A person into whom
everything
he
finds can be stuffed must be built with no shape of his own, like a sack.
finds can be stuffed must be built with no shape of his own, like a sack.
Musil - Man Without Qualities - v2
'' Ulrich asked.
A smile and a movement of her head spontaneously indicated his sis- ter's resistance to this archaic term, which has fallen out of use and now bears the scent of old trunks and costumes.
"It is an archaic word," Ulrich admitted, "but this would be a good occasion to use it! And as I said, I did read up on it. If it doesn't bother you to do this in the street, let me have a look at what else I can tell you about it. " With a smile, he pulled a piece ofpaper from his pocket and deciphered various notes he had made in pencil. "Goethe," he an- nounced. " 'Here I saw regret and penitence pushed to caricature, and because all passion replaces genius, really inspiriting. ' In another place: 'Your inspiriting composure often advanced to meet me with magnifi- cent enthusiasm. ' Wieland: 'The fruit of inspiriting hours. ' Holderlin: 'The Greeks are still a beautiful, inspiriting, and happy people. ' And you'll find a similar 'inspiriting' in Schleiermacher, in his earlier years. But already with Immermann you find 'inspired economy' and 'inspired debauchery. ' So there you already have the disconcerting transforma- tion of the notion into the· kettle-patching and slovenly, which is how 'inspired' is understood today. '' He turned the piece of paper this way and that, stuck it back in his pocket, and then took it out once more for assistance. "But its prehistory and preconditions are found earlier," he added. "Kant was already criticizing 'the fashionable tone ofa geniuslike freedom in thinking' and speaks with annoyance of 'genius-men' and 'genius-apes. ' What annoyed him so much is a respectable piece of Ger- man intellectual history. For before him as well as after him people in Germany talked, partly ecstatically, partly disapprovingly, of 'genius urge,' 'genius fever,' 'storm of genius,' 'leaps of genius,' 'calls of genius,' and 'screams of genius,' and even philosophy's fingernails were notal- ways clean, least of all when it believed it could suck the independent
truth from its fingers. "
"And how does Kant decide what a genius is? '' Agathe asked. All she
associated with his famous name was that she remembered having heard that he surpassed everything.
"What he emphasized in the nature of genius was the creative ele- ment and originality, the 'spirit of originality,' which has remained ex- traordinarily influential up to the present day,'' Ulrich replied. "Goethe
From the Posthumous Papers · 1341
later was relying on Kant when he defined the geniative with the words: 'to have many objects present and easily relate the most remote ones to each other: this free of egotism and self-complacency. ' But that's a view that was very much designed for the achievements of reason, and it leads to the rather gymnastic conception of genius we have succumbed to. "
Agathe asked with laughing disbelief: "So now do you know what ge- nius and geniative are? "
Ulrich took the joshing with a shrug of his shoulders. "Anyway, we've found that among Germans, ifwe don't see the strictly Kantian 'spirit of originality,' we feel that eccentric and conspicuous behavior indicates genius," he said.
49
GENERAL VON STUMM ON GENIUS
The conversation with Stumm that Ulrich mentioned had occurred at a chance meeting and had been brief. The General seemed worried; he did not indicate why, but he began to grumble over the nonsense that in civilian life there were so many geniuses. "What is a genius, really? " he asked. "No one has ever called a general a genius! "
"Except Napoleon," Ulrich inteljected.
"Maybe him," Stumm admitted. "But that appears to happen more because his whole evolution was paradoxical! "
Ulrich didn't know what to say to this.
"At your cousin's, I had lots of opportunity to meet people who are designated as geniuses," Stumm declared pensively, and went on: "I be- lieve I can tell you what a genius is: a person who not only enjoys great success but also, in some sense, has to get hold of his subject backward! " And Stumm immediately expounded on this, using the great examples of psychoanalysis and the theory of relativity:
"In the old days it was also often true that you didn't know some- thing," he began in his characteristic fashion. "But you didn't think any- thing of it, and ifit didn't happen during an examination it didn't harm anyone. But suddenly this was turned into the so-called unconscious, and now everyone's unconscious is the size of all the things he doesn't know, and it's much more important to know why you don't know some- thing than what it is you don't know! Humanly speaking, this has, as one says, turned things topsy-turvy, and it's apparently a lot simpler too. ''
1342 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
Since Ulrich still did not react, Stumm went on:
"But the man who invented that also established the following law: You will remember that in the regiment one used to admonish the younger men when there had been too much barnyard talk by telling them: 'Don't say it, just do it! ' And what's the opposite of that? In some sense, the challenge: If, because you're a civilized human being, you can't do what you want, at least talk it over with a learned man; for he will convince you that everything that exists rests on something that ought not to exist! Of course I can't judge this from a scientific point of view, but in any case you can see from this that the new rules are abso- lutely the reverse ofthose that prevailed before, and the man who intro- duced them is praised today as a top-notch genius! "
Since Ulrich was apparently still not convinced, and Stumm himself did not feel he had got where he wanted, he repeated his argument using "relativity theory," as he conceived of it: "Like me, you learned at school that everything that moves happens in 'space and time,' " was where his thinking started. "But what is it like in practice? Permit me to say something quite ordinary: You are supposed to be with the front of your squadron at a particular place on the map at such and such a time. Or when you get the order, you're supposed to bring your cavalry from a formation to form a new front, which bears no relation at all to the straight lines on the exercise field. It happens in space and time, but it never happens without incident and never works out the way you want. I, at least, received a hundred reprimands so long as I was with the troops, I tell you that candidly. Even at school I always, so to speak, re- sisted when I had to calculate a mechanical motion in space and time on the blackboard. So I found it a real inspiration of genius the instant I heard that someone had finally discovered that space and time are quite relative concepts, which change at every moment whenever they are put to serious use, although since the creation of the world they have been regarded as the solidest thing there is. That's why this man, and in my view quite rightly, is at least as famous as the other. But it can also be said of him that he's tethered the horse by its tail, which, at least today, is what more or less amounts to the fixed main idea of what a genius is! And that's what I would like to make you see, ifyou place any value on my experience," Stumm concluded.
Ulrich, in his partiality for him, had conceded that the most important scientific teachings ofthe present had their eccentric aspects, or at least showed no fear of them. It might not mean much; but if one is so in- clined, a sign can be seen in this as well. Fearless showiness, a predispo- sition for the paradoxical, self-starting ambition, surprise, and revision of everything on the basis of contradictory details that previously had
From the Posthumous Papers · z343
hardly been noticed, all this had doubtless been part of the fashion in thinking for some time, for with their great achievements these things had just begun to crown precisely those fields where one would not have expected it and where one had been accustomed to the steady adminis- tration and constant increase of an enormous intellectual estate.
"But why? " Stumm asked. "How did it happen? "
Ulrich shrugged his shoulders. He thought of his own abandoned sci- ence, the broaching of its basic questions, their being skewered when their logic was checked out. It had not been much different with other sciences; they felt their edifices shaken through discoveries they had a hard time accommodating. That was the dispensation and the violence of truth. Nevertheless, it still seemed possible to speak of a boredom with everyday, never-ending progress, which up to now, and for the longest time, had been the ideal ofreal, silent faith amid the racket ofall convictions. There was no denying a creeping doubt in all fields about the rightness of the bare, exact process of taking one step before an- other. That, too, might be a cause. Finally, Ulrich answered: "Perhaps it's simply the same as when you get tired: you need a prospect that re- freshes you, or a shove in the back ofyour knees. "
"Why not sit down instead? '' Stumm asked.
"I don't know. In any event, after the longish calm flowering of the mind, you prefer to flirt with revolution. Some such thing seems to be in the offing. By way of comparison, you might perhaps think of the pre- vailing disjointedness in the arts. I don't understand much about politics, but perhaps sometime in the future someone will say that this intellec- tual restlessness already held signs of a revolution. "
"The hell you say! " Stumm exclaimed, arts and revolutionary unrest reminding him of his impressions at Diotima's.
"Perhaps only as a transition to a new stability to come! " Ulrich said soothingly.
That made no difference to Stumm. "Since that tactless business in front of the War Minister I've avoided Diotima's parties," he related. "Don't get me wrong, I have no objection whatever to all those geniuses we've been talking about, who are already preserved in amber-or if I do, it's only that the way they're revered seems to me exaggerated. But I really have it in for the rest of that rabble! " And after a brief but obvi- ously bitter moment he brought himself to ask the question: "Tell me honestly, is genius really so valuable? ''
Ulrich had to smile, and disregarding what he had said before, he now mentioned the enormous-he even called it the magically simpleminded-sense of release that one recognized in the solution to any kind of problem that the most talented and even the greatest spe-
1344 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
cialists had vainly striven to find. Genius is the single unconditional human value, it is human value, he said. Without the involvement of genius there would not even be the animal group ofthe higher primates. In his eagerness, he even passionately praised that genius which he was later to call merely the genius of degree and dexterity, to the extent that it was not fundamentally genius by nature.
