- ception; he claimed to envy in her that she was able to believe precipi- tately and with ardor, and he sometimes felt the femininity of her lack of rational discretion as physically as he did one of those other sexual differentiations, knowledge of which arouses a dazzling bliss. He for- gave her this unpredictability even when it really seemed to him un- forgivable, as in her association with the ridiculous person of Professor Lindner, about whom there was much that his sister did not tell him. He felt the reticence of her bodily warmth beside him and was re- minded of a passionate assertion which had it that no person is beauti- ful or ugly, good or bad, significant or soul-destroying in himself, but his value always depends on whether one believes in him or is skepti- cal of him. That was an extravagant observation, full of magnanimity but also undermined by vagueness, which allowed all sorts of infer-
1336 • THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
ences; and the hidden question of whether this observation was not ul- timately traceable to that billy goat of credulity, this fellow Lindner, of whom he knew little more than his shadow, caused a wave to eddy up jealously in the rapid underground river of his thoughts. But as Ulrich thought about this, he could not recall whether it had been Agathe who had made this observation or he himself; the one seemed as possi- ble as the other. As a result of this heady confusion, the wave of jeal- ousy ebbed over all spiritual and physical distinctions in a delicate foam, and he would have liked to voice what his real reservations were about every predisposition to faith. To believe something and to be- lieve in something are spiritual conditions that derive their power from another condition, which they make use of or squander; but this other condition not only was, as seemed most obvious, the solid condition of knowledge but could, on the contrary, be an even more ephemeral state than that of faith itself: and that everything that moved his sister and him pointed precisely in this direction urged Ulrich to speak out, but his ideas were still far from the prospect of pledging himself to it, and therefore he said nothing, but rather changed the subject before he reached that point.
Even a man of genius bears within himself a standard that could em- power him to the judgment that in some totally inexplicable fashion things in the world go backward as well as forward; but who is such a man? Originally Ulrich had not had the slightest desire to think about it, but the problem would not let him go, he had no idea why.
"One must separate genius in general from genius as an individual superlative," he began, but still had not found the right expression. "I sometimes used to think that the only two important species of humans were the geniuses and the blockheads, which don't intermingle very well. But people of the species 'genius,' or people of genius, don't actu- ally need to be geniuses. The genius one gapes at is actually born in the marketplace of the vanities; his splendor is radiated in the mirrors of the stupidity that surround him; it is always connected with something that bestows on it one merit the more, like money or medals: no matter how great his deserts, his appearance is really that of stuffed genius. "
Agathe interrupted him, curious about the other: "Fine, but genius itself? "
"If you pull out of the stuffed scarecrow what is just straw, it would probably have to be what's left," Ulrich said, but then bethought himself and added distrustfully: 'Til never really know what genius is, or who should decide! "
"A senate ofwise men! " Agathe said, smiling. She knew her brother's often quite idiosyncratic way of thinking; he had plagued her with it in
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 3 3 7
many conversations. Her words were meant to remind him rather hypo- critically of the famous demand of philosophy, which had not been fol- lowed in two thousand years, that the governance of the world ought to be entrusted to an academy of the wisest men.
Ulrich nodded. "That goes back to Plato. And if it could have been brought about, presumably a Platonist would have followed him as leader of the reigning spirit until one day-God knows why-the Ploti- nists would have been seen as the true philosophers. That's the way it is, too, with what passes for genius. And what would the Plotinists have made of the Platonists, and before that the Platonists of them, if not what every truth does with error: mercilessly root it out? God proceeded cautiously when he directed that an elephant bring forth only another elephant, and a cat a cat: but a philosopher produces a blind adherent and a counterphilosopher! "
"So God himself had to decide what genius was! " Agathe exclaimed impatiently, not without feeling a soft, proud shudder at this idea and awareness of its precipitate/childish/vehemence.
