Today we need an art that has brush strokes and musical
intervals
this big!
Musil - Man Without Qualities - v2
He could not think of anything else to say.
But his mouth remained open as he mindlessly groped around for a word; suddenly he beat against his boots again with his crop.
"But of course, the shouts!
" he added.
"Right at the beginning you spoke of the shouting you heard, and I overlooked that when you were talking about the deathly stillness.
You tell a story so magnificently that one forgets everything!
"
"As we stood in front of the door from which shouts and a strange moaning alternated," Clarisse began, "Friedenthal asked me once more whether I really wanted to go in. I was so excited I could hardly answer, but the guards paid no attention and began opening the doors. You may imagine, General, that at that moment I was terribly afraid, for I'm really only a woman. I had the feeling: when the door opens, the maniac is going to jump mel"
"One always hears that such mentally ill people have incredible strength," the General said by way of encouragement.
"Yes; but when the door was open and we all stood at the entrance, he paid absolutely no attention to us! "
1368 · THE MAN WITH0 UT QUALITIES
"Paid no attention? " Stumm asked.
"None at all! He was almost as tall as Ulrich, and perhaps my age. He was standing in the middle of the cell, with his head bent forward and his legs apart. Like this! " Clarisse imitated it.
General: Was he dressed in black too? Clarisse: No, stark naked.
General: Looks at Clarisse from head to toe.
''Thick strands of saliva were spread all over his young man's brown- ish-blond beard; the muscles literally jumped out of his scrawniness; he was naked, and his hair, I mean specific hairs-"
''You present everything so vividly one understands it all! " Stumm in- teiVened soothingly.
"-were dully bright, shamelessly bright; he fixed us with them as if they were an eye that looks at you without noticing anything about you! " Clarisse had reached the top, the General sat at her feet. From the "ski jump" one looked down on vineyards and meadows sloping away, on large and small houses that for a short distance rose in a jumble up the slope from below, and in one place the glance escaped into the charming depth of the hilly plateau that on the far horizon bordered high moun- tains. But if, like Stumm, you were sitting on a low tree stump, all you saw was an accidental hump of forest arching its back toward the sky, white clouds in the familiar, fatly drifting balls, and Clarisse. She stood with her legs apart in front of the General and mimicked a manic fit. She held one arm bent out at a right angle and stiffiy locked to her body; with her head bent forward, she was executing with her torso in an unvarying sequence a jerky motion that formed a shallow forward circle, while she bent one finger after another as if she were counting. And she allowed each of these motions to be accompanied by a pantingly uttered cry, whose force, however, she considerately restrained. ''You can't imitate the essential part," she explained. "'Ib. at's the incredible strain with every motion, which gives an impression as if each time the person is
tearing his body from a vise. . . . "
"But that's moral" the General exclaimed. ''You ! mow, that game of
chance? Whoever guesses the right number of fingers wins. Except that you can't bend one finger after another but have to show as many as you think of on the spur of the moment. All our peasants on the Italian bor- der play it. "
From the Posthu'TIWUs Papers · 1369
"It really is mora," said Clarisse, who had seen it on her travels. "And he also did it the way you described! "
"Well then, mora," Stumm repeated with satisfaction. "But I'd like to lmow where these insane people get their ideas," he added, and here commenced the strenuous part of the conversation.
Clarisse sat down on the tree stump beside the General, a little apart from him so that she could, if need be, "cast an eye" on him, and each time this happened he had a ridiculous horrible feeling, as if he were being pinched by a stag beetle. She was prepared to explain for his bene- fit the emotional life of the insane as she herself understood it after much reflection. One ofits most important elements-because she con- nected everything with herself-was the idea that the so-called mentally ill were some kind of geniuses who were spirited away and deprived of their rights, and for some reason that Clarisse had not yet discovered, this was something they were not able to defend themselves against. It was only natural that the General could not concur in this opinion, but this did not surprise either of them. "I am willing to concede that such an idiot might occasionally guess something that the likes of us don't lmow," he protested. "That's the way you imagine them being: they have a certain aura; but that they should think more than we healthy people- no, please, I beg to differ! "
Clarisse insisted seriously that people who were mentally healthy thought less than those who were mentally unhealthy. "Have you ever strayed off a point, General, from A to B? " she asked Stumm, and he was forced to agree that he had. "Have you ever, then, done it the other way round, from B to A? " she asked further, and Stumm had even less desire to deny it, after considering for a while what it meant, for it is part of a man's pride to think through for himself to the single thing called truth. But Clarisse reasoned: ''You see, and that's nothing but cowardice, this neat and orderly reflecting about things. On account of their cowardice men will never amount to anything! "
'Tve never heard that before," Stumm asserted dismissively. But he thought it over. Wouldn't that mean . . . ? "
Clarisse moved closer to him with her eyes. "Surely some woman has whispered in your ear: 'You god-man'? "
Stumm could not recall this happening, but he didn't want to admit it, so he merely made a gesture that could just as well mean "unfortunately not" as 'Tm sick and tired of hearing itl" In words, he replied: "Many women are very high-strung! But what does that have to do with our conversation? Something of that sort is simply an exaggerated compli- ment! "
1370 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
"Do you remember the painter whose sketches the doctor showed us? " Clarisse asked.
''Yes, of course. What he had painted was really magnificent. "
"He was dissatisfied with Friedenthal because the doctor doesn't un- derstand anything about art. 'Show it to this gentleman! ' he said, point- ing to me," Clarisse went on, again suddenly casting her eye on the General. "Do you believe it was merely a compliment that he addressed me as a man? "
"It's just one of those ideas," Stumm said. "Honestly, I've never thought about it. I would assume it's what's called an association, or an analogy, or something like that. He just had some reason or other to take you for a man! "
But does it give you pleasure to be taken for a man? Pleasure? No. But . . .
Although Stumm was convinced that with these last words he had ex- plained something to Clarisse, he was still surprised by the wannth with which she exclaimed: "Terrific! Then I only need tell you that it has the same cause as in love when there's whispering about god-man! For the world is full of double beings! "
One should not of course believe that it was agreeable to Stumm when Clarisse talked this way, shooting a cleft glance from eyes nar- rowed to slits; he was thinking, rather, whether it would not be more proper not to conduct such conversations in uniform, but to appear for the next walk in mufti. But on the other hand the good Stumm, who admired Clarisse with great caution, ifnot concealed terror, had the am- bitious desire to understand this young woman who was so passionate, and also to be understood by her, for which reason he quickly discovered a good side to her assertion. He put it this way, that most things involv- ing the world and people were indeed ambivalent, which accorded well with his newly acquired pessimism. He assuaged himself further by as- suming that what was meant by god-man and man-woman was no differ- ent from what could be said about anybody: that he was a bit of a noble person and a bit of a rascal. Still, he preferred to steer the conversation back to the more natural view, and began to spin out his knowledge of analogies, comparisons, symbolic forms ofexpression, and the like.
"Please excuse me and permit me, dear lady, to adopt your excite- ment for a moment and accept the idea that you really are a man," he began, advised by the guardian angel of intuition, and went on in the
From the Posthunwus Papers · 1371
same fashion: "because then you would be able to imagine what it means for a lady to wear a heavy veil and show only a small part of her face; or, which is almost the same thing, for a ball gown to swirl up from the floor in a dance and expose an ankle: that's how it was just a few years ago, about the time I was a major; and such hints strike one much more strongly, I might almost say more passionately, than if one were to see the lady up to her knee with no obstacle in the way-yes, obstacle is precisely the right word! Because that's how I would also describe what analogies or comparisons or symbols consist of. They present an obstacle to thinking, and in doing so arouse it more strongly than is usually the case. I believe that's what you mean when you say that there's something cowardly about ordinary reflection. "
But Clarisse meant nothing of the sort. "People have an obligation to get beyond mere hints! " she asserted.
