From the
PosthuTTWUS
Papers · 1597
- N o w do you believe that I belong in the league of men?
- N o w do you believe that I belong in the league of men?
Musil - Man Without Qualities - v2
It is precisely the other way around.
Take greed, greatness,
1590 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
cheerfulness, or whatever you like: it is only the hollow earthly charac- terization of processes that are far more powerful than their ridiculous trailing thread, which our understanding seizes in order to pull them down to us. In truth, all our feelings are inexpressible. We press them out in drops and think that these drops are our feelings. But they are clouds rushing away! All our experiences are more than we experience of them. I could now simply apply the example of music to this; all our experiences would then be of the essence of music, were it not sur- rounded by a still greater circle. F o r -
But here an interruption ensued, for Schmeisser, whose lips had long mated dryly together, could no longer restrain the birth of an objection. He said loudly: - I f you derive the birth of morality from the spirit of music, you're forgetting that all the emotions you might care to talk about receive their meaning from middle-class habits and middle-class assumptions!
Meingast turned amicably to the young man. -When, ten years ago, I came to Zurich for the first time-he said slowly-something ofthat sort would have been considered revolutionary. At that time you would have had great success with your inteijection. I may tell you that it was there that I received my first spiritual training, in the left wing of your party, which had members from all the countries of the world. But today it is clear to us that the creative accomplishment of Social Democracy-he emphasized the component "Democracy"-has so far remained zero, and will never get beyond whitewashing the cultural content of liberal- ism as neorevolutionary!
Schmeisser had no intention of responding to this. It was sufficient that he threw back his hair with a shake of his neck muscles and smiled with sternly closed lips. One could perhaps also say: Oh, don't let me bother you! He was thinking that a few lines in The Shoemaker, a few juicily pointed sarcastic comments, would be appropriate anytime as warning yet again against bourgeois like these, who never stuck it out for long in the movement. But Ulrich interrupted: -Don't run him through with a quotation from Marx; Herr Meingast would answer with Goethe, and we'd never get home today! But still Schmeisser let himself be car- ried away, because he had to say something. Since he lacked the will to do battle his answer was too modest. He simply said: - T h e new culture that socialism has brought into the world is the feeling of solidarity. . . . The response was not immediate; Meingast seemed to be leaving him- self time. He replied slowly: -That's correct. But it's precious little. Now Schmeisser lost his patience: -So-called academic learning-he exclaimed-has long since lost its right to be taken seriously as an intel- lectual center! Poking around among antiquities, pasting together trea-
From the Posthu11WUs Papers · 1591
tises about the poems of some fifth-rate writer, cramming Roman un- Law; that only breeds empty arrogance. The workers' movement, with its definable goals, has long been developing the real intellectual work- ers, the fighters in the class struggle with their clear aims, who are going to do away with the barbarism of exploitation, and they are the ones who will create the foundations for a culture of the future!
Now it was Meingast's turn to get angry; for years he had not felt as warmly about the culture of the present as he did now, faced with this battler for the future. But with a good-natured motion, Meingast cut off his counterattack. -W e are really not at all as far apart as you think, he answered Schmeisser. - 1 don't think much of academic learning either, and I, too, believe that a new feeling of community, a turning away from the individualism of the most recent age, signifies the most important development under way today. B u t - And again Meingast stood in the meadow like a totem pole, stretching out the hand that descriptively ac- companied his words, and could continue precisely where he had been interrupted: But that had happened before his new doctrine of the will. By "will" one was not, of course, to understand something like the inten- tion of seeking out a specific business because its drawing paper is cheaper, or composing a poem meant to be arrhythmic because up to then all other poems had been rhythmic. Nor was trampling on a supe- rior in order to get ahead a sign ofwill. On the contrary, that's merely the scum ofwill, caused by the many obstacles that today stand in the way of will, and is, therefore, broken will. That one applies the word "will" to such things is a sign that its true meaning is no longer felt. Meingast's charter was the unbroken cosmic stream of will. He illustrated its ap- pearance by great men like Napoleon. Compare Shaw's assertion that it is only great men who do anything, and that in vain. The will of such people is uninterrupted activity, an art of burning up like breathing, it must incessantly produce heat and movement, and for such natures standing still and turning back are equivalent to death. But one can illus- trate this just as well by the will of primeval mythic times; when the wheel was invented, language, fire, religion: those were breakthroughs with which nothing since can be compared. At most in Homer there are perhaps the last traces of this great simplicity of the will and collected creative energy. Now Meingast brought together with extraordinary force these two discrepant examples: It was no accident that they were talking about a statesman and an artist. -For, ifyou all remember what I was telling you about music, the aesthetic phenomenon is that which needs nothing in addition to itself; as a phenomenon it is already all that it can possibly be: in other words, purely realized will! Will belongs not to morality but to aesthetics, to unmotivated phenomena. There are
1592 · THE MAN WITH 0 U T QUALITIES
three conclusions that can be drawn from this: First, the world can be justified only as an aesthetic phenomenon; every attempt to give it a moral basis has failed up to now, and now we can understand why it must be that way. Second, our statesmen must, as the ancient wisdom of Plato already demanded, learn music again; and Plato drew his impetus for this from the wisdom ofthe East. Third, systematically executed cru- elty is the only means now available for the European peoples, still stupefied by humanitarianism, to find their strength again!
Even though this conversation might at times have been rather opaque to ear and understanding, it was different with eye and feeling; it came tumbling down from a philosophical height where everything is in any case One, and Clarisse felt its onrush. She was enthusiastic. All the emotions in her were stirred up and swam, if one may put it this way, once more in feeling. For a while she had placed herself in the meadow not far from Meingast in order to hear better and to be able to conceal her excitement behind a glance that appeared to be distractedly gazing into the distance. But the inner burning of the world of which Meingast spoke opened her thoughts like nuts bursting with flames. Strange things became clear to her: summer noons, freezing with the fever of light; starry nights, mute as fish with gold scales; experiences without reflection or preparation that sometimes overcame her and remained without response, indeed really without content; tension, whenever she made music, certainly, today, worse than any concert pianist, but to the absolute best of her ability and clearly, with the uncanny feeling that something titanic, nameless experiences, a still-nameless person, greater than the greatest music can encompass, was forcing itself against the limits of her fingers. Now she understood her battles with Walter: they were suddenly moments as when a boat glides over an infinite chasm; in words, perhaps not comprehensible to anyone else. Clarisse's fingers and wrists began barely perceptibly to play along; one saw the young woman translating the prophet's wisdom into her own bodily will. The effect he had on her was related to the essence of a dance, a dancing wandering. Her feet released themselves from the impoverished and hardened present; her soul released itself from the uncertainty of in- stinct and weakness; the distance reared up; she held a flower with three heads in her hand; to follow after Meingast, following Christ, to redeem Walter, those were the three heads; if they were not, then Clarisse was not thinking it the way one counts or reads, from left to right, but like a rainbow from one end to the other; out ofthis rainbow arose the smell of the closet in which she kept her traveling clothes, then the three flowers consisted of the three terms I seek, self-search, self-seeking-Clarisse had already forgotten what the flower had consisted of before. Walter
From the Posthumous Papers · 1593
was a stem, even Meingast was just a stem, from the soles of her feet Clarisse grew taller and taller, it happened with dizzying speed, before one could hold one's breath, and Clarisse threw herself down in the grass, horrified at her enthusiasm for herself. Ulrich, who was already lying there, had misunderstood her movements, and thoughtlessly tick- led her with a blade of grass. Clarisse shot out sparks of loathing.