Stumm nodded with satisfaction. "I know: the invention of fire and the wheel, gunpowder and printing, and so on! In short, from log canoe to logarithms! " But after he had demonstrated his sympathy he went on: "Now let me tell you something, and it's from the conversations at Di- otima's: 'From Sophocles to Feuermaull' Some young dolt once shouted that in complete seriousness! "
"What bothers you about Sophocles? "
"Ah! I don't know anything about him. But Feuermaul! And here you are claiming that genius is an unconditional value. "
"The touch of genius is the only moment in which that ugly and obdu- rate pupil of God, man, is beautiful and candid! " Ulrich intensified his statement. "But I did not say that it's easy to decide what's genius and what merely fantasy. I'm just saying that wherever a new value really enters the human game, genius is behind it! "
"How can you know whether something is 'really a new value'? " Ulrich hesitated, smiling.
"And then, in any case, whether the value really is worth anything! "
Stumm added with curiosity and concern.
"You often feel it at first sight," Ulrich said.
'Tve been told that people have been mistaken at first sight! "
The conversation faltered. Stumm was perhaps preparing a funda-
mentally different question.
Ulrich said: "You hear the first bars of Bach or Mozart; you read a
page of Goethe or Corneille: and you know that you've touched genius! " "Maybe with Mozart and Goethe, because with them I already know
that; but not with an unknown! " the General protested.
"Do you believe it wouldn't have electrified you even when you were
young? The enthusiasm ofyouth is in itselfrelated to genius! "
"What do you mean, 'in itself'? But ifyou're really forcing me to an- swer: maybe an opera diva might have aroused my enthusiasm. And Alexander the Great, Caesar, and Napoleon excited me once too. But 'in
itself,' writers or composers of any kind have always left me cold! " Ulrich beat a retreat, although he felt that he had merely got hold of a good argument from the wrong end. "I meant to say that a young per- son, as he develops intellectually, sniffs out genius the way a migrating bird senses direction. But apparently that would be confusing things.
From the Posthumous Papers · 1345
For the young person has only the most limited access to what is signifi- cant. He has no particular sense of it, but only a sense for what excites him. He's not even looking for genius, but he's searching for himself and for whatever is an appropriate foothold for the shape ofhis biases. What speaks to him," he declared, "is what's like him, in all the vagueness that goes along with it. It's more or less what he himself believes he can be, and has the same importance in his formation as the mirror, in which he gazes at himselfhappily, but byno means only out ofvanity. That's why it's only to be expected of works of genius that they should have this effect on him; usually it's contemporary things, and among those rather the ones that stimulate moods than those clearly formed by the intellect, just as he prefers mirrors that make his face thin or his shoulders broad to faithful ones. "
"That may well be," Stumm agreed pensively. "But do you believe that people get cleverer later on? "
"There's no doubt that the mature person is more capable and has more experience in recognizing what is significant; but his mature per- sonal aims and powers also force him to exclude many things. It's not that he refuses from lack of understanding but that he leaves things aside. "
"That's it! " Stumm exclaimed, relieved. "He's not as limited as a young person, but I would say he's more circumscribed! And that has to be too. Whenever people like us associate with immature young people of the kind favored by your cousin, God knows we must be ready for anything and have the good sense not to understand half of what they're saying! "
"You might well criticize them. "
"But your cousin says they're geniuses! How do you prove the oppo- site? "
Ulrich would not have been disinclined to follow up this question as well. "A genius is a person who finds a solution where many have looked for it in vain by doing something nobody before him thought of doing," he defined, in order finally to get on, because he was curious himself.
But Stumm declined. "I can stick to the facts themselves," he com- mented. "At Frau von Tuzzi's I've met enough critics and professors in person, and every time that one of the geniuses who improve life or art made assertions that were entirely too far out of line, I discreetly sought these experts' advice. "
Ulrich allowed himself to be distracted. "And what was the result? "
"Oh, they were always very respectful to me and said: 'You shouldn't bother your head about that, General! ' Of course that may be a kind of arrogance they have; for though they nervously praise all new artists,
1346 · THE MAN WITH 0 U T QUALITIES
they nonetheless seem to imagine that these artists, in their own asser- tions, dangerously contradict each other, indeed that they feel some- thing like blind rage toward each other, and that summa summarum they perhaps don't know what they're doing! "
"And did you also find out what those sun-stricken minds that Di- otima cools with laurel think about the critics and professors, to the ex- tent these people don't praise them? " Ulrich asked. "As if the artists were the ones feeding these beasts ofintellect with their flesh, and these beasts were the ones who would leave a mere struggle over bones as the final remains of all man's humanity! "
"You've observed them well! " Stumm agreed as a delighted connois- seur.
"But in the face of so much contradiction, how do you recog- nize whether you've really got hold of a 'genius' or not? '' Ulrich asked logically.
Stumm's answer was honest, ifnot compelling: "I don't give a damn," he said.
Ulrich looked at him in silence. If he wanted merely to engage in a rear-guard skirmish and avoid problems that were more difficult than the circumstances warranted, then it was a mistake for him not to use this moment "to disengage himself from the enemy," as good tactics would have dictated. But he himself did not know what mood he was in. So he finally said: "Nothing gives fake geniuses so much luck with the masses as the incomprehension that genuine geniuses ordinarily have for each other, and, following their example, the pseudo-genuine ones; lamp polishers can't clean Prometheus! " At this conclusion Stumm looked up at him, uncomprehending but thoughtful. "Don't misunder- stand me," he added cautiously. "Remember my eagerness when I was searching for a great idea for Diotima. I know what intellectual aristoc- racy is. Nor am I Count Leinsdorf, for whom that's always a kind of minor nobility. Just now, for example, you brilliantly defined what age- nius is. How did it go? It finds a solution by doing something that hadn't occurred to anyone before! That really says the same thing I've been saying: the important thing is that a genius gets hold of his subject from the wrong end. But that's not intellectual aristocracy! And why isn't it intellectual aristocracy? Because the usual polestar of our age is that whatever the circumstances, what happens must be meaningful, but whether you call it genius or intellectual aristocracy, progress or, as you now often hear people say, a record, just doesn't matter much to our time! "
"But then why did you mention intellectual aristocracy? '' Ulrich prompted impatiently.
From the Posthurrwus Papers · 1347
"I can't really say precisely, for that very reason! " Stumm defended himself. "Anyway," he continued, thinking busily, "perhaps you could say in a way that an intellectual aristocracy in particular is not permitted to leave character in peace. Aren't I right? "
"Yes, you're right! " Ulrich encouraged him, made aware for the first time this precise moment, quite incidentally, as it happened, to heed a distinction like the one between genius and dexterity.
"Yes," Stumm repeated thoughtfully. And then he asked: "But what is character? Is it what helps a man develop the ideas that will distinguish him? Or is it what keeps him from having such ideas? For a man who has character doesn't do much flitting around! "
Ulrich decided to shrug his shoulders and smile.
"Presumably it's connected with what one is accustomed to calling great ideas," Stumm went on skeptically. "And then intellectual aristoc- racy would be nothing except the possession of great ideas. But how does one recognize that an idea is great? There are so many geniuses, at least a couple in every profession; indeed, it's a distinctive mark of our time that we have too many geniuses. How is one to understand them all and not overlook any! " His painful familiarity with the question ofwhat a really great idea was had brought him back to its role in genius.
Ulrich shrugged again.
"There are of course some people, and I've met them," Stumm said, "who never miss the smallest genius that can be dug up anywhere! "
Ulrich replied: ·'Those are the snobs and intellectual pretenders. " The General: "But Diotima is one of these people too. "
Ulrich: "Makes no difference.
A person into whom everything he
finds can be stuffed must be built with no shape of his own, like a sack. " "It's true," the General replied rather reproachfully, "that you've often said that Diotima was a snob. And you've sometimes said it about Arnheim as well. But that made me imagine a snob to be someone who is quite stimulating! I've honestly tried hard to be one myself and not let anything slip past me. It's hard for me to suddenly hear you say that you can't even depend on a snob to understand genius. Because you said before that youth couldn't answer for it, nor age either. And then we discussed how geniuses don't, and critics not at all. Well then, genius will
finally have to reveal itself to everyone of its own accord! "
"That will happen in time," Ulrich soothed him, laughing. "Most peo-
ple believe that time naturally turns up what is significant. "
·'Yes, one hears that too. But tell me ifyou can," Stumm asked impa- tiently. "I can understand that one is cleverer at fifty than one was at twenty. But at eight o'clock in the evening I'm no cleverer than I was at eight in the morning; and that one should be cleverer after nineteen
1348 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
hundred and fourteen years than after eight hundred and fourteen, that I can't see either! " This led them to go on a bit discussing the difficult subject of genius, the only thing, in Ulrich's opinion, that justified man- kind, but at the same time the most exciting and confusing, because you never know whether you're looking at genius or at one of its half-baked imitations. What are its distinguishing characteristics? How is it passed on? Could it develop further ifit were not constantly being thwarted? Is it, as Stumm had asked, such a desirable thing anyway? These were problems that for Stumm belonged to the beauty of the civilian mind and its scandalous disorder, while Ulrich, on the other hand, compared them with a weather forecast that not only didn't know whether it would be fair tomorrow but didn't know whether it had been fair yesterday ei- ther. For the judgment of what constitutes genius changes with the spirit of the times, assuming that anyone is interested in it at all, which by no means need be the mark of greatness of soul or of mind.
