His misunderstanding of Ulrich, whom he considers a
rationalist
be- cause he does not understand the difficulty ofwhat Ulrich has an intima- tion of, and because he makes things easy for himself through community, insolent youthful hordes, etc.
Musil - Man Without Qualities - v2
Leo Fischel mentally doubled the amount.
Ridiculous!
said the inner voice.
Fischel quadrupled.
No, on principle, occurred to him.
Then in one swoop he breathlessly in- creased the sum beyond any human resistance or capability, and angrily stopped.
He speedily had to switch his mind to smaller fortunes, which literally shrank in his mind the way the pupils narrow with a sudden change of light; but he did not forget his affairs for an instant, and made no mistakes.
- B u t now tell me, finally-Ulrich asked, having already become im- patient-what kind of letters these are that you wanted to show me. They appear to be love letters. Did you intercept Gerda's love letters?
- I wanted to show you these letters. You should read them. I would just like to lmow now what you would say about them. Fischel handed Ulrich the whole packet and sat back, preoccupied meanwhile with other thoughts, gazing into the air through his pince-nez.
Ulrich glanced at the letters; then he took one out and slowly read it through. Director Fischel asked: -Tell me, Herr Doktor, you used to lmow this singer Leontine, or Leona, who looks like the late Empress Elizabeth; may God punish me, this woman really has the appetite of a lion!
Ulrich looked up, frowning; he liked the letter, and the interruption bothered him.
-W ell, you don't have to answer, Fischel placated him. - I was just
From the Posthumous Papers · z64 7
asking. You needn't be ashamed. She's no royalty. I met her a little while ago through an acquaintance; we found out that you and she were friends. She eats a lot. Let her eat! Who doesn't like to eat? Fischel laughed.
Ulrich dropped his gaze to the letter again, without responding. Fischel again gazed dreamily into the firmament of the room.
The letter began: -Beloved person! Human goddess! We are con- demned to live in an extinguished century. No one has the courage to believe in the reality of myth. You must realize that this applies to you too. You do not have the courage ofyour nature as goddess. Fear ofpeo- ple holds you back. You are right to consider ordinary human lust as vulgar; indeed, worse than that, as a ridiculous regression from the life of us people ofthe future into mere atavism! And you are right again when you say that love for a person, animal, or thing is already the beginning of taking possession of it! And we don't even need to mention that possess- ing is the beginning of despiritualization! But still you have to distin- guish: being felt, perhaps also being sensed, is called being mine. I only feel what is mine; I don't hear what is not meant for me! Were this not so, we would be intellectualists. It's perhaps an inescapable tragedy that when we love we are forced to possess with eyes, ears, breath, and thoughts! But consider: I feel that I am not, so long as I am only I myself, I-self. It's only in the things outside me that I first discover myself. That, too, is a truth. I love a flower, a person, because without them I would be nothing. The grand thing about the experience of"mine" is feeling one- self melt away entirely, like a pile of snow under the rays of the sun, drifting upward like a gentle dissipating vapor! The most beautiful thing about "mine" is the ultimate extirpation of the possession of my self! That's the pure sense of "mine," that I possess nothing but am possessed by the entire world. All brooks flow from the heights to the valleys, and you too, 0 my soul, will not be mine before you have become a drop in the ocean of the world, totally a link in the world brotherhood and world community! This mystery no longer has anything in common with the insipid exaggeration that individual love experiences. In spite of the lust of this age one must have the courage for ardor, for inner fire! Virtue makes action virtuous; actions don't make virtue! Try it! The Beyond reveals itself in fits and starts, and we will not be transported in one jump into the regions of untrammeled life. But moments will come when we who are remote from people will experience moments ofgrace that are remote from people. Don't throw sensuality and suprasensuality into a pot of what has been! Have the courage to be a goddess! That's Germani . . .
-W ell? Fischel asked.
1648 • THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
Ulrich's face had turned red He found this letter ridiculous but mov- ing. Did these young people have no inhibitions at all about what was exaggerated, impossible, about the word that will not let itself be re- deemed? Words constantly hitched up with new words, and a kernel of truth hazed over with their peculiar web. - S o that's what Gerda's like now, he thought. But within this thought he thought a second, un- spoken, shaming one; it went something like: - A r e n ' t you insufficiently exaggerated and impossible?
-Well? Fischel repeated.
- A r e all the letters like that? Ulrich asked, giving them back to him. - H o w do I know which ones you've read! Fischel answered.
-They're all like that!
- T h e n they are quite beautiful, Ulrich said.
- I thought as much! Fischel exploded. - O f course that's why I
showed them to you! My wife found them. But no one expects me to have any clever advice in such questions ofthe soul. So fine! Tell that to my wife!
I would rather talk to Gerda herselfabout it; there's a lot in the letter that is, of course, quite misguided-
-Misguided? To say the least! But talk to her! And tell Gerda that I can't understand a single word of this jargon, but that I'm ready to pay five thousand marks-no! Better not to say anything! Tell her only that I love her anyway and am ready to forgive her!
The telephone again called Fischel to business. He, who all his life had been only a solid clerk, had begun some time ago to operate on the stock exchange on his own: -from time to time and with only small amounts, the scanty savings he possessed and a few stocks belonging to his spouse, Clementine. He could not talk to her about it, but he could be quite satisfied at his success; it was a real recreation from the depress- ing circumstances at home.
Ulrich is driven to see Gerda. He hadn't spoken to her since the hys- terical scene. Conscience impels him. But he finds Gerda very much taken up with Hans Sepp.
Ulrich seeks to be conciliatory with Gerda and to be kind. She pays him back with her involvement with Hans Sepp, which Ulrich perceives as intellectual felony.
Arnheim has become the ideal, the messiah, the savior. The spiritual man of intellect for our time.
From the Posthumous Papers · 1649
Effect of the nabob.
Leo Fischel's belief in progress is part of the problem of culture. Hans Sepp stimulated by the conflict of the national minorities. "German-ness" as a vague reaction to the cultural situation.
Ulrich receives a Stella shock [Goethe's play-TRANs. ] (letters! ) for
Agathe.
Gerda is "beyond" love. Also against religious mysticism. In future:
conflict indicated in letter.
Double orientation: Mysticism Antidemocracy
Soon after his visit to the Fischels', Ulrich was again driven to see Gerda. He had not seen her since the sad scene that had taken place between them, and felt the desire to speak kindly and reasonably to her. He wanted to suggest that she leave her parents' house for a year or two and undertake something that would give her pleasure, with the aim of forgetting him and Hans Sepp and taking advantage ofher youth. But he found her in the company of Hans Sepp. She turned pale when she saw him come in; the thoughts flew out of her head, and even though she looked composed, there was really nothing at all in her that she could compose; she suddenly felt nothing but an emptiness surrounded by the stiff, disciplined, automatic motions of her limbs.
- I don't want to ask your pardon, Gerda-Ulrich began-because that isn't important-
She interrupted him right there. -I behaved ludicrously-she said-I know that; but believe me, it's all over.
-I'll only believe that everything's fine when I know what you're up to and what your plans are.
Hans Sepp was listening with the jealous eyes of one who does not understand.
- W h a t makes you think that Friiulein Fischel has plans? he asked.