"I fear it bores him! " Ulrich said. "At least the Christian God. He's out for hearts, without caring whether they have a lot of understanding or a little. Moreover, I believe that there's a lot to be said for the church's contempt for the genius oflaymen. "
Agathe waited a bit; then she simply replied: "You used to have a dif- ferent opinion. "
"I could answer you that the heathen belief that all ideas that move people rested beforehand in the divine spirit must have been quite beautiful; but it's hard to think of divine emanations, since among the things that mean a lot to us there are ideas called guncotton or tires," Ulrich countered at once. But then he seemed to waver and to have grown tired of this jocular tone, and suddenly he revealed to his sister what she wanted to know. He said: "I have always believed, and almost as ififs my nature to, that the spirit, because one feels its power in one- self, also imposes the obligation to make it carry weight in the world. I have believed that to live meaningfully is the only reward, and have wanted never to do anything that was indifferent. And the consequence of this for culture in general may seem an arrogant distortion but is unavoidably this: Only genius is bearable, and average people have to be squeezed to either produce it or allow it to prevail! Mixed in with a thou- sand other things, something of this is also part of the general persua- sion: It's really humiliating for me to have to respond that I never could say what genius was, and don't know now either, although just now I indicated casually that I would ascribe this quality less to a particular individual than to a human modality. "
1338 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
He didn't seem to mean it so seriously, and Agathe carefully kept the conversation going when he fell silent. "Don't you yourself find it pretty easy to speak ofan acrobat with genius? " she asked. "It seems that today the difficult, the unusual, and whatever is especially successful ordinar- ily figure in the notion. "
"It began with singers; and if a singer who sings higher than the rest is called a genius, why not someone who jumps higher? By this reasoning you end up with the genius of a pointing dog; and people consider men who won't let themselves be intimidated by anything to be more worthy than a man who can tear his vocal cords out of his throat. Evidently, what's vague here is a twofold use oflanguage: aside from the genius of success, which can be made to cover everything, so that even the stupid- est joke can be, 'in its fashion,' a work of genius, there is also the sub- limity, dignity, or significance of what succeeds: in other words, some kind of ranking of genius. " A cheerful expression had replaced the seri- ousness in Ulrich's eyes, so that Agathe asked what came next, which he seemed to be suppressing.
"It occurs to me that I once discussed the question of genius with our friend Stumm," Ulrich related, "and he insisted on the usefulness ofdis- tinguishing between a military and a civilian notion of genius. But to grasp this distinction, I'll probably have to tell you something about the world of the Imperial and Royal military. The companies of engineers;·• he went on, "are there to build fortifications and for similar work, and are made up of soldiers and subalterns and officers who don't have any particular future unless they pass a 'Higher Engineer[/Genius] Course,' after which they land on the 'Engineering[/Genius] Staff. ' 'So in the military, the Engineer [/Genius] Staffer stands above the engineer [/genius],' says Stumm von Bordwehr. 'And at the very top, of course, there is the General Staff, because that is absolutely the cleverest thing God has done. ' So although Stumm always enjoys playing the antimili- tarist, he tried to convince me that the proper usage of'genius' can really be found only in the military and is graded in steps, while all civilian chatter about genius is regrettably lacking in such order. And the way he twists everything so that you really see to the bottom of truth, it wouldn't be at all a bad idea for us to follow his primer! "
But what Ulrich added to this concerning the dissimilar notions of ge- nius was aimed less at the highest degree ofgenius than at its basic form, thesignificant, whose doubtfulness seemed to him more painful and confusing. It seemed to him easier to arrive at a judgment about what
•The German Genie means both "genius" and "engineer. "-TRANs.
From the Posthumous Papers · 1339
was exceptionally significant than about the significant in general. The first is merely a step beyond something whose value is already unques- tioned, that is, something which is always grounded in a more or less traditional order of spiritual values; the latter, on the other hand, calls for taking the first step into an indefinite and infinite space, which offers almost no prospect of allowing a cogent distinction to be made between what is significant and what is not. So it is natural for language instead to have stuck with the genius of degree and success rather than with the genius value ofwhat succeeds; yet it is also understandable that the cus- tom that has developed of calling any aptitude that is hard to imitate "genius" is connected with a bad conscience, and of course none other than that of a dropped task or a forgotten duty. This scandalized the two of them in a joking and incidental way, but they went on speaking seri- ously. "This is clearest," Ulrich said to his sister, "when, although it mostly happens only by accident, one becomes conscious of an external sign to which scant attention is paid: namely, our habit of pronouncing the noun Genie and its adjective, genial, differently, and not in a way to indicate that the adjective derives from the noun. "
As happens to everyone who is made aware of a practice to which scant attention is paid, Agathe was somewhat surprised.