Such puzzles would no doubt have been well worth solving, and so it came about in this part of the conversation that Stumm finally, after shaking his head a few times, proffered his observation about the Engi- neering[/Genius] Staff that Ulrich later repeated to his sister. This expla- nation, that genius needed a Genius Staff, reminded him somewhat painfully, moreover, of what Ulrich himself had half ironically called the General Secretariat of Precision and Soul, and Stumm did not neglect to remind him that he had last mentioned it in his own and Count Leins- dorf's presence during the unfortunate gathering at Diotima's. "At that time you were demanding something quite similar," he held up to him, "and if I'm not mistaken, it was a department for geniuses and the intel- lectual aristocracy. " Ulrich nodded silently. "For the intellectual aristoc- racy," Stumm continued, "would ultimately be what ordinary geniuses don't have. No matter how you define them, our geniuses are geniuses and nothing more, nothing but specialists! Am I right? I can really un- derstand why many people say: today there's no such thing as genius! "
Ulrich nodded again. A pause ensued.
"But there's one thing I'd like to know," Stumm asked with that hint of egotism that attaches to a recurrent perplexing thought: "Is it a re- proach or a distinction that people never say about a general: he's a genius? "
"Both. "
"Both? Why both? "
"I honestly don't know. "
Stumm was taken aback but, after thinking it over, said: "You put that
brilliantly! The people love an officer- as long as they aren't stirred up; and he gets to know the people: the people couldn't care less about ge-
From the Posthunwus Papers · 1349
niuses! But by the time he gets to be a general he has to be a specialist, and if he himself is a specialist genius he then falls into the category that there's no such thing as genius. So he never gets, as I would say if I spelled it out, to the point where the use ofthis wishy-washy term would be appropriate. Do you know, by the way, that I recently heard some- thing really clever? I was at your cousin's, in the most intimate circle, although Arnheim is away, and we were discussing intellectual ques- tions. Then someone pokes me in the ribs and explains Arnheim to me in a whisper: 'He's what you call a genius,' he said. 'More than all the oth- ers. A universal specialist! ' Why don't you say anything? " Ulrich found nothing to say. "The possibilities inherent in this point ofview surprised me. Besides, you yourself happen to be such a kind of universal special- ist. That's why you shouldn't neglect Arnheim so; because ultimately the Parallel Campaign might get its saving idea from him, and that could be dangerous! I would really much prefer that it came from you. "
And although Stumm had (finally) spoken far more than Ulrich, he took his leave with the words: "As always, it's a pleasure talking with you, because you understand all these things de facto much better than ev- eryone else! "
so
GENIUS AS A PROBLEM
Ulrich had related this conversation to his sister.
But even before that he had been speaking of difficulties connected
with the notion ofgenius. What enticedhim to do this? He had no inten- tion of claiming to be a genius himself, or of politely inquiring about the conditions that would enable a person to become one. On the contrary, he was convinced that the powerful, exhausted ambition in his time for the vocation of genius was the expression not of intellectual or spiritual greatness but merely of an incongruity. But as all contemporary ques- tions about life become impossibly entangled in an impenetrable thicket, so do the questions surrounding the idea ofgenius, which in part enticed one's thoughts to penetrate it and in part left them hung up on the difficulties.
After he finished his report, Ulrich had immediately come back to this. Ofcourse, whatever has genius must be significant; for genius is the
1350 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
significant accomplishment that originates under particularly distinctive conditions. But "significant" is not only the lesser but also the more gen- eral category. So the first thing was to inquire into this notion again. The words "significant" and "significance" themselves, like all terms that are much used, have different meanings. On the one hand, they are con- nected with the concepts of thinking and knowing. To say that some- thing signifies or has this significance means that it points to, gives to understand, indicates, or can represent in specific cases, or simply gen- erally, that it is the same as something else, or falls under the same head- ing and can be known and comprehended as the other. That is, of course, a relationship accessible to reason and involving the nature of reason; and in this manner anything and everything can signify some- thing, as it can also be signified. On the other hand, the term "signifying something" is used as well in the sense of something having significance or being of significance. In this sense, too, nothing is excluded. Not only a thought can be significant, but also an act, a work, a personality, a posi- tion, a virtue, and even an individual quality of mind. The distinction between this and the other kind of signifying is that a particular rank and value is ascribed to what is significant. That something is significant means in this sense that it is more significant than other things, or simply that it is unusually significant. What decides this? The ascription gives one to understand that it belongs to a hierarchy, an order of mental pow- ers that is aspired to, even should the attainable measure of order be in many things as undependable as it is strict in others. Does this hierarchy exist?
It is the human spirit itself: named not as a natural concept but as the objective spirit.
Agathe asked what this included; it is a notion that people more scien- tifically trained than she threw around so much that she ducked.
Ulrich nearly emulated her. He found the word used far too much. At that period it was used so often in scientific and pseudoscientific argu- ments that it simply revolved around itself. "For heaven's sake! You're becoming profound! " he retorted. The expression had inadvertently slipped from his own lips.
Ordinarily, one understands by "objective spirit" the works of the spirit, the relatively constant share it deposits in the world through the most various signs, in opposition to the subjective spirit as individual quality and individual experience; or one understood by it, and this could not be entirely separated from the first kind, the viable spirit, verifiable, constant in value, in opposition to the inspirations of mood and error. This touched two oppositions whose significance for Ulrich's life had certainly not been simply didactic but-and this he was well
From the Posthu11WUs Papers · 13 51
aware of and had expressed often enough-had become extremely allur- ing and worrisome. So what he meant had elements of both.
· Perhaps he could also have said to his sister that by "objective spirit" one understands everything that man has thought, dreamed, and de- sired; but, to do so means not looking at it as components of a spiritual, historical, or other temporal-actual development, and certainly not as something spiritual-suprasensmy either, but exclusively as itself, accord- ing to its own characteristic content and inner coherence. He could also have said, which appeared to contradict this but in the end came to the same thing, that it should be looked at with the reservation of all the contexts and orderings of which it is at all capable. For what something signifies or is in and of itself he equated with the result that coalesces out of the significances that could accrue to it under all possible conditions.
But one merely needs to put this differently, simply saying that in and of itself, something would be precisely what it never is in and of itself, but rather is in relation to its circumstances; and likewise that its signifi- cance is everything that it could signify; so one merely has to turn the expression on its head for the scruple connected with it to immediately become obvious. For of course the usual procedure, on the contrary, is to assume, even i f only from a usage oflanguage, that what something is in and of itself, or what it signifies, forms the origin and nucleus of every- thing that can be expressed about it in mutable relationships. So it was a particular conception of the nature of the notion and of signifying by which Ulrich had let himself be guided; and particularly because it is not unfamiliar, it might also be stated something like this: Whatever may be understood under the nature of the concept of a logical theory is in ap- plication, as a concept of something, nothing but the countervalue and the stored-up readiness for all possible true statements about that some- thing. This principle, which inverts the procedure of logic, is "empiri- cal," that is, it reminds one, ifone were to apply an already coined name to it, of that familiar line of philosophical thought, without, however, being meant in precisely the same sense. Ought Ulrich now to have ex- plained to his companion what empiricism was in its earlier form and what it had become in its more modest, and perhaps improved, modem version? As often happens when an idea gains in correctness, the more finely honed process of thinking renounces false answers but also some more profound questions as well.
What was baptized as empiricism in philosophical language was a doc- trine that arbitrarily declared the really astonishing presence and un- changeable sway of laws in nature and in the rules of the intellect to be a deceptive view that originated in habituation to the frequent repetition of the same experiences. The approximate classical formula for this was:
1352 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
Whatever repeats itself often enough seems to have to be so; and in this exaggerated form, which the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries be- stowed upon it, this formula was a repercussion of the long antecedent theological speculation: that is, of the faith placed in God, of being able to explain His works with the aid of whatever one takes into one's head. Notions and ideas demonstrate, when they are dominant, the same incli- nation to let themselves be worshiped and to broadcast capricious judg- ments as people do; and that probably led, when empiricism was established in modern times, to the admixture of a rather superficial op- position to totally convinced rationalism, which then, when it came to power itself, bore some of the responsibility for a shallow materialistic nature and societal mentality that at times has become almost popular.
