A
primordial
idea has set- tled in my mind, alongside doubt and derision: Everything in the world is love!
Musil - Man Without Qualities - v2
''
"It is not a candy jar! Friend Stumm! " Ulrich implored, seized by the disgraceful desire to chat with him about it. "If you fall in love with a saddle and harness that are too expensive for you, or a uniform or a pair of riding boots you see in a shop window: what are you in love with? "
"You're being outrageous! I don't love things like that! " the Gen- eral protested.
"Don't deny it! " Ulrich replied. "There are people who can dream day and night of a suit fabric or a piece of luggage they have seen in a shop; everyone's known something like that; and the same thing will have happened to you, at least with your first lieutenant's uniform! And you'll have to admit that you might have no use for this material or this suitcase, and that you don't even have to be in the position of being able to really desire it: so nothing is easier than loving some- thing before you know it and without knowing it. May I, moreover, remind you that you loved Diotima at first sight? "
This time, the General looked up cunningly. Agathe had in the meantime asked him to sit down and also procured a cigar for him, since her brother had forgotten his duty. Stumm, fringed with blue
1214 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
clouds, said innocently: "Since then she's become a textbook of love, and I didn't much like textbooks in school, either. But I still admire and respect this woman," he added with a dignified composure that was new to him.
Ulrich, unfortunately, didn't notice it immediately. "All those things are idols," he went on, pursuing the questions he had directed at Stumm. "And now you see where they came from. The instincts embedded in our nature need only a minimum of external motiva- tion and justification; they are enormous machines set in motion by a tiny switch. But they equip the object they are applied to with only as many ideas that can bear investigation as perhaps correspond to the flickering oflight and shadow in the light ofan emergency lamp-"
"Stop! " Stumm begged from his cloud ofsmoke. 'What is 'object'? Are you talking about the boots and that suitcase again? "
''I'm speaking of passion. Of longing for Diotima, just as much as longing for a forbidden cigarette. I want to make clear to you that every emotional relationship had the groundwork laid for it by pre- liminary perceptions and ideas that belong to reality; but that such a relationship also immediately conjures up perceptions and ideas that it fits out in its own way. In short, affect sets up the object the way it needs it to be, indeed it creates it so that the affect finally applies to an object that, having come about in such a way, is no longer recog- nizable. But affect isn't destined for knowledge, either, but really for passion! This object that is born of passion and hovers in it," Ulrich concluded, returning to his starting point, "is of course something different from the object on which it is outwardly fastened and which it can reach out to grasp, and this is therefore also true oflove. 'I love you' is mistaken; for 'you,' this person who has evoked the passion and whom you can seize in your arms, is the one you think you love; the person evoked by passion, this wildly religious invention, is the one you really love, but it is a different person. "
"Ustening to you"-Agathe interrupted her brother with a re- proach that betrayed her inner sympathies-"you might think you don't really love the real person, but really love an unreal person! "
"That's precisely what I meant to say, and I've also heard you say- ing much the same. "
"But in reality both are ultimately one person! "
"That's exactly the major complication, that the hovering image of
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 2 1 5
the person you love has to be represented in every outward connec- tion by the person himself and is indeed one and the same. That's what leads to all the confusions that give the simple business of love such an excitingly ghostly quality! "
"But perhaps it's only love that makes the real person entirely real? Perhaps he's not complete before then? ''
"But the boot or the suitcase you dream about is in reality none other than the one you could actually buy! "
"Perhaps the suitcase only becomes completely real ifyou love it! "
"In a word, we come to the question of what is real. Love's old question! " Ulrich exclaimed impatiently, yet somehow satisfied.
"Oh, let's forget the suitcase! " To the astonishment of both, it was the General's voice that interrupted their sparring. Stumm had com- fortably squeezed one leg over the other, which, once achieved, lent him great security. "Let's stay with the person," he went on, and praised Ulrich: "So far you've said some things terrifically well! Peo- ple always believe that nothing is easier than loving each other, and then you have to remind them every day: 'Dearest, it's not as easy as it is for the apple woman! ' " In explanation of this more military than civilian expression, he turned politely to Agathe. "The 'apple woman,' dear lady, is an army expression for when someone thinks something is easier than it is: in higher mathematics, for example, when you're doing short division so short that, willy-nilly, you come up with a false result! Then the appple woman is held up to you, and it's applied the same way in other places as well, where an ordinary person might just say: that's not so simple! " Now he turned back to Ulrich and continued: "Your doctrine of the two persons interests me a good deal, because I'm also always telling people that you can love people only in two parts: in theory, or, as you put it, as a hovering person, is the way you ought to love someone, as I see it; but in prac- tice, you have to treat a person strictly and, in the last analysis, harshly too! That's the way it is between man and woman, and that's the way it is in life in general! The pacifists, for instance, with their love that has no soles on its shoes, haven't the slightest notion of this; a lieutenant knows ten times as much about love as these dilettantes! "
Through his earnestness, through his carefully weighed manner of speaking, and not least through the boldness with which, despite
1216 • THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
Agathe's presence, he had condemned woman to obedience, Stumm von Bordwehr gave the impression of a man to whom something im- portant had happened and who had striven, not without success, to master it. But Ulrich still had not grasped this, and proposed: 'Well, you decide which person is truly worth loving and which has the walk-on part! "
"That's too deep for me! " Stumm stated calmly, and, inhaling from his cigar, added with the same composure: "It's a pleasure to hear again how well you speak; but on the whole you speak in such a way that one really must ask oneself whether it's your only occupation. I must confess that after you disappeared I expected to find you, God knows, busy with more important matters! "
"Stumm, this is important! " Ulrich exclaimed. "Because at least halfthe history ofthe world is a love story! Ofcourse you have to take all the varieties of love together! "
The General nodded his resistance. "That may well be. " He bar- ricaded himself behind the busyness of cutting and lighting a fresh cigar, and grumbled: "But then the other halfis a story ofanger. And one shouldn't underestimate anger! I have been a specialist in love for some time, and I know! "
Now at last Ulrich understood that his friend had changed and, curious, asked him to tell what had befallen him.