Ulrich remembered the letters that Leo Fischel had shown him. Since then he had had a lot of sympathy for this young person in whom mystic feelings raged. But at the same time, seeing him reminded him, God knows why, of a skinny dog that wants to mount a bitch much too
1650 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
big for him. He collected himself and, ignoring his question, asked Hans to explain to him what he wanted. - T h a t is to say, he added, he would like to know what he had in mind to turn his ideas into reality when he was not talking about "human being," "soul," "mystery," "ardor," "con- templation," and the like, but about the future Dr. Hans Sepp, who would be compelled to live in the world.
Ulrich really wanted to know, that was sincerely to be heard in his question; and in addition he had managed to invest it with a Masonic choice of words that astonished Hans, and Gerda's glance rested on Hans with a challenging reproach. Hans scratched his head, because he did not want to be rude and felt embarrassed. -Those aren't my ideas-he finally said-but those of German youth. Ulrich repeated his request to show him how they could be made reality. Hans thought he knew what Ulrich was getting at: whenever Hans courted Gerda with such ideas, the words were like the texture of an orchestra through which, as voice, the sight of Gerda hovered; could one tear that apart and separate it? -Y ou're asking me to make a political treatise out of a piece of music! he said.
Ulrich added: - A n d the language of politics, of trade, of arithmetic, is the language ofthe fallen angels, whose wings have long since become as vestigial as, say, our caudal vertebra. It can hardly be articulated in such a language-is that what you mean? But that's exactly why I would like to know what you're thinking of doing. Hans gave him the simplest answer to this: - I don't know! But I'm not alone. And if several thou- sand people want something that they can't picture, then one day they'll get it, as long as they remain true to themselves!
- D o you believe that too, Gerda? Ulrich asked.
Gerdawavered. -I'm convincedtoo-shesaid-thatourculturewill perish i f something isn't done.
Ulrich jumped up. -My dear children! What concern is that of yours? Tell me what you're proposing to do with each other!
Hanssetaboutdefendinghisview. -Don'ttalkdowntous! It'squite certain that this hugger-mugger called culture will perish, and every- thing else along with it-and nothing will prevail against it but the New Man!
-But Hans overestimates the significance of love between people, Gerda added. - T h e New will also leave that behind.
Hans was really a melancholy person. An emerging impurity on his skin could put him in a bad mood for days, and that was no rare occur- rence, for in his petit-bourgeois family care of the skin did not rank very high. As in many Austrian families, it had stopped at the state it had reached before the middle of the nineteenth century: that is, every Sat-
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 6 5 1
urday the bathtub or a wash trough would be filled with hot water, and this setved for the cleaning of the body that was forgone on all the other days. There were just as few other luxuries in Hans Sepp's family home. His father was a minor government functionary with a small salary and the prospect of an even scantier pension, which in view of his age was imminent, and the principles as well as the conduct of life in his parents' house were distinguished from those at the Fischels' about the way that a cardboard box carefully tied together with knotted bits of string, in which the common people pack their belongings for a journey, differs from a magnificent valise. I f he looked around, all that Hans Sepp could claim as a distinction was his German name, and it had taken him a long time before he learned to regard it as more than a gift of fate, on the day that he became acquainted with the view that being German meant being aristocratic. From that day forward he bore a noble name, and it is not necessary to waste words about how nice it is to know that one is personally distinguished; one should rather write a whole book about how one ought to want not to be distinguished but to distinguish oneself; but that would tum into a book that would be absolutely and completely unsocial.
The titles Count and Prince pale in comparison with the title Hans Sepp. No one today values belonging to a secret clan whose signs are an ox's head or three stars. On the other hand, to have a German name when one had German sentiments was, among lower-class youth in Austria, a rarity. The friends through whom Hans had been introduced into the movement were named Vybiral and Bartolini. It had about it something of a symbolic cover, the miracle of the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, when one was named Hans and in addition had the family name of Sepp.
Hans Sepp felt himself one of the elect, and in the absence of a bath- room he acquired the ideal of racial purity. But within this ideal there is enclosed the ideal of purity of principles. In this way, even in his early years, Hans Sepp came to fight for all the commandments of morality, which is otherwise the privilege of the incapacity for sinning, and is a position in which one has no desire for any further changes. It is a quite remarkable thing when young people become enthusiastic about virtue: a union of fire and stubbornness.
This union is facilitated if there is the possibility of combining the af- firmation with a powerful negation. But in order to arrive at the real significance of such a negation, one must leave aside what is accidental, in this case the racial aspect, which is the form in which it expresses itself though not its sense.
But that was just the smaller and less serious advantage. Far greater is
1652 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
the advantage that a young person who adopts a negative view of the world makes the world into a comfortable nest. It is well-nigh impossible to demonstrate something as notorious as the meager intellectual con- tent of one of those novels that among the German public pass for pro- found; it is much easier to make this credible by saying that these novels aren't German, or at least it penetrates reality more easily. One should not (on the whole) underestimate the advantage of saying no to every- thing that is considered great and beautiful. For, first, one almost always hits upon something true, and second, determining it more precisely, and the process of proving it, are in all circumstances extremely difficult and, in terms ofhaving any effect, futile. In Germany there was once the ideal: "Test everything and keep the best"; this ideal ended in filth and scorn; it was the ideal of the dignified life and the cult of the home, which, in a time of obligatory specialization deprived of the aid of inter- connections, had the same inner consequence as the purposefulness of a snail: I'll hitch a ride on anything. One must never forget this impotence into which we have put ourselves if one wishes to understand the ideal- ism of maliciousness and evil. When the change of worldview to which every new outfitting ofhumanity is called stalls and becomes impossible, almost nothing remains but to say no to everything; the lowest point is always a point of rest and balance.
Closing one's eyes and gently touching one's leg is the simplest pic- ture of the world one can have.
So there are two main kinds of pessimism. One is the pessimism of weltschmerz, which despairs of everything; the other is the contempo- rary kind, which exempts one's own person from the process. It is quite understandable that when one is young one would rather consider other
people bad than oneself. This was the service that the German world- view performed for Hans Sepp. He did not so soon experience the futil- ity of ordering his ideas, he could free himself from everything that oppresses us by calling it "un-German," and he could appear ideal to himself without having to restrain himself from besmirching I scorning the ideals of everyone else.
However, the most remarkable aspect of Hans Sepp was still a third
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 6 5 3
thing. But one should not be deceived by this manner of presentation, taking one thing after another; in reality these reasons were not layers swimming atop one another; any two of them were always dissolved in a third. And what needs to be added to the two reasons named above can perhaps be called, in a correspondingly broad sense, "religious. " If one were to have asked Hans Sepp whether, in school, he had believed in the teaching of his catechist, he would have answered indignantly that the German must cut himself loose from Rome and its Jew religion, but it would also not have been possible to win him over to Luther, whom he would have characterized as a pusillanimous compromiser with the Spirit of the World. Hans Sepp's religion did not fit any of the three great European religions; it was a plant of unintelligible ancestry run to seed.
This wild religious nature of nationalism is very peculiar.
Break off This would be the place to develop the possibility of the Other Condition as something like the component freed by the weather- ing of religion as well as of liberal heroism.
