No More Learning

The leaves of the trees in front of the windows glistened desolately, like wet linoleum; the roadway behind the gaps in the foliage was as shiny as a rubber boot. The eyes could hardly get a hold on the wet view. Agathe was sony for her remark, and no lon- ger knew why she had made it. She sighed and began again: "Today the world reminds me of our nursery. " She was alluding to the bare upper rooms in their father's house and the astonishing reunion they had both celebrated with them. That might be farfetched; but she added: "It's a person's first sadness, surrounded by his toys, that al- ways keeps coming back! " After the recent stretch of good weather, expectations had automatically been directed toward a lovely day, and this filled the mind with frustrated desire and impatient melan- choly. Ulrich, too, now looked out the window. Behind the gray, streaming wall of water, will-o'-the-wisps of outings never taken, open green, and an endless world beckoned; and perhaps, too, the ghost of a desire to be alone once more and free again to move in any direction, the sweet pain ofwhich is the story ofthe Passion and also the Resurrection of love. He turned to his sister with something of this still in the expression on his face, and asked her almost vehe- mently: ''I'm surely not one of those people who can respond em- pathically to others? ''
"No, you really aren't! " she responded, and smiled at him.
"But just what such people presume," he went on, for it was only now that he understood how seriously her words had been meant, "namely, that people can suffer together, is as impossible for them as
II50 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
it is for anyone else. At most they have a nursing skill in guessing what someone in need likes to hear-"
"In which case they must know what would help him," Agathe objected.
"Not at all! " Ulrich asserted more stubbornly. "Apparently the only comfort they give is by talking: whoever talks a lot discharges another person's sorrow drop by drop, the way rain discharges the electricity in a cloud. That's the well-known alleviation of every grief through talking! "
Agathe was silent.
"People like your new friend," Ulrich now said provocatively, "perhaps work the way many cough remedies do: they don't get rid of the sore throat but soothe its irritation, and then it often heals by itself! "
In any other situation he could have expected his sister's assent, but Agathe, who since yesterday had been in a peculiar frame of mind because ofher sudden weakness for a man whose worth Ulrich doubted, smiled unyieldingly and played with her fingers. Ulrich jumped up and said urgently: "But I know him, even if only fleet- ingly; I've heard him speak several times! "
"You even called him a 'vacuous fool,'" Agathe interjected.
"And why not? '' Ulrich defended it. "People like him know less than anyone about how to empathize with another person! They don't even know what it means. They simply don't feel the difficulty, the terrible equivocation, of this demand! "
Agathe then asked: 'Why do you think the demand is equivocal? "
Now Ulrich was silent. He even lit a cigarette to underline that he was not going to answer; they had, after all, talked about it enough yesterday. Agathe knew this too. She did not want to provoke any new explanations. These explanations were as enchanting and as dev- astating as looking at the sky when it forms gray, pink, and yellow cities of ,marble cloud. She thought, "How fine it would be if he would only say: 'I want to love you as myself, and I can love you that way better than any other woman because you are my sister! ' " But because he was not about to say it, she took a small pair of scissors and carefully cut off a thread that was sticking out somewhere, as if this were at that moment the only thing in the entire world that de- served her full attention. Ulrich observed this with the same atten-
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 1 5 1
tion. She was at this instant more seductively present to all his senses than ever, and he guessed something ofwhat she was hiding, even if not everything. For she meanwhile had had time to resolve: if Ulrich could forget that she herself was laughing at the stranger who pre- sumed he could be of help here, he was not going to find it out from her now. Moreover, she had a happy presentiment about Lindner. She did not know him. But that he had offered his assistance self- lessly and wholeheartedly must have inspired confidence in her, for a joyous melody of the heart, a hard trumpet blast of will, confidence, and pride, which were in salutary opposition to her own state, now seemed to be playing for her and refreshing her beyond all the com- edy of the situation. "No matter how great difficulties may be, they mean nothing if one seriously wills oneself to deal with them! . . she thought, and was unexpectedly overcome by remorse, so that she now broke the silence in something of the way a flower is broken off so that two heads can bend over it, and added as a second question to her first: "Do you still remember that you always said that 'love thy neighbor' is as different from an obligation as a cloudburst of bliss is from a drop of satisfaction? . .
She was astonished at the vehemence with which Ulrich answered her: ''I'm not unaware of the irony of my situation. Since yesterday, and apparently always, I have done nothing but raise an army of rea- sons why this love for one's neighbor is no joy but a terribly magnifi- cent, half-impossible task! So nothing could be more understandable than that you're seeking protection with a person who has no idea about any of this, and in your position I'd do the same! . .
"But it's not true at all that I'm doing that! . . Agathe replied curtly.
Ulrich could not keep himself from throwing her a glance that held as much gratitude as mistrust. "It's hardly worth the bother of talking about,. . he assured her. "I really didn't want to either. . . He hesitated a moment and then went on: "But look, if you do have to love someone else the way you love yourself, however much you love him it really remains a self-deceiving lie, because you simply can't feel along with him how his head or his finger hurts. It is absolutely unbearable that one really can't be part of a person one loves, and it's an absolutely simple thing. That's the way the world is organized. We wear our animal skin with the hair inside and cannot shake it out. And this horror within the tenderness, this nightmare of coming to a
1152 • THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
standstill in getting close to one another, is something that the peo- ple who are conventionally correct, the 'let's be precise' people, never experience. What they call their empathy is actually a substi- tute for it, which they use to make sure they didn't miss anything! "
Agathe forgot that she had just said something that was as close to a lie as a non-lie. She saw illuminated in Ulrich's words the disillusion over the vision of sharing in each other, before which the usual proofs of love, goodness, and sympathy lost their meaning; and she understood that this was the reason he spoke of the world more often than ofhimself, for ifit was to be more than idle dreaming, one must remove oneself along with reality like a door from its hinges. At this moment she was far away from the man with the sparse beard and timid severity who wanted to do her good. But she couldn't say it. She merely looked at Ulrich and then looked away, without speaking. Then she did something or other, then they looked at each other again. After the shortest time the silence gave the impression of hav- ing lasted for hours.