"Quite remarkable! " Stumm exclaimed, honestly moved. "Old Count Leinsdorf says the same thing you do! Just recently I had a most pro- found discussion with that distinguished gentleman about metaphors and symbols, and in connection with the patriotic campaign he ex- pressed precisely the opinion you did: that all of us have the obligation to reach out beyond the condition of metaphor to reality! "
"I once wrote him a letter in which I asked him to do something about freeing Moosbrugger," Clarisse said.
You see, even then we already had two acquaintances in common with- out knowing it!
"And what was his response? For of course he couldn't do it. I mean, even if he could, he couldn't, because he's much too conservative and legalistic a gentleman. "
"But you could? " Clarisse asked.
"No; whatever's in the madhouse can stay there. No matter how am- biguous it is. Caution, you know, is the mother ofwisdom. "
"But what's this? " Clarisse asked, smiling, for she had discovered on the scabbard of the General's sword the woven double eagle, the em- blem of the Imperial and Royal Monarchy. "What's this double eagle? "
"What do you mean? What should the double eagle be? It's the dou- ble eagle! "
"But what is a double eagle? An eagle with two heads? Only one- headed eagles fly around in the real world! So I'm pointing out to you that you're carrying on your saber the symbol of a double being! I re-
1372 • THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
peat, General, enchanting things are all based, it would appear, on prim- itive nonsense! "
General: Pst! I shouldn't be listening to such things! (smiling)
W AL TER AND CLARISSE'S WOODSY ARMISTICE
As they approached her house, she was accompanied by the theatrical illusion of being a person returning from a distant land. She had given up her dance but for some reason or other was humming in her head the melody "There my father Parsifal wore the crown, I his knight, Lohen- grin my name. " When she walked through the door and felt the violent transition from the morning, whose brightness had already become hard and warm, into the sleeping twilight of the vestibule, she thought she was caught in a trap. Under her light weight the steps she climbed emit- ted a barely audible sound; it echoed like the breath of a sigh, but noth- ing in the entire house responded. Clarisse cautiously turned the doorlmob of the bedroom: Walter was still sleeping! She was greeted by light the color of milky coffee penetrating the curtains, and the nursery odor of the ending night. Walter's lips were sulky like a boy's, and warm; at the same time his face was simple, indeed impoverished. Much less was to be seen in it than was normally one's impression. Only a lustful need for power, otherwise not evident, was now visible. Standing mo- tionless by his bed, Clarisse looked at her husband; he felt his sleep dis- turbed by her entrance and rolled over on his other side. She lingeringly enjoyed the superiority of the waking over the sleeping person; she felt the desire to kiss him or stroke him, or indeed to scare him, but could not make up her mind. She also did not want to expose herself to the danger associated with the bedroom, and finding Walter still sleeping had obviously found her unprepared. She tore off a piece from some wrapping paper from a purchase, which had been left lying on the table, and wrote on it in large letters: "I have paid a visit to the sleeper and await him in the woods. "
When Walter awoke shortly afterward and discovered the empty bed next to his, he dully remembered that something had gone on in the room while he was sleeping, looked at the clock, discovered the note, and quickly wiped away the cobwebs of sleep, for he had intended on this particular day to get up especially early and do some work. Since this was now no longer possible, he thought it proper, after thinking it over a bit, to put off the work; and although he saw himself forced to scrape his own breakfast together, he was soon standing in the best of spirits under
From the Posthumous Papers · 1373
the rays of the morning sun. He assumed that Clarisse was lurking in a hiding place and would materialize from ambush as soon as he entered the woods. He took the usual route, a wide dirt wheelbarrow path, which took about halfan hour. ltwas a halfholiday, which is to say one ofthose days between holidays that do not officially count as holidays; on which account, remarkably enough, precisely those official agencies and the noble professions connected with them took the whole day off, while less responsible private people and businesses worked half the day. Things like this are said to have been sanctioned by history, and the con- sequence was that on this day Walter was permitted to walk like a pri- vate individual in an almost private nature, in which apart from him only a few unsupervised hens were running around. He stretched to see whether he might discover a bright-colored dress either at the edge of the woods or perhaps even coming toward him, but there was nothing to be seen, and although the walk had been lovely at the start, his pleasure in the exercise sank with the increasing heat. His rapid walking soaked his collar and the pores of his face until that unpleasant feeling of damp warmth set in which degrades the human body to a piece of laundry. Walter resolved to get into better shape for the outdoors again; allowed himself the excuse that perhaps he was merely dressed too warmly; was also doubtless anxious lest he might be coming down with something: and his thoughts, which had initially been quite animated, became in this fashion gradually incoherent and finally flopped, as it were, in time with his steps, while the path seemed never to end.
At some point he thought: "As a so-called normal person, one's thoughts are truly hardly less incoherent than a madman's! " And then it occurred to him: "Moreover, one does say that it's insanely hot! " And he smiled weakly that this turn of phrase was apparently not without foun- dation, since for example the changes a feverish temperature brings about in one's head are really somewhere between the symptoms of or- dinary heat and those of mental disturbance. And so, without taking it entirely seriously, it might perhaps also be said of Clarisse that she had always been what one calls a crazy person without her having to be a sick one. Walter would very much have liked to know the answer to this question. Her brother and doctor claimed that there was not the slight- est danger. But Walter believed he had known for a long time that Cla- risse was already on the other side of a certain boundary. He sometimes had the feeling that she was merely still hovering around him as do de- parted souls, of whom it is said that they cannot immediately separate themselves from what they had loved. This idea was not unsuited to in- flating his pride, for there were not many other people who would have been up to such a ghastly yet beautiful-as he now called it-struggle
1374 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
between love and horror. There were, to be sure, times when he felt irresolute. A sudden push or collapse could cany his wife away into the domain of the completely repellent and ugly, and that would still have been the least of it, for what if, in that case, she did not repel him! No, Walter assumed that she would have to repel him, for the debased mind was ugly! And Clarisse would then have to be put in an institution, for which there was not enough money. That was all quite depressing. Still, there had been times, when her soul was already, so to speak, fluttering in front of the windowpanes, when he had felt himself so bold that he had no desire to think whether he should pull her in to him or rush out to her.