Perhaps as a supplement to Lindner religious development. But in contrast to Professor August Lindner, God had never once appeared to Hans Sepp. In spite ofthat, or indeed perhaps just because ofit, because he could not bring his vague feelings of faith and love into the solid framework of religion, they were in him especially wild.
One cannot say whether it is a remnant of bisexuality, the remnant of another primitive stage, or the lost natural tenderness of life, this need to make a community out of people. To feel every action inwardly, that is, a symbol . . .
Of this kind his love for Gerda, which is really less for the woman than for the person.
His misunderstanding of Ulrich, whom he considers a rationalist be- cause he does not understand the difficulty ofwhat Ulrich has an intima- tion of, and because he makes things easy for himself through community, insolent youthful hordes, etc.
(Definition after Unger: Symbol. View sees in those events we can not incorporate in any order (e. g. , those of the Pentateuch) images to repre-
1654 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
sent the higher world that our consciousness cannot grasp in any other
way. )
Excitement also in the air as the guests left Diotima's house! Gusts of wind ran behind waves of darkness; the streetlamps reeled in their light on one side and let it flow out widely on the other; the leaves in the canopies of the trees pulled and tugged at their thin stems, or suddenly became quite still, as if on command; the clouds played high above the rooftops with the pale fire of the moon like dogs playing with a brown cat; pushed it, jumped over it, and when they retreated, it cowered with arched back, motionless in their midst. Ulrich had fallen in with Gerda and Hans Sepp; all three were surprised that it had already got dark.
Feuermaul had had an effect on Gerda. It seemed to her horribly ruthless that one is an "I," calmly mirrored in the eyes of a "you. " She applied it to the whole nation. To universal love. It was a new emotion; how was it to be understood? One is no longer linked with just one other person. That's basically always horrible; one can't stir on account of the other; in spite of love one must feel a lot of resentment. It's also quite unnatural; the only natural thing is getting together to raise a brood, but not for one's whole life, and not because of oneself, or love. Individual love seemed to her like a snowman, hard, cold; on the other hand, ifthe same thing is spread like a blanket over the whole field . . . she imagined life beneath the pure soft snow cover that hovered before her, warm and protecting every seed. -Strange-Gerda thought-that I happened to think of a snowman! But then she still felt only the other, distant, soft, melting-even ifthat was not quite the case! -Loving many, many peo- ple! she said to herself softly. And it was like: Sleeping with everyone; but with no one so brutally to the very end, but only as in a dream that is never quite clear. Kissing everybody, but the way a child lets itself be stroked. To say something nice to everyone, but not giving anyone the right to forbid her saying it to his enemy as well . . . She felt happy and anxious as she portrayed this to herself, like a tender being that has to slip through rough hands until the hands, fumbling beside it, also learn to be tender.
"A happy-anxious soul": that had been in one of Feuermaul's poems, as if the poet had uttered this expression for no one else but her, the unla10wn girl. From far away word was dispatched to her, a man who lmew nothing about her had sent out this word and still had no idea that the word had already found her; but she lmew it, for she bore his word in
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 655
her breast, which he would never see: That seemed to her like a mar- riage through magic. Gerda thought over whether she really had a hap- pily anxious soul. She had one that constantly hovered between happiness and fear, without quite making contact with either. Was that the same thing? She was not certain of it, but she felt herself really hov- ering like a moonbeam in the roaring night, filled with love and free of all misfortune, which rarely happened to her. She squinted over at Ul- rich, who was walking mutely beside her; he frightened her and only occasionally gave her a little happiness. Ulrich noticed that she was look- ing at him; he was angry with h e r . -The first time some blockhead bab- bles at you in verses you overflow! he said, smiling; but there was really some pain in this smile. -Didn't you notice that this person is the most vain and selfish creature in the world?
Gerda answered quite seriously. -You're right, he's weak; Stefan George is greater. She named her favorite poet-she knew that Ulrich had an aversion to him as well. She was a little drunk with happiness and felt: - I can love two people who hate each other. At this moment she was all love.
But at this moment Hans Sepp pushed forward from the other side; jealous restlessness impelled him, for Gerda and Ulrich had been speak- ing softly, and he only half understood; he did not want to be left out.
-Feuermaul is a prattler! he exclaimed angrily.
- O h , why! Ulrich said.
-Because!
They were just passing beneath a streetlamp. Hans wanted to stop,
because his mouth was full ofwords. But Ulrich did not stop. Hans was dragged on like a screaining child and emptied his words into the dark- ness. Gerda knew them all. The Beyond, contemplation, Christ, Edda, Gautama Buddha, and then the punishment meant for her: Feuermaul, as a Jew, had appropriated these things with his intelligence but in- wardly had no idea what they were about. She looked straight ahead, and even at the next streetlamp did not look at Hans. In the darkness she felt his dark mouth wide open at her side. It made her shudder. She did not understand that Hans no longer knew what he was saying. The darkness was terrible for him. He imagined that the two of them were laughing at him. He knew no bounds, and his words poured out as if each were try- ing to trample the next, the way people do in a panic.
In between, Gerda heard Ulrich speaking quietly and objectively, seeking to divert this storm. -The emotional scribbler-he said-is in himself the most vain and self-seeking person in the world; something like women who have no understanding, only their love. What would happen ifthese people became you-seeking? . . .
1656 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
Gerda liked Ulrich's words rather better than Hans's, but they, too, made her cold. With a hasty good-bye, she left the two of them standing there and ran up the steps. Hans gasped for air, hardly touched his hat, and left Ulrich.
But he stopped at the next comer and under cover of darkness looked to see what Ulrich was going to do. Ulrich went home, and Hans began to have regrets. He knew that Gerda's parents would be home late today; Gerda was alone, and he could imagine how much his churlish behavior must be eating at her. He saw light in a window and ran away in order not to go weak. But he only ran around the block, then without stopping went up the steps. He was still excited; his clothes sat on him angrily, the dark-blond hair over his forehead was standing crookedly in the air, and his cheeks had disappeared beneath his cheekbones.
-Forgive mel he begged. -I've behaved badly.
Gerda looked at him without understanding why he was there; her emotions had grown deaf.
- I don't know what I said, Hans went on. - I t was probably some- thing ugly. But you're so far gone that you can't even separate Jewish spuriousness and your ideals!
-Ulrich's not a Jew! Gerda said spontaneously. -A nd I forbid you- she added-to speak that way about Jews! For the first time she dared to say such a thing.
- I was speaking of Feuermaul! Hans corrected her. - B u t this Jew- ish poet we heard today might at least be said to have great and honest feelings if his race permitted it, but Ulrich, your father's friend, is ten times worse! Gerda was sitting in an easy chair and looked at Hans doubtingly. Hans was standing in front of her; her behavior unnerved him. - I f someone acts-he said-like Feuermaul, as if he had seized hold of the true life, he's a swindler. The Beyond withholds itself; out-of- body contemplation reveals itself only rarely and intermittently. There are whole centuries that know nothing about it. But it is Germanic, nev- ertheless, never to lose the feeling here below of the Beyond that shim- mers through.
-Since I have known you, every second thing you've said has been about out-of-body contemplation-Gerda countered, eager to attack- but you haven't ever, not one single time, really seen anything! Tell me what you've seen! Words!