The dream of being two people and one: in truth the effect of this fabrication was at many moments not unlike that of a dream that has stepped outside the boundaries of night, and now it was hovering in such a state of feeling between faith and denial, in which reason had nothing more to say. It was precisely the body's unalterable constitu- tion by which feeling was referred back to reality. These bodies, since they loved each other, displayed their existence before the in- quiring gaze, for surprises and delights that renewed themselves like a peacock's tail sweeping back and forth in currents of desire; but as soon as one's glance no longer lingered on the hundred eyes of the spectacle that love offers to love, but attempted to penetrate into the thinking and feeling being behind it, these bodies transformed them- selves into horrible prisons. One found oneselfagain separated from the other, as so often before, not knowing what to say, because for everything that desire still had to say or repeat a far too remote, pro- tective, covering gesture was needed, for which there was no solid foundation.
And it was not long before the bodily motions, too, involuntarily grew slower and congealed. The rain beyond the windows was still filling the air with its twitching curtain of drops and the lullaby of sounds through whose monotony the sky-high desolation flowed
From the Posthumous Papers · 1153
downward. It seemed to Agathe that her body had been alone for centuries, and time flowed as ifit were flowing with the water from the sky. The light in the room now was like that of a hollowed-out silver die. Blue, sweetish scarves of smoke from heedlessly burning cigarettes coiled around the two of them. She no longer knew whether she was tender and sensitive to the core of her being or im- patient and out of sorts with her brother, whose stamina she ad- mired. She sought out his eyes and found them hovering in this uncertain atmosphere like two dead moons. At the same instant something happened to her that seemed to come not from her will but from outside: the surging water beyond the windows suddenly became fleshy, like a fruit that has been sliced, and its swelling soft- ness pressed between herself and Ulrich. Perhaps she was ashamed or even hated herself a little for it, but a completely sensual wanton- ness-and not at all only what one calls an unleashing of the senses but also, and far more, a voluntary and unconstrained draining of the senses away from the world-began to gain control over her; she was just able to anticipate it and even hide it from Ulrich by telling him with the speediest ofall excuses that she had forgotten to take care of something, jumped up, and left the room.
UP JACOB'S LADDER INTO A STRANGER'S DWELLING
Hardly had that been done when she resolved to look up the odd man who had offered her his help, and immediately carried out her resolution. She wanted to confess to him that she no longer had any idea what to do with herself. She had no clear picture of him; a per- son one has seen through tears that dried up in his company will not easily appear to someone the way he actually is. So on the way, she thought about him. She thought she was thinking clearheadedly, but
1154 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
actually it was fantasy. She hastened through the streets, bearing before her eyes the light from her brother's room. It had not been a proper kind of light at all, she considered; she should rather say that all the objects in the room had suddenly lost their composure, or a kind of understanding that they must certainly have otherwise had. But if it were the case that it was only she herself who had lost her composure, or her understanding, it would not have been limited just to her, for there had also been awakened in the objects a libera- tion that was astir with miracles. "The next moment it would have peeled us out of our clothes like a silver knife, without our having moved a finger! " she thought.
She gradually let herself be calmed by the rain, whose harmless gray water bounced off her hat and down her coat, and her thoughts became more measured. This was perhaps helped, too, by the simple clothes she had hastily thrown on, for they directed her memory back to schoolgirl walks without an umbrella, and to guiltless states. As she walked she even thought unexpectedly of an innocent summer she had spent with a girlfriend and the friend's parents on a small island in the north: there, between the harsh splendors of sea and sky, she had discovered a seabirds' nesting place, a hollow filled with white, soft bird feathers. And now she knew: the man to whom she was being drawn reminded her of this nesting place. The idea cheered her. At that time, to be sure, in view of the strict sincerity that is part of youth's need for experience, she would have hardly let it pass that at the thought of the softness and whiteness she would be abandon- ing herself to an unearthly shudder, as illogically, indeed as youth- fully and immaturely, as she was now allowing to happen with such assiduity. This shudder was for Professor Lindner; but the unearthly was also for him.
The intimation, amounting to certainty, that everything that hap- pened to her was connected as in a fairy tale with something hidden was familiar to her from all the agitated periods of her life; she sensed it as a nearness, felt it behind her, and was inclined to wait for the hour of the miracle, when she would have nothing to do but close her eyes and lean back. But Ulrich did not see any help in unearthly dreaminess, and his attention seemed claimed mostly by transform- ing, with infinite slowness, unearthly content into an earthly one. In this Agathe recognized the reason why she had now left him for the
From the Posthumous Papers · I I 55
third time within twenty-four hours, fleeing in the confused expecta- tion of something that she had to take into her keeping and allow to rest from the afflictions, or perhaps just from the impatience, of her passions. But then as soon as she calmed down she was herself again, standing by his side and seeing in what he was teaching her all the possibilities for healing; and even now this lasted for a while. But as the memory of what had "almost" happened at home-and yet not happened! -reasserted itself more vividly, she was again profoundly at a loss. First she wanted to convince herself that the infinite realm of the unimaginable would have come to their aid if they had stuck it out for another instant; then she reproached herself that she had not waited to see what Ulrich would do; finally, however, she dreamed that the truest thing would have been simply to yield to love and make room for a place for overtaxed nature to rest on the dizzying Jacob's ladder they were climbing. But hardly had she made this con- cession than she thought of herself as one of those incompetent fairy- tale creatures who cannot restrain themselves, and in their womanly weakness prematurely break silence or some other oath, causing ev- erything to collapse amid thunderclaps.