Such thoughts made him forget the sunny, strenuous path, but finally also caused him to leave off thinking altogether, so that while he re- mained in animated motion he really had no content, or was filled with terribly ordinary contents, which he solemnly pondered; he walked along like a rhythm without notes, and when he bumped into Clarisse he almost stumbled over her. She, too, had at first followed the broad path, and had found at the edge of the woods a small indentation where the spilled sunlight licked the shadows at every breath of wind, like a god- dess licking an animal. Here the ground rose gently, and since she was lying on her back, she saw the world within a strange gimlet. Through some kind ofkinship ofshapes, the uncanny mood that on this day mixed particularly easilywith her cheerfulness had again taken hold ofher spir- its, and gazing long and steadily into the horizontally perverse landscape she began to feel sadness, as if she had to assume the burden of a sorrow or a sin or a destiny. There was an enormous sense of abandonment, of anticipation, and an expectancy of sacrifice abroad in the world, of the kind she had found the first time she had gone out, when the day just "reached her ankles. " Her eyes involuntarily sought the place where, behind more distant slopes and not visible to her, the extensive buildings of the asylum for the insane must lie; and when she thought she had located them it calmed her, as it calms the lover to know the direction in which his thoughts can find his beloved. Her thoughts "flew," but not in that direction. "They're now crouching, having fallen quite silent, like huge black birds beside me in the sun," she thought, and the splendid yet melancholy feeliD. g associated with this lasted until Clarisse caught sight of Walter in the distance. Then she had suddenly had enough of her sorrow, hid behind the trees, held her hand in front of her mouth like a funnel, and shouted, as loudly as she could: "Cuckoo! " She then straightened up and ran deeper into the woods, but immediately changed her mind again and threw herself down in the warm forest
From the Posthumous Papers · 1375
weeds beside the path Walter would have to use. His countenance then did come along, thinking itself unobserved, expressing nothing but an unconscious, gently animated attentiveness to the obstacles on the path, and this made his face very strange, indeed quite resolutely masculine, to look at. When he was unsuspectingly close, Clarisse stretched out her arm and reached for his foot, and this was the moment when Walter nearly fell and first caught sight of his wife, lying almost under his eyes and directing her smiling glance up at him. Despite some of his con- cerns, she did not look in the least ugly.
Clarisse laughed. Walter sat down beside her on a tree stump and dried his neck with his handkerchief. "Clarisse . . . ! " he began, and con- tinued only after a pause: "I really meant to work today. . . . "
"Meant? " Clarisse mocked. But for once it did not sting. The word whizzed from her tongue and mingled with the cheerful whirring of the flies that zoomed past their ears through the sun like small metal arrows.
Walter replied: 'Til admit that lately I haven't thought working was the right thing to do ifyou could just as well sniff the new flowers. Work is one-sided; it goes against one's duty to wholeness! "
Since he paused briefly, Clarisse threw a small pine cone that had come to hand up in the air a few times and caught it again.
"Of course I'm also aware of the objections that could be raised against that," Walter asserted.
Clarisse let the pine cone fall to the ground and asked animatedly: "So you're going to begin working again?
Today we need an art that has brush strokes and musical intervals this big! " She stretched her arms out three feet.
"I don't have to begin that way right off," Walter objected. "Anyway, I still find the whole problematic of the individual artist off-putting. Today we need a problematic of the totality-" But hardly had he ut- tered the word "problematic" than it seemed to him quite overexcited in the stillness of the woods. He therefore added something new: "But ba- sically it's in no way a demand inimical to life that a person should paint something he loves; in the case of the landscape painter, nature! "
"But a painter also paints his beloved," Clarisse threw in. "One part of the painter loves, the other paints! "
Walter saw his beautiful new idea shrivel up. He was not in the mood to breathe new life into it, but he was still convinced that the idea was important and merely needed careful working out. And the singing of finches, the woodpecker's drumming, the humming of small insects: it didn't move him to work but rather dragged him down into an infinite abyss of indolence.
1376 • THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
'We're very much alike, you and 1," he said with gratification. "There's hardly another couple like us! Others paint, make music, or write, and I refuse to: basically that's as radical as your eagerness! "
Clarisse turned on her side, raised herself on her elbow, and opened her mouth for a furious response. "I'll set you free yet, all the way! " she said quickly.
Walter looked down at her tenderly. "What do you mean, really, when you say that we have to be saved from our sinful form? " he asked eagerly.
This time Clarisse did not answer. She had the impression that if she were to speak now it would run away too quickly, and although she in- tended to say something, the woods confused her; for the woods were on her side: that was something that couldn't be expressed properly, al- though it was clear to see.
Walter probed in the delicious wound. "Did you really talk about that again with Meingast? " he asked in a way that demanded a response, yet hesitantly, indeed fearful that she might have done so although he had forbidden it.
Clarisse lied, for she shook her head; but at the same time she smiled.
"Can you still remember the time we took Meingast's 'sins' on our- selves? " he pursued further. He took her hand. But Clarisse only let him have a finger. It is a remarkable condition when a man has to remind himselfwith as much reluctance as willingness that nearly everything his beloved bestows on him has previously belonged to another; it may be the sign of a love that is all too strong, or perhaps the sign of a feeble soul, and sometimes Walter actually sought out this condition. He loved the fifteen-to-sixteen-year-old Clarisse, who had never been taken with him completely and unreservedly; loved her almost more than the pres- ent Clarisse, and the memory of her caresses, which were perhaps the reflection of Meingast's indecency, stirred him in a peculiar way more profoundly than, by comparison, the cool, unhampered quality of mar- riage. He found it almost agreeable knowing that Clarisse had a favoring side glance to spare for Ulrich and now entirely once again for the mag- nificently altered Meingast, and the way in which these men had an un- favorable impact on her imagination magnified his longing for his wife the way the shadows of debauchery and desire under an eye make it appear larger. Of course men in whom jealousy will suffer nothing be- side themselves, he-men, will not experience this, but his jealousy was full of love, and when that is the case, then the torture is so precise, so distinct, so alive, that it is almost the vicarious experiencing of desire. Whenever Walter imagined his wife in the act of giving herself to an- other man he felt more strongly than when he held her in his own arms,
From the Posthu'11WUs Papers · 1 3 7 7
and, somewhat disconcerted, he thought by way of excuse: ''When I'm painting and I need to see the most subtle curvature of the lines of a face, I don't look at it directly but in a mirror! " It really stung him that he was yielding to such thoughts in the woods, in the healthy world of na- ture, and the hand that held Clarisse's finger began to tremble. He had to say something, but it could not be what he was thinking. He joked in a strained way: "So now you want to take my sins upon yourself, but how are you going to do that? " He smiled; but Clarisse noticed a slight trem- bling spreading over his lips. This did not suit her just now; although it is always a marvelous spur to laughter, this image of the way a man who is dragging a much too large bale of useless thoughts along with him tries to stride through the small door to which he is drawn. She sat completely upright, looked at Walter with a mockingly serious glance, shook her head several times, and began reflectively:
"Don't you believe that periods of depression alternate with periods of mania in the world? Urgent, disturbed, fruitful periods of upswing that bring in the new, alternating with sinful periods, despondent, de- pressed, bad centuries or decades? " Periods in which the world ap- proaches its bright ideal shape and periods where it sinks into its sinful form. Walter looked at her with alarm. "That's how it is; I just can't tell you which years," she continued, adding: "The upswing doesn't have to be beautiful; in fact, it has to shuck off a good deal, which may of course be beautiful. It can look like a disease: I'm convinced that from time to time humanity has to become mentally ill in order to attain the synthesis of a new and higher health! "
Walter refused to understand.
Clarisse talked on: "People who are sensitive, like you and me, feel that! We're now living in a period of decline, and that's why you can't work either. In addition there are sensual ages, and ages that turn away from sensuality. You must prepare yourself for suffering. . . . "
Remarkably, it moved Walter that Clarisse had said "you and me. " She had not said that for a long time.
"And of course there are periods of transition," Clarisse went on. "And figures like Saint John, precursors; we may be two precursors. "
Now Walter responded: "But you had your way and went to the in- sane asylum; now we really ought to be of one mind again! "
"You mean that I ought not to go again? " Clarisse interjected, and smiled.
"Don't go again! " Walter pleaded. But he did so without conviction: he felt it himself; his plea was merely meant to cover him.