Walter had been observing Clarisse, but something he had to talk about drew him more strongly to Meingast. This was Homer. Homer already a phenomenon of decay? No, decay first set in with Voltaire and Lessing! Meingast was probably the most important person one could encounter today, but what he said about music only showed what a mis- fortune it was that throughout his life Walter had felt too crippled to put his own views in the form of a book. He could understand Clarisse so well; he had long seen how she was carried away by Meingast; he felt so sony for her; she was wrong, for despite everything she put the fortis- simo of her enthusiasm into unimportant things; this coupling pregnant with destiny made his feelings for her flare up in great flames. While he was walking over to Meingast, Clarisse lay stretched out in the grass, Ulrich at her side not understanding anything at all, only, by lying there, pushing the optical center of gravity of the picture somewhat in his di- rection; Walter felt totally like an actor walking across a stage; here they were playing out their destiny, their story; in the seconds before he spoke to Meingast he felt lifted out of himself and frozen to icy silence, performer and poet of his self.
Meingast saw him coming. Four paces away like four ages of the world to be strode through. He had recently called Walter's helplessness that of a democracy of feelings, and with that given him the key to his condition, but he had no desire to carry this discussion further, and before Walter reached him he turned to the quarrelsome stranger.
-Perhaps you are a Socialist-Schmeisser answered him-but you are an enemy ofdemocracy!
-W ell, thank God you noticed! Meingast turned completely to face him and succeeded in forgetting Walter and Clarisse. -1 was, as you heard, a Socialist too. But you say that a new culture will arise by itself out of the workers' movement; and I say to you: on the path that social- ism has taken among us, never!
Schmeisser shrugged his shoulders. -The world is certainly not going to be put on a better path by talking about art, love, and the like!
-Who's talking about art? It seems that you haven't understood me in the least. I am of the same opinion as you that the present condition will not last much longer. The culture of bourgeois individualism will perish the way all previous cultures have perished. Of what? I can tell
1594 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
you: Ofthe increase ofall quantities without a corresponding increase of the central quality. Of there being too many people, things, opinions, needs, wills. The firming energies, the perfusing of the community with its mission, its will to get ahead, its community feeling, the connective tissue of public and private institutions: these are not all growing at the same rate; it is rather left far too much to accident and falls further and further behind. The point comes in every culture where this dispropor- tion gets to be too much. From then on, the culture is vulnerable like a weakened organism, and it takes only a push to bring it down. Today the growing complexity of relations and passions can still barely be main- tained.
Schmeisser shook his head. -We'll give the push, when the time comes.
-W hen it comes! It will never come! The materialistic view ofhistory produces passivity! The time will perhaps be here tomorrow. Perhaps it's already here today! You won't take advantage of it, for with democ- racy you ruin everything! Democracy produces neither thinkers nor doers, but gabblers. Just ask yourself what the characteristic creations of democracy are! Parliament and newspapers! What an idea-Meingast exclaimed-taking over from the whole despised bourgeois world of ideas precisely the most ridiculous one, democracy!
Walter had stood irresolute for a moment and then, since politics re- pelled him, joined Clarisse and Ulrich. Ulrich was saying: - S u c h a the- ory functions only when it is false, but then it's a tremendous machine for happiness! The two ofthem seem to me like a ticket machine arguing with a candy machine. But he found no echo.
Schmeisser had stood up to Meingast smiling, without responding. He told himselfthat it made no difference at all what an individual per- son thought.
Meingast was saying: - A new order, structure, cohesion of energy, is what's needed; that is correct. Pseudohistorical individualism and liber- alism have been ruined by mismanagement; that is correct. The masses are coming; that is correct. But their agglomeration must be great, hard, and with the power to do things! And when he had said that he looked probingly at Schmeisser, turned around, plucked a handful of grass, and silently strode away.
Ulrich felt himself superfluous and went off with Schmeisser. Schmeisser did not say a word. -W e're each carrying-Ulrich thought to himself-beside each other two glass balloons on our necks. Both transparent, of different colors, and beautifully, hermetically sealed. For heaven's sake don't stumble, so they don't break!
Walter and Clarisse remained behind on their "stage. "
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 59 5
Addendum: Clarisse notices criminal instincts everywhere (which later lead to war).
The blue parasol of the sky stretched above the green parasol of the pines; the green parasol ofthe pines stretched over the red coral trunks; at the foot of one of the coral trunks Clarisse was sitting, feeling the large, armadillo-like scales of the bark against her back. Meingast was standing to one side in the meadow. The wind was playing with his lean- ness as it does around the fence ofa steel tower; Clarisse thought: Ifone could bend one's ear that way one would hear his joints sing. Her heart felt: I am his younger brother.
The struggles with Walter, those attempted embraces from which she had to push her way out-chiseling herself out, she called it, although she herselfwas not made ofstone-had left behind in her an excitement that at times chased over her skin in a flash, like a pack of wolves; she had no idea where it had broken out from or where it vanished to. But as she sat there, her lmees drawn up, listening to Meingast, who was speak- ing of men's groups, her panties under her thin dress lying as tight as boy's trousers against her thighs, she felt calmed.
- A league or covenant of men-Meingast was saying-is armed love that one can no longer find anywhere today. Today one lmows only love for women. A covenant of men demands: loyalty, obedience, standing one for all and all for one; today the manly virtues have been turned into the caricature of a general obligatory military service, but for the Greeks they were still living eros. Male eroticism is not restricted to the sexual; its original form is war, alliance, united energies. Overcoming the fear of death! He stood and spoke into the air.
-W hen a man loves a woman it is always the start of his becoming a bourgeois: Clarisse completed the thought, convinced. -T ell me, does one have any business wishing for a child in a time like ours?
-Oh God, a child! Meingast warded her off. -Well, yes; only chil- dren! You should desire a child. This eroticism ofthe bourgeoisie, it's all people lmow today, and the only possibility leading to suffering and sac- rifice is by means of a child. And anyway, childbearing is still one of the few great things in life. A certain rehabilitation.
Clarisse slowly shook her head. They had recently begun addressing each other again with the familiar Du and had recalled their friendship of long ago, but not in the sensual form it had had before. - I f it were only a childofyours! Clarissesaidwithasmile. -ButWalterisn'tfitforthat.
- M e ? That's a really new ideal Besides, I'm going back to Switzer- land in a few days. My book is finished.
1596 · THE MAN WITH 0 U T QUALITIES
- I ' m coming with you, Clarisse said.
-That's out of the question! My friends are expecting me. There's hard work to be done. We're subject to all sorts of dangers and have to stick together like a phalanx. Meingast said this with a quiet, inward- directed smile. -That's no job for women!
-I'm not a woman! Clarisse exclaimed, and jumped up. (-Didn't you call me "little fellow" when I was fifteen years old? )
The philosopher smiled. Clarisse jumped up and went over to him. - I want to go away with you! she said.
-Love can be revealed in any ofthe following relations-the philoso- pher answered-servant to master, friend to friend, child to parents, wife to spouse, soul to God.
Clarisse put her hand on his arm; with a wordless request and awk- wardly, but as deeply moving as a dog's faithfulness.
Meingast bent down and whispered something in her ear.
Clarisse whispered back hoarsely: -I'm no woman, Meingastl I am the hermaphrodite!
- Y o u ? Meingast made no effort to hide a little contempt.
- I ' m traveling with you. You'll see. I'll show you the first night. W e won't become one, but you will be two. I can leave my body. You will have two bodies.