If her expectation now directed itself again toward the man who was to help her find counsel, he not only enjoyed the great advantage bestowed on order, certainty, kindly strictness, and composed behav- ior by an undisciplined and desperate mode of conduct, but this stranger also had the particular quality of speaking about God with certainty and without feeling, as if he visited God's house daily and could announce that everything there that was mere passion and imagining was despised. So what might be awaiting her at Lindner's? While she was asking herself this she set her feet more firmly on the ground as she walked, and breathed in the coldness of the rain so that she would become quite clearheaded; and then it started to seem highly probable to her that Ulrich, even though he judged Lindner one-sidedly, still judged him more correctly than she did, for before her conversations with Ulrich, when her impression of Lindner was still vivid, she herself had thought quite scornfully of this good man. She was amazed at her feet, which were taking her to him anyway, and she even took a bus going in the same direction so she would get there sooner.
Shaken about among people who were like rough, wet pieces of
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laundry, she found it hard to hold on to her inner fantasy completely, but with an exasperated expression on her face she persevered, and protected it from being tom to shreds. She wanted to bring it whole to Lindner. She even disparaged it. Her whole relation to God, ifthat name was to be applied to such adventurousness at all, was limited to a twilight that opened up before her every time life became too op- pressive and repulsive or, which was new, too beautiful. Then she ran into it, seeking. That was all she could honestly say about it. And it had never led to anything, as she told herself with a sigh. But she noticed that she was now really curious about how her unknown man would extricate himself from this affair that was being confided to him, so to speak, as God's representative; for such a purpose, after all, some omniscience must have rubbed off on him from the great Inaccessible One, because she had meanwhile firmly resolved, squeezed between all kinds of people, on no account to deliver a complete confession to him right away. But as she got out she discov- ered in herself, remarkably enough, the deeply concealed conviction that this time it would be different from before, and that she had also made up her mind to bring this whole incomprehensible fantasy out ofthe twilight and into the light on her own. Perhaps she would have quickly extinguished this overblown expression again if it had en- tered her consciousness at all; but all that was present there was not a word, but merely a surprised feeling that whirled her blood around as ifit were fire.
The man toward whom such passionate emotions and fantasies were en route was meanwhile sitting in the company of his son, Peter, at lunch, which he still ate, following a good rule of former times, at the actual hour of noon. There was no luxury in his sur- roundings, or, as it would be better to say in the German tongue, no excess;0 for the German word reveals the sense that the alien word obscures. "Luxury" also has the meaning ofthe superfluous and dis- pensable that idle wealth might accumulate; "excess," on the other hand, is not so much superfluous-to which extent it is synonymous with luxury-as it is overflowing, thus signifying a padding of exis- tence that gently swells beyond its frame, or that surplus ease and
•Oberftuss, literally, "overflow. "-'TRANs.
From the PosthuT1WUS Papers · 1 1 5 7
magnanimity of European life which is lacking only for the extremely poor. Lindner discriminated between these two senses ofluxury, and just as luxury in the first sense was absent from his home, it was pres- ent in the second. One already had this peculiar impression, al- though it could not be said where it came from, when the entry door opened and revealed the moderately large foyer. If one then looked around, none of the arrangements created to serve mankind through useful invention was lacking: an umbrella stand, soldered from sheet metal and painted with enamel, took care of umbrellas. A runner with a coarse weave removed from shoes the dirt that the mud brush might not have caught. Two clothes brushes hung in a pouch on the wall, and the stand for hanging up outer garments was not missing either. A bulb illuminated the space; even a mirror was present, and all these utensils were lovingly maintained and promptly replaced when they were damaged. But the lamp had the lowest wattage by which one could just barely make things out; the clothes stand had only three hooks; the mirror encompassed only four fifths of an adult face; and the thickness as well as the quality of the carpet was just great enough that one could feel the floor through it without sinking into softness: even if it was futile to describe the spirit of the place through such details, one only needed to enter to feel overcome by a peculiar general atmosphere that was not strict and not lax, not pros- perous and not poor, not spiced and not bland, but just something like a positive produced by two negatives, which might best be ex- pressed in the term "absence of prodigality. " This by no means ex- cluded, upon one's entering the inner rooms, a feeling for beauty, or indeed of coziness, which was everywhere in evidence. Choice prints hung framed on the walls; the window beside Lindner's desk was adorned with a colorful showpiece of glass representing a knight who, with a prim gesture, was liberating a maiden from a dragon; and in the choice of several painted vases that held lovely paper flowers, in the provision of an ashtray by the nonsmoker, as well as in the many trifling details through which, as it were, a ray of sunshine falls into the serious circle of duty represented by the preservation and care of a household, Lindner had gladly allowed a liberal taste to pre- vail. Still, the twelve-edged severity of the room's shape emerged ev- erywhere as a reminder of the hardness of life, which one should not forget even in amenity; and wherever something stemming from ear-
1158 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
lier times that was undisciplined in a feminine way managed to break through this unity-a little cross-stitch table scarf, a pillow with roses, or the petticoat of a larripshade-the unity was strong enough to prevent the voluptuous element from being excessively obtrusive.
Nevertheless, on this day, and not for the first time since the day before, Lindner appeared at mealtime nearly a quarter of an hour late. The table was set; the plates, three high at each place, looked at him with the frank glance of reproach; the little glass knife rests, from which knife, spoon, and fork stared like barrels from gun car- riages, and the rolled-up napkins in their rings, were deployed like an army left in the lurch by its general. Lindner had hastily stuffed the mail, which he usually opened before the meal, in his pocket, and with a bad conscience hastened into the dining room, not knowing in his confusion what he was meeting with there-it might well have been something like mistrust, since at the same moment, from the other side, and just as hastily as he, his son, Peter, entered as if he had only been waiting for his father to come in.