Ulrich smiled when he thought of an example, but did not say why. For it was not reluctantly that one reproached empiricism, which was all too simpleminded and confined to its rules, that according to it the sun rises in the east and sets in the west for no other reason than that up till now it always has. And were he to betray this to his sister and ask her what she thought of it, she would probably answer arbitrarily, without bothering about the arguments and counterarguments, that the sun might one day do it differently. This was why he smiled as he thought of this example; for the relationship between youth and empiricism seemed to him profoundly natural, and youth's inclination to want to experience everything itself, and to expect the most surprising discover- ies, moved him to see this as the philosophy appropriate to youth. But from the assertion that awaiting the rising of the sun in the east every day merely has the security of a habit, it is only a step to asserting that all human lmowledge is felt only subjectively and at a particular time, or is indeed the presumption of a class or race, all of which has gradually become evident in European intellectual history. Apparently one should also add that approximately since the days of our great-grandfathers, a new kind of individuality has made its appearance: this is the type of the empirical man or empiricist, of the person of experience who has become such a familiar open question, the person who lmows how to make from a hundred of his own experiences a thousand new ones, which, however, always remain within the same circle ofexperience, and who has by this means created the gigantic, profitable-in-appearance monotony of the technical age. Empiricism as a philosophy might be taken as the philosophical children's disease of this type of person.
SKETCHES FOR A CONTINUA TION OF THE "GALLEY CHAPTERS," 1938 AND LATER
59
NIGHT TALK
In his room he had lit one lamp after the other, as if the stimulating excess ofillumination would make the words come more easily, and for a long time he wrote zealously. But after he had accomplished the most important part, he was overcome by the awareness that Agathe had not yet returned, and this became more and more disturbing. Ulrich did not lmow that she was with Lindner, nor did he lmow about these visits at all; but since that secret and his diaries were the only things they concealed from each other, he could surmise and also almost understand what she was doing. He did not take it more seriously than it deserved, and was more astonished at it than jealous; then too, he ascribed responsibility for it to his own lack of resolution, insofar as she pursued ways of her own that he could not approve of. It nevertheless inhibited him more and more, and diminished the readiness for belief that was weaving his thoughts together, that in this hour of collectedness he did not even lmow where she was or why she was late. He decided to interrupt his work and go out, to escape the enervating influence ofwaiting, but with the intention of soon returning to his labors. As he left the house it oc- curred to him that going to the theater not only would be the greatest diversion, but would also stimulate him; and so he went, although he was not dressed for it. He chose an inconspicuous seat and at first felt the great pleasure of coming into a performance that was already energeti- cally under way. It justified his coming, for this dynamic mirroring of emotions familiar a hundred times over, by which the theater is accus- tomed to live under the pretext that this gives it meaning, reminded Ul- rich of the value of the task he had left at home and renewed his desire
1354 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
to come to the end of the road that, proceeding from the origin of the emotions, ultimately had to lead to their significance. When he again directed his attention to the goings-on onstage, it occurred to him that most of the actors busily occupied up there, beautifully if meaninglessly imitating passions, bore titles such as Privy Councillor or Professor, for Ulrich was in the Hoftheater, and this raised everything to the level of state comedy. So although he left the theater before the end of the play, he nevertheless returned home with his spirits refreshed.
He again turned on all the lights in his room, and it gave him pleasure to listen to himself writing in the porous stillness of the night. This time, when he had entered the house, all sorts of fleeting signs barely assimi- lated by his consciousness told him that Agathe had returned; but when he subsequently thought of it and everything was without a sound, he was afraid to look around him. Thus the night became late. He had been once more in the garden, which lay in complete darkness, as inhospita- ble, indeed as mortally hostile, as deep black ocean; nevertheless, he had groped his way to a bench and persevered there for quite a while. It was difficult, even under these circumstances, to believe that what he was writing was important. But when he was again sitting in the light, he set to work to write to the end, as far as his plan extended this time. He didn't have far to go, but had hardly begun when a soft noise interrupted him. For Agathe, who had been in his room while he was at the theater and had repeated this secret visit while he was in the garden, slipping out upon his return, hesitated a short while outside the door and now softly turned the knob.
Agathe's entrance: she is wearing the historical lounging attire, etc. Lets her hand glide over his head, sits with crossed legs on the sofa.
Or: wrapper. Perhaps better. Describe it? Not transparent; on the contrary, heavy material. She was enveloped in a wrapper of old velvet material that reached to her ankles and looked like a completely dark- ened picture that had once been painted on a gold ground. Like a magi- cian's cape. Her ankles bare, the span of her foot as bare as her hand. Her slippers were of violet silk the color of spindle-tree fruit hanging on its bush in autumn. A collar of some soft weave, whose color hovered between ivory, milk, and dull gilt silver.
She had never worn this wrapper before; Ulrich did not recall it.
Ibidem. When he is near her, Ulrich feels the flowing back into emo- tion of what is outside and what inside, and the vigorous action of the
From the Posthu11WUs Papers · 1355
emotion. Also the sexual propensity, which belongs to a different sphere. The woman who becomes a guiding image in a different aspect and the woman who is the fulfillment of desire as examples of conceptions of
different levels that in life exist side by side.
She settles down on the sofa. Her torso comfortably supported and
her legs drawn up beneath her so that only her foot peeks out beneath the hem that forms a wheel. Later she briskly changes position, but at the beginning her posture was thoughtful and her face serious.
'Tve read it! " she informed her brother, like a chess player who, after a short pause for reflection, makes his first move.
"It seems to me you shouldn't have," he responded in the same manner.
Agathe burst out laughing. "It was disloyal of you to conceal it from me," she asserted boldly.
If the description of the dress stays, don't have the laughing right after it-
Ulrich listened to her voice and contemplated her beauty. "These re- flections make me understand more about myself than many years were able to previously," he said quite calmly.
"And they have nothing to do with me? "
"Yes, it concerns you as well! "
"But why then are you doing it secretly? Why haven't you ever told
me about it?
"Why are you secretly visiting that man of tears Lindner? "
"Also to understand myself better. And anyway, he weeps tears of
anger. "
"Were you there today? "
"Yes. " Agathe looked steadily at her brother and noticed the resent-
ment in his eyes.
He strove to control himself and responded as tersely as possible: "I
don't like your doing that. "
"I don't like doing it myself," Agathe said, continuing after a brief
pause: "But I like what you write. The beginning and the end, and what's in between too. I didn't understand everything, but I read it all. I think you could explain a lot of things to me, and because I'm afraid of strain- ing myself, I'll believe a lot without any explanation at all. "
(Post datum. This is really an example of an inner form of cheerful- ness as distinct from outer. )
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She laughed again, and it pealed softly. She seemed to be laughing over nothing and only from joy; and although Ulrich could be quite sen- sitive to people's laughter when it was aroused by something, for then it sometimes seemed to him just as humdrum an occurrence as sneezing, it immediately enticed him into an impossible task, that of adequately describing this pleasant, unmotivated sound. If, into the bargain, one threw in a little poetic commonplace, the impression could then be com- pared with that of a small, low-tuned silver bell: a dark bass tone sub- merged in a soft overflowing sparkle. But while Ulrich was listening to these cheerful sounds spreading out in the quiet room, his eyes also thought they were seeing all its lamps burning that much more quietly I as brightly. Precisely the simplest sensory impressions that populate the world occasionally have surprises in store when it comes to describing them, as ifthey came from anotherworld.
Influenced by this weakness, Ulrich suddenly felt a confession on his tongue about which he himself had not thought for goodness knew how long. "I once made a devilish bet with our big cousin Tzi, which I will never write down and which I don't think I ever told you about," he began to confess. "He suspected that I would write books, and, as it seems to me, he considered books that did not praise his politics to be deleterious and those that did superfluous, aside from the historical lit- erature and memoirs a diplomat customarily employs. But I swore to him that I would kill myself before I succumbed to the temptation of writing a book; and I really meant it. For what I was able to write would do nothing more than prove that one is able to live differently in some specific fashion; but that I should write a book about it would at the very least be the counterproof that I'm not able to live in that fashion. I didn't expect it would turn out differently. "
His sister had listened to him without stirring, without even a muscle in her face twitching. 'W e can kill each other ifit turns into a book," she said. "But it seems to me we have less reason to than before. "
Ulrich involuntarily looked her in the eye.
"Rather more reason for the opposite," she went on.
"You can't yet say that (too)," Ulrich objected calmly.
Agathe found that the supporting pillow at her side needed rearrang-
ing, which turned her face away from him. "Don't be angry with me," she replied from this posture, "but even though I admire what you write, I still don't quite understand why you write. Indeed, sometimes I've found it enormously comical. You carefully dissect according to natural and moral laws the possibility of extending your hand. Why don't you simply reach out? "
From the Posthumous Papers · 1357
"It's ruinous simply to reach out. Did I ever tell you the story of the major's wife? "
Agathe nodded mutely.
"It can't end the way that did! "
The small furrow appeared between Agathe's brows. "The major's
wife was a commonplace person," she declared coolly.
"That's right. But whether one discovers a world or goes on a Don
Quixote adventure doesn't depend, unfortunately, on the worth of the person in whose honor one embarks on the trip. "
"Who knows! " Agathe replied. A moment later she impatiently aban- doned her comfortable position and sat down in the ordinary way right in front of her brother, as if she were going to test something.