Clarisse replied: "All 'precursors' complain about the spirit's lack of resolution because they don't yet have complete faith, but no one dares
1378 · THE MAN WITH 0 U T QUALITIES
put an end to the irresolution! Even Meingast doesn't dare," she added. Walter asked: "What is it you'd have to dare? "
"You see, a whole people can't be insane," Clarisse said in an even
softer voice. "There is only individual insanity. When everyone is insane, then they are the healthy ones. Isn't that right? Therefore a whole peo- ple of the insane is the healthiest of people; you just have to treat them as a people, and not as sick people. And I tell you, the mad think more than the healthy do, and they lead a resolute life of a kind we never have the courage for! To be sure, they are forced to live this life in a sinner's form, or they can't yet do otherwise! "
W alter swallowed and asked: "But what is this sinner's form? You talk about it so much, and a lot about transformation too, about taking sins upon oneself, about double beings and so much else, that I half under- stand and half don't understand! "
That goes around in circles Ofcourse it goes around in circles
Clarisse smiled, and it was her embarrassed and rather excited smile. "That can't be put in a few words," she replied. "The insane are just double beings. "
"Well, you said that before. But what does it mean? " Walter probed; he wanted to know how she was feeling, without consideration for her.
Clarisse reflected. "In many depictions, Apollo is man and woman. On the other hand, the Apollo with the arrow was not the Apollo with the lyre, and the Diana of Ephesus wasn't the Diana of Athens. The Greek gods were double beings, and we've forgotten that, but we're double beings too. "
Walter said after a while: "You're exaggerating. Of course the god is one thing when he's killing men and another when he's making music. " "That's not natural at all! " Clarisse countered. "You would be the same! You would only be excited in a different way. You're a little differ- ent here in the woods and there in your room, but you're not a different person. I could say that you never transform yourself completely into what you do; but I don't want to say too much. We've lost the concepts for these processes. The ancients still had them, the Greeks, the people
of Nietzsche! "
"Yes," Walter said, "perhaps; perhaps one could be quite different
from the way we are. " And then he fell silent. Snapped a twig. They
From the Posthumous Papers · 1379
were both now lying on the ground, with their heads turned toward each other. Finally Walter asked:
"What sort of double being am I? "
Clarisse laughed.
He took his twig and tickled her face.
"You are billy goat and eagle," she said, and laughed again. "I am not a billy goat! " Walter protested sulkily.
"You're a billy goat with eagle's wings! " Clarisse fleshed out her assertion.
"Did you just invent that? " Walter asked.
It had come to her on the spur of the moment, but she could add something to it that she had long known: "Every person has an animal in which he can recognize his fate. Nietzsche had the eagle. "
"Perhaps you mean what's called a totem. Do you know that for the Greeks specific animals were still associated with the gods: the wolf, the steer, the goose, the swan, the dog . . . "
"You see! " Clarisse said. "I didn't know that at all, but it's true. " And she suddenly added: "Do you know that sick people do disgusting things? Just like the man under my window that time. " And she related the story of the old man on the ward who had winked at her and then behaved so indecently.
"A lovely story, that, and moreover in front of the General! " Walter objected heatedly. "You really mustn't go there again! "
"Oh, come on, the General is just afraid of me! " Clarisse defended herself.
"Why should he be afraid? "
"I don't know. But you are too, and Father was afraid, and Meingast is afraid of me too," Clarisse said. "I seem to possess an accursed power, so that men who have something wrong with them are compelled to offer themselves to me. In a word, I tell you, sick people are double beings of god and billy goat! "
''I'm afraid for you! " Walter whispered more than spoke, softly and tenderly.
"But the sick ones aren't only double beings of god and goat, but also ofchild and man, and sadness and gaiety," Clarisse went on without pay- ing attention.
Walter shook his head. "You seem to associate all men with 'goat'! "
"My God, that's true, I do. " Clarisse defended it calmly. "I carry the figure of the goat within myself too! "
"The figure! " Walter was a little scornful, but involuntarily; for the constant succession of ideas was making him tired.
I380 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
"The image, the model, the daimon--call it what you like! "
Walter needed a rest, he wished to stop for a while, and replied: "I will admit that in many respects people are double beings. Recent psychology-"
Clarisse interrupted him vehemently. "Not psychology! You all think much too much! "
"But didn't you claim that the insane think more than we healthy peo- ple do? " Walter asked mechanically.
"Then I said it wrong. They think differently. More energetically! " she replied, and went on: "It doesn't make the slightest difference what one thinks; as soon as one acts, what one thought beforehand doesn't matter anymore. That's why I find it right not to go on talking but to go to the insane in their house. "
"Just a minute! " Walter begged. "What is your double being? "
"I am first of all man and woman. "
"But you just said goat too. "
"That too. Tool It's not the sort of thing you can measure with ruler
and compass. "
"No, that you can't! " Walter moaned aloud, covering his eyes with his
hands and clenching his hands into fists. As he lay there mute in this posture, Clarisse crept up to him, threw her arms around his shoulders, and kissed him from time to time.
Walter lay motionless.
Clarisse was whispering and murmuring something into his ear. She was telling him that the man under the window had been sent by the goat, and that the goat signified sensuality, which had everywhere sepa- rated itself from the rest of mankind. All people creep to each other in bed every night and leave the world where it is: this lower solution to the great powers of desire in people must finally be stopped, and then the goat would become the god! This was what Walter heard her say. And wasn't she right? Yet how did it happen that it pleased him? How did it happen that for a long time nothing else had pleased him? Not the paint- ings that he had earlier admired; not the masters of music whom he had loved; not the great poems, and not the mighty ideas? And that he now found pleasure in listening to Clarisse telling him something that anyone else would say was fantasy? These were the questions that went through Walter's mind. As long as his life had lain before him, he had felt it to be full of great desire and imagination; since then, Eros had truly separated himself from it. Was there anything he still did body and soul? Was not everything he touched insignificant? Truly, love was gone from his fin- gertips, the tip of his tongue, his entrails, eyes, and ears, and what re- mained was merely ashes in the form oflife, or, as he now expressed it
From the Posthurrwus Papers · 1381
rather magniloquently, "dung in a polished glass," the "goat"! And be- side him, at his ear, was Clarisse: a little bird that had suddenly begun to prophesy this in the woods! He could not find the suggestive, the com- manding tone to point out to her where her ideas went too far and where they did not. She was full ofimages jumbled together; he, too, had been this full of images once, he persuaded himself. And of these great im- ages, one has no idea which ones can be made into reality and which ones cannot. So every person bears within himself a leading ideal figure, Clarisse was now maintaining, but most people settle for living in the form of sin, and Walter found that it might well be said of him that he bore an ideal figure within himself, although he, perhaps even self-peni- tently, at least voluntarily, lived in ashes. The world also has an ideal figure. He found this image magnificent. Of course it did not explain anything, but what good is explanation? It expressed the will of human- ity, striving upward again and again after every defeat. And it suddenly struck Walter that Clarisse had not kissed him voluntarily for at least a year, and that she was now doing it for the first time.
6 . . .
BREATHS OF A SUMMER DAY
On the same morning, Agathe, impelled by moody contradictions left over from the previous night, said to her brother: "And why should it be possible to live a life in love? There are times when you live no less in anger, in hostility, or even in pride or hardness, and they don't claim to be a second world! "
'Td prefer to say that one lives for love," Ulrich replied indolently. ~·our other emotions must inspire us to action in order that they last; that's what anchors them in reality. "
"But it's usually that way in love too," Agathe objected. She felt as if she were swinging on a high branch that was threatening to break off under her any moment. "But then why does every beginner swear to himself that it will 'last' forever, even if he's beginning for the tenth time? " was her next question.