43
THE DO-GOODER AND THE DO-NO-GOODER; BUT AGATHE TOO
Peter was a quite presentable fellow of about seventeen, in whom Lindner's precipitous height had been infused and curtailed by a broadened body; he came up only as far as his father's shoulders, but his head, which was like a large, squarish-round bowling ball, sat on a neck of taut flesh whose circumference would have served for one of Papa's thighs. Peter had tarried on the soccer field instead of in school and had on the way home unfortunately got into conversation with a girl, from whom his manly beauty had wrung a half-promise to see him again: thus late, he had secretly slunk into the house and to the door of the dining room, uncertain to the last minute how he was
From the Posthumous Papers · 1159
going to excuse himself; but to his swprise he had heard no one in the room, had rushed in, and, just on the point of assuming the bored expression of long waiting, was extremely embarrassed when he col- lided with his father. His red face flushed with still redder spots, and he immediately let loose an enormous flood of words, casting side- long glances at his father when he thought he wasn't noticing, while looking him fearlessly in the eye when he felt his father's eyes on him. This was calculated behavior, and often called upon: its purpose was to fulfill the mission of arousing the impression of a young man who was vacant and slack to the point of idiocy and who would be capable of anything with the one exception of hiding something. But if that wasn't enough, Peter did not recoil from letting slip, appar- ently inadvertently, words disrespectful of his father or otherwise displeasing to him, which then had the effect of lightning rods at- tracting electricity and diverting it from dangerous paths. For Peter feared his father the way hell fears heaven, with the awe of stewing flesh upon which the spirit gazes down. He loved soccer, but even there he preferred to watch it with an expert expression and make portentous comments than to strain himself by playing. He wanted to become a pilot and achieve heroic feats someday; he did not, how- ever, imagine this as a goal to be worked toward but as a personal disposition, like creatures whose natural attribute it is that they will one day be able to fly. Nor did it influence him that his lack of incli- nation for work was in contradiction to the teachings of school: this son of a well-known pedagogue was not in the least interested in being respected by his teachers; it was enough for him to be physi- cally the strongest in his class, and if one of his fellow pupils seemed to him too clever, he was ready to restore the balance of the relation- ship by a punch in the nose or stomach. As we know, one can lead a respected existence this way; but his behavior had the one disadvan- tage that he could not use it at home against his father; indeed, that his father should find out as little about it as possible. For faced with this spiritual authority that had brought him up and held him in gen- tle embrace, Peter's vehemence collapsed into wailing attempts at rebellion, which Undner senior called the pitiable cries of the desires. Intimately exposed since childhood to the best principles, Peter had a hard time denying their truth to himself and was able to satisfy his honor and valor only with the cunning of an Indian in
1I6o · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
avoiding open verbal warfare. He too, ofcourse, used lots ofwords in order to adapt to his opponent, but he never descended to the need to speak the truth, which in his view was unmanly and garrulous.
So this time, too, his assurances and grimaces bubbled forth at once, but they met with no reaction from his master. Professor Lind- ner had hastily made the sign of the cross over the soup and begun to eat, silent and rushed. At times, his eye rested briefly and distract- edly on the part in his son's hair. On this day the part had been drawn through the thick, reddish-brown hair with comb, water, and a good deal of pomade, like a narrow-gauge railroad track through a reluc- tantly yielding forest thicket. Whenever Peter felt his father's glance resting on it he lowered his head so as to cover with his chin the red, screamingly beautiful tie with which his tutor was not yet acquainted. For an instant later the eye could gently widen upon making such a discovery and the mouth follow it, and words would emerge about "subjection tq the slogans of clowns and fops" or "social toadiness and servile vanity," which offended Peter. But this time nothing hap- pened, and it was only a while later, when the plates were being changed, that Lindner said kindly and vaguely-it was not even at all certain whether he was referring to the tie or whether his admonition was brought about by some unconsciously perceived sight-"People who still have to struggle a lot with their vanity should avoid anything striking in their outward appearance. "
Peter took advantage ofhis father's unexpected absentmindedness of character to produce a story about a poor grade he was chival- rously supposed to have received because, tested after a fellow pupil, he had deliberately made himself look unprepared in order not to outshine his comrade by demonstrating the incredible demands that were simply beyond the grasp ofweaker pupils.
Professor Lindner merely shook his head at this.
But when the middle course had been taken away and dessert came on the table, he began cautiously and ruminatively: "Look, it's precisely in those years when the appetites are greatest that one can win the most momentous victories over oneself, not for instance by starving oneself in an unhealthy way but through occasionally re- nouncing a favorite dish after one has eaten enough. "
Peter was silent and showed no understanding of this, but his head was again vividly suffused with red up to his ears.
From the Posthumous Papers · I I 6 I
"It would be wrong," his father continued, troubled, "if I wanted to punish you for this poor grade, because aside from the fact that you are lying childishly, you demonstrate such a lack of the concept of moral honor that one must first make the soil tillable in order for the punishment to have an effect on it. So I'm not asking anything of you except that you understand this yourself, and I'm sure that then you'll punish yourself! "
This was the moment for Peter to point animatedly to his weak health and also to the overwork that could have caused his recent failures in school and that rendered it impossible for him to steel his character by renouncing dessert.