A smile and a movement of her head spontaneously indicated his sis- ter's resistance to this archaic term, which has fallen out of use and now bears the scent of old trunks and costumes.
"It is an archaic word," Ulrich admitted, "but this would be a good occasion to use it! And as I said, I did read up on it. If it doesn't bother you to do this in the street, let me have a look at what else I can tell you about it. " With a smile, he pulled a piece ofpaper from his pocket and deciphered various notes he had made in pencil. "Goethe," he an- nounced. " 'Here I saw regret and penitence pushed to caricature, and because all passion replaces genius, really inspiriting. ' In another place: 'Your inspiriting composure often advanced to meet me with magnifi- cent enthusiasm. ' Wieland: 'The fruit of inspiriting hours. ' Holderlin: 'The Greeks are still a beautiful, inspiriting, and happy people. ' And you'll find a similar 'inspiriting' in Schleiermacher, in his earlier years. But already with Immermann you find 'inspired economy' and 'inspired debauchery. ' So there you already have the disconcerting transforma- tion of the notion into the· kettle-patching and slovenly, which is how 'inspired' is understood today. '' He turned the piece of paper this way and that, stuck it back in his pocket, and then took it out once more for assistance. "But its prehistory and preconditions are found earlier," he added. "Kant was already criticizing 'the fashionable tone ofa geniuslike freedom in thinking' and speaks with annoyance of 'genius-men' and 'genius-apes. ' What annoyed him so much is a respectable piece of Ger- man intellectual history. For before him as well as after him people in Germany talked, partly ecstatically, partly disapprovingly, of 'genius urge,' 'genius fever,' 'storm of genius,' 'leaps of genius,' 'calls of genius,' and 'screams of genius,' and even philosophy's fingernails were notal- ways clean, least of all when it believed it could suck the independent
truth from its fingers. "
"And how does Kant decide what a genius is? '' Agathe asked. All she
associated with his famous name was that she remembered having heard that he surpassed everything.
"What he emphasized in the nature of genius was the creative ele- ment and originality, the 'spirit of originality,' which has remained ex- traordinarily influential up to the present day,'' Ulrich replied. "Goethe
From the Posthumous Papers · 1341
later was relying on Kant when he defined the geniative with the words: 'to have many objects present and easily relate the most remote ones to each other: this free of egotism and self-complacency. ' But that's a view that was very much designed for the achievements of reason, and it leads to the rather gymnastic conception of genius we have succumbed to. "
Agathe asked with laughing disbelief: "So now do you know what ge- nius and geniative are? "
Ulrich took the joshing with a shrug of his shoulders. "Anyway, we've found that among Germans, ifwe don't see the strictly Kantian 'spirit of originality,' we feel that eccentric and conspicuous behavior indicates genius," he said.
49
GENERAL VON STUMM ON GENIUS
The conversation with Stumm that Ulrich mentioned had occurred at a chance meeting and had been brief. The General seemed worried; he did not indicate why, but he began to grumble over the nonsense that in civilian life there were so many geniuses. "What is a genius, really? " he asked. "No one has ever called a general a genius! "
"Except Napoleon," Ulrich inteljected.
"Maybe him," Stumm admitted. "But that appears to happen more because his whole evolution was paradoxical! "
Ulrich didn't know what to say to this.
"At your cousin's, I had lots of opportunity to meet people who are designated as geniuses," Stumm declared pensively, and went on: "I be- lieve I can tell you what a genius is: a person who not only enjoys great success but also, in some sense, has to get hold of his subject backward! " And Stumm immediately expounded on this, using the great examples of psychoanalysis and the theory of relativity:
"In the old days it was also often true that you didn't know some- thing," he began in his characteristic fashion. "But you didn't think any- thing of it, and ifit didn't happen during an examination it didn't harm anyone. But suddenly this was turned into the so-called unconscious, and now everyone's unconscious is the size of all the things he doesn't know, and it's much more important to know why you don't know some- thing than what it is you don't know! Humanly speaking, this has, as one says, turned things topsy-turvy, and it's apparently a lot simpler too. ''
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Since Ulrich still did not react, Stumm went on:
"But the man who invented that also established the following law: You will remember that in the regiment one used to admonish the younger men when there had been too much barnyard talk by telling them: 'Don't say it, just do it! ' And what's the opposite of that? In some sense, the challenge: If, because you're a civilized human being, you can't do what you want, at least talk it over with a learned man; for he will convince you that everything that exists rests on something that ought not to exist! Of course I can't judge this from a scientific point of view, but in any case you can see from this that the new rules are abso- lutely the reverse ofthose that prevailed before, and the man who intro- duced them is praised today as a top-notch genius! "
Since Ulrich was apparently still not convinced, and Stumm himself did not feel he had got where he wanted, he repeated his argument using "relativity theory," as he conceived of it: "Like me, you learned at school that everything that moves happens in 'space and time,' " was where his thinking started. "But what is it like in practice? Permit me to say something quite ordinary: You are supposed to be with the front of your squadron at a particular place on the map at such and such a time. Or when you get the order, you're supposed to bring your cavalry from a formation to form a new front, which bears no relation at all to the straight lines on the exercise field. It happens in space and time, but it never happens without incident and never works out the way you want. I, at least, received a hundred reprimands so long as I was with the troops, I tell you that candidly. Even at school I always, so to speak, re- sisted when I had to calculate a mechanical motion in space and time on the blackboard. So I found it a real inspiration of genius the instant I heard that someone had finally discovered that space and time are quite relative concepts, which change at every moment whenever they are put to serious use, although since the creation of the world they have been regarded as the solidest thing there is. That's why this man, and in my view quite rightly, is at least as famous as the other. But it can also be said of him that he's tethered the horse by its tail, which, at least today, is what more or less amounts to the fixed main idea of what a genius is! And that's what I would like to make you see, ifyou place any value on my experience," Stumm concluded.
Ulrich, in his partiality for him, had conceded that the most important scientific teachings ofthe present had their eccentric aspects, or at least showed no fear of them. It might not mean much; but if one is so in- clined, a sign can be seen in this as well. Fearless showiness, a predispo- sition for the paradoxical, self-starting ambition, surprise, and revision of everything on the basis of contradictory details that previously had
From the Posthumous Papers · z343
hardly been noticed, all this had doubtless been part of the fashion in thinking for some time, for with their great achievements these things had just begun to crown precisely those fields where one would not have expected it and where one had been accustomed to the steady adminis- tration and constant increase of an enormous intellectual estate.
"But why? " Stumm asked. "How did it happen? "
Ulrich shrugged his shoulders. He thought of his own abandoned sci- ence, the broaching of its basic questions, their being skewered when their logic was checked out. It had not been much different with other sciences; they felt their edifices shaken through discoveries they had a hard time accommodating. That was the dispensation and the violence of truth. Nevertheless, it still seemed possible to speak of a boredom with everyday, never-ending progress, which up to now, and for the longest time, had been the ideal ofreal, silent faith amid the racket ofall convictions. There was no denying a creeping doubt in all fields about the rightness of the bare, exact process of taking one step before an- other. That, too, might be a cause. Finally, Ulrich answered: "Perhaps it's simply the same as when you get tired: you need a prospect that re- freshes you, or a shove in the back ofyour knees. "
"Why not sit down instead? '' Stumm asked.
"I don't know. In any event, after the longish calm flowering of the mind, you prefer to flirt with revolution. Some such thing seems to be in the offing. By way of comparison, you might perhaps think of the pre- vailing disjointedness in the arts. I don't understand much about politics, but perhaps sometime in the future someone will say that this intellec- tual restlessness already held signs of a revolution. "
"The hell you say! " Stumm exclaimed, arts and revolutionary unrest reminding him of his impressions at Diotima's.
"Perhaps only as a transition to a new stability to come! " Ulrich said soothingly.
That made no difference to Stumm. "Since that tactless business in front of the War Minister I've avoided Diotima's parties," he related. "Don't get me wrong, I have no objection whatever to all those geniuses we've been talking about, who are already preserved in amber-or if I do, it's only that the way they're revered seems to me exaggerated. But I really have it in for the rest of that rabble! " And after a brief but obvi- ously bitter moment he brought himself to ask the question: "Tell me honestly, is genius really so valuable? ''
Ulrich had to smile, and disregarding what he had said before, he now mentioned the enormous-he even called it the magically simpleminded-sense of release that one recognized in the solution to any kind of problem that the most talented and even the greatest spe-
1344 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
cialists had vainly striven to find. Genius is the single unconditional human value, it is human value, he said. Without the involvement of genius there would not even be the animal group ofthe higher primates. In his eagerness, he even passionately praised that genius which he was later to call merely the genius of degree and dexterity, to the extent that it was not fundamentally genius by nature.