"Perhaps because it's so inconstant.
"As we stood in front of the door from which shouts and a strange moaning alternated," Clarisse began, "Friedenthal asked me once more whether I really wanted to go in. I was so excited I could hardly answer, but the guards paid no attention and began opening the doors. You may imagine, General, that at that moment I was terribly afraid, for I'm really only a woman. I had the feeling: when the door opens, the maniac is going to jump mel"
"One always hears that such mentally ill people have incredible strength," the General said by way of encouragement.
"Yes; but when the door was open and we all stood at the entrance, he paid absolutely no attention to us! "
1368 · THE MAN WITH0 UT QUALITIES
"Paid no attention? " Stumm asked.
"None at all! He was almost as tall as Ulrich, and perhaps my age. He was standing in the middle of the cell, with his head bent forward and his legs apart. Like this! " Clarisse imitated it.
General: Was he dressed in black too? Clarisse: No, stark naked.
General: Looks at Clarisse from head to toe.
''Thick strands of saliva were spread all over his young man's brown- ish-blond beard; the muscles literally jumped out of his scrawniness; he was naked, and his hair, I mean specific hairs-"
''You present everything so vividly one understands it all! " Stumm in- teiVened soothingly.
"-were dully bright, shamelessly bright; he fixed us with them as if they were an eye that looks at you without noticing anything about you! " Clarisse had reached the top, the General sat at her feet. From the "ski jump" one looked down on vineyards and meadows sloping away, on large and small houses that for a short distance rose in a jumble up the slope from below, and in one place the glance escaped into the charming depth of the hilly plateau that on the far horizon bordered high moun- tains. But if, like Stumm, you were sitting on a low tree stump, all you saw was an accidental hump of forest arching its back toward the sky, white clouds in the familiar, fatly drifting balls, and Clarisse. She stood with her legs apart in front of the General and mimicked a manic fit. She held one arm bent out at a right angle and stiffiy locked to her body; with her head bent forward, she was executing with her torso in an unvarying sequence a jerky motion that formed a shallow forward circle, while she bent one finger after another as if she were counting. And she allowed each of these motions to be accompanied by a pantingly uttered cry, whose force, however, she considerately restrained. ''You can't imitate the essential part," she explained. "'Ib. at's the incredible strain with every motion, which gives an impression as if each time the person is
tearing his body from a vise. . . . "
"But that's moral" the General exclaimed. ''You ! mow, that game of
chance? Whoever guesses the right number of fingers wins. Except that you can't bend one finger after another but have to show as many as you think of on the spur of the moment. All our peasants on the Italian bor- der play it. "
From the Posthu'TIWUs Papers · 1369
"It really is mora," said Clarisse, who had seen it on her travels. "And he also did it the way you described! "
"Well then, mora," Stumm repeated with satisfaction. "But I'd like to lmow where these insane people get their ideas," he added, and here commenced the strenuous part of the conversation.
Clarisse sat down on the tree stump beside the General, a little apart from him so that she could, if need be, "cast an eye" on him, and each time this happened he had a ridiculous horrible feeling, as if he were being pinched by a stag beetle. She was prepared to explain for his bene- fit the emotional life of the insane as she herself understood it after much reflection. One ofits most important elements-because she con- nected everything with herself-was the idea that the so-called mentally ill were some kind of geniuses who were spirited away and deprived of their rights, and for some reason that Clarisse had not yet discovered, this was something they were not able to defend themselves against. It was only natural that the General could not concur in this opinion, but this did not surprise either of them. "I am willing to concede that such an idiot might occasionally guess something that the likes of us don't lmow," he protested. "That's the way you imagine them being: they have a certain aura; but that they should think more than we healthy people- no, please, I beg to differ! "
Clarisse insisted seriously that people who were mentally healthy thought less than those who were mentally unhealthy. "Have you ever strayed off a point, General, from A to B? " she asked Stumm, and he was forced to agree that he had. "Have you ever, then, done it the other way round, from B to A? " she asked further, and Stumm had even less desire to deny it, after considering for a while what it meant, for it is part of a man's pride to think through for himself to the single thing called truth. But Clarisse reasoned: ''You see, and that's nothing but cowardice, this neat and orderly reflecting about things. On account of their cowardice men will never amount to anything! "
'Tve never heard that before," Stumm asserted dismissively. But he thought it over. Wouldn't that mean . . . ? "
Clarisse moved closer to him with her eyes. "Surely some woman has whispered in your ear: 'You god-man'? "
Stumm could not recall this happening, but he didn't want to admit it, so he merely made a gesture that could just as well mean "unfortunately not" as 'Tm sick and tired of hearing itl" In words, he replied: "Many women are very high-strung! But what does that have to do with our conversation? Something of that sort is simply an exaggerated compli- ment! "
1370 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
"Do you remember the painter whose sketches the doctor showed us? " Clarisse asked.
''Yes, of course. What he had painted was really magnificent. "
"He was dissatisfied with Friedenthal because the doctor doesn't un- derstand anything about art. 'Show it to this gentleman! ' he said, point- ing to me," Clarisse went on, again suddenly casting her eye on the General. "Do you believe it was merely a compliment that he addressed me as a man? "
"It's just one of those ideas," Stumm said. "Honestly, I've never thought about it. I would assume it's what's called an association, or an analogy, or something like that. He just had some reason or other to take you for a man! "
But does it give you pleasure to be taken for a man? Pleasure? No. But . . .
Although Stumm was convinced that with these last words he had ex- plained something to Clarisse, he was still surprised by the wannth with which she exclaimed: "Terrific! Then I only need tell you that it has the same cause as in love when there's whispering about god-man! For the world is full of double beings! "
One should not of course believe that it was agreeable to Stumm when Clarisse talked this way, shooting a cleft glance from eyes nar- rowed to slits; he was thinking, rather, whether it would not be more proper not to conduct such conversations in uniform, but to appear for the next walk in mufti. But on the other hand the good Stumm, who admired Clarisse with great caution, ifnot concealed terror, had the am- bitious desire to understand this young woman who was so passionate, and also to be understood by her, for which reason he quickly discovered a good side to her assertion. He put it this way, that most things involv- ing the world and people were indeed ambivalent, which accorded well with his newly acquired pessimism. He assuaged himself further by as- suming that what was meant by god-man and man-woman was no differ- ent from what could be said about anybody: that he was a bit of a noble person and a bit of a rascal. Still, he preferred to steer the conversation back to the more natural view, and began to spin out his knowledge of analogies, comparisons, symbolic forms ofexpression, and the like.
"Please excuse me and permit me, dear lady, to adopt your excite- ment for a moment and accept the idea that you really are a man," he began, advised by the guardian angel of intuition, and went on in the
From the Posthunwus Papers · 1371
same fashion: "because then you would be able to imagine what it means for a lady to wear a heavy veil and show only a small part of her face; or, which is almost the same thing, for a ball gown to swirl up from the floor in a dance and expose an ankle: that's how it was just a few years ago, about the time I was a major; and such hints strike one much more strongly, I might almost say more passionately, than if one were to see the lady up to her knee with no obstacle in the way-yes, obstacle is precisely the right word! Because that's how I would also describe what analogies or comparisons or symbols consist of. They present an obstacle to thinking, and in doing so arouse it more strongly than is usually the case. I believe that's what you mean when you say that there's something cowardly about ordinary reflection. "
But Clarisse meant nothing of the sort. "People have an obligation to get beyond mere hints! " she asserted.