Meingast shook his head. -Duality ofbodies with a certain cancella- tion of the emphasis on self: a woman can accomplish that. But a woman will never lose herself in a higher community-
-Y ou don't understand mel Clarisse said. - I have the power of transforming myself into a hermaphrodite. I'll be very useful to you in your band of men. You hear that I'm speaking very calmly, but pay atten- tion to what I'm saying: Look at these trees and this round sky above them. Your breath goes further, your heart goes further, health is work- ing ip. your viscera. But the longer you look, the more the picture sucks you out of yourself. Your body remains standing in its place alone. The world sucks you up, I say. Your eyes make you a woman. And i f all your feelings could reach the top, for the world you would be dead and your body decayed.
-Am I right? But there are other days. Then all your muscles and thoughts become urgent. Then I'm a man. Then I stand here and raise my arm, and the sky shoots down into my arm. As if I were tearing down a banner, I say to you. I'm not a megalomaniac. My arm, too, tears me away from the place where I'm standing. Whether I dance, fight, weep, or sing: all that's left are my movements, my song, my tears; the world and I are blown up.
From the PosthuTTWUS Papers · 1597
- N o w do you believe that I belong in the league of men?
Meingast had been listening to Clarisse with an uncertain and almost anxious expression. Now he bent down and kissed her on the forehead. His words inspired Clarisse. - 1 did not lmow you! he said. - B u t it still won't do. A woman's love renders me infertile.
With this, he walked slowly with his high gait through the meadows on the shortest way back to the house. Clarisse did not run after him and did not let any word run after him. She lmew that he was leaving. She wanted to wait, to spare him the leave-taking. She was certain that he needed time to come to terms with her proposal, and that a letter would soon call her. Her lips were still murmuring words, like two little sisters talking over an exciting event; she reprimanded them, and closed them.
Addition to hennaphrodite: For the first time again like it used to be, when young girls had secrets. You really lmow what it means to be mar- ried, and you lmow how Walter is. (Each of these sentences occurs to her as at the beginning. ) And I'm sometimes a man. I've never "per- ished" in a man's arms; I push! I permeate him! I don't belong to any- one; I'm so strong that I could have a friendship with several men at once. A woman loves like an enormous pot that draws all the fire into itself. Clarisse says of herself: To love not like a woman but the way a brave little fox loves a big dog against which it is helpless. Or like a brave dog its master. That's what you love. Or: I'm a soldier, I disarm you, then disarm you just one degree more. Can't move a limb because ofso much superior strength. That's thewayyou love boys. Young people. But I'm a person too, why then just a woman.
But isn't she still-hermaphrodite-a woman too? Perhaps depict it this way: as i f a man would think it beautiful.
I go my way, I have my tasks; but you open my dress and fall upon me and draw my helplessness out of me. And I lean on you, unhappy at what you're doing to me but unable to resist. And go on and wear a black crepe on my helmet.
She would like to have intercourse (possibly with Walter too).
It is weakening.
From this the idea: You will weaken me, make me a woman, so that
you remain radiant . . . (at times)
We struggle hand to hand and are like the bath after the battle. Concretely: I have the character and duties of a man. I don't want
1598 ·THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
(this time) a child and don't want love, but I want the deep phenomenon of desire, of purification (salvation) through wealmess. I-you like you- me, even if servant and master.
? I'll press one leg against yours and wind the other around your hips, and your eyes will mist over.
I'll be insolent and forget my shyness toward you.
The woman has feminine feelings for the superior man, masculine feelings for the subordinate man. Therefore something hermaphroditic arises, a spiritually intertwined threesome.
Clarisse waited for Meingast's letter; the letter did not arrive. Clarisse became agitated. Ulrich, whom she suddenly thought of again, was away. She did not want to talk to Walter.
One morning, something strange happened. Clarisse was reading the newspaper; Walter had not yet left for the office. Suddenly Clarisse asked: -Wasn't there something in the paper yesterday about a train wreck near Budweis? -Y es, said Walter, who was reading another part ofthe paper. -How many dead? -Oh, ofcourse I can't remember; I think two or three; it was a small accident. Why are you asking? -Noth- ing. Reading on for a while, Clarisse said: -Because there's been an accident in America too. Where's Pennsylvania? - I don't know. In America. They went on reading. Clarisse saw strands like railroad tracks fanning out before her, which went on tangling wildly. Had she not seen these strands of tracks weeks or months ago? She reflected. Little trains shot out on the tracks, roared through curves, and collided. Clarisse said: -The engineers never mean for their locomotives to collide. -Of course not, Walter said, without paying attention. Clarisse asked whether her brother Siegfried was coming later that afternoon. Walter answered, he hoped so. He was bothered, it was time for him to be off, and Clarisse was constantly interrupting his reading.
Suddenly Clarisse said: - I want to talk with Siegfried about taking me to see Moosbrugger.
- W h o is Moosbrugger?
- Y o u mean you don't remember? Ulrich's friend the murderer. Now Walter understood whom she meant. She had once talked about
this man. - B u t Ulrich knows him either not at all or only very slightly, he corrected Clarisse.
-W ell, in any case--
- Y o u really shouldn't be so eccentric.
From the Posthumous Papers · 1599
Clarisse did not dignify this with a response. Walter leafed through the paper once more and thought he was surprised at not finding any mention of this person; he had assumed that Clarisse had been moved to make her comment because of some article; but he didn't have time for a question or genuine surprise, because he had to find his hat and rush off. Clarisse made an unpleasant face when he kissed her on the fore- head; two arrogant long lines ran down alongside her nose, and her chin jutted fmward. This very unreal face, which Walter did not notice, might have been grounds for anxiety.
But the strange thing that happened was this. While Clarisse was ask- ing her question, she had recognized that an accident happens not be- cause of evil intent but because in the confused network of tracks, switches, and signals that she saw before her, the human being loses the power of conscience with which he ought to have checked over his task once more; had that happened, he would certainly have done whatever was necessary to avoid the accident. At this moment, where she saw this before her eyes like a child's toy, she felt an enormous power of con- science. So she possessed it. She had to halfclose her eyes so that Walter would not notice their flashing. For she had recognized instantly that when one said "letting things prevail," it was only another expression for it. She understood that one was forced to let things have their way. But she did not let Walter have his, and would not do so.
That was the moment when Moosbrugger had occurred to her.
Everyone is familiar with what a miracle it is when a long-forgotten name, and one that moreover may be unimportant, suddenly pops up in one's memory. Or a face, with details that one is not at all aware of hav- ing seen. Evoked by some accidental stimulus. It is really as if a hole were to open in the sky. Clarisse was by no means wrong when she felt it as a process with two ends, Moosbrugger at one end, and far away, look- ing at him, herself; although one could of course say that in general this is not correct, because memory outside ourselves is nothing.
But precisely if something is not true in general, but is in particular, then this was something for Clarisse. It now occurred to her that Moos- brugger was a carpenter. And we know who else was a carpenter? Right. So at one end there was the carpenter, and at the other, Clarisse. Cla- risse, who was not permitted to let things prevail, who had a black mole on her thigh that fascinated every man. For there was no question that Meingast had run away from her; it had come too suddenly, he had wanted to save himself.