Stumm nodded with satisfaction. "I know: the invention of fire and the wheel, gunpowder and printing, and so on! In short, from log canoe to logarithms! " But after he had demonstrated his sympathy he went on: "Now let me tell you something, and it's from the conversations at Di- otima's: 'From Sophocles to Feuermaull' Some young dolt once shouted that in complete seriousness! "
"What bothers you about Sophocles? "
"Ah! I don't know anything about him. But Feuermaul! And here you are claiming that genius is an unconditional value. "
"The touch of genius is the only moment in which that ugly and obdu- rate pupil of God, man, is beautiful and candid! " Ulrich intensified his statement. "But I did not say that it's easy to decide what's genius and what merely fantasy. I'm just saying that wherever a new value really enters the human game, genius is behind it! "
"How can you know whether something is 'really a new value'? " Ulrich hesitated, smiling.
"And then, in any case, whether the value really is worth anything! "
Stumm added with curiosity and concern.
"You often feel it at first sight," Ulrich said.
'Tve been told that people have been mistaken at first sight! "
The conversation faltered. Stumm was perhaps preparing a funda-
mentally different question.
Ulrich said: "You hear the first bars of Bach or Mozart; you read a
page of Goethe or Corneille: and you know that you've touched genius! " "Maybe with Mozart and Goethe, because with them I already know
that; but not with an unknown! " the General protested.
"Do you believe it wouldn't have electrified you even when you were
young? The enthusiasm ofyouth is in itselfrelated to genius! "
"What do you mean, 'in itself'? But ifyou're really forcing me to an- swer: maybe an opera diva might have aroused my enthusiasm. And Alexander the Great, Caesar, and Napoleon excited me once too. But 'in
itself,' writers or composers of any kind have always left me cold! " Ulrich beat a retreat, although he felt that he had merely got hold of a good argument from the wrong end. "I meant to say that a young per- son, as he develops intellectually, sniffs out genius the way a migrating bird senses direction. But apparently that would be confusing things.
From the Posthumous Papers · 1345
For the young person has only the most limited access to what is signifi- cant. He has no particular sense of it, but only a sense for what excites him. He's not even looking for genius, but he's searching for himself and for whatever is an appropriate foothold for the shape ofhis biases. What speaks to him," he declared, "is what's like him, in all the vagueness that goes along with it. It's more or less what he himself believes he can be, and has the same importance in his formation as the mirror, in which he gazes at himselfhappily, but byno means only out ofvanity. That's why it's only to be expected of works of genius that they should have this effect on him; usually it's contemporary things, and among those rather the ones that stimulate moods than those clearly formed by the intellect, just as he prefers mirrors that make his face thin or his shoulders broad to faithful ones. "
"That may well be," Stumm agreed pensively. "But do you believe that people get cleverer later on? "
"There's no doubt that the mature person is more capable and has more experience in recognizing what is significant; but his mature per- sonal aims and powers also force him to exclude many things. It's not that he refuses from lack of understanding but that he leaves things aside. "
"That's it! " Stumm exclaimed, relieved. "He's not as limited as a young person, but I would say he's more circumscribed! And that has to be too. Whenever people like us associate with immature young people of the kind favored by your cousin, God knows we must be ready for anything and have the good sense not to understand half of what they're saying! "
"You might well criticize them. "
"But your cousin says they're geniuses! How do you prove the oppo- site? "
Ulrich would not have been disinclined to follow up this question as well. "A genius is a person who finds a solution where many have looked for it in vain by doing something nobody before him thought of doing," he defined, in order finally to get on, because he was curious himself.
But Stumm declined. "I can stick to the facts themselves," he com- mented. "At Frau von Tuzzi's I've met enough critics and professors in person, and every time that one of the geniuses who improve life or art made assertions that were entirely too far out of line, I discreetly sought these experts' advice. "
Ulrich allowed himself to be distracted. "And what was the result? "
"Oh, they were always very respectful to me and said: 'You shouldn't bother your head about that, General! ' Of course that may be a kind of arrogance they have; for though they nervously praise all new artists,
1346 · THE MAN WITH 0 U T QUALITIES
they nonetheless seem to imagine that these artists, in their own asser- tions, dangerously contradict each other, indeed that they feel some- thing like blind rage toward each other, and that summa summarum they perhaps don't know what they're doing! "
"And did you also find out what those sun-stricken minds that Di- otima cools with laurel think about the critics and professors, to the ex- tent these people don't praise them? " Ulrich asked. "As if the artists were the ones feeding these beasts ofintellect with their flesh, and these beasts were the ones who would leave a mere struggle over bones as the final remains of all man's humanity! "
"You've observed them well! " Stumm agreed as a delighted connois- seur.
"But in the face of so much contradiction, how do you recog- nize whether you've really got hold of a 'genius' or not? '' Ulrich asked logically.
Stumm's answer was honest, ifnot compelling: "I don't give a damn," he said.
Ulrich looked at him in silence. If he wanted merely to engage in a rear-guard skirmish and avoid problems that were more difficult than the circumstances warranted, then it was a mistake for him not to use this moment "to disengage himself from the enemy," as good tactics would have dictated. But he himself did not know what mood he was in. So he finally said: "Nothing gives fake geniuses so much luck with the masses as the incomprehension that genuine geniuses ordinarily have for each other, and, following their example, the pseudo-genuine ones; lamp polishers can't clean Prometheus! " At this conclusion Stumm looked up at him, uncomprehending but thoughtful. "Don't misunder- stand me," he added cautiously. "Remember my eagerness when I was searching for a great idea for Diotima. I know what intellectual aristoc- racy is. Nor am I Count Leinsdorf, for whom that's always a kind of minor nobility. Just now, for example, you brilliantly defined what age- nius is. How did it go? It finds a solution by doing something that hadn't occurred to anyone before! That really says the same thing I've been saying: the important thing is that a genius gets hold of his subject from the wrong end. But that's not intellectual aristocracy! And why isn't it intellectual aristocracy? Because the usual polestar of our age is that whatever the circumstances, what happens must be meaningful, but whether you call it genius or intellectual aristocracy, progress or, as you now often hear people say, a record, just doesn't matter much to our time! "
"But then why did you mention intellectual aristocracy? '' Ulrich prompted impatiently.
From the Posthurrwus Papers · 1347
"I can't really say precisely, for that very reason! " Stumm defended himself. "Anyway," he continued, thinking busily, "perhaps you could say in a way that an intellectual aristocracy in particular is not permitted to leave character in peace. Aren't I right? "
"Yes, you're right! " Ulrich encouraged him, made aware for the first time this precise moment, quite incidentally, as it happened, to heed a distinction like the one between genius and dexterity.
"Yes," Stumm repeated thoughtfully. And then he asked: "But what is character? Is it what helps a man develop the ideas that will distinguish him? Or is it what keeps him from having such ideas? For a man who has character doesn't do much flitting around! "
Ulrich decided to shrug his shoulders and smile.
"Presumably it's connected with what one is accustomed to calling great ideas," Stumm went on skeptically. "And then intellectual aristoc- racy would be nothing except the possession of great ideas. But how does one recognize that an idea is great? There are so many geniuses, at least a couple in every profession; indeed, it's a distinctive mark of our time that we have too many geniuses. How is one to understand them all and not overlook any! " His painful familiarity with the question ofwhat a really great idea was had brought him back to its role in genius.
Ulrich shrugged again.
"There are of course some people, and I've met them," Stumm said, "who never miss the smallest genius that can be dug up anywhere! "
Ulrich replied: ·'Those are the snobs and intellectual pretenders. " The General: "But Diotima is one of these people too. "
Ulrich: "Makes no difference.
A person into whom everything he
finds can be stuffed must be built with no shape of his own, like a sack. " "It's true," the General replied rather reproachfully, "that you've often said that Diotima was a snob. And you've sometimes said it about Arnheim as well. But that made me imagine a snob to be someone who is quite stimulating! I've honestly tried hard to be one myself and not let anything slip past me. It's hard for me to suddenly hear you say that you can't even depend on a snob to understand genius. Because you said before that youth couldn't answer for it, nor age either. And then we discussed how geniuses don't, and critics not at all. Well then, genius will
finally have to reveal itself to everyone of its own accord! "
"That will happen in time," Ulrich soothed him, laughing. "Most peo-
ple believe that time naturally turns up what is significant. "
·'Yes, one hears that too. But tell me ifyou can," Stumm asked impa- tiently. "I can understand that one is cleverer at fifty than one was at twenty. But at eight o'clock in the evening I'm no cleverer than I was at eight in the morning; and that one should be cleverer after nineteen
1348 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
hundred and fourteen years than after eight hundred and fourteen, that I can't see either! " This led them to go on a bit discussing the difficult subject of genius, the only thing, in Ulrich's opinion, that justified man- kind, but at the same time the most exciting and confusing, because you never know whether you're looking at genius or at one of its half-baked imitations. What are its distinguishing characteristics? How is it passed on? Could it develop further ifit were not constantly being thwarted? Is it, as Stumm had asked, such a desirable thing anyway? These were problems that for Stumm belonged to the beauty of the civilian mind and its scandalous disorder, while Ulrich, on the other hand, compared them with a weather forecast that not only didn't know whether it would be fair tomorrow but didn't know whether it had been fair yesterday ei- ther. For the judgment of what constitutes genius changes with the spirit of the times, assuming that anyone is interested in it at all, which by no means need be the mark of greatness of soul or of mind.