"The French philosopher Comte," Professor Lindner replied calmly, "was accustomed after dining, without particular induce- ment, to chew on a crust of dry bread instead of dessert, just to re- member those who do not have even dry bread. It is an admirable trait, which reminds us that every exercise of abstemiousness and plainness has profound social significance! "
Peter had long had a most unfavorable impression of philosophy, but now his father added literature to his bad associations by contin- uing: "The writer Tolstoy, too, says that abstemiousness is the first step toward freedom. Man has many slavish desires, and in order for the struggle against all of them to be successful, one must begin with the most elemental: the craving for food, idleness, and sensual desires. " Professor Lindner was accustomed to pronounce any of these three terms, which occurred often in his admonitions, as im- personally as the others; and long before Peter had been able to con- nect anything specific with the expression "sensual desires" he had already been introduced to the struggle against them, alongside the struggles against idleness and the craving for food, without thinking about them any more than his father, who had no need to think fur- ther about them because he was certain that basic instruction in these struggles begins with self-determination. In this fashion it came about that on a day when Peter did not yet know sensual long- ing in its most desired form but was already slinking about its skirts, he was surprised for the first time by a sudden feeling of angry revul- sion against the loveless connection between it and idleness and the craving for food that his father was accustomed to make; he was not allowed to come straight out with this but had to lie, and cried: ''I'm a
1162 • THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
plain and simple person and can't compare myself with writers and philosophers! "-whereby, in spite ofhis agitation, he did not choose his words without reflection.
His tutor did not respond.
''I'm hungry! " Peter added, still more passionately.
Lindner put on a pained and scornful smile.
'T il die if I don't get enough to eat! " Peter was almost blubbering. "The first response of the individual to all interventions and at-
tacks from without occurs through the instrument of the voice! " his father instructed him.
And the "pitiable cries of the desires," as Lindner called them, died away. On this particularly manly day Peter did not want to cry, but the necessity of developing the spirit for voluble verbal defense was a terrible burden to him. He could not think ofanything more at all to say, and at this moment he even hated the lie because one had to speak in order to use it. Eagerness for murder alternated in his eyes with howls of complaint. When it had got to this point, Professor Lindner said to him kindly: "You must impose on yourself serious exercises in being silent, so that it is not the careless and ignorant person in you who speaks but the reflective and well-brought-up one, who utters words that bring joy and firmness! " And then, with a friendly expression, he lapsed into reflection. "I have no better an- vice, ifone wants to make others good"-he finally revealed to his son the conclusion he had come to-"than to be good oneself; Mat- thias Claudius says too: 'I can't think of any other way except by being oneself the way one wants children to be'! '' And with these words Professor Lindner amiably but decisively pushed away the dessert, although it was his favorite-rice pudding with sugar and chocolate-without touching it, through such loving inexorability forcing his son, who was gnashing his teeth, to do the same.
At this moment the housekeeper came in to report that Agathe was there. August Lindner straightened up in confusion. "So she did come!
" a horribly distinct mute voice said to him. He was prepared to feel indignant, but he was also ready to feel a fraternal gentleness that combined in sympathetic understanding with a delicate sense of moral action, and these two countercurrents, with an enormous train of principles, staged a wild chase through his entire body before he was able to utter the simple command to show the lady into the living
From the Posthumous Papers · 1163
room. "You wait for me here! " he said to Peter severely, and hastily left. But Peter had noticed something unusual about his father's be- havior, he just didn't know what; in any event, it gave him so much rash courage that after the latter's departure, and a brief hesitation, he scooped into his mouth a spoonful ofthe chocolate that was stand- ing ready to be sprinkled, then a spoonful of sugar, and finally a big spoonful of pudding, chocolate, and sugar, a procedure he repeated several times before smoothing out all the dishes to cover his tracks.
And Agathe sat for a while al'? ne in the strange house and waited for Professor Lindner; for he was pacing back and forth in another room, collecting his thoughts before going to encounter the lovely and perilous female. She looked around and suddenly felt anxious, as if she had lost her way climbing among the branches of a dream tree and had to fear not being able to escape in one piece from its world of contorted wood and myriad leaves. A profusion of details confused her, and in the paltry taste they evinced there was a repellent acer- bity intertwined in the most remarkable way with an opposite qual- ity, for which, in her agitation, she could not immediately find words. The repulsion was perhaps reminiscent of the frozen stiffness of chalk drawings, but the room also looked as if it might smell in a grandmotherly, cloying way of medicines and ointments; and old- fashioned and unmanly ghosts, fixated with unpleasant maliciousness upon human suffering, were hovering within its walls. Agathe sniffed. And although the air held nothing more than her imaginings, she gradually found herself being led further and further backward by her feelings, until she remembered the rather anxious "smell of heaven," that aroma of incense half aired and emptied of its spices which clung to the scarves of the habits her teachers had once worn when she was a girl being brought up together with little friends in a pious convent school without at all succumbing to piety herself. For as edifying as this odor may be for people who associate it with what is right, its effect on the hearts of growing, worldly-oriented, and re- sistant girls consisted in a vivid memory of smells of protest, just as ideas and first experiences were associated with a man's mustache or
with his energetic cheeks, pungent with cologne and dusted with talc. God knows, even that odor does not deliver what it promises! And as Agathe sat on one of Lindner's renunciative upholstered chairs and waited, the empty smell of the world closed inescapably
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about her with the empty smell of heaven like two hollow hemi- spheres, and an intimation came over her that she was about to make up for a negligently endured class in the school of life.
She knew now where she was. Afraid yet ready, she tried to adapt to these surroundings and think of the teachings from which she had perhaps let herself be diverted too soon. But her heart reared up at this docility like a horse that refuses to respond to encouragement, and began to run wild with terror, as happens in the presence of feel- ings that would like to warn the ~derstanding but can't find any words. Nevertheless, after a while she tried again, and in support thought of her father, who had been a liberal man and had always exhibited a somewhat superficial Enlightenment style and yet, in total contradiction, had made up his mind to send her to a convent school for her education. She was inclined to regard this as a kind of conciliatory sacrifice, an attempt, propelled by a secret insecurity, to do for once the opposite of what one thinks is one's firm conviction: and because she felt a kinship with any kind of inconsistency, the situation into which she had got herself seemed to her for an instant like a daughter's secret, unconscious act of repetition. But even this second, voluntarily encouraged shudder of piety did not last; ap- parently she had definitively lost her ability to anchor her animated imaginings in a creed when she had been placed under that all-too- clerical care: for all she had to do was inspect her present surround- ings again, and with that cruel instinct youth has for the distance separating the infinitude of a teaching from the finiteness of the teacher, which indeed easily leads one to deduce the master from the servant, the sight of the home surrounding her, in which she had imprisoned herself and settled full of expectation, suddenly and irre- sistibly impelled her to laughter.