One cannot expect everything to be equally clear in the first moment. Somehow, of course, the carpenter was also connected with Ulrich; when a person whom one has almost forgotten after having loved him
1600 • THE MAN WITH0 UT QUALITIES
suddenly walks in the door, without, so to speak, being inwardly an- nounced, as Ulrich now did, even though in the company of other peo- ple, this is in and of itself something of the kind that makes one have to hold one's breath for a moment. Nor was it clear what all this had to do with the hermaphrodite that Clarisse was in order to enter the league of men; but she would get to that, she felt, and at the root of the emotion there most certainly was a connection; that could be seen in the manner of activity among these thoughts, which up there, on the outside, re- mained isolated for now.
For all these reasons Clarisse considered it her duty to meet Moos- brugger. That certainly wouldn't be difficult. Her brother was a physi- cian and could help her with it. She waited for him, and the time passed quickly. She considered how little Meingast had meant to her when she had known him before, and how great he had become since. While he was present, everything here in the house had been elevated. She had the feeling that he had simply taken her and Walter's sins upon himself, and that was what had made everything so easy. Perhaps now, in the next phase, she would have to take Meingast's sins upon herself.
But what are sins? She used this word perhaps too often, without thinking enough about it. It is a poisonous Christian word. Clarisse could not discover what she herself meant, precisely. A butterfly occurred to her, which suddenly falls motionless to the ground and becomes an ugly worm with dead wings. Then naturally Walter, who sought the milk of love at her breast and thereafter became stiff and lazy. Besides, had she not once known quite clearly that she would redeem this carpenter from his sins? She had, had she not, once written a letter? It was uncanny to recall that only so dimly. It obviously signified that something was still to come.
No letter came from Meingast, the business with the league of men remained out of Clarisse's purview; sometimes she forgot it because of the new things that were happening. She had to think how she might get into the clinic again in spite of Dr. Friedenthal, who had forbidden her to return. She realized that it would be difficult. Climb over the wall surrounding the grounds? she thought; this idea of penetrating the for- bidden space like a warrior appealed to her greatly, but since the clinic was not in open country but in the city, ifit was to be done without being seen it could be risked only at night, and then, once on the grounds, how was Clarisse to find her way among the many locked buildings? She was
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 6 0 1
afraid. Although she knew that it would have to be considered out of the question, she was frightened by the image of falling into the hands of a madman among the black trees and being raped or strangled by him. She still had the screams of the maniacs in her ears: at the last station, before she went past the lovely ladies and returned once more to ratio- nal life. She often saw before her the naked man standing in the center of a totally empty room that had nothing in it but a low cot and a toilet that were of a piece with the floor. He had a blond beard and light- brown pubic hair. He ignored both the opening of the door and the peo- ple looking at him; he stood with his legs spread apart, kept his head lowered like a savage, had thick saliva in his beard, and repeated like a pendulum the same motion again and again, throwing his upper body around in a shallow circle, always with a push, always toward the same side, his arms forming an acute angle to his body, and the only thing that changed was that with every one of these motions another finger jumped up from his clenched fist; it was accompanied by a loud, panting scream, forced out by the requisite monstrous exertion of the whole body. Dr. Friedenthal had explained that this went on for hours, and had allowed Clarisse to look into other cells, where for the moment quiet reigned. But this had been if anything even more horrifying. He showed her the same bare cement room containing nothing but a person whose fit was imminent, and one of these people was sitting there still in his street clothes; ~<. nlyhis tie and collar had been removed. It was a lawyer with a lovely full beard and carefully parted hair; he sat there and glanced at the visitors as if he had been on the point of going to court and had sat down on this stone bench only because he was compelled, for God knows what reason, to wait. Clarisse was especially horrified by this per- son because he looked so natural; but Dr. Friedenthal said that just a few days before, in his first fit, he had killed his wife, and almost all the transient inhabitants of this section were murderers. Clarisse asked her- selfwhy she was afraid of them, when it was precisely these patients who were best secured and supervised? She feared them because she did not . understand them. There were several others in her memory who af- fected her the same way. -But that's still no reason for my having to meet them if I'm walking through the grounds at night! she said to herself.
But it was like this. It was almost certain that she would meet them; that was an idea it was impossible to eradicate, for no matter how often Clarisse imagined the process ofclimbing over the wall and then walking forward through the gloomy, widely spaced trees, sooner or later it came to a gruesome encounter. This was a given fact one had to reckon with, and therefore it was reasonable to ask what it meant. Even as solid a man
1602 • THE MAN WITH 0 U T QUALITIES
as the famous old American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson, whom she had read in her adolescence because her friends told her he was marvel- ous, maintained that it is a general law of nature and man that like is attracted by like. Clarisse remembered a sentence which went, roughly, that everything that comes to a person tends toward him ofitself, so that cause and effect only apparently succeed each other but in reality are simply two sides ofthe same thing, and all cleverness is bad because with every precautionary rule against danger one is put in the power of this danger. All Clarisse had to do, when she remembered this, was to apply it to herself. If it was established that she, even if at first only in some mysterious fashion in her mind, was continually meeting murderers, then she was attracting these murderers. But is like being attracted by like? That meant that she bore within herself the soul of a murderer. One can imagine what it means when such extraordinary thoughts sud- denly find solid ground beneath their feet! Meingast had run away from her; she was apparently too strong for him. It was like lightning bolts striking each other! Walter was attracted by her to murder his talent again and again in her, no matter how much she pushed him away. She carried a black medallion at the crease ofher hip, and the insane divined it: perhaps such people can see through clothes and came toward her rejoicing. In a confusing way, all the facts fit.
Laughter and difficulties struggled around Clarisse's mouth; it alter- nately opened and clamped tight. She had got up too early; Walter was still sleeping; she had hastily thrown on a light dress and gone outside. The singing of birds reached her from the woods through the empty morning stillness. The hemisphere of the sky had not yet filled with warmth. Even the light was still shallowly dispersed. - I t only reaches as far as my ankles-Clarisse thought-the faucet of the morning has just been opened. Everything was before its time. Clarisse was deeply moved that she was wandering through the world before its time. It al- most made her cry. She fervently regretted that during her visit to the madhouse she had seen through Moosbrugger's situation too late. What she had seen being played out before her was worthless devils gambling for a soul. She heard herself being called to tum back there once more, but Dr. Friedenthal blocked her path. She felt quite ashamed, and went on like that for a ways. But at some point a thought took shape that re- leased her from this depression: Many great men had been in insane asylums. And they had been derided by those who had remained in pos- session of their reason. They had now become incapable of explaining themselves to those for whom earlier they had had only contempt. She remembered the muteness ofthe late Nietzsche, whom she worshiped. And what had vexed her just now because she had not seen through it in
From the Posthumous Papers · 1603
time, how the three devils had intentionally brought her before Moos- brugger in so miserably casual a fashion in order to get the better of her through cunning and paralyze her, indeed that she had really shown her- self to be stupid and weak, now slowly made her understand as a sign that the fate of the great man among the repulsive jailers of the world would be laid upon her too. Her heart was filled by a drifting rain oflight and tears. It was uncanny, putting oneself on an equal footing with the insane; but being on the same footing with the uncanny is to cast one's lot for genius! She decided to free Moosbrugger from his jailers. Thoughts regarding how she might do this flitted around in her mind. The swallows had meanwhile begun to flit through the air. In some way it would have to work. Clarisse was so absorbed in these thoughts that she felt the depths like the narrow incline of an abyss. She had to draw in her shoulders and could only cautiously venture a smile. It occurred to her that this would be the "depth of antimoral inclination" that Nietz- sche demanded of his disciples. She was astonished at this, for she had not expected that it was possible to experience it so palpably. It was a path through a "landscape of countermorality. "
The landscape of countermorality lies deep beneath that of ordinary life, not deep in yards but many octaves deeper.