"After my conversation with Stumm that time, I looked it up in Grimm's dictionary," Ulrich offered by way of excuse. "The military word Genie-in other words, the engineering soldier-came to us, of course, like many military expressions, from the French. In French, the art of the engineer is called le genie, and connected with it is geniecorps, anne du genie, and Ecole du genie, as well as the English engine, the French engin, and the Italian ingenio macchina, the artful tool; the whole clan goes back to the late Latin ingenium, whose hard g became in its travels a soft g and whose fundamental connotation is dexterity and inventiveness: a summation, like the now rather old and creaky expres- sion, 'arts and crafts,' with which official communications and inscrip- tions still sometimes bless us. From there a decayed path also leads to the soccer player of genius, indeed even to the hunting dog of genius or the steeplechase horse of genius, but it would be consistent to pro- nounce adjective and noun the same way. For there is a second Genie and genial, whose meaning is likewise to be found in every language and does not derive from genium but from genius, the more-than-human, or
at least, in reverence for mind and spirit, the culmination of what is human. I hardly need point out that for centuries these two meanings have been dreadfully confused and mixed up everywhere, in language as in life, and not only in German; but, characteristically, in German most of all, so that not being able to keep genius and ingenious apart can be
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called a particularly German problem. Moreover, it has in German a his- tory that in one place affects me greatly-"
Agathe had followed this extended explanation, as is usual in such cases, with some mistrust and a readiness for boredom, while waiting for a turn that would free her from this uncertainty. "Would you consider me a linguistic grouch if I were to propose that from now on we both start using the expression 'inspiriting'? '' Ulrich asked.
A smile and a movement of her head spontaneously indicated his sis- ter's resistance to this archaic term, which has fallen out of use and now bears the scent of old trunks and costumes.
"It is an archaic word," Ulrich admitted, "but this would be a good occasion to use it! And as I said, I did read up on it. If it doesn't bother you to do this in the street, let me have a look at what else I can tell you about it. " With a smile, he pulled a piece ofpaper from his pocket and deciphered various notes he had made in pencil. "Goethe," he an- nounced. " 'Here I saw regret and penitence pushed to caricature, and because all passion replaces genius, really inspiriting. ' In another place: 'Your inspiriting composure often advanced to meet me with magnifi- cent enthusiasm. ' Wieland: 'The fruit of inspiriting hours. ' Holderlin: 'The Greeks are still a beautiful, inspiriting, and happy people. ' And you'll find a similar 'inspiriting' in Schleiermacher, in his earlier years. But already with Immermann you find 'inspired economy' and 'inspired debauchery. ' So there you already have the disconcerting transforma- tion of the notion into the· kettle-patching and slovenly, which is how 'inspired' is understood today. '' He turned the piece of paper this way and that, stuck it back in his pocket, and then took it out once more for assistance. "But its prehistory and preconditions are found earlier," he added. "Kant was already criticizing 'the fashionable tone ofa geniuslike freedom in thinking' and speaks with annoyance of 'genius-men' and 'genius-apes. ' What annoyed him so much is a respectable piece of Ger- man intellectual history. For before him as well as after him people in Germany talked, partly ecstatically, partly disapprovingly, of 'genius urge,' 'genius fever,' 'storm of genius,' 'leaps of genius,' 'calls of genius,' and 'screams of genius,' and even philosophy's fingernails were notal- ways clean, least of all when it believed it could suck the independent
truth from its fingers. "
"And how does Kant decide what a genius is? '' Agathe asked. All she
associated with his famous name was that she remembered having heard that he surpassed everything.