Such puzzles would no doubt have been well worth solving, and so it came about in this part of the conversation that Stumm finally, after shaking his head a few times, proffered his observation about the Engi- neering[/Genius] Staff that Ulrich later repeated to his sister. This expla- nation, that genius needed a Genius Staff, reminded him somewhat painfully, moreover, of what Ulrich himself had half ironically called the General Secretariat of Precision and Soul, and Stumm did not neglect to remind him that he had last mentioned it in his own and Count Leins- dorf's presence during the unfortunate gathering at Diotima's. "At that time you were demanding something quite similar," he held up to him, "and if I'm not mistaken, it was a department for geniuses and the intel- lectual aristocracy. " Ulrich nodded silently. "For the intellectual aristoc- racy," Stumm continued, "would ultimately be what ordinary geniuses don't have. No matter how you define them, our geniuses are geniuses and nothing more, nothing but specialists! Am I right? I can really un- derstand why many people say: today there's no such thing as genius! "
Ulrich nodded again. A pause ensued.
"But there's one thing I'd like to know," Stumm asked with that hint of egotism that attaches to a recurrent perplexing thought: "Is it a re- proach or a distinction that people never say about a general: he's a genius? "
"Both. "
"Both? Why both? "
"I honestly don't know. "
Stumm was taken aback but, after thinking it over, said: "You put that
brilliantly! The people love an officer- as long as they aren't stirred up; and he gets to know the people: the people couldn't care less about ge-
From the Posthunwus Papers · 1349
niuses! But by the time he gets to be a general he has to be a specialist, and if he himself is a specialist genius he then falls into the category that there's no such thing as genius. So he never gets, as I would say if I spelled it out, to the point where the use ofthis wishy-washy term would be appropriate. Do you know, by the way, that I recently heard some- thing really clever? I was at your cousin's, in the most intimate circle, although Arnheim is away, and we were discussing intellectual ques- tions. Then someone pokes me in the ribs and explains Arnheim to me in a whisper: 'He's what you call a genius,' he said. 'More than all the oth- ers. A universal specialist! ' Why don't you say anything? " Ulrich found nothing to say. "The possibilities inherent in this point ofview surprised me. Besides, you yourself happen to be such a kind of universal special- ist. That's why you shouldn't neglect Arnheim so; because ultimately the Parallel Campaign might get its saving idea from him, and that could be dangerous! I would really much prefer that it came from you. "
And although Stumm had (finally) spoken far more than Ulrich, he took his leave with the words: "As always, it's a pleasure talking with you, because you understand all these things de facto much better than ev- eryone else! "
so
GENIUS AS A PROBLEM
Ulrich had related this conversation to his sister.
But even before that he had been speaking of difficulties connected
with the notion ofgenius. What enticedhim to do this? He had no inten- tion of claiming to be a genius himself, or of politely inquiring about the conditions that would enable a person to become one. On the contrary, he was convinced that the powerful, exhausted ambition in his time for the vocation of genius was the expression not of intellectual or spiritual greatness but merely of an incongruity. But as all contemporary ques- tions about life become impossibly entangled in an impenetrable thicket, so do the questions surrounding the idea ofgenius, which in part enticed one's thoughts to penetrate it and in part left them hung up on the difficulties.
After he finished his report, Ulrich had immediately come back to this. Ofcourse, whatever has genius must be significant; for genius is the
1350 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
significant accomplishment that originates under particularly distinctive conditions. But "significant" is not only the lesser but also the more gen- eral category. So the first thing was to inquire into this notion again. The words "significant" and "significance" themselves, like all terms that are much used, have different meanings. On the one hand, they are con- nected with the concepts of thinking and knowing. To say that some- thing signifies or has this significance means that it points to, gives to understand, indicates, or can represent in specific cases, or simply gen- erally, that it is the same as something else, or falls under the same head- ing and can be known and comprehended as the other. That is, of course, a relationship accessible to reason and involving the nature of reason; and in this manner anything and everything can signify some- thing, as it can also be signified. On the other hand, the term "signifying something" is used as well in the sense of something having significance or being of significance. In this sense, too, nothing is excluded. Not only a thought can be significant, but also an act, a work, a personality, a posi- tion, a virtue, and even an individual quality of mind. The distinction between this and the other kind of signifying is that a particular rank and value is ascribed to what is significant. That something is significant means in this sense that it is more significant than other things, or simply that it is unusually significant. What decides this? The ascription gives one to understand that it belongs to a hierarchy, an order of mental pow- ers that is aspired to, even should the attainable measure of order be in many things as undependable as it is strict in others. Does this hierarchy exist?
It is the human spirit itself: named not as a natural concept but as the objective spirit.
Agathe asked what this included; it is a notion that people more scien- tifically trained than she threw around so much that she ducked.
Ulrich nearly emulated her. He found the word used far too much. At that period it was used so often in scientific and pseudoscientific argu- ments that it simply revolved around itself. "For heaven's sake! You're becoming profound! " he retorted. The expression had inadvertently slipped from his own lips.
Ordinarily, one understands by "objective spirit" the works of the spirit, the relatively constant share it deposits in the world through the most various signs, in opposition to the subjective spirit as individual quality and individual experience; or one understood by it, and this could not be entirely separated from the first kind, the viable spirit, verifiable, constant in value, in opposition to the inspirations of mood and error. This touched two oppositions whose significance for Ulrich's life had certainly not been simply didactic but-and this he was well
From the Posthu11WUs Papers · 13 51
aware of and had expressed often enough-had become extremely allur- ing and worrisome. So what he meant had elements of both.
· Perhaps he could also have said to his sister that by "objective spirit" one understands everything that man has thought, dreamed, and de- sired; but, to do so means not looking at it as components of a spiritual, historical, or other temporal-actual development, and certainly not as something spiritual-suprasensmy either, but exclusively as itself, accord- ing to its own characteristic content and inner coherence. He could also have said, which appeared to contradict this but in the end came to the same thing, that it should be looked at with the reservation of all the contexts and orderings of which it is at all capable. For what something signifies or is in and of itself he equated with the result that coalesces out of the significances that could accrue to it under all possible conditions.
But one merely needs to put this differently, simply saying that in and of itself, something would be precisely what it never is in and of itself, but rather is in relation to its circumstances; and likewise that its signifi- cance is everything that it could signify; so one merely has to turn the expression on its head for the scruple connected with it to immediately become obvious. For of course the usual procedure, on the contrary, is to assume, even i f only from a usage oflanguage, that what something is in and of itself, or what it signifies, forms the origin and nucleus of every- thing that can be expressed about it in mutable relationships. So it was a particular conception of the nature of the notion and of signifying by which Ulrich had let himself be guided; and particularly because it is not unfamiliar, it might also be stated something like this: Whatever may be understood under the nature of the concept of a logical theory is in ap- plication, as a concept of something, nothing but the countervalue and the stored-up readiness for all possible true statements about that some- thing. This principle, which inverts the procedure of logic, is "empiri- cal," that is, it reminds one, ifone were to apply an already coined name to it, of that familiar line of philosophical thought, without, however, being meant in precisely the same sense. Ought Ulrich now to have ex- plained to his companion what empiricism was in its earlier form and what it had become in its more modest, and perhaps improved, modem version? As often happens when an idea gains in correctness, the more finely honed process of thinking renounces false answers but also some more profound questions as well.
What was baptized as empiricism in philosophical language was a doc- trine that arbitrarily declared the really astonishing presence and un- changeable sway of laws in nature and in the rules of the intellect to be a deceptive view that originated in habituation to the frequent repetition of the same experiences. The approximate classical formula for this was:
1352 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
Whatever repeats itself often enough seems to have to be so; and in this exaggerated form, which the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries be- stowed upon it, this formula was a repercussion of the long antecedent theological speculation: that is, of the faith placed in God, of being able to explain His works with the aid of whatever one takes into one's head. Notions and ideas demonstrate, when they are dominant, the same incli- nation to let themselves be worshiped and to broadcast capricious judg- ments as people do; and that probably led, when empiricism was established in modern times, to the admixture of a rather superficial op- position to totally convinced rationalism, which then, when it came to power itself, bore some of the responsibility for a shallow materialistic nature and societal mentality that at times has become almost popular.