Hans implored Gerda not to lose her strength! She ought not to be so sensitive, not want to be so clever! She should get away from this Ulrich!
From the Posthumous Papers · z657
-Where does "sensitive" come from? he exclaimed. -From the senses! It's sensualistic and base!
For heaven's sake, Gerda knew that; but it had never seemed to her so hurdy-gurdy. - I f I want, I will also love a Jew, she thought, and thought of Feuermaul. A very gentle smile struggled with the anger in her face. Hans misunderstood it; he thought the tenderness in the resistance was for him. He was so excited by everything that had gone on before that he thought he would break into pieces right then and there. Over Gerda's face there is a breath of the Orient, it occurred to him at this moment, and in the same moment he thought he understood that what he loved most secretly about her was the other-racial, the Jewish; he, with his melancholy, who never felt sure of himself! Hans broke down. He hardly knew what was happening to him; he hid his face against Gerda's legs, and she felt that he was weeping in despair. That tore at her breast like the wild, covetous fingers of a small child; she, too, was suddenly excited, and tears were running down her cheeks without her knowing whether she was weeping over Hans, Feuermaul, herself, or Ulrich. So they gazed into each other's eyes with crumpled faces, when Hans raised his from her lap. He lifted himself half up and reached for her face. Y outh's ecstatic desire for words came from his mouth. - T h e r e are only three ways back to the Great Truth, he exclaimed. -Suicide, madness, or making ourselves a symbol! She did not understand that. Why suicide or madness? She connected no filled-out notions with these words. -Perhaps Hans doesn't ever know exactly what he means, went through her head. But somehow, if one got free of oneself through sui- cide or madness, it seemed to be almost as high as being uplifted by some mystic union. Madness, death, and love have always been closely linked in the consciousness of humanity. She did not know why; she did not even think of posing such a question. But the three words, which made no sense as an idea, had somehow come together at this moment in a trembling young person who was holding Gerda's face in his hands as if he were holding in them the deepest import of his life. What they then went on talking about did not matter at all; the great experience was that they said to each other what shook them. Whoever would have heard them wouldn't have understood them; entwined, they pressed forward to God's knee and thought they saw His finger. I t was possible, since this scene was being played out in the Fischels' dining room, that this finger pointing the way out of the world and into their own consis- ted partly of the tasteless self-conscious pictures and furnishings that gave them the feeling of having nothing to do with the universe of the bourgeois.
1658 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
One evening several days after this (the) musical evening in the stu- dio, Gerda appeared at Ulrich's, after having called excitedly on the tele- phone. With a dramatic swoop she removed her hat from her head and threw it on a chair. To the question of what was up, she answered: -Now everything's been blown sky-high!
-Has Hans run off?
-Papa's broke! Gerda laughed nervously at her slangy expression. Ulrich recalled that the last time he had been with Director Fischel he had wondered at the kind oftelephone conversations the latter had been conducting from his house; but this recollection was not vivid enough to enable him to take Gerda's exclamation with complete seriousness.
-Papa was a gambler-imagine! the excited girl, struggling between merriment and despair, went on to explain. -W e all thought he was a solid bank official with no great prospects, but yesterday evening it came out that the whole time he had been making the riskiest stock specula- tions! You ought to have been there for the blowup! Gerda threw herself on the chair beside her hat and boldly swung one leg over the other. - H e came home as ifhe'd been pulled out of the river. Mama rushed at him with bicarbonate and chamomile, because she thought he was feel- ing ill. It was eleven-thirty at night; we were already asleep. Then he confessed that in three days he had to come up with lots of money and had no idea where it was to come from. Mama, splendid, offered him her dowry. Mama is always splendid; what would the few thousand crowns have meant to a gambler! But Papa went on to confess that Mama's little fortune had long since been lost along with everything else. What can I tell you? Mama screamed like a dog that's been run over. She had on nothing but her nightgown and slippers. Papa lay in an armchair and moaned. His job ofcourse is also gone once this gets out. I tell you, it was pitiable!
-Shall I speak to your father? Ulrich asked. -1 don't understand much about such things. Do you think he might do something to him- self?
Gerda shrugged her shoulders. -T oday he's trying to convince one of his unsullied business friends to help him. She suddenly turned gloomy. - 1 hope you don't think that that's why I've come to you? Mama moved out to her brother's today; she wanted to take me with her, but I won't go; I've run away from home-she had become cheerful again. -Do you know that behind the whole thing there's a woman, some sort of chanteuse? Mama found that out, and that was the last straw. Good for Papal Who would ever have thought him capable of all that! And no, I
From the Posthumous Papers · 1659
don't think he'll kill himself, she went on. -Because when it afteiWard came out about the woman, today, in the course ofthe day, he said some remarkable things: he would rather let himself be locked up and after- ward earn his bread by hawking pornographic books than go on being Director Fischel with family!
-But what's most important to me--Ulrich asked-what do you in- tend to do?
- I ' m staying with friends, Gerda said saucily. - Y o u don't need to wony!
- W i t h Hans Sepp and his friends! Ulrich exclaimed reproachfully.
- N o one's going to bother me there!
Gerda inspected Ulrich's house. Like shadows, the memory of what
had once happened here stepped out of the walls. Gerda felt herself to be a poor girl who possessed nothing outside of a few crowns, which in leaving she had, with amazing ease and freedom, taken from her mother's desk. She was sony for herself. She was inclined to weep over herself as over a tragic figure on the stage. One really ought to do some- thing good for her, she thought, but she hardly expected that Ulrich would take her comfortingly in his arms. Except that if he had, she would not have been such a coward as she had been the first time. But Ulrich said: - Y o u won't let me help you now, Gerda, I see that; you're still much too proud of your new adventure. I can only say that I fear a bad outcome for you. Remember, please, that you always, without hesi- tation, can call upon me ifyou need to. He said this reflectively and hesi- tantly, for he really could have said something else that would have been more kind. Gerda had stood up, fiddled with her hat before the mirror, and smiled at Ulrich. She would have liked to kiss him good-bye, but then it might well not have come to a good-bye; and the stream of tears that was running invisibly behind her eyes bore her like a tenderly tragic music that one cannot interrupt out into the new life which she could still not quite picture to herself.
Hans Sepp was forced to double-step, kneel down in puddles in the barracks yard, present arms and put them down again until his arms fell off. The corporal torturing him was a green peasant boy, and Hans stared uncomprehendingly into his apoplectic young face, which ex- pressed not only anger, which would have been understandable because he was forced to do extra duty with this recruit, but all the malice of which a person is capable when he lets himself go. If Hans let his glance
1660 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
roam across the breadth of the yard-and a barracks yard has in and of itselfsomething inhuman, some locked-in regularity ofthe sort the dead world ofcrystals has-it rested on squatting and stiffiy running blue fig- ures painted on all the walls, meant to be assaulted with one's weapon; and this universal goal of being shot at was expressed in the abstract manner ofthese paintings well enough to drive one to despair. This had already weighed down Hans Sepp's heart in the first hour of his arrival. '! he people in these pictures painted on the barracks walls had no faces, but instead offaces only a bright area. Nor did they have bodies that the painter had captured in one of those positions such as people and ani- mals, following the play oftheir needs, assume ofthemselves, but bodies that consisted of a crude outline filled in with dark-blue paint, capturing for an eternity the attitude of a man running with a weapon in his hand, or a man kneeling and shooting, an eternity in which there will never again be anything so superfluous as the drawing of individual people. This was by no means unreasonable; the technical term for these figures was . .