Yet she unconsciously dug her nails into the wood of the chair, for she was ashamed of her lack of resolution. What she most wanted to do was suddenly and as quickly as possible fling into the face of this unknown man everything that was oppressing her, if he would only finally deign to show himself: The criminal trafficking with her fa- ther's will-absolutely unpardonable, if one regarded it undefiantly. Hagauer's letters, distorting her image as horribly as a bad mirror without her being quite able to deny the likeness. Then, too, that she wanted to destroy this husband without actually killing him; that she
From the Posthurrwus Papers · 1 1 6 5
had indeed once married him, but not really, only blinded by self- contempt. There were in her life nothing but unusual incompletions; and finally, bringing everything together, she would also have to talk about the presentiment that hovered between herself and Ulrich, and this she could never betray, under any circumstances! She felt as churlish as a child who is constantly expected to perform a task that is too difficult. Why was the light she sometimes glimpsed always im- mediately extinguished again, like a lantern bobbing through a vast darkness, its gleam alternately swallowed up and exposed? She was robbed of all resolution, and superfluously remembered that Ulrich had once said that whoever seeks this light has to cross an abyss that has no bottom and no bridge. Did he himself, therefore, in his in- most soul, not believe in the possibility of what it was they were seek- ing together? This was what she was thinking, and although she did not really dare to doubt, she still felt herself deeply shaken. So no one could help her except the abyss itself! This abyss was God: oh, what did she know! With aversion and contempt she examined the tiny bridge that was supposed to lead across, the humility of the room, the pictures hung piously on the walls, everything feigning a confi- dential relationship with Him. She was just as close to abasing herself as she was to turning away in horror. What she would probably most have liked to do was run away once more; but when she remembered that she always ran away she thought of Ulrich again and seemed to herself "a terrible coward. " The silence at home had been like the calm before a storm, and the pressure ofwhat was approaching had catapulted her here. This was the way she saw it now, not without quite suppressing a smile; and it was also natural that something else Ulrich had said should occur to her, for he had said at some time or other: "A person never finds himself a total coward, because i f some- thing frightens him he runs just far enough away to consider himself a hero again! " And so here she sat!
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A MIGHTY DISCUSSION
At this moment Lindner entered, having made up his mind to say as much as his visitor would; but once they found themselves face-to- face, things turned out differently. Agathe immediately went on the verbal attack, which to her surprise turned out to be far more ordi- nary than what led up to it would have indicated.
''You will ofcourse recall that I asked you to explain some things to me," she began. "Now I'm here. I still remember quite well what you said against my getting a divorce. Perhaps I've understood it even better since! "
They were sitting at a large round table, separated from each other by the entire span of its diameter. In relation to her final moments alone Agathe first felt herself, at the very beginning of this encoun- ter, deep under water, but then on solid ground; she laid out the word "divorce" like a bait, although her curiosity to learn Lindner's opinion was genuine too.
And Lindner actually answered at almost the same instant: "I know quite well why you are asking me for this explanation. People will have been murmuring to you your whole life long that a belief in the suprahuman, and obeying commandments that have their origin in this belief, belong to the Middle Ages! You have discovered that such fairy tales have been disposed of by science! But are you certain that's really the way it is? "
Agathe noticed to her astonishment that at every third word or so, his lips puffed out like two assailants beneath his scanty beard. She gave no answer.
"Have you thought about it? " Lindner continued severely. "Do you know the vast number of problems it involves? It's clear you don't! But you have a magnificent way of dismissing this with a wave of your hand, and you apparently don't even realize that you're sim- ply acting under the influence of an external compulsion! "
From the Posthumous Papers · 1167
He had plunged into danger. It was not clear what murmurers he had in mind. He felt himself carried away. His speech was a long tunnel he had bored right through a mountain in order to fall upon an idea, "lies of freethinking men," which was sparkling on the other side in a cocksure light. He was not thinking of either Ulrich or Hagauer but meant both ofthem, meant everyone. "And even ifyou had thought about it"-he exclaimed in an assertively rising voice- "and were to be convinced of these mistaken doctrines that the body is nothing but a system of dead corpuscles, and the soul an interplay of glands, and society a ragbag of mechano-economic laws; and even if that were correct-which it is far from being-I would still deny that such a way of thinking knows anything about the truth of life! For what calls itself science doesn't have the slightest qualification to explicate by externals what lives within a human being as spiritual inner certainty. Life's truth is a knowledge with no beginning, and the facts of true life are not communicated by rational proof: who- ever lives and suffers has them within himself as the secret power of higher claims and as the living explanation ofhis self! "
Lindner had stood up. His eyes sparkled like two preachers in the high pulpit formed by his long legs. He looked down on Agathe om- nipotently.
'Why is he talking so much right away? '' she thought. "And what does he have against Ulrich? He hardly knows him, and yet he speaks against him openly. " Then her feminine experience in the arousal of feelings told her more quickly and certainly than reflection would have done that Lindner was speaking this way only because, in some ridiculous fashion, he was jealous. She looked up at him with an en- chanting smile.