1590 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
cheerfulness, or whatever you like: it is only the hollow earthly charac- terization of processes that are far more powerful than their ridiculous trailing thread, which our understanding seizes in order to pull them down to us. In truth, all our feelings are inexpressible. We press them out in drops and think that these drops are our feelings. But they are clouds rushing away! All our experiences are more than we experience of them. I could now simply apply the example of music to this; all our experiences would then be of the essence of music, were it not sur- rounded by a still greater circle. F o r -
But here an interruption ensued, for Schmeisser, whose lips had long mated dryly together, could no longer restrain the birth of an objection. He said loudly: - I f you derive the birth of morality from the spirit of music, you're forgetting that all the emotions you might care to talk about receive their meaning from middle-class habits and middle-class assumptions!
Meingast turned amicably to the young man. -When, ten years ago, I came to Zurich for the first time-he said slowly-something ofthat sort would have been considered revolutionary. At that time you would have had great success with your inteijection. I may tell you that it was there that I received my first spiritual training, in the left wing of your party, which had members from all the countries of the world. But today it is clear to us that the creative accomplishment of Social Democracy-he emphasized the component "Democracy"-has so far remained zero, and will never get beyond whitewashing the cultural content of liberal- ism as neorevolutionary!
Schmeisser had no intention of responding to this. It was sufficient that he threw back his hair with a shake of his neck muscles and smiled with sternly closed lips. One could perhaps also say: Oh, don't let me bother you! He was thinking that a few lines in The Shoemaker, a few juicily pointed sarcastic comments, would be appropriate anytime as warning yet again against bourgeois like these, who never stuck it out for long in the movement. But Ulrich interrupted: -Don't run him through with a quotation from Marx; Herr Meingast would answer with Goethe, and we'd never get home today! But still Schmeisser let himself be car- ried away, because he had to say something. Since he lacked the will to do battle his answer was too modest. He simply said: - T h e new culture that socialism has brought into the world is the feeling of solidarity. . . . The response was not immediate; Meingast seemed to be leaving him- self time. He replied slowly: -That's correct. But it's precious little. Now Schmeisser lost his patience: -So-called academic learning-he exclaimed-has long since lost its right to be taken seriously as an intel- lectual center! Poking around among antiquities, pasting together trea-
From the Posthu11WUs Papers · 1591
tises about the poems of some fifth-rate writer, cramming Roman un- Law; that only breeds empty arrogance. The workers' movement, with its definable goals, has long been developing the real intellectual work- ers, the fighters in the class struggle with their clear aims, who are going to do away with the barbarism of exploitation, and they are the ones who will create the foundations for a culture of the future!
Now it was Meingast's turn to get angry; for years he had not felt as warmly about the culture of the present as he did now, faced with this battler for the future. But with a good-natured motion, Meingast cut off his counterattack. -W e are really not at all as far apart as you think, he answered Schmeisser. - 1 don't think much of academic learning either, and I, too, believe that a new feeling of community, a turning away from the individualism of the most recent age, signifies the most important development under way today. B u t - And again Meingast stood in the meadow like a totem pole, stretching out the hand that descriptively ac- companied his words, and could continue precisely where he had been interrupted: But that had happened before his new doctrine of the will. By "will" one was not, of course, to understand something like the inten- tion of seeking out a specific business because its drawing paper is cheaper, or composing a poem meant to be arrhythmic because up to then all other poems had been rhythmic. Nor was trampling on a supe- rior in order to get ahead a sign ofwill. On the contrary, that's merely the scum ofwill, caused by the many obstacles that today stand in the way of will, and is, therefore, broken will. That one applies the word "will" to such things is a sign that its true meaning is no longer felt. Meingast's charter was the unbroken cosmic stream of will. He illustrated its ap- pearance by great men like Napoleon. Compare Shaw's assertion that it is only great men who do anything, and that in vain. The will of such people is uninterrupted activity, an art of burning up like breathing, it must incessantly produce heat and movement, and for such natures standing still and turning back are equivalent to death. But one can illus- trate this just as well by the will of primeval mythic times; when the wheel was invented, language, fire, religion: those were breakthroughs with which nothing since can be compared. At most in Homer there are perhaps the last traces of this great simplicity of the will and collected creative energy. Now Meingast brought together with extraordinary force these two discrepant examples: It was no accident that they were talking about a statesman and an artist. -For, ifyou all remember what I was telling you about music, the aesthetic phenomenon is that which needs nothing in addition to itself; as a phenomenon it is already all that it can possibly be: in other words, purely realized will! Will belongs not to morality but to aesthetics, to unmotivated phenomena. There are
1592 · THE MAN WITH 0 U T QUALITIES
three conclusions that can be drawn from this: First, the world can be justified only as an aesthetic phenomenon; every attempt to give it a moral basis has failed up to now, and now we can understand why it must be that way. Second, our statesmen must, as the ancient wisdom of Plato already demanded, learn music again; and Plato drew his impetus for this from the wisdom ofthe East. Third, systematically executed cru- elty is the only means now available for the European peoples, still stupefied by humanitarianism, to find their strength again!
Even though this conversation might at times have been rather opaque to ear and understanding, it was different with eye and feeling; it came tumbling down from a philosophical height where everything is in any case One, and Clarisse felt its onrush. She was enthusiastic. All the emotions in her were stirred up and swam, if one may put it this way, once more in feeling. For a while she had placed herself in the meadow not far from Meingast in order to hear better and to be able to conceal her excitement behind a glance that appeared to be distractedly gazing into the distance. But the inner burning of the world of which Meingast spoke opened her thoughts like nuts bursting with flames. Strange things became clear to her: summer noons, freezing with the fever of light; starry nights, mute as fish with gold scales; experiences without reflection or preparation that sometimes overcame her and remained without response, indeed really without content; tension, whenever she made music, certainly, today, worse than any concert pianist, but to the absolute best of her ability and clearly, with the uncanny feeling that something titanic, nameless experiences, a still-nameless person, greater than the greatest music can encompass, was forcing itself against the limits of her fingers. Now she understood her battles with Walter: they were suddenly moments as when a boat glides over an infinite chasm; in words, perhaps not comprehensible to anyone else. Clarisse's fingers and wrists began barely perceptibly to play along; one saw the young woman translating the prophet's wisdom into her own bodily will. The effect he had on her was related to the essence of a dance, a dancing wandering. Her feet released themselves from the impoverished and hardened present; her soul released itself from the uncertainty of in- stinct and weakness; the distance reared up; she held a flower with three heads in her hand; to follow after Meingast, following Christ, to redeem Walter, those were the three heads; if they were not, then Clarisse was not thinking it the way one counts or reads, from left to right, but like a rainbow from one end to the other; out ofthis rainbow arose the smell of the closet in which she kept her traveling clothes, then the three flowers consisted of the three terms I seek, self-search, self-seeking-Clarisse had already forgotten what the flower had consisted of before. Walter
From the Posthumous Papers · 1593
was a stem, even Meingast was just a stem, from the soles of her feet Clarisse grew taller and taller, it happened with dizzying speed, before one could hold one's breath, and Clarisse threw herself down in the grass, horrified at her enthusiasm for herself. Ulrich, who was already lying there, had misunderstood her movements, and thoughtlessly tick- led her with a blade of grass. Clarisse shot out sparks of loathing.