"What he emphasized in the nature of genius was the creative ele- ment and originality, the 'spirit of originality,' which has remained ex- traordinarily influential up to the present day,'' Ulrich replied. "Goethe
From the Posthumous Papers · 1341
later was relying on Kant when he defined the geniative with the words: 'to have many objects present and easily relate the most remote ones to each other: this free of egotism and self-complacency. ' But that's a view that was very much designed for the achievements of reason, and it leads to the rather gymnastic conception of genius we have succumbed to. "
Agathe asked with laughing disbelief: "So now do you know what ge- nius and geniative are? "
Ulrich took the joshing with a shrug of his shoulders. "Anyway, we've found that among Germans, ifwe don't see the strictly Kantian 'spirit of originality,' we feel that eccentric and conspicuous behavior indicates genius," he said.
49
GENERAL VON STUMM ON GENIUS
The conversation with Stumm that Ulrich mentioned had occurred at a chance meeting and had been brief. The General seemed worried; he did not indicate why, but he began to grumble over the nonsense that in civilian life there were so many geniuses. "What is a genius, really? " he asked. "No one has ever called a general a genius! "
"Except Napoleon," Ulrich inteljected.
"Maybe him," Stumm admitted. "But that appears to happen more because his whole evolution was paradoxical! "
Ulrich didn't know what to say to this.
"At your cousin's, I had lots of opportunity to meet people who are designated as geniuses," Stumm declared pensively, and went on: "I be- lieve I can tell you what a genius is: a person who not only enjoys great success but also, in some sense, has to get hold of his subject backward! " And Stumm immediately expounded on this, using the great examples of psychoanalysis and the theory of relativity:
"In the old days it was also often true that you didn't know some- thing," he began in his characteristic fashion. "But you didn't think any- thing of it, and ifit didn't happen during an examination it didn't harm anyone. But suddenly this was turned into the so-called unconscious, and now everyone's unconscious is the size of all the things he doesn't know, and it's much more important to know why you don't know some- thing than what it is you don't know! Humanly speaking, this has, as one says, turned things topsy-turvy, and it's apparently a lot simpler too. ''
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Since Ulrich still did not react, Stumm went on:
"But the man who invented that also established the following law: You will remember that in the regiment one used to admonish the younger men when there had been too much barnyard talk by telling them: 'Don't say it, just do it! ' And what's the opposite of that? In some sense, the challenge: If, because you're a civilized human being, you can't do what you want, at least talk it over with a learned man; for he will convince you that everything that exists rests on something that ought not to exist! Of course I can't judge this from a scientific point of view, but in any case you can see from this that the new rules are abso- lutely the reverse ofthose that prevailed before, and the man who intro- duced them is praised today as a top-notch genius! "
Since Ulrich was apparently still not convinced, and Stumm himself did not feel he had got where he wanted, he repeated his argument using "relativity theory," as he conceived of it: "Like me, you learned at school that everything that moves happens in 'space and time,' " was where his thinking started. "But what is it like in practice? Permit me to say something quite ordinary: You are supposed to be with the front of your squadron at a particular place on the map at such and such a time. Or when you get the order, you're supposed to bring your cavalry from a formation to form a new front, which bears no relation at all to the straight lines on the exercise field. It happens in space and time, but it never happens without incident and never works out the way you want. I, at least, received a hundred reprimands so long as I was with the troops, I tell you that candidly. Even at school I always, so to speak, re- sisted when I had to calculate a mechanical motion in space and time on the blackboard. So I found it a real inspiration of genius the instant I heard that someone had finally discovered that space and time are quite relative concepts, which change at every moment whenever they are put to serious use, although since the creation of the world they have been regarded as the solidest thing there is. That's why this man, and in my view quite rightly, is at least as famous as the other. But it can also be said of him that he's tethered the horse by its tail, which, at least today, is what more or less amounts to the fixed main idea of what a genius is! And that's what I would like to make you see, ifyou place any value on my experience," Stumm concluded.