- B u t now tell me, finally-Ulrich asked, having already become im- patient-what kind of letters these are that you wanted to show me. They appear to be love letters. Did you intercept Gerda's love letters?
- I wanted to show you these letters. You should read them. I would just like to lmow now what you would say about them. Fischel handed Ulrich the whole packet and sat back, preoccupied meanwhile with other thoughts, gazing into the air through his pince-nez.
Ulrich glanced at the letters; then he took one out and slowly read it through. Director Fischel asked: -Tell me, Herr Doktor, you used to lmow this singer Leontine, or Leona, who looks like the late Empress Elizabeth; may God punish me, this woman really has the appetite of a lion!
Ulrich looked up, frowning; he liked the letter, and the interruption bothered him.
-W ell, you don't have to answer, Fischel placated him. - I was just
From the Posthumous Papers · z64 7
asking. You needn't be ashamed. She's no royalty. I met her a little while ago through an acquaintance; we found out that you and she were friends. She eats a lot. Let her eat! Who doesn't like to eat? Fischel laughed.
Ulrich dropped his gaze to the letter again, without responding. Fischel again gazed dreamily into the firmament of the room.
The letter began: -Beloved person! Human goddess! We are con- demned to live in an extinguished century. No one has the courage to believe in the reality of myth. You must realize that this applies to you too. You do not have the courage ofyour nature as goddess. Fear ofpeo- ple holds you back. You are right to consider ordinary human lust as vulgar; indeed, worse than that, as a ridiculous regression from the life of us people ofthe future into mere atavism! And you are right again when you say that love for a person, animal, or thing is already the beginning of taking possession of it! And we don't even need to mention that possess- ing is the beginning of despiritualization! But still you have to distin- guish: being felt, perhaps also being sensed, is called being mine. I only feel what is mine; I don't hear what is not meant for me! Were this not so, we would be intellectualists. It's perhaps an inescapable tragedy that when we love we are forced to possess with eyes, ears, breath, and thoughts! But consider: I feel that I am not, so long as I am only I myself, I-self. It's only in the things outside me that I first discover myself. That, too, is a truth. I love a flower, a person, because without them I would be nothing. The grand thing about the experience of"mine" is feeling one- self melt away entirely, like a pile of snow under the rays of the sun, drifting upward like a gentle dissipating vapor! The most beautiful thing about "mine" is the ultimate extirpation of the possession of my self! That's the pure sense of "mine," that I possess nothing but am possessed by the entire world. All brooks flow from the heights to the valleys, and you too, 0 my soul, will not be mine before you have become a drop in the ocean of the world, totally a link in the world brotherhood and world community! This mystery no longer has anything in common with the insipid exaggeration that individual love experiences. In spite of the lust of this age one must have the courage for ardor, for inner fire! Virtue makes action virtuous; actions don't make virtue! Try it! The Beyond reveals itself in fits and starts, and we will not be transported in one jump into the regions of untrammeled life. But moments will come when we who are remote from people will experience moments ofgrace that are remote from people. Don't throw sensuality and suprasensuality into a pot of what has been! Have the courage to be a goddess! That's Germani . . .
-W ell? Fischel asked.
1648 • THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
Ulrich's face had turned red He found this letter ridiculous but mov- ing. Did these young people have no inhibitions at all about what was exaggerated, impossible, about the word that will not let itself be re- deemed? Words constantly hitched up with new words, and a kernel of truth hazed over with their peculiar web. - S o that's what Gerda's like now, he thought. But within this thought he thought a second, un- spoken, shaming one; it went something like: - A r e n ' t you insufficiently exaggerated and impossible?
-Well? Fischel repeated.
- A r e all the letters like that? Ulrich asked, giving them back to him. - H o w do I know which ones you've read! Fischel answered.
-They're all like that!
- T h e n they are quite beautiful, Ulrich said.
- I thought as much! Fischel exploded. - O f course that's why I
showed them to you! My wife found them. But no one expects me to have any clever advice in such questions ofthe soul. So fine! Tell that to my wife!
I would rather talk to Gerda herselfabout it; there's a lot in the letter that is, of course, quite misguided-
-Misguided? To say the least! But talk to her! And tell Gerda that I can't understand a single word of this jargon, but that I'm ready to pay five thousand marks-no! Better not to say anything! Tell her only that I love her anyway and am ready to forgive her!
The telephone again called Fischel to business. He, who all his life had been only a solid clerk, had begun some time ago to operate on the stock exchange on his own: -from time to time and with only small amounts, the scanty savings he possessed and a few stocks belonging to his spouse, Clementine. He could not talk to her about it, but he could be quite satisfied at his success; it was a real recreation from the depress- ing circumstances at home.
Ulrich is driven to see Gerda. He hadn't spoken to her since the hys- terical scene. Conscience impels him. But he finds Gerda very much taken up with Hans Sepp.
Ulrich seeks to be conciliatory with Gerda and to be kind. She pays him back with her involvement with Hans Sepp, which Ulrich perceives as intellectual felony.
Arnheim has become the ideal, the messiah, the savior. The spiritual man of intellect for our time.
From the Posthumous Papers · 1649
Effect of the nabob.
Leo Fischel's belief in progress is part of the problem of culture. Hans Sepp stimulated by the conflict of the national minorities. "German-ness" as a vague reaction to the cultural situation.
Ulrich receives a Stella shock [Goethe's play-TRANs. ] (letters! ) for
Agathe.
Gerda is "beyond" love. Also against religious mysticism. In future:
conflict indicated in letter.
Double orientation: Mysticism Antidemocracy
Soon after his visit to the Fischels', Ulrich was again driven to see Gerda. He had not seen her since the sad scene that had taken place between them, and felt the desire to speak kindly and reasonably to her. He wanted to suggest that she leave her parents' house for a year or two and undertake something that would give her pleasure, with the aim of forgetting him and Hans Sepp and taking advantage ofher youth. But he found her in the company of Hans Sepp. She turned pale when she saw him come in; the thoughts flew out of her head, and even though she looked composed, there was really nothing at all in her that she could compose; she suddenly felt nothing but an emptiness surrounded by the stiff, disciplined, automatic motions of her limbs.
- I don't want to ask your pardon, Gerda-Ulrich began-because that isn't important-
She interrupted him right there. -I behaved ludicrously-she said-I know that; but believe me, it's all over.
-I'll only believe that everything's fine when I know what you're up to and what your plans are.
Hans Sepp was listening with the jealous eyes of one who does not understand.
- W h a t makes you think that Friiulein Fischel has plans? he asked.
Ulrich remembered the letters that Leo Fischel had shown him. Since then he had had a lot of sympathy for this young person in whom mystic feelings raged. But at the same time, seeing him reminded him, God knows why, of a skinny dog that wants to mount a bitch much too
1650 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
big for him. He collected himself and, ignoring his question, asked Hans to explain to him what he wanted. - T h a t is to say, he added, he would like to know what he had in mind to turn his ideas into reality when he was not talking about "human being," "soul," "mystery," "ardor," "con- templation," and the like, but about the future Dr. Hans Sepp, who would be compelled to live in the world.