Walter had been observing Clarisse, but something he had to talk about drew him more strongly to Meingast. This was Homer. Homer already a phenomenon of decay? No, decay first set in with Voltaire and Lessing! Meingast was probably the most important person one could encounter today, but what he said about music only showed what a mis- fortune it was that throughout his life Walter had felt too crippled to put his own views in the form of a book. He could understand Clarisse so well; he had long seen how she was carried away by Meingast; he felt so sony for her; she was wrong, for despite everything she put the fortis- simo of her enthusiasm into unimportant things; this coupling pregnant with destiny made his feelings for her flare up in great flames. While he was walking over to Meingast, Clarisse lay stretched out in the grass, Ulrich at her side not understanding anything at all, only, by lying there, pushing the optical center of gravity of the picture somewhat in his di- rection; Walter felt totally like an actor walking across a stage; here they were playing out their destiny, their story; in the seconds before he spoke to Meingast he felt lifted out of himself and frozen to icy silence, performer and poet of his self.
Meingast saw him coming. Four paces away like four ages of the world to be strode through. He had recently called Walter's helplessness that of a democracy of feelings, and with that given him the key to his condition, but he had no desire to carry this discussion further, and before Walter reached him he turned to the quarrelsome stranger.
-Perhaps you are a Socialist-Schmeisser answered him-but you are an enemy ofdemocracy!
-W ell, thank God you noticed! Meingast turned completely to face him and succeeded in forgetting Walter and Clarisse. -1 was, as you heard, a Socialist too. But you say that a new culture will arise by itself out of the workers' movement; and I say to you: on the path that social- ism has taken among us, never!
Schmeisser shrugged his shoulders. -The world is certainly not going to be put on a better path by talking about art, love, and the like!
-Who's talking about art? It seems that you haven't understood me in the least. I am of the same opinion as you that the present condition will not last much longer. The culture of bourgeois individualism will perish the way all previous cultures have perished. Of what? I can tell
1594 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
you: Ofthe increase ofall quantities without a corresponding increase of the central quality. Of there being too many people, things, opinions, needs, wills. The firming energies, the perfusing of the community with its mission, its will to get ahead, its community feeling, the connective tissue of public and private institutions: these are not all growing at the same rate; it is rather left far too much to accident and falls further and further behind. The point comes in every culture where this dispropor- tion gets to be too much. From then on, the culture is vulnerable like a weakened organism, and it takes only a push to bring it down. Today the growing complexity of relations and passions can still barely be main- tained.
Schmeisser shook his head. -We'll give the push, when the time comes.
-W hen it comes! It will never come! The materialistic view ofhistory produces passivity! The time will perhaps be here tomorrow. Perhaps it's already here today! You won't take advantage of it, for with democ- racy you ruin everything! Democracy produces neither thinkers nor doers, but gabblers. Just ask yourself what the characteristic creations of democracy are! Parliament and newspapers! What an idea-Meingast exclaimed-taking over from the whole despised bourgeois world of ideas precisely the most ridiculous one, democracy!
Walter had stood irresolute for a moment and then, since politics re- pelled him, joined Clarisse and Ulrich. Ulrich was saying: - S u c h a the- ory functions only when it is false, but then it's a tremendous machine for happiness! The two ofthem seem to me like a ticket machine arguing with a candy machine. But he found no echo.
Schmeisser had stood up to Meingast smiling, without responding. He told himselfthat it made no difference at all what an individual per- son thought.
Meingast was saying: - A new order, structure, cohesion of energy, is what's needed; that is correct. Pseudohistorical individualism and liber- alism have been ruined by mismanagement; that is correct. The masses are coming; that is correct. But their agglomeration must be great, hard, and with the power to do things! And when he had said that he looked probingly at Schmeisser, turned around, plucked a handful of grass, and silently strode away.
Ulrich felt himself superfluous and went off with Schmeisser. Schmeisser did not say a word. -W e're each carrying-Ulrich thought to himself-beside each other two glass balloons on our necks. Both transparent, of different colors, and beautifully, hermetically sealed. For heaven's sake don't stumble, so they don't break!
Walter and Clarisse remained behind on their "stage. "
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 59 5
Addendum: Clarisse notices criminal instincts everywhere (which later lead to war).
The blue parasol of the sky stretched above the green parasol of the pines; the green parasol ofthe pines stretched over the red coral trunks; at the foot of one of the coral trunks Clarisse was sitting, feeling the large, armadillo-like scales of the bark against her back. Meingast was standing to one side in the meadow. The wind was playing with his lean- ness as it does around the fence ofa steel tower; Clarisse thought: Ifone could bend one's ear that way one would hear his joints sing. Her heart felt: I am his younger brother.
The struggles with Walter, those attempted embraces from which she had to push her way out-chiseling herself out, she called it, although she herselfwas not made ofstone-had left behind in her an excitement that at times chased over her skin in a flash, like a pack of wolves; she had no idea where it had broken out from or where it vanished to. But as she sat there, her lmees drawn up, listening to Meingast, who was speak- ing of men's groups, her panties under her thin dress lying as tight as boy's trousers against her thighs, she felt calmed.
- A league or covenant of men-Meingast was saying-is armed love that one can no longer find anywhere today. Today one lmows only love for women. A covenant of men demands: loyalty, obedience, standing one for all and all for one; today the manly virtues have been turned into the caricature of a general obligatory military service, but for the Greeks they were still living eros. Male eroticism is not restricted to the sexual; its original form is war, alliance, united energies. Overcoming the fear of death! He stood and spoke into the air.
-W hen a man loves a woman it is always the start of his becoming a bourgeois: Clarisse completed the thought, convinced. -T ell me, does one have any business wishing for a child in a time like ours?
-Oh God, a child! Meingast warded her off. -Well, yes; only chil- dren! You should desire a child. This eroticism ofthe bourgeoisie, it's all people lmow today, and the only possibility leading to suffering and sac- rifice is by means of a child. And anyway, childbearing is still one of the few great things in life. A certain rehabilitation.
Clarisse slowly shook her head. They had recently begun addressing each other again with the familiar Du and had recalled their friendship of long ago, but not in the sensual form it had had before. - I f it were only a childofyours! Clarissesaidwithasmile. -ButWalterisn'tfitforthat.
- M e ? That's a really new ideal Besides, I'm going back to Switzer- land in a few days. My book is finished.
1596 · THE MAN WITH 0 U T QUALITIES
- I ' m coming with you, Clarisse said.
-That's out of the question! My friends are expecting me. There's hard work to be done. We're subject to all sorts of dangers and have to stick together like a phalanx. Meingast said this with a quiet, inward- directed smile. -That's no job for women!
-I'm not a woman! Clarisse exclaimed, and jumped up. (-Didn't you call me "little fellow" when I was fifteen years old? )
The philosopher smiled. Clarisse jumped up and went over to him. - I want to go away with you! she said.
-Love can be revealed in any ofthe following relations-the philoso- pher answered-servant to master, friend to friend, child to parents, wife to spouse, soul to God.
Clarisse put her hand on his arm; with a wordless request and awk- wardly, but as deeply moving as a dog's faithfulness.
Meingast bent down and whispered something in her ear.
Clarisse whispered back hoarsely: -I'm no woman, Meingastl I am the hermaphrodite!
- Y o u ? Meingast made no effort to hide a little contempt.
- I ' m traveling with you. You'll see. I'll show you the first night. W e won't become one, but you will be two. I can leave my body. You will have two bodies.