He stood before her tall, waveringly supple, and armed, and seemed to her like a bellicose giant grasshopper from some past geo- logic age. "Good heavens! " she thought. "Now I'm going to say something that will annoy him all over again, and he'll chase after me again with his Where am I? What game am I playing? " It confused her that Lindner irritated her to the point of laughter and yet that she was not able to shrug off some of his individual expressions, like "knowledge with no beginning" or "living explanation"; such strange terms at present, but secretly familiar to her, as if she had always
1168 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
used them herself without being able to remember ever having heard them before. She thought: "It's gruesome, but he's already planted some of his words in my heart like children! "
Lindner was aware of having made an impression on her, and this satisfaction conciliated him somewhat. He saw before him a young woman in whom agitation seemed to alternate precariously with feigned indifference, even boldness; since he took himself for a scru- pulous expert on the female soul, he did not allow himself to be put off by this, knowing as he did that in beautiful women there was an inordinately great temptation to be arrogant and vain. He could hardly ever observe a beautiful face without an admixture of pity. People so marked were, he was convinced, almost always martyrs to their shining outward aspect, which seduced them to self-conceit and its dragging train of coldheartedness and superficiality. Still, it can also happen that a soul dwells behind a beautiful countenance, and how often has insecurity not taken refuge behind arrogance, or despair beneath frivolity! Often, indeed, this is true of particularly noble people, who are merely lacking the support of proper and un- shakable convictions. And now Lindner was gradually and com- pletely overcome once more with how the successful person has to put himself in the frame of mind of the slighted one; and as he did this he became aware that the form of Agathe's face and body pos- sessed that delightful repose unique to the great and noble; even her knee seemed to him, in the folds of its covering envelope, like the knee of Niobe. He was astonished that this specific image should force itself on him, since so far as he knew there was nothing in the least appropriate about it; but apparently the nobility of his moral pain had unilaterally come together in this image with the suspi- ciousness many children have, for he felt no less attracted than alarmed. He now noticed her breast too, which was breathing in small, rapid waves. He felt hot and bothered, and ifhis knowledge of the world had not come to his aid again he would even have felt at a loss; but at this moment of greatest captiousness it whispered to him that this bosom must enclose something unspoken, and that accord- ing to all he knew, this secret might well be connected with the di- vorce from his colleague Hagauer; and this saved him from embarrassing foolishness by instantaneously offering the possibility of desiring the revelation of this secret instead of the bosom. He de-
From the Posthurrwus Papers · 1 1 6 9
sired this with all his might, while the union of sin with the chivalric slaying of the dragon of sin hovered before his eyes in glowing colors, much as they glowed in the stained glass in his study.
Agathe interrupted this rumination with a question she addressed to him in a temperate, even restrained tone, after she had regained her composure. "You claimed that I was acting on insinuations, on external compulsion; what did you mean by that? "
Disconcerted, Lindner raised the glance that had been resting on her heart to her eyes. This had never happened to him before: he could no longer remember the last thing he had said. He had seen in this young woman a victim ofthe free-minded spirit that was confus- ing the age, and in his victorious joy had forgotten it.
Agathe repeated her question slightly differently: "I confided to you that I want a divorce from Professor Hagauer, and you replied that I was acting under insinuating influences. It might be useful to me to find out what you understand by them. I repeat, none of the customary reasons is entirely apt; even my aversion has not been in- surmountable, as the standards of the world go. I am merely con- vinced that they may not be surmounted but are to be immeasurably enlarged! "
"By whom? "
"That's just the problem you're supposed to help me solve. " She again looked at him with a gentle smile that was a kind of horribly deep decollete and that exposed her inner bosom as if it were cov- ered by a mere wisp of black lace.
Lindner involuntarily protected his eyes from the sight with a mo- tion of his hand feigning some adjustment to his glasses. The truth was that courage played the same timid role in his view of the world as it did in the feelings he harbored toward Agathe. He was one of those people who have recognized that it greatly facilitates the vic- tory ofhumilityifone first flattens arrogance with a blow ofone's fist, and his learned nature bade him fear no arrogance so bitterly as that of open-minded science, which reproaches faith with being unscien- tific. Had someone told him that the saints, with their empty and beseeching raised hands, were outmoded and in today's world would have to be portrayed grasping sabers, pistols, or even newer instru- ments in their fists, he would no doubt have been appalled; but he did not want to see the arms of knowledge withheld from faith. This
II70 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
was almost entirely an error, but he was not alone in committing it; and that was why he had assailed Agathe with words that would have merited an honorable place in his writings-and presumably did- but were out of place directed to the woman who was confiding in him. Since he now saw sitting modestly and reflectively before him the emissary of quarters of the world hostile to him, delivered into his hands by a benevolent or demonic fate, he felt this himself and was embarrassed how to respond. "Ah! " he said, as generally and dis- paragingly as possible, and accidentally hitting not far from the mark: "I meant the spirit that runs everything today and makes young peo- ple afraid they might look stupid, even unscientific, if they don't go along with every modem superstition. How should I know what slo- gans are in their minds: 'live life to the full! ' 'Say yes to life! ' 'Culti- vate your personality! ' 'Freedom of thought and art! ' In any case, everything but the commandments ofsimple and eternal morality. "
The happy intensification "stupid, even unscientific" gladdened him with its subtlety and reinvigorated his combative spirit. "You will be surprised," he continued, "that in conversing with you I am plac- ing such emphasis on science, without knowing whether you have occupied yourselfwith it a little or a lot-"
"Not at all! " Agathe interrupted him. ''I'm just an ignorant woman. " She emphasized it and seemed to be pleased with it, per- haps with a kind ofnonsanctimoniousness.
"But it's the world you move in! " Undner corrected her emphati- cally. "And whether it's freedom in values or freedom in science, they both express the same thing: spirit that has been detached from morality. "
Agathe again felt these words as sober shadows that were, how- ever, cast by something still darker in their vicinity. She was not minded to conceal her disappointment, but revealed it with a laugh: "Last time, you advised me not to think about myself, and now you're the one who is talking about me incessantly," she mockingly offered for the man standing before her to think about.