Ulrich really wanted to know, that was sincerely to be heard in his question; and in addition he had managed to invest it with a Masonic choice of words that astonished Hans, and Gerda's glance rested on Hans with a challenging reproach. Hans scratched his head, because he did not want to be rude and felt embarrassed. -Those aren't my ideas-he finally said-but those of German youth. Ulrich repeated his request to show him how they could be made reality. Hans thought he knew what Ulrich was getting at: whenever Hans courted Gerda with such ideas, the words were like the texture of an orchestra through which, as voice, the sight of Gerda hovered; could one tear that apart and separate it? -Y ou're asking me to make a political treatise out of a piece of music! he said.
Ulrich added: - A n d the language of politics, of trade, of arithmetic, is the language ofthe fallen angels, whose wings have long since become as vestigial as, say, our caudal vertebra. It can hardly be articulated in such a language-is that what you mean? But that's exactly why I would like to know what you're thinking of doing. Hans gave him the simplest answer to this: - I don't know! But I'm not alone. And if several thou- sand people want something that they can't picture, then one day they'll get it, as long as they remain true to themselves!
- D o you believe that too, Gerda? Ulrich asked.
Gerdawavered. -I'm convincedtoo-shesaid-thatourculturewill perish i f something isn't done.
Ulrich jumped up. -My dear children! What concern is that of yours? Tell me what you're proposing to do with each other!
Hanssetaboutdefendinghisview. -Don'ttalkdowntous! It'squite certain that this hugger-mugger called culture will perish, and every- thing else along with it-and nothing will prevail against it but the New Man!
-But Hans overestimates the significance of love between people, Gerda added. - T h e New will also leave that behind.
Hans was really a melancholy person. An emerging impurity on his skin could put him in a bad mood for days, and that was no rare occur- rence, for in his petit-bourgeois family care of the skin did not rank very high. As in many Austrian families, it had stopped at the state it had reached before the middle of the nineteenth century: that is, every Sat-
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 6 5 1
urday the bathtub or a wash trough would be filled with hot water, and this setved for the cleaning of the body that was forgone on all the other days. There were just as few other luxuries in Hans Sepp's family home. His father was a minor government functionary with a small salary and the prospect of an even scantier pension, which in view of his age was imminent, and the principles as well as the conduct of life in his parents' house were distinguished from those at the Fischels' about the way that a cardboard box carefully tied together with knotted bits of string, in which the common people pack their belongings for a journey, differs from a magnificent valise. I f he looked around, all that Hans Sepp could claim as a distinction was his German name, and it had taken him a long time before he learned to regard it as more than a gift of fate, on the day that he became acquainted with the view that being German meant being aristocratic. From that day forward he bore a noble name, and it is not necessary to waste words about how nice it is to know that one is personally distinguished; one should rather write a whole book about how one ought to want not to be distinguished but to distinguish oneself; but that would tum into a book that would be absolutely and completely unsocial.
The titles Count and Prince pale in comparison with the title Hans Sepp. No one today values belonging to a secret clan whose signs are an ox's head or three stars. On the other hand, to have a German name when one had German sentiments was, among lower-class youth in Austria, a rarity. The friends through whom Hans had been introduced into the movement were named Vybiral and Bartolini. It had about it something of a symbolic cover, the miracle of the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, when one was named Hans and in addition had the family name of Sepp.
Hans Sepp felt himself one of the elect, and in the absence of a bath- room he acquired the ideal of racial purity. But within this ideal there is enclosed the ideal of purity of principles. In this way, even in his early years, Hans Sepp came to fight for all the commandments of morality, which is otherwise the privilege of the incapacity for sinning, and is a position in which one has no desire for any further changes. It is a quite remarkable thing when young people become enthusiastic about virtue: a union of fire and stubbornness.
This union is facilitated if there is the possibility of combining the af- firmation with a powerful negation. But in order to arrive at the real significance of such a negation, one must leave aside what is accidental, in this case the racial aspect, which is the form in which it expresses itself though not its sense.
But that was just the smaller and less serious advantage. Far greater is
1652 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
the advantage that a young person who adopts a negative view of the world makes the world into a comfortable nest. It is well-nigh impossible to demonstrate something as notorious as the meager intellectual con- tent of one of those novels that among the German public pass for pro- found; it is much easier to make this credible by saying that these novels aren't German, or at least it penetrates reality more easily. One should not (on the whole) underestimate the advantage of saying no to every- thing that is considered great and beautiful. For, first, one almost always hits upon something true, and second, determining it more precisely, and the process of proving it, are in all circumstances extremely difficult and, in terms ofhaving any effect, futile. In Germany there was once the ideal: "Test everything and keep the best"; this ideal ended in filth and scorn; it was the ideal of the dignified life and the cult of the home, which, in a time of obligatory specialization deprived of the aid of inter- connections, had the same inner consequence as the purposefulness of a snail: I'll hitch a ride on anything. One must never forget this impotence into which we have put ourselves if one wishes to understand the ideal- ism of maliciousness and evil. When the change of worldview to which every new outfitting ofhumanity is called stalls and becomes impossible, almost nothing remains but to say no to everything; the lowest point is always a point of rest and balance.
Closing one's eyes and gently touching one's leg is the simplest pic- ture of the world one can have.
So there are two main kinds of pessimism. One is the pessimism of weltschmerz, which despairs of everything; the other is the contempo- rary kind, which exempts one's own person from the process. It is quite understandable that when one is young one would rather consider other
people bad than oneself. This was the service that the German world- view performed for Hans Sepp. He did not so soon experience the futil- ity of ordering his ideas, he could free himself from everything that oppresses us by calling it "un-German," and he could appear ideal to himself without having to restrain himself from besmirching I scorning the ideals of everyone else.
However, the most remarkable aspect of Hans Sepp was still a third
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 6 5 3
thing. But one should not be deceived by this manner of presentation, taking one thing after another; in reality these reasons were not layers swimming atop one another; any two of them were always dissolved in a third. And what needs to be added to the two reasons named above can perhaps be called, in a correspondingly broad sense, "religious. " If one were to have asked Hans Sepp whether, in school, he had believed in the teaching of his catechist, he would have answered indignantly that the German must cut himself loose from Rome and its Jew religion, but it would also not have been possible to win him over to Luther, whom he would have characterized as a pusillanimous compromiser with the Spirit of the World. Hans Sepp's religion did not fit any of the three great European religions; it was a plant of unintelligible ancestry run to seed.
This wild religious nature of nationalism is very peculiar.
Break off This would be the place to develop the possibility of the Other Condition as something like the component freed by the weather- ing of religion as well as of liberal heroism.
Perhaps as a supplement to Lindner religious development. But in contrast to Professor August Lindner, God had never once appeared to Hans Sepp. In spite ofthat, or indeed perhaps just because ofit, because he could not bring his vague feelings of faith and love into the solid framework of religion, they were in him especially wild.