"Quite remarkable! " Stumm exclaimed, honestly moved. "Old Count Leinsdorf says the same thing you do! Just recently I had a most pro- found discussion with that distinguished gentleman about metaphors and symbols, and in connection with the patriotic campaign he ex- pressed precisely the opinion you did: that all of us have the obligation to reach out beyond the condition of metaphor to reality! "
"I once wrote him a letter in which I asked him to do something about freeing Moosbrugger," Clarisse said.
You see, even then we already had two acquaintances in common with- out knowing it!
"And what was his response? For of course he couldn't do it. I mean, even if he could, he couldn't, because he's much too conservative and legalistic a gentleman. "
"But you could? " Clarisse asked.
"No; whatever's in the madhouse can stay there. No matter how am- biguous it is. Caution, you know, is the mother ofwisdom. "
"But what's this? " Clarisse asked, smiling, for she had discovered on the scabbard of the General's sword the woven double eagle, the em- blem of the Imperial and Royal Monarchy. "What's this double eagle? "
"What do you mean? What should the double eagle be? It's the dou- ble eagle! "
"But what is a double eagle? An eagle with two heads? Only one- headed eagles fly around in the real world! So I'm pointing out to you that you're carrying on your saber the symbol of a double being! I re-
1372 • THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
peat, General, enchanting things are all based, it would appear, on prim- itive nonsense! "
General: Pst! I shouldn't be listening to such things! (smiling)
W AL TER AND CLARISSE'S WOODSY ARMISTICE
As they approached her house, she was accompanied by the theatrical illusion of being a person returning from a distant land. She had given up her dance but for some reason or other was humming in her head the melody "There my father Parsifal wore the crown, I his knight, Lohen- grin my name. " When she walked through the door and felt the violent transition from the morning, whose brightness had already become hard and warm, into the sleeping twilight of the vestibule, she thought she was caught in a trap. Under her light weight the steps she climbed emit- ted a barely audible sound; it echoed like the breath of a sigh, but noth- ing in the entire house responded. Clarisse cautiously turned the doorlmob of the bedroom: Walter was still sleeping! She was greeted by light the color of milky coffee penetrating the curtains, and the nursery odor of the ending night. Walter's lips were sulky like a boy's, and warm; at the same time his face was simple, indeed impoverished. Much less was to be seen in it than was normally one's impression. Only a lustful need for power, otherwise not evident, was now visible. Standing mo- tionless by his bed, Clarisse looked at her husband; he felt his sleep dis- turbed by her entrance and rolled over on his other side. She lingeringly enjoyed the superiority of the waking over the sleeping person; she felt the desire to kiss him or stroke him, or indeed to scare him, but could not make up her mind. She also did not want to expose herself to the danger associated with the bedroom, and finding Walter still sleeping had obviously found her unprepared. She tore off a piece from some wrapping paper from a purchase, which had been left lying on the table, and wrote on it in large letters: "I have paid a visit to the sleeper and await him in the woods. "
When Walter awoke shortly afterward and discovered the empty bed next to his, he dully remembered that something had gone on in the room while he was sleeping, looked at the clock, discovered the note, and quickly wiped away the cobwebs of sleep, for he had intended on this particular day to get up especially early and do some work. Since this was now no longer possible, he thought it proper, after thinking it over a bit, to put off the work; and although he saw himself forced to scrape his own breakfast together, he was soon standing in the best of spirits under
From the Posthumous Papers · 1373
the rays of the morning sun. He assumed that Clarisse was lurking in a hiding place and would materialize from ambush as soon as he entered the woods. He took the usual route, a wide dirt wheelbarrow path, which took about halfan hour. ltwas a halfholiday, which is to say one ofthose days between holidays that do not officially count as holidays; on which account, remarkably enough, precisely those official agencies and the noble professions connected with them took the whole day off, while less responsible private people and businesses worked half the day. Things like this are said to have been sanctioned by history, and the con- sequence was that on this day Walter was permitted to walk like a pri- vate individual in an almost private nature, in which apart from him only a few unsupervised hens were running around. He stretched to see whether he might discover a bright-colored dress either at the edge of the woods or perhaps even coming toward him, but there was nothing to be seen, and although the walk had been lovely at the start, his pleasure in the exercise sank with the increasing heat. His rapid walking soaked his collar and the pores of his face until that unpleasant feeling of damp warmth set in which degrades the human body to a piece of laundry. Walter resolved to get into better shape for the outdoors again; allowed himself the excuse that perhaps he was merely dressed too warmly; was also doubtless anxious lest he might be coming down with something: and his thoughts, which had initially been quite animated, became in this fashion gradually incoherent and finally flopped, as it were, in time with his steps, while the path seemed never to end.
At some point he thought: "As a so-called normal person, one's thoughts are truly hardly less incoherent than a madman's! " And then it occurred to him: "Moreover, one does say that it's insanely hot! " And he smiled weakly that this turn of phrase was apparently not without foun- dation, since for example the changes a feverish temperature brings about in one's head are really somewhere between the symptoms of or- dinary heat and those of mental disturbance. And so, without taking it entirely seriously, it might perhaps also be said of Clarisse that she had always been what one calls a crazy person without her having to be a sick one. Walter would very much have liked to know the answer to this question. Her brother and doctor claimed that there was not the slight- est danger. But Walter believed he had known for a long time that Cla- risse was already on the other side of a certain boundary. He sometimes had the feeling that she was merely still hovering around him as do de- parted souls, of whom it is said that they cannot immediately separate themselves from what they had loved. This idea was not unsuited to in- flating his pride, for there were not many other people who would have been up to such a ghastly yet beautiful-as he now called it-struggle
1374 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
between love and horror. There were, to be sure, times when he felt irresolute. A sudden push or collapse could cany his wife away into the domain of the completely repellent and ugly, and that would still have been the least of it, for what if, in that case, she did not repel him! No, Walter assumed that she would have to repel him, for the debased mind was ugly! And Clarisse would then have to be put in an institution, for which there was not enough money. That was all quite depressing. Still, there had been times, when her soul was already, so to speak, fluttering in front of the windowpanes, when he had felt himself so bold that he had no desire to think whether he should pull her in to him or rush out to her.
Such thoughts made him forget the sunny, strenuous path, but finally also caused him to leave off thinking altogether, so that while he re- mained in animated motion he really had no content, or was filled with terribly ordinary contents, which he solemnly pondered; he walked along like a rhythm without notes, and when he bumped into Clarisse he almost stumbled over her. She, too, had at first followed the broad path, and had found at the edge of the woods a small indentation where the spilled sunlight licked the shadows at every breath of wind, like a god- dess licking an animal. Here the ground rose gently, and since she was lying on her back, she saw the world within a strange gimlet. Through some kind ofkinship ofshapes, the uncanny mood that on this day mixed particularly easilywith her cheerfulness had again taken hold ofher spir- its, and gazing long and steadily into the horizontally perverse landscape she began to feel sadness, as if she had to assume the burden of a sorrow or a sin or a destiny. There was an enormous sense of abandonment, of anticipation, and an expectancy of sacrifice abroad in the world, of the kind she had found the first time she had gone out, when the day just "reached her ankles. " Her eyes involuntarily sought the place where, behind more distant slopes and not visible to her, the extensive buildings of the asylum for the insane must lie; and when she thought she had located them it calmed her, as it calms the lover to know the direction in which his thoughts can find his beloved. Her thoughts "flew," but not in that direction. "They're now crouching, having fallen quite silent, like huge black birds beside me in the sun," she thought, and the splendid yet melancholy feeliD. g associated with this lasted until Clarisse caught sight of Walter in the distance. Then she had suddenly had enough of her sorrow, hid behind the trees, held her hand in front of her mouth like a funnel, and shouted, as loudly as she could: "Cuckoo! " She then straightened up and ran deeper into the woods, but immediately changed her mind again and threw herself down in the warm forest
From the Posthumous Papers · 1375
weeds beside the path Walter would have to use. His countenance then did come along, thinking itself unobserved, expressing nothing but an unconscious, gently animated attentiveness to the obstacles on the path, and this made his face very strange, indeed quite resolutely masculine, to look at. When he was unsuspectingly close, Clarisse stretched out her arm and reached for his foot, and this was the moment when Walter nearly fell and first caught sight of his wife, lying almost under his eyes and directing her smiling glance up at him. Despite some of his con- cerns, she did not look in the least ugly.