Meingast shook his head. -Duality ofbodies with a certain cancella- tion of the emphasis on self: a woman can accomplish that. But a woman will never lose herself in a higher community-
-Y ou don't understand mel Clarisse said. - I have the power of transforming myself into a hermaphrodite. I'll be very useful to you in your band of men. You hear that I'm speaking very calmly, but pay atten- tion to what I'm saying: Look at these trees and this round sky above them. Your breath goes further, your heart goes further, health is work- ing ip. your viscera. But the longer you look, the more the picture sucks you out of yourself. Your body remains standing in its place alone. The world sucks you up, I say. Your eyes make you a woman. And i f all your feelings could reach the top, for the world you would be dead and your body decayed.
-Am I right? But there are other days. Then all your muscles and thoughts become urgent. Then I'm a man. Then I stand here and raise my arm, and the sky shoots down into my arm. As if I were tearing down a banner, I say to you. I'm not a megalomaniac. My arm, too, tears me away from the place where I'm standing. Whether I dance, fight, weep, or sing: all that's left are my movements, my song, my tears; the world and I are blown up.
From the PosthuTTWUS Papers · 1597
- N o w do you believe that I belong in the league of men?
Meingast had been listening to Clarisse with an uncertain and almost anxious expression. Now he bent down and kissed her on the forehead. His words inspired Clarisse. - 1 did not lmow you! he said. - B u t it still won't do. A woman's love renders me infertile.
With this, he walked slowly with his high gait through the meadows on the shortest way back to the house. Clarisse did not run after him and did not let any word run after him. She lmew that he was leaving. She wanted to wait, to spare him the leave-taking. She was certain that he needed time to come to terms with her proposal, and that a letter would soon call her. Her lips were still murmuring words, like two little sisters talking over an exciting event; she reprimanded them, and closed them.
Addition to hennaphrodite: For the first time again like it used to be, when young girls had secrets. You really lmow what it means to be mar- ried, and you lmow how Walter is. (Each of these sentences occurs to her as at the beginning. ) And I'm sometimes a man. I've never "per- ished" in a man's arms; I push! I permeate him! I don't belong to any- one; I'm so strong that I could have a friendship with several men at once. A woman loves like an enormous pot that draws all the fire into itself. Clarisse says of herself: To love not like a woman but the way a brave little fox loves a big dog against which it is helpless. Or like a brave dog its master. That's what you love. Or: I'm a soldier, I disarm you, then disarm you just one degree more. Can't move a limb because ofso much superior strength. That's thewayyou love boys. Young people. But I'm a person too, why then just a woman.
But isn't she still-hermaphrodite-a woman too? Perhaps depict it this way: as i f a man would think it beautiful.
I go my way, I have my tasks; but you open my dress and fall upon me and draw my helplessness out of me. And I lean on you, unhappy at what you're doing to me but unable to resist. And go on and wear a black crepe on my helmet.
She would like to have intercourse (possibly with Walter too).
It is weakening.
From this the idea: You will weaken me, make me a woman, so that
you remain radiant . . . (at times)
We struggle hand to hand and are like the bath after the battle. Concretely: I have the character and duties of a man. I don't want
1598 ·THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
(this time) a child and don't want love, but I want the deep phenomenon of desire, of purification (salvation) through wealmess. I-you like you- me, even if servant and master.
? I'll press one leg against yours and wind the other around your hips, and your eyes will mist over.
I'll be insolent and forget my shyness toward you.
The woman has feminine feelings for the superior man, masculine feelings for the subordinate man. Therefore something hermaphroditic arises, a spiritually intertwined threesome.
Clarisse waited for Meingast's letter; the letter did not arrive. Clarisse became agitated. Ulrich, whom she suddenly thought of again, was away. She did not want to talk to Walter.
One morning, something strange happened. Clarisse was reading the newspaper; Walter had not yet left for the office. Suddenly Clarisse asked: -Wasn't there something in the paper yesterday about a train wreck near Budweis? -Y es, said Walter, who was reading another part ofthe paper. -How many dead? -Oh, ofcourse I can't remember; I think two or three; it was a small accident. Why are you asking? -Noth- ing. Reading on for a while, Clarisse said: -Because there's been an accident in America too. Where's Pennsylvania? - I don't know. In America. They went on reading. Clarisse saw strands like railroad tracks fanning out before her, which went on tangling wildly. Had she not seen these strands of tracks weeks or months ago? She reflected. Little trains shot out on the tracks, roared through curves, and collided. Clarisse said: -The engineers never mean for their locomotives to collide. -Of course not, Walter said, without paying attention. Clarisse asked whether her brother Siegfried was coming later that afternoon. Walter answered, he hoped so. He was bothered, it was time for him to be off, and Clarisse was constantly interrupting his reading.
Suddenly Clarisse said: - I want to talk with Siegfried about taking me to see Moosbrugger.
- W h o is Moosbrugger?
- Y o u mean you don't remember? Ulrich's friend the murderer. Now Walter understood whom she meant. She had once talked about
this man. - B u t Ulrich knows him either not at all or only very slightly, he corrected Clarisse.
-W ell, in any case--
- Y o u really shouldn't be so eccentric.
From the Posthumous Papers · 1599
Clarisse did not dignify this with a response. Walter leafed through the paper once more and thought he was surprised at not finding any mention of this person; he had assumed that Clarisse had been moved to make her comment because of some article; but he didn't have time for a question or genuine surprise, because he had to find his hat and rush off. Clarisse made an unpleasant face when he kissed her on the fore- head; two arrogant long lines ran down alongside her nose, and her chin jutted fmward. This very unreal face, which Walter did not notice, might have been grounds for anxiety.
But the strange thing that happened was this. While Clarisse was ask- ing her question, she had recognized that an accident happens not be- cause of evil intent but because in the confused network of tracks, switches, and signals that she saw before her, the human being loses the power of conscience with which he ought to have checked over his task once more; had that happened, he would certainly have done whatever was necessary to avoid the accident. At this moment, where she saw this before her eyes like a child's toy, she felt an enormous power of con- science. So she possessed it. She had to halfclose her eyes so that Walter would not notice their flashing. For she had recognized instantly that when one said "letting things prevail," it was only another expression for it. She understood that one was forced to let things have their way. But she did not let Walter have his, and would not do so.
That was the moment when Moosbrugger had occurred to her.
Everyone is familiar with what a miracle it is when a long-forgotten name, and one that moreover may be unimportant, suddenly pops up in one's memory. Or a face, with details that one is not at all aware of hav- ing seen. Evoked by some accidental stimulus. It is really as if a hole were to open in the sky. Clarisse was by no means wrong when she felt it as a process with two ends, Moosbrugger at one end, and far away, look- ing at him, herself; although one could of course say that in general this is not correct, because memory outside ourselves is nothing.
But precisely if something is not true in general, but is in particular, then this was something for Clarisse. It now occurred to her that Moos- brugger was a carpenter. And we know who else was a carpenter? Right. So at one end there was the carpenter, and at the other, Clarisse. Cla- risse, who was not permitted to let things prevail, who had a black mole on her thigh that fascinated every man. For there was no question that Meingast had run away from her; it had come too suddenly, he had wanted to save himself.
One cannot expect everything to be equally clear in the first moment. Somehow, of course, the carpenter was also connected with Ulrich; when a person whom one has almost forgotten after having loved him
1600 • THE MAN WITH0 UT QUALITIES
suddenly walks in the door, without, so to speak, being inwardly an- nounced, as Ulrich now did, even though in the company of other peo- ple, this is in and of itself something of the kind that makes one have to hold one's breath for a moment. Nor was it clear what all this had to do with the hermaphrodite that Clarisse was in order to enter the league of men; but she would get to that, she felt, and at the root of the emotion there most certainly was a connection; that could be seen in the manner of activity among these thoughts, which up there, on the outside, re- mained isolated for now.