One cannot say whether it is a remnant of bisexuality, the remnant of another primitive stage, or the lost natural tenderness of life, this need to make a community out of people. To feel every action inwardly, that is, a symbol . . .
Of this kind his love for Gerda, which is really less for the woman than for the person.
His misunderstanding of Ulrich, whom he considers a rationalist be- cause he does not understand the difficulty ofwhat Ulrich has an intima- tion of, and because he makes things easy for himself through community, insolent youthful hordes, etc.
(Definition after Unger: Symbol. View sees in those events we can not incorporate in any order (e. g. , those of the Pentateuch) images to repre-
1654 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
sent the higher world that our consciousness cannot grasp in any other
way. )
Excitement also in the air as the guests left Diotima's house! Gusts of wind ran behind waves of darkness; the streetlamps reeled in their light on one side and let it flow out widely on the other; the leaves in the canopies of the trees pulled and tugged at their thin stems, or suddenly became quite still, as if on command; the clouds played high above the rooftops with the pale fire of the moon like dogs playing with a brown cat; pushed it, jumped over it, and when they retreated, it cowered with arched back, motionless in their midst. Ulrich had fallen in with Gerda and Hans Sepp; all three were surprised that it had already got dark.
Feuermaul had had an effect on Gerda. It seemed to her horribly ruthless that one is an "I," calmly mirrored in the eyes of a "you. " She applied it to the whole nation. To universal love. It was a new emotion; how was it to be understood? One is no longer linked with just one other person. That's basically always horrible; one can't stir on account of the other; in spite of love one must feel a lot of resentment. It's also quite unnatural; the only natural thing is getting together to raise a brood, but not for one's whole life, and not because of oneself, or love. Individual love seemed to her like a snowman, hard, cold; on the other hand, ifthe same thing is spread like a blanket over the whole field . . . she imagined life beneath the pure soft snow cover that hovered before her, warm and protecting every seed. -Strange-Gerda thought-that I happened to think of a snowman! But then she still felt only the other, distant, soft, melting-even ifthat was not quite the case! -Loving many, many peo- ple! she said to herself softly. And it was like: Sleeping with everyone; but with no one so brutally to the very end, but only as in a dream that is never quite clear. Kissing everybody, but the way a child lets itself be stroked. To say something nice to everyone, but not giving anyone the right to forbid her saying it to his enemy as well . . . She felt happy and anxious as she portrayed this to herself, like a tender being that has to slip through rough hands until the hands, fumbling beside it, also learn to be tender.
"A happy-anxious soul": that had been in one of Feuermaul's poems, as if the poet had uttered this expression for no one else but her, the unla10wn girl. From far away word was dispatched to her, a man who lmew nothing about her had sent out this word and still had no idea that the word had already found her; but she lmew it, for she bore his word in
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 655
her breast, which he would never see: That seemed to her like a mar- riage through magic. Gerda thought over whether she really had a hap- pily anxious soul. She had one that constantly hovered between happiness and fear, without quite making contact with either. Was that the same thing? She was not certain of it, but she felt herself really hov- ering like a moonbeam in the roaring night, filled with love and free of all misfortune, which rarely happened to her. She squinted over at Ul- rich, who was walking mutely beside her; he frightened her and only occasionally gave her a little happiness. Ulrich noticed that she was look- ing at him; he was angry with h e r . -The first time some blockhead bab- bles at you in verses you overflow! he said, smiling; but there was really some pain in this smile. -Didn't you notice that this person is the most vain and selfish creature in the world?
Gerda answered quite seriously. -You're right, he's weak; Stefan George is greater. She named her favorite poet-she knew that Ulrich had an aversion to him as well. She was a little drunk with happiness and felt: - I can love two people who hate each other. At this moment she was all love.
But at this moment Hans Sepp pushed forward from the other side; jealous restlessness impelled him, for Gerda and Ulrich had been speak- ing softly, and he only half understood; he did not want to be left out.
-Feuermaul is a prattler! he exclaimed angrily.
- O h , why! Ulrich said.
-Because!
They were just passing beneath a streetlamp. Hans wanted to stop,
because his mouth was full ofwords. But Ulrich did not stop. Hans was dragged on like a screaining child and emptied his words into the dark- ness. Gerda knew them all. The Beyond, contemplation, Christ, Edda, Gautama Buddha, and then the punishment meant for her: Feuermaul, as a Jew, had appropriated these things with his intelligence but in- wardly had no idea what they were about. She looked straight ahead, and even at the next streetlamp did not look at Hans. In the darkness she felt his dark mouth wide open at her side. It made her shudder. She did not understand that Hans no longer knew what he was saying. The darkness was terrible for him. He imagined that the two of them were laughing at him. He knew no bounds, and his words poured out as if each were try- ing to trample the next, the way people do in a panic.
In between, Gerda heard Ulrich speaking quietly and objectively, seeking to divert this storm. -The emotional scribbler-he said-is in himself the most vain and self-seeking person in the world; something like women who have no understanding, only their love. What would happen ifthese people became you-seeking? . . .
1656 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
Gerda liked Ulrich's words rather better than Hans's, but they, too, made her cold. With a hasty good-bye, she left the two of them standing there and ran up the steps. Hans gasped for air, hardly touched his hat, and left Ulrich.
But he stopped at the next comer and under cover of darkness looked to see what Ulrich was going to do. Ulrich went home, and Hans began to have regrets. He knew that Gerda's parents would be home late today; Gerda was alone, and he could imagine how much his churlish behavior must be eating at her. He saw light in a window and ran away in order not to go weak. But he only ran around the block, then without stopping went up the steps. He was still excited; his clothes sat on him angrily, the dark-blond hair over his forehead was standing crookedly in the air, and his cheeks had disappeared beneath his cheekbones.
-Forgive mel he begged. -I've behaved badly.
Gerda looked at him without understanding why he was there; her emotions had grown deaf.
- I don't know what I said, Hans went on. - I t was probably some- thing ugly. But you're so far gone that you can't even separate Jewish spuriousness and your ideals!
-Ulrich's not a Jew! Gerda said spontaneously. -A nd I forbid you- she added-to speak that way about Jews! For the first time she dared to say such a thing.
- I was speaking of Feuermaul! Hans corrected her. - B u t this Jew- ish poet we heard today might at least be said to have great and honest feelings if his race permitted it, but Ulrich, your father's friend, is ten times worse! Gerda was sitting in an easy chair and looked at Hans doubtingly. Hans was standing in front of her; her behavior unnerved him. - I f someone acts-he said-like Feuermaul, as if he had seized hold of the true life, he's a swindler. The Beyond withholds itself; out-of- body contemplation reveals itself only rarely and intermittently. There are whole centuries that know nothing about it. But it is Germanic, nev- ertheless, never to lose the feeling here below of the Beyond that shim- mers through.
-Since I have known you, every second thing you've said has been about out-of-body contemplation-Gerda countered, eager to attack- but you haven't ever, not one single time, really seen anything! Tell me what you've seen! Words!
Hans implored Gerda not to lose her strength! She ought not to be so sensitive, not want to be so clever! She should get away from this Ulrich!
From the Posthumous Papers · z657
-Where does "sensitive" come from? he exclaimed. -From the senses! It's sensualistic and base!