He repeated: "You're afraid of seeming old-fashioned to your- self! "
Something in Agathe's eyes twitched angrily. "You leave me speechless: this certainly doesn't apply to mel"
"And I say to you: 'You have been bought dear; do not become the
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 1 7 1
servants of man! ' " The way he said this, which was in total contrast to his entire physical appearance, like a too-heavy blossom on a weak stem, made Agathe brighten. She asked urgently and almost coarsely: "So what should I do? I was hoping you would give me a definite answer! "
Lindner swallowed and turned gloomy with earnestness. "Do what is your duty! "
"I don't know what my duty is! "
"Then you must seek duties out! "
"I don't know what duties are! "
Lindner smiled grimly. "There we have it! That's the liberation of
the personality! " he exclaimed. "Vain reflection! You can see it in yourself: when a person is free he is unhappy! When a person is free he's a phantom! " he added, raising his voice somewhat more, out of embarrassment. But then he lowered it again, and concluded with conviction: "Duty is what mankind in proper self-awareness has erected against its own weakness. Duty is one and the same truth that all great personalities have acknowledged or pointed to. Duty is the work ofthe experience ofcenturies and the result ofthe visionary glance of the blessed. But what even the simplest person knows with precision in his inmost being, if only he lives an upright life, is duty too! "
"That was a hymn with quivering candles! " Agathe noted ap- preciatively.
It was disagreeable that Lindner, too, felt that he had sung falsely. He ought to have said something else but didn't trust himself to rec- ognize in what the deviation from the genuine voice ofhis heart con- sisted. He merely allowed himself the thought that this young creature must be deeply disappointed by her husband, since she was raging so impudently and bitterly against herself, and that in spite of all the censure she provoked, she would have been worthy of a stronger man; but he had the impression that a far more dangerous idea was on the point of succeeding this one. Agathe, meanwhile, slowly and very decisively shook her head; and with the spontaneous assurance with which an excited person is seduced by another into doing something that unbalances an already precarious situation completely, she continued: "But we're talking about my divorce! And why aren't you saying anything more about God today? Why don't
1172 • THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
you simply say to me: 'God orders you to stay with Professor Hagauer! ' I can't honestly imagine that He would command such a thing! "
Lindner shrugged his tall shoulders indignantly; indeed, as they rose he himselfactually seemed to hover in the air. "I have never said a word to you about it; you're the only one who has tried to! " He defended himself gruffiy. "And for the rest, don't believe for a min- ute that God bothers Himself with the tiny egoistic antics of our emotions! That's what His law is for, which we must follow! Or doesn't that seem heroic enough for you, since people today are al- ways looking for what's 'personal'? Well, in that case I'll set a higher heroism against your claims: heroic submission! "
Every word of this carried significantly more weight than a layper- son really ought to permit himself, were it only in his thoughts; Agathe, in return, could only go on smiling in the face of such coarse derision ifshe did not want to be forced to stand up and break offthe visit; and she smiled, of course, with such assured adroitness that Lindner felt himselfgoaded into ever-greater confusion. He became aware that his inspirations were ominously rising and increasingly reinforcing a glowing intoxication that was robbing him of reflection and resounded with the will to break the obstinate mind and perhaps save the soul he saw facing him. "Our duty is painful! " he exclaimed. "Our duty may be repulsive and disgusting! Don't think I have any intention of becoming your husband's lawyer, or that my nature is to stand by his side. But you must obey the law, because it is the only thing that bestows lasting peace on us and protects us from our- selves! "
Agathe now laughed at him; she had guessed at the weapon, stem- ming from her divorce, that these effects put in her hand, and she turned the knife in the wound. "I understand so little about all that," she said. "But may I honestly confess an impression I have? When you're angry yQU get a little slippery! "
"Oh, come on! " Lindner retorted. He recoiled, his one desire not to concede such a thing at any price. He raised his voice defensively and entreated the sinning phantom sitting before him: "The spirit must not submit itselfto the flesh and all its charms and horrors! Not even in the form of disgust! And I say to you: Even though you might find it painful to control the reluctance of the flesh, as the school of
From the Posthumous Papers · 1173
marriage has apparently asked of you, you are not simply permitted to run away from it. For there lives in man a desire for liberation, and we can no more be the slaves ofour fleshly disgust than the slaves of our lust! This is obviously what you wanted to hear, since otherwise you would not have come to me! " he concluded, no less grandilo- quently than spitefully. He stood towering before Agathe; the strands of his beard moved around his lips. He had never spoken such words to a woman before, with the exception of his own de- ceased wife, and his feelings toward her had been different. But now these feelings were intermingled with desire, as i f he were swinging a whip in his fist to chastise the whole earth; yet they were simulta- neously timid, as if he were being lofted like an escaped hat on the crest of the tornado of the sermon of repentance that had taken hold ofhim.
"There you go again, saying such remarkable things! " Agathe noted without passion, intending to shut off his insolence with a few dry words; but then she measured the enormous crash looming up before him and preferred to humble herself gently by holding back, so she continued, in a voice that had apparently suddenly been dark- ened by repentance: "I came only because I wanted you to lead me. "
Lindner went on swinging his whip of words with confused zeal; he had some sense that Agathe was deliberately leading him on, but he could not find a way out, and entrusted himself to the future. "To be chained to a man for a lifetime without feeling any physical attrac- tion is certainly a heavy sentence," he exclaimed. "But hasn't one brought this on oneself, especially if the partner is unworthy, by not having paid enough attention to the signs ofthe inner life? There are many women who allow themselves to be deluded by external cir- cumstances, and who knows if one is not being punished in order to be shaken up? " Suddenly his voice cracked. Agathe had been accom- panying his words with assenting nods of her head; but imagining Hagauer,as a bewitching seducer was too much for her, and her merry eyes betrayed it. Lindner, driven crazy by this, blared in fal- setto: "'For. he that spares the rod hates his child, but whosoever loves it chastises it! ' "
His victim's resistance had now transformed this philosopher of life, dwelling in his lofty watchtower, into a poet of chastisement and the exciting conditions that went with it.