For all these reasons Clarisse considered it her duty to meet Moos- brugger. That certainly wouldn't be difficult. Her brother was a physi- cian and could help her with it. She waited for him, and the time passed quickly. She considered how little Meingast had meant to her when she had known him before, and how great he had become since. While he was present, everything here in the house had been elevated. She had the feeling that he had simply taken her and Walter's sins upon himself, and that was what had made everything so easy. Perhaps now, in the next phase, she would have to take Meingast's sins upon herself.
But what are sins? She used this word perhaps too often, without thinking enough about it. It is a poisonous Christian word. Clarisse could not discover what she herself meant, precisely. A butterfly occurred to her, which suddenly falls motionless to the ground and becomes an ugly worm with dead wings. Then naturally Walter, who sought the milk of love at her breast and thereafter became stiff and lazy. Besides, had she not once known quite clearly that she would redeem this carpenter from his sins? She had, had she not, once written a letter? It was uncanny to recall that only so dimly. It obviously signified that something was still to come.
No letter came from Meingast, the business with the league of men remained out of Clarisse's purview; sometimes she forgot it because of the new things that were happening. She had to think how she might get into the clinic again in spite of Dr. Friedenthal, who had forbidden her to return. She realized that it would be difficult. Climb over the wall surrounding the grounds? she thought; this idea of penetrating the for- bidden space like a warrior appealed to her greatly, but since the clinic was not in open country but in the city, ifit was to be done without being seen it could be risked only at night, and then, once on the grounds, how was Clarisse to find her way among the many locked buildings? She was
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 6 0 1
afraid. Although she knew that it would have to be considered out of the question, she was frightened by the image of falling into the hands of a madman among the black trees and being raped or strangled by him. She still had the screams of the maniacs in her ears: at the last station, before she went past the lovely ladies and returned once more to ratio- nal life. She often saw before her the naked man standing in the center of a totally empty room that had nothing in it but a low cot and a toilet that were of a piece with the floor. He had a blond beard and light- brown pubic hair. He ignored both the opening of the door and the peo- ple looking at him; he stood with his legs spread apart, kept his head lowered like a savage, had thick saliva in his beard, and repeated like a pendulum the same motion again and again, throwing his upper body around in a shallow circle, always with a push, always toward the same side, his arms forming an acute angle to his body, and the only thing that changed was that with every one of these motions another finger jumped up from his clenched fist; it was accompanied by a loud, panting scream, forced out by the requisite monstrous exertion of the whole body. Dr. Friedenthal had explained that this went on for hours, and had allowed Clarisse to look into other cells, where for the moment quiet reigned. But this had been if anything even more horrifying. He showed her the same bare cement room containing nothing but a person whose fit was imminent, and one of these people was sitting there still in his street clothes; ~<. nlyhis tie and collar had been removed. It was a lawyer with a lovely full beard and carefully parted hair; he sat there and glanced at the visitors as if he had been on the point of going to court and had sat down on this stone bench only because he was compelled, for God knows what reason, to wait. Clarisse was especially horrified by this per- son because he looked so natural; but Dr. Friedenthal said that just a few days before, in his first fit, he had killed his wife, and almost all the transient inhabitants of this section were murderers. Clarisse asked her- selfwhy she was afraid of them, when it was precisely these patients who were best secured and supervised? She feared them because she did not . understand them. There were several others in her memory who af- fected her the same way. -But that's still no reason for my having to meet them if I'm walking through the grounds at night! she said to herself.
But it was like this. It was almost certain that she would meet them; that was an idea it was impossible to eradicate, for no matter how often Clarisse imagined the process ofclimbing over the wall and then walking forward through the gloomy, widely spaced trees, sooner or later it came to a gruesome encounter. This was a given fact one had to reckon with, and therefore it was reasonable to ask what it meant. Even as solid a man
1602 • THE MAN WITH 0 U T QUALITIES
as the famous old American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson, whom she had read in her adolescence because her friends told her he was marvel- ous, maintained that it is a general law of nature and man that like is attracted by like. Clarisse remembered a sentence which went, roughly, that everything that comes to a person tends toward him ofitself, so that cause and effect only apparently succeed each other but in reality are simply two sides ofthe same thing, and all cleverness is bad because with every precautionary rule against danger one is put in the power of this danger. All Clarisse had to do, when she remembered this, was to apply it to herself. If it was established that she, even if at first only in some mysterious fashion in her mind, was continually meeting murderers, then she was attracting these murderers. But is like being attracted by like? That meant that she bore within herself the soul of a murderer. One can imagine what it means when such extraordinary thoughts sud- denly find solid ground beneath their feet! Meingast had run away from her; she was apparently too strong for him. It was like lightning bolts striking each other! Walter was attracted by her to murder his talent again and again in her, no matter how much she pushed him away. She carried a black medallion at the crease ofher hip, and the insane divined it: perhaps such people can see through clothes and came toward her rejoicing. In a confusing way, all the facts fit.
Laughter and difficulties struggled around Clarisse's mouth; it alter- nately opened and clamped tight. She had got up too early; Walter was still sleeping; she had hastily thrown on a light dress and gone outside. The singing of birds reached her from the woods through the empty morning stillness. The hemisphere of the sky had not yet filled with warmth. Even the light was still shallowly dispersed. - I t only reaches as far as my ankles-Clarisse thought-the faucet of the morning has just been opened. Everything was before its time. Clarisse was deeply moved that she was wandering through the world before its time. It al- most made her cry. She fervently regretted that during her visit to the madhouse she had seen through Moosbrugger's situation too late. What she had seen being played out before her was worthless devils gambling for a soul. She heard herself being called to tum back there once more, but Dr. Friedenthal blocked her path. She felt quite ashamed, and went on like that for a ways. But at some point a thought took shape that re- leased her from this depression: Many great men had been in insane asylums. And they had been derided by those who had remained in pos- session of their reason. They had now become incapable of explaining themselves to those for whom earlier they had had only contempt. She remembered the muteness ofthe late Nietzsche, whom she worshiped. And what had vexed her just now because she had not seen through it in
From the Posthumous Papers · 1603
time, how the three devils had intentionally brought her before Moos- brugger in so miserably casual a fashion in order to get the better of her through cunning and paralyze her, indeed that she had really shown her- self to be stupid and weak, now slowly made her understand as a sign that the fate of the great man among the repulsive jailers of the world would be laid upon her too. Her heart was filled by a drifting rain oflight and tears. It was uncanny, putting oneself on an equal footing with the insane; but being on the same footing with the uncanny is to cast one's lot for genius! She decided to free Moosbrugger from his jailers. Thoughts regarding how she might do this flitted around in her mind. The swallows had meanwhile begun to flit through the air. In some way it would have to work. Clarisse was so absorbed in these thoughts that she felt the depths like the narrow incline of an abyss. She had to draw in her shoulders and could only cautiously venture a smile. It occurred to her that this would be the "depth of antimoral inclination" that Nietz- sche demanded of his disciples. She was astonished at this, for she had not expected that it was possible to experience it so palpably. It was a path through a "landscape of countermorality. "
The landscape of countermorality lies deep beneath that of ordinary life, not deep in yards but many octaves deeper.