For heaven's sake, Gerda knew that; but it had never seemed to her so hurdy-gurdy. - I f I want, I will also love a Jew, she thought, and thought of Feuermaul. A very gentle smile struggled with the anger in her face. Hans misunderstood it; he thought the tenderness in the resistance was for him. He was so excited by everything that had gone on before that he thought he would break into pieces right then and there. Over Gerda's face there is a breath of the Orient, it occurred to him at this moment, and in the same moment he thought he understood that what he loved most secretly about her was the other-racial, the Jewish; he, with his melancholy, who never felt sure of himself! Hans broke down. He hardly knew what was happening to him; he hid his face against Gerda's legs, and she felt that he was weeping in despair. That tore at her breast like the wild, covetous fingers of a small child; she, too, was suddenly excited, and tears were running down her cheeks without her knowing whether she was weeping over Hans, Feuermaul, herself, or Ulrich. So they gazed into each other's eyes with crumpled faces, when Hans raised his from her lap. He lifted himself half up and reached for her face. Y outh's ecstatic desire for words came from his mouth. - T h e r e are only three ways back to the Great Truth, he exclaimed. -Suicide, madness, or making ourselves a symbol! She did not understand that. Why suicide or madness? She connected no filled-out notions with these words. -Perhaps Hans doesn't ever know exactly what he means, went through her head. But somehow, if one got free of oneself through sui- cide or madness, it seemed to be almost as high as being uplifted by some mystic union. Madness, death, and love have always been closely linked in the consciousness of humanity. She did not know why; she did not even think of posing such a question. But the three words, which made no sense as an idea, had somehow come together at this moment in a trembling young person who was holding Gerda's face in his hands as if he were holding in them the deepest import of his life. What they then went on talking about did not matter at all; the great experience was that they said to each other what shook them. Whoever would have heard them wouldn't have understood them; entwined, they pressed forward to God's knee and thought they saw His finger. I t was possible, since this scene was being played out in the Fischels' dining room, that this finger pointing the way out of the world and into their own consis- ted partly of the tasteless self-conscious pictures and furnishings that gave them the feeling of having nothing to do with the universe of the bourgeois.
1658 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
One evening several days after this (the) musical evening in the stu- dio, Gerda appeared at Ulrich's, after having called excitedly on the tele- phone. With a dramatic swoop she removed her hat from her head and threw it on a chair. To the question of what was up, she answered: -Now everything's been blown sky-high!
-Has Hans run off?
-Papa's broke! Gerda laughed nervously at her slangy expression. Ulrich recalled that the last time he had been with Director Fischel he had wondered at the kind oftelephone conversations the latter had been conducting from his house; but this recollection was not vivid enough to enable him to take Gerda's exclamation with complete seriousness.
-Papa was a gambler-imagine! the excited girl, struggling between merriment and despair, went on to explain. -W e all thought he was a solid bank official with no great prospects, but yesterday evening it came out that the whole time he had been making the riskiest stock specula- tions! You ought to have been there for the blowup! Gerda threw herself on the chair beside her hat and boldly swung one leg over the other. - H e came home as ifhe'd been pulled out of the river. Mama rushed at him with bicarbonate and chamomile, because she thought he was feel- ing ill. It was eleven-thirty at night; we were already asleep. Then he confessed that in three days he had to come up with lots of money and had no idea where it was to come from. Mama, splendid, offered him her dowry. Mama is always splendid; what would the few thousand crowns have meant to a gambler! But Papa went on to confess that Mama's little fortune had long since been lost along with everything else. What can I tell you? Mama screamed like a dog that's been run over. She had on nothing but her nightgown and slippers. Papa lay in an armchair and moaned. His job ofcourse is also gone once this gets out. I tell you, it was pitiable!
-Shall I speak to your father? Ulrich asked. -1 don't understand much about such things. Do you think he might do something to him- self?
Gerda shrugged her shoulders. -T oday he's trying to convince one of his unsullied business friends to help him. She suddenly turned gloomy. - 1 hope you don't think that that's why I've come to you? Mama moved out to her brother's today; she wanted to take me with her, but I won't go; I've run away from home-she had become cheerful again. -Do you know that behind the whole thing there's a woman, some sort of chanteuse? Mama found that out, and that was the last straw. Good for Papal Who would ever have thought him capable of all that! And no, I
From the Posthumous Papers · 1659
don't think he'll kill himself, she went on. -Because when it afteiWard came out about the woman, today, in the course ofthe day, he said some remarkable things: he would rather let himself be locked up and after- ward earn his bread by hawking pornographic books than go on being Director Fischel with family!
-But what's most important to me--Ulrich asked-what do you in- tend to do?
- I ' m staying with friends, Gerda said saucily. - Y o u don't need to wony!
- W i t h Hans Sepp and his friends! Ulrich exclaimed reproachfully.
- N o one's going to bother me there!
Gerda inspected Ulrich's house. Like shadows, the memory of what
had once happened here stepped out of the walls. Gerda felt herself to be a poor girl who possessed nothing outside of a few crowns, which in leaving she had, with amazing ease and freedom, taken from her mother's desk. She was sony for herself. She was inclined to weep over herself as over a tragic figure on the stage. One really ought to do some- thing good for her, she thought, but she hardly expected that Ulrich would take her comfortingly in his arms. Except that if he had, she would not have been such a coward as she had been the first time. But Ulrich said: - Y o u won't let me help you now, Gerda, I see that; you're still much too proud of your new adventure. I can only say that I fear a bad outcome for you. Remember, please, that you always, without hesi- tation, can call upon me ifyou need to. He said this reflectively and hesi- tantly, for he really could have said something else that would have been more kind. Gerda had stood up, fiddled with her hat before the mirror, and smiled at Ulrich. She would have liked to kiss him good-bye, but then it might well not have come to a good-bye; and the stream of tears that was running invisibly behind her eyes bore her like a tenderly tragic music that one cannot interrupt out into the new life which she could still not quite picture to herself.
Hans Sepp was forced to double-step, kneel down in puddles in the barracks yard, present arms and put them down again until his arms fell off. The corporal torturing him was a green peasant boy, and Hans stared uncomprehendingly into his apoplectic young face, which ex- pressed not only anger, which would have been understandable because he was forced to do extra duty with this recruit, but all the malice of which a person is capable when he lets himself go. If Hans let his glance
1660 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
roam across the breadth of the yard-and a barracks yard has in and of itselfsomething inhuman, some locked-in regularity ofthe sort the dead world ofcrystals has-it rested on squatting and stiffiy running blue fig- ures painted on all the walls, meant to be assaulted with one's weapon; and this universal goal of being shot at was expressed in the abstract manner ofthese paintings well enough to drive one to despair. This had already weighed down Hans Sepp's heart in the first hour of his arrival. '! he people in these pictures painted on the barracks walls had no faces, but instead offaces only a bright area. Nor did they have bodies that the painter had captured in one of those positions such as people and ani- mals, following the play oftheir needs, assume ofthemselves, but bodies that consisted of a crude outline filled in with dark-blue paint, capturing for an eternity the attitude of a man running with a weapon in his hand, or a man kneeling and shooting, an eternity in which there will never again be anything so superfluous as the drawing of individual people. This was by no means unreasonable; the technical term for these figures was . .