Clarisse laughed. Walter sat down beside her on a tree stump and dried his neck with his handkerchief. "Clarisse . . . ! " he began, and con- tinued only after a pause: "I really meant to work today. . . . "
"Meant? " Clarisse mocked. But for once it did not sting. The word whizzed from her tongue and mingled with the cheerful whirring of the flies that zoomed past their ears through the sun like small metal arrows.
Walter replied: 'Til admit that lately I haven't thought working was the right thing to do ifyou could just as well sniff the new flowers. Work is one-sided; it goes against one's duty to wholeness! "
Since he paused briefly, Clarisse threw a small pine cone that had come to hand up in the air a few times and caught it again.
"Of course I'm also aware of the objections that could be raised against that," Walter asserted.
Clarisse let the pine cone fall to the ground and asked animatedly: "So you're going to begin working again?
Today we need an art that has brush strokes and musical intervals this big! " She stretched her arms out three feet.
"I don't have to begin that way right off," Walter objected. "Anyway, I still find the whole problematic of the individual artist off-putting. Today we need a problematic of the totality-" But hardly had he ut- tered the word "problematic" than it seemed to him quite overexcited in the stillness of the woods. He therefore added something new: "But ba- sically it's in no way a demand inimical to life that a person should paint something he loves; in the case of the landscape painter, nature! "
"But a painter also paints his beloved," Clarisse threw in. "One part of the painter loves, the other paints! "
Walter saw his beautiful new idea shrivel up. He was not in the mood to breathe new life into it, but he was still convinced that the idea was important and merely needed careful working out. And the singing of finches, the woodpecker's drumming, the humming of small insects: it didn't move him to work but rather dragged him down into an infinite abyss of indolence.
1376 • THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
'We're very much alike, you and 1," he said with gratification. "There's hardly another couple like us! Others paint, make music, or write, and I refuse to: basically that's as radical as your eagerness! "
Clarisse turned on her side, raised herself on her elbow, and opened her mouth for a furious response. "I'll set you free yet, all the way! " she said quickly.
Walter looked down at her tenderly. "What do you mean, really, when you say that we have to be saved from our sinful form? " he asked eagerly.
This time Clarisse did not answer. She had the impression that if she were to speak now it would run away too quickly, and although she in- tended to say something, the woods confused her; for the woods were on her side: that was something that couldn't be expressed properly, al- though it was clear to see.
Walter probed in the delicious wound. "Did you really talk about that again with Meingast? " he asked in a way that demanded a response, yet hesitantly, indeed fearful that she might have done so although he had forbidden it.
Clarisse lied, for she shook her head; but at the same time she smiled.
"Can you still remember the time we took Meingast's 'sins' on our- selves? " he pursued further. He took her hand. But Clarisse only let him have a finger. It is a remarkable condition when a man has to remind himselfwith as much reluctance as willingness that nearly everything his beloved bestows on him has previously belonged to another; it may be the sign of a love that is all too strong, or perhaps the sign of a feeble soul, and sometimes Walter actually sought out this condition. He loved the fifteen-to-sixteen-year-old Clarisse, who had never been taken with him completely and unreservedly; loved her almost more than the pres- ent Clarisse, and the memory of her caresses, which were perhaps the reflection of Meingast's indecency, stirred him in a peculiar way more profoundly than, by comparison, the cool, unhampered quality of mar- riage. He found it almost agreeable knowing that Clarisse had a favoring side glance to spare for Ulrich and now entirely once again for the mag- nificently altered Meingast, and the way in which these men had an un- favorable impact on her imagination magnified his longing for his wife the way the shadows of debauchery and desire under an eye make it appear larger. Of course men in whom jealousy will suffer nothing be- side themselves, he-men, will not experience this, but his jealousy was full of love, and when that is the case, then the torture is so precise, so distinct, so alive, that it is almost the vicarious experiencing of desire. Whenever Walter imagined his wife in the act of giving herself to an- other man he felt more strongly than when he held her in his own arms,
From the Posthu'11WUs Papers · 1 3 7 7
and, somewhat disconcerted, he thought by way of excuse: ''When I'm painting and I need to see the most subtle curvature of the lines of a face, I don't look at it directly but in a mirror! " It really stung him that he was yielding to such thoughts in the woods, in the healthy world of na- ture, and the hand that held Clarisse's finger began to tremble. He had to say something, but it could not be what he was thinking. He joked in a strained way: "So now you want to take my sins upon yourself, but how are you going to do that? " He smiled; but Clarisse noticed a slight trem- bling spreading over his lips. This did not suit her just now; although it is always a marvelous spur to laughter, this image of the way a man who is dragging a much too large bale of useless thoughts along with him tries to stride through the small door to which he is drawn. She sat completely upright, looked at Walter with a mockingly serious glance, shook her head several times, and began reflectively:
"Don't you believe that periods of depression alternate with periods of mania in the world? Urgent, disturbed, fruitful periods of upswing that bring in the new, alternating with sinful periods, despondent, de- pressed, bad centuries or decades? " Periods in which the world ap- proaches its bright ideal shape and periods where it sinks into its sinful form. Walter looked at her with alarm. "That's how it is; I just can't tell you which years," she continued, adding: "The upswing doesn't have to be beautiful; in fact, it has to shuck off a good deal, which may of course be beautiful. It can look like a disease: I'm convinced that from time to time humanity has to become mentally ill in order to attain the synthesis of a new and higher health! "
Walter refused to understand.
Clarisse talked on: "People who are sensitive, like you and me, feel that! We're now living in a period of decline, and that's why you can't work either. In addition there are sensual ages, and ages that turn away from sensuality. You must prepare yourself for suffering. . . . "
Remarkably, it moved Walter that Clarisse had said "you and me. " She had not said that for a long time.
"And of course there are periods of transition," Clarisse went on. "And figures like Saint John, precursors; we may be two precursors. "
Now Walter responded: "But you had your way and went to the in- sane asylum; now we really ought to be of one mind again! "
"You mean that I ought not to go again? " Clarisse interjected, and smiled.
"Don't go again! " Walter pleaded. But he did so without conviction: he felt it himself; his plea was merely meant to cover him.