Ulrich smiled when he thought of an example, but did not say why. For it was not reluctantly that one reproached empiricism, which was all too simpleminded and confined to its rules, that according to it the sun rises in the east and sets in the west for no other reason than that up till now it always has. And were he to betray this to his sister and ask her what she thought of it, she would probably answer arbitrarily, without bothering about the arguments and counterarguments, that the sun might one day do it differently. This was why he smiled as he thought of this example; for the relationship between youth and empiricism seemed to him profoundly natural, and youth's inclination to want to experience everything itself, and to expect the most surprising discover- ies, moved him to see this as the philosophy appropriate to youth. But from the assertion that awaiting the rising of the sun in the east every day merely has the security of a habit, it is only a step to asserting that all human lmowledge is felt only subjectively and at a particular time, or is indeed the presumption of a class or race, all of which has gradually become evident in European intellectual history. Apparently one should also add that approximately since the days of our great-grandfathers, a new kind of individuality has made its appearance: this is the type of the empirical man or empiricist, of the person of experience who has become such a familiar open question, the person who lmows how to make from a hundred of his own experiences a thousand new ones, which, however, always remain within the same circle ofexperience, and who has by this means created the gigantic, profitable-in-appearance monotony of the technical age. Empiricism as a philosophy might be taken as the philosophical children's disease of this type of person.
SKETCHES FOR A CONTINUA TION OF THE "GALLEY CHAPTERS," 1938 AND LATER
59
NIGHT TALK
In his room he had lit one lamp after the other, as if the stimulating excess ofillumination would make the words come more easily, and for a long time he wrote zealously. But after he had accomplished the most important part, he was overcome by the awareness that Agathe had not yet returned, and this became more and more disturbing. Ulrich did not lmow that she was with Lindner, nor did he lmow about these visits at all; but since that secret and his diaries were the only things they concealed from each other, he could surmise and also almost understand what she was doing. He did not take it more seriously than it deserved, and was more astonished at it than jealous; then too, he ascribed responsibility for it to his own lack of resolution, insofar as she pursued ways of her own that he could not approve of. It nevertheless inhibited him more and more, and diminished the readiness for belief that was weaving his thoughts together, that in this hour of collectedness he did not even lmow where she was or why she was late. He decided to interrupt his work and go out, to escape the enervating influence ofwaiting, but with the intention of soon returning to his labors. As he left the house it oc- curred to him that going to the theater not only would be the greatest diversion, but would also stimulate him; and so he went, although he was not dressed for it. He chose an inconspicuous seat and at first felt the great pleasure of coming into a performance that was already energeti- cally under way. It justified his coming, for this dynamic mirroring of emotions familiar a hundred times over, by which the theater is accus- tomed to live under the pretext that this gives it meaning, reminded Ul- rich of the value of the task he had left at home and renewed his desire
1354 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
to come to the end of the road that, proceeding from the origin of the emotions, ultimately had to lead to their significance. When he again directed his attention to the goings-on onstage, it occurred to him that most of the actors busily occupied up there, beautifully if meaninglessly imitating passions, bore titles such as Privy Councillor or Professor, for Ulrich was in the Hoftheater, and this raised everything to the level of state comedy. So although he left the theater before the end of the play, he nevertheless returned home with his spirits refreshed.
He again turned on all the lights in his room, and it gave him pleasure to listen to himself writing in the porous stillness of the night. This time, when he had entered the house, all sorts of fleeting signs barely assimi- lated by his consciousness told him that Agathe had returned; but when he subsequently thought of it and everything was without a sound, he was afraid to look around him. Thus the night became late. He had been once more in the garden, which lay in complete darkness, as inhospita- ble, indeed as mortally hostile, as deep black ocean; nevertheless, he had groped his way to a bench and persevered there for quite a while. It was difficult, even under these circumstances, to believe that what he was writing was important. But when he was again sitting in the light, he set to work to write to the end, as far as his plan extended this time. He didn't have far to go, but had hardly begun when a soft noise interrupted him. For Agathe, who had been in his room while he was at the theater and had repeated this secret visit while he was in the garden, slipping out upon his return, hesitated a short while outside the door and now softly turned the knob.
Agathe's entrance: she is wearing the historical lounging attire, etc. Lets her hand glide over his head, sits with crossed legs on the sofa.
Or: wrapper. Perhaps better. Describe it? Not transparent; on the contrary, heavy material. She was enveloped in a wrapper of old velvet material that reached to her ankles and looked like a completely dark- ened picture that had once been painted on a gold ground. Like a magi- cian's cape. Her ankles bare, the span of her foot as bare as her hand. Her slippers were of violet silk the color of spindle-tree fruit hanging on its bush in autumn. A collar of some soft weave, whose color hovered between ivory, milk, and dull gilt silver.
She had never worn this wrapper before; Ulrich did not recall it.
Ibidem. When he is near her, Ulrich feels the flowing back into emo- tion of what is outside and what inside, and the vigorous action of the
From the Posthu11WUs Papers · 1355
emotion. Also the sexual propensity, which belongs to a different sphere. The woman who becomes a guiding image in a different aspect and the woman who is the fulfillment of desire as examples of conceptions of
different levels that in life exist side by side.
She settles down on the sofa. Her torso comfortably supported and
her legs drawn up beneath her so that only her foot peeks out beneath the hem that forms a wheel. Later she briskly changes position, but at the beginning her posture was thoughtful and her face serious.
'Tve read it! " she informed her brother, like a chess player who, after a short pause for reflection, makes his first move.
"It seems to me you shouldn't have," he responded in the same manner.
Agathe burst out laughing. "It was disloyal of you to conceal it from me," she asserted boldly.
If the description of the dress stays, don't have the laughing right after it-
Ulrich listened to her voice and contemplated her beauty. "These re- flections make me understand more about myself than many years were able to previously," he said quite calmly.
"And they have nothing to do with me? "
"Yes, it concerns you as well! "
"But why then are you doing it secretly? Why haven't you ever told
me about it?
"Why are you secretly visiting that man of tears Lindner? "
"Also to understand myself better. And anyway, he weeps tears of
anger. "
"Were you there today? "
"Yes. " Agathe looked steadily at her brother and noticed the resent-
ment in his eyes.
He strove to control himself and responded as tersely as possible: "I
don't like your doing that. "
"I don't like doing it myself," Agathe said, continuing after a brief
pause: "But I like what you write. The beginning and the end, and what's in between too. I didn't understand everything, but I read it all. I think you could explain a lot of things to me, and because I'm afraid of strain- ing myself, I'll believe a lot without any explanation at all. "
(Post datum. This is really an example of an inner form of cheerful- ness as distinct from outer. )
1356 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
She laughed again, and it pealed softly. She seemed to be laughing over nothing and only from joy; and although Ulrich could be quite sen- sitive to people's laughter when it was aroused by something, for then it sometimes seemed to him just as humdrum an occurrence as sneezing, it immediately enticed him into an impossible task, that of adequately describing this pleasant, unmotivated sound. If, into the bargain, one threw in a little poetic commonplace, the impression could then be com- pared with that of a small, low-tuned silver bell: a dark bass tone sub- merged in a soft overflowing sparkle. But while Ulrich was listening to these cheerful sounds spreading out in the quiet room, his eyes also thought they were seeing all its lamps burning that much more quietly I as brightly. Precisely the simplest sensory impressions that populate the world occasionally have surprises in store when it comes to describing them, as ifthey came from anotherworld.
Influenced by this weakness, Ulrich suddenly felt a confession on his tongue about which he himself had not thought for goodness knew how long. "I once made a devilish bet with our big cousin Tzi, which I will never write down and which I don't think I ever told you about," he began to confess. "He suspected that I would write books, and, as it seems to me, he considered books that did not praise his politics to be deleterious and those that did superfluous, aside from the historical lit- erature and memoirs a diplomat customarily employs. But I swore to him that I would kill myself before I succumbed to the temptation of writing a book; and I really meant it. For what I was able to write would do nothing more than prove that one is able to live differently in some specific fashion; but that I should write a book about it would at the very least be the counterproof that I'm not able to live in that fashion. I didn't expect it would turn out differently. "
His sister had listened to him without stirring, without even a muscle in her face twitching. 'W e can kill each other ifit turns into a book," she said. "But it seems to me we have less reason to than before. "
Ulrich involuntarily looked her in the eye.
"Rather more reason for the opposite," she went on.
"You can't yet say that (too)," Ulrich objected calmly.
Agathe found that the supporting pillow at her side needed rearrang-
ing, which turned her face away from him. "Don't be angry with me," she replied from this posture, "but even though I admire what you write, I still don't quite understand why you write. Indeed, sometimes I've found it enormously comical. You carefully dissect according to natural and moral laws the possibility of extending your hand. Why don't you simply reach out? "
From the Posthumous Papers · 1357
"It's ruinous simply to reach out. Did I ever tell you the story of the major's wife? "
Agathe nodded mutely.
"It can't end the way that did! "
The small furrow appeared between Agathe's brows. "The major's
wife was a commonplace person," she declared coolly.
"That's right. But whether one discovers a world or goes on a Don
Quixote adventure doesn't depend, unfortunately, on the worth of the person in whose honor one embarks on the trip. "
"Who knows! " Agathe replied. A moment later she impatiently aban- doned her comfortable position and sat down in the ordinary way right in front of her brother, as if she were going to test something.