Ulrich, in his partiality for him, had conceded that the most important scientific teachings ofthe present had their eccentric aspects, or at least showed no fear of them. It might not mean much; but if one is so in- clined, a sign can be seen in this as well. Fearless showiness, a predispo- sition for the paradoxical, self-starting ambition, surprise, and revision of everything on the basis of contradictory details that previously had
From the Posthumous Papers · z343
hardly been noticed, all this had doubtless been part of the fashion in thinking for some time, for with their great achievements these things had just begun to crown precisely those fields where one would not have expected it and where one had been accustomed to the steady adminis- tration and constant increase of an enormous intellectual estate.
"But why? " Stumm asked. "How did it happen? "
Ulrich shrugged his shoulders. He thought of his own abandoned sci- ence, the broaching of its basic questions, their being skewered when their logic was checked out. It had not been much different with other sciences; they felt their edifices shaken through discoveries they had a hard time accommodating. That was the dispensation and the violence of truth. Nevertheless, it still seemed possible to speak of a boredom with everyday, never-ending progress, which up to now, and for the longest time, had been the ideal ofreal, silent faith amid the racket ofall convictions. There was no denying a creeping doubt in all fields about the rightness of the bare, exact process of taking one step before an- other. That, too, might be a cause. Finally, Ulrich answered: "Perhaps it's simply the same as when you get tired: you need a prospect that re- freshes you, or a shove in the back ofyour knees. "
"Why not sit down instead? '' Stumm asked.
"I don't know. In any event, after the longish calm flowering of the mind, you prefer to flirt with revolution. Some such thing seems to be in the offing. By way of comparison, you might perhaps think of the pre- vailing disjointedness in the arts. I don't understand much about politics, but perhaps sometime in the future someone will say that this intellec- tual restlessness already held signs of a revolution. "
"The hell you say! " Stumm exclaimed, arts and revolutionary unrest reminding him of his impressions at Diotima's.
"Perhaps only as a transition to a new stability to come! " Ulrich said soothingly.
That made no difference to Stumm. "Since that tactless business in front of the War Minister I've avoided Diotima's parties," he related. "Don't get me wrong, I have no objection whatever to all those geniuses we've been talking about, who are already preserved in amber-or if I do, it's only that the way they're revered seems to me exaggerated. But I really have it in for the rest of that rabble! " And after a brief but obvi- ously bitter moment he brought himself to ask the question: "Tell me honestly, is genius really so valuable? ''
Ulrich had to smile, and disregarding what he had said before, he now mentioned the enormous-he even called it the magically simpleminded-sense of release that one recognized in the solution to any kind of problem that the most talented and even the greatest spe-
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cialists had vainly striven to find. Genius is the single unconditional human value, it is human value, he said. Without the involvement of genius there would not even be the animal group ofthe higher primates. In his eagerness, he even passionately praised that genius which he was later to call merely the genius of degree and dexterity, to the extent that it was not fundamentally genius by nature.
Stumm nodded with satisfaction. "I know: the invention of fire and the wheel, gunpowder and printing, and so on! In short, from log canoe to logarithms! " But after he had demonstrated his sympathy he went on: "Now let me tell you something, and it's from the conversations at Di- otima's: 'From Sophocles to Feuermaull' Some young dolt once shouted that in complete seriousness! "
"What bothers you about Sophocles? "
"Ah! I don't know anything about him. But Feuermaul! And here you are claiming that genius is an unconditional value. "
"The touch of genius is the only moment in which that ugly and obdu- rate pupil of God, man, is beautiful and candid! " Ulrich intensified his statement. "But I did not say that it's easy to decide what's genius and what merely fantasy. I'm just saying that wherever a new value really enters the human game, genius is behind it! "
"How can you know whether something is 'really a new value'? " Ulrich hesitated, smiling.
"And then, in any case, whether the value really is worth anything! "
Stumm added with curiosity and concern.
"You often feel it at first sight," Ulrich said.
'Tve been told that people have been mistaken at first sight! "
The conversation faltered. Stumm was perhaps preparing a funda-
mentally different question.