Clarisse replied: "All 'precursors' complain about the spirit's lack of resolution because they don't yet have complete faith, but no one dares
1378 · THE MAN WITH 0 U T QUALITIES
put an end to the irresolution! Even Meingast doesn't dare," she added. Walter asked: "What is it you'd have to dare? "
"You see, a whole people can't be insane," Clarisse said in an even
softer voice. "There is only individual insanity. When everyone is insane, then they are the healthy ones. Isn't that right? Therefore a whole peo- ple of the insane is the healthiest of people; you just have to treat them as a people, and not as sick people. And I tell you, the mad think more than the healthy do, and they lead a resolute life of a kind we never have the courage for! To be sure, they are forced to live this life in a sinner's form, or they can't yet do otherwise! "
W alter swallowed and asked: "But what is this sinner's form? You talk about it so much, and a lot about transformation too, about taking sins upon oneself, about double beings and so much else, that I half under- stand and half don't understand! "
That goes around in circles Ofcourse it goes around in circles
Clarisse smiled, and it was her embarrassed and rather excited smile. "That can't be put in a few words," she replied. "The insane are just double beings. "
"Well, you said that before. But what does it mean? " Walter probed; he wanted to know how she was feeling, without consideration for her.
Clarisse reflected. "In many depictions, Apollo is man and woman. On the other hand, the Apollo with the arrow was not the Apollo with the lyre, and the Diana of Ephesus wasn't the Diana of Athens. The Greek gods were double beings, and we've forgotten that, but we're double beings too. "
Walter said after a while: "You're exaggerating. Of course the god is one thing when he's killing men and another when he's making music. " "That's not natural at all! " Clarisse countered. "You would be the same! You would only be excited in a different way. You're a little differ- ent here in the woods and there in your room, but you're not a different person. I could say that you never transform yourself completely into what you do; but I don't want to say too much. We've lost the concepts for these processes. The ancients still had them, the Greeks, the people
of Nietzsche! "
"Yes," Walter said, "perhaps; perhaps one could be quite different
from the way we are. " And then he fell silent. Snapped a twig. They
From the Posthumous Papers · 1379
were both now lying on the ground, with their heads turned toward each other. Finally Walter asked:
"What sort of double being am I? "
Clarisse laughed.
He took his twig and tickled her face.
"You are billy goat and eagle," she said, and laughed again. "I am not a billy goat! " Walter protested sulkily.
"You're a billy goat with eagle's wings! " Clarisse fleshed out her assertion.
"Did you just invent that? " Walter asked.
It had come to her on the spur of the moment, but she could add something to it that she had long known: "Every person has an animal in which he can recognize his fate. Nietzsche had the eagle. "
"Perhaps you mean what's called a totem. Do you know that for the Greeks specific animals were still associated with the gods: the wolf, the steer, the goose, the swan, the dog . . . "
"You see! " Clarisse said. "I didn't know that at all, but it's true. " And she suddenly added: "Do you know that sick people do disgusting things? Just like the man under my window that time. " And she related the story of the old man on the ward who had winked at her and then behaved so indecently.
"A lovely story, that, and moreover in front of the General! " Walter objected heatedly. "You really mustn't go there again! "
"Oh, come on, the General is just afraid of me! " Clarisse defended herself.
"Why should he be afraid? "
"I don't know. But you are too, and Father was afraid, and Meingast is afraid of me too," Clarisse said. "I seem to possess an accursed power, so that men who have something wrong with them are compelled to offer themselves to me. In a word, I tell you, sick people are double beings of god and billy goat! "
''I'm afraid for you! " Walter whispered more than spoke, softly and tenderly.
"But the sick ones aren't only double beings of god and goat, but also ofchild and man, and sadness and gaiety," Clarisse went on without pay- ing attention.
Walter shook his head. "You seem to associate all men with 'goat'! "
"My God, that's true, I do. " Clarisse defended it calmly. "I carry the figure of the goat within myself too! "
"The figure! " Walter was a little scornful, but involuntarily; for the constant succession of ideas was making him tired.
I380 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
"The image, the model, the daimon--call it what you like! "
Walter needed a rest, he wished to stop for a while, and replied: "I will admit that in many respects people are double beings. Recent psychology-"
Clarisse interrupted him vehemently. "Not psychology! You all think much too much! "
"But didn't you claim that the insane think more than we healthy peo- ple do? " Walter asked mechanically.
"Then I said it wrong. They think differently. More energetically! " she replied, and went on: "It doesn't make the slightest difference what one thinks; as soon as one acts, what one thought beforehand doesn't matter anymore. That's why I find it right not to go on talking but to go to the insane in their house. "
"Just a minute! " Walter begged. "What is your double being? "
"I am first of all man and woman. "
"But you just said goat too. "
"That too. Tool It's not the sort of thing you can measure with ruler
and compass. "
"No, that you can't! " Walter moaned aloud, covering his eyes with his
hands and clenching his hands into fists. As he lay there mute in this posture, Clarisse crept up to him, threw her arms around his shoulders, and kissed him from time to time.
Walter lay motionless.
Clarisse was whispering and murmuring something into his ear. She was telling him that the man under the window had been sent by the goat, and that the goat signified sensuality, which had everywhere sepa- rated itself from the rest of mankind. All people creep to each other in bed every night and leave the world where it is: this lower solution to the great powers of desire in people must finally be stopped, and then the goat would become the god! This was what Walter heard her say. And wasn't she right? Yet how did it happen that it pleased him? How did it happen that for a long time nothing else had pleased him? Not the paint- ings that he had earlier admired; not the masters of music whom he had loved; not the great poems, and not the mighty ideas? And that he now found pleasure in listening to Clarisse telling him something that anyone else would say was fantasy? These were the questions that went through Walter's mind. As long as his life had lain before him, he had felt it to be full of great desire and imagination; since then, Eros had truly separated himself from it. Was there anything he still did body and soul? Was not everything he touched insignificant? Truly, love was gone from his fin- gertips, the tip of his tongue, his entrails, eyes, and ears, and what re- mained was merely ashes in the form oflife, or, as he now expressed it
From the Posthurrwus Papers · 1381
rather magniloquently, "dung in a polished glass," the "goat"! And be- side him, at his ear, was Clarisse: a little bird that had suddenly begun to prophesy this in the woods! He could not find the suggestive, the com- manding tone to point out to her where her ideas went too far and where they did not. She was full ofimages jumbled together; he, too, had been this full of images once, he persuaded himself. And of these great im- ages, one has no idea which ones can be made into reality and which ones cannot. So every person bears within himself a leading ideal figure, Clarisse was now maintaining, but most people settle for living in the form of sin, and Walter found that it might well be said of him that he bore an ideal figure within himself, although he, perhaps even self-peni- tently, at least voluntarily, lived in ashes. The world also has an ideal figure. He found this image magnificent. Of course it did not explain anything, but what good is explanation? It expressed the will of human- ity, striving upward again and again after every defeat. And it suddenly struck Walter that Clarisse had not kissed him voluntarily for at least a year, and that she was now doing it for the first time.
6 . . .
BREATHS OF A SUMMER DAY
On the same morning, Agathe, impelled by moody contradictions left over from the previous night, said to her brother: "And why should it be possible to live a life in love? There are times when you live no less in anger, in hostility, or even in pride or hardness, and they don't claim to be a second world! "
'Td prefer to say that one lives for love," Ulrich replied indolently. ~·our other emotions must inspire us to action in order that they last; that's what anchors them in reality. "
"But it's usually that way in love too," Agathe objected. She felt as if she were swinging on a high branch that was threatening to break off under her any moment. "But then why does every beginner swear to himself that it will 'last' forever, even if he's beginning for the tenth time? " was her next question.
"Perhaps because it's so inconstant.