Stumm von Bordwehr looked at him f¢ a while without answer- ing, then looked at Agathe, and finally replied in a way that made it impossible to distinguish whether he was hesitating from irritation or enjoyment: "Oh, it will hardly seem worth mentioning in comparison with your occupations. Just one thing has happened: the Parallel Campaign has found a goal! "
This news about something to which so much sympathy, even if counterfeit, had been accorded would have broken through even a fully guarded state of seclusion, and when Stumm saw the effect he had achieved he was reconciled with fortune, and found again for quite a while his old, guileless joy in spreading news. "Ifyou'd rather, I could just as well say: the Parallel Campaign has come to an end! " he offered obligingly.
It had happened quite incidentally: 'W e all of us had got so used to nothing happening, while thinking that something ought to hap- pen," Stumm related. "And then all of a sudden, instead of a new
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 2 1 7
proposal, someone brought the news that this coming autumn a Con- gress for World Peace is to meet, and here in Austria! "
"That's odd! " Ulrich said.
"What's odd? We didn't know the least thing about it! "
"That's just what I mean. "
'Well, there you're not entirely off the track," Stumm von B9rd-
wehr agreed. "It's even being asserted that the news was a plant from abroad. Leinsdorf and Tuzzi went so far as to suspect that it might be a Russian plot against our patriotic campaign, ifnot ultimately even a Gennan plot. For you must consider that we have four years before we have to be ready, so it's entirely possible that someone wants to rush us into something we hadn't planned. Beyond that, the different versions part company; but it's no longer possible to find out what the truth of the matter is, although of course we immediately wrote off everywhere to learn more. Remarkably enough, it seems that people all over already knew about this pacifistic Congress-I assure you: in the whole world! And private individuals as well as newspaper and government offices! But it was assumed, or bandied about, that it emanated from us and was part of our great world campaign, and people were merely surprised because they couldn't get any kind of rational response from us to their questions and queries. Maybe someone was playing a joke on us; Tuzzi was discreetly able to get hold of a few invitations to this Peace Congress; the signatures were quite naive forgeries, but the letter paper and the style were good as gold! Of course we then called in the police, who quickly discovered that the whole manner of execution pointed to a domestic origin, and in the course of this it emerged that there really are people here who would like to convene a World Peace Congress here in the autumn- because some woman who has written a pacifist novel is going to cel- ebrate her umpteenth birthday or, in case she's died, would have: But it quickly became clear that these people quite evidently had not the least connection with disseminating the material that was aimed at us, and so the origin of the affair has remained in the dark," Stumm said resignedly, but with the satisfaction that every well-told tale provides. The effortful exposition of the difficulties had drawn shadows over his face, but now the sun of his smile burst through this perplexity, and with a trace of scorn that was as unconstrained as it was candid, he added: 'What's most remarkable is that everyone
1218 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
agreed that there should be such a congress, or at least no one wanted to say no! And now I ask you: what are we to do, especially since we have already announced that we are undertaking something meant to serve as a model for the whole world and have constantly been spreading the slogan 'Action! ' around? For two weeks we've simply had to work like savages, so that retroactively at least it looks the way it would have looked prospectively, so to speak, under other circumstances. And so we showed ourselves equal to the organi- zational superiority of the Prussians-assuming that it was the Prussians! We're now calling it a preliminary celebration. The gov- ernment is keeping an eye on the political part, and those of us in the campaign are working more on the ceremonial and cultural-human aspects, because that is simply too burdensome for a ministry-"
"But what a strange story it is! " Ulrich asserted seriously, although he had to laugh at this development.
"A real accident of history," the General said with satisfaction. "Such mystifications have often been important. "
"And Diotima? " Ulrich inquired cautiously.
'Well, she has speedily had to jettison Amor and Psyche and is now, together with a painter, designing the parade of regional cos- tumes. It will be called: 'The clans of Austria and Hungary pay hom- age to internal and external peace,' " Stumm reported, and now turned pleadingly toward Agathe as he noticed that she, too, was parting her lips to smile. "I entreat you, dear lady, please don't say anything against it, and don't permit any objection to it either! " he begged. "For the parade of regional costumes, and apparently a mili- tary parade, are all that is definite so far about the festivities. The Tyrolean militia will march down the Ringstrasse, because they al- ways look picturesque with their green suspenders, the rooster feath- ers in their hats, and their long beards; and then the beers and wines of the Monarchy are to pay tribute to the beers and wines of the rest of the world. But even here there is still no unanimity on whether, for instance, only Austro-Hungarian beers and wines shall pay trib- ute to those of the rest of the world, which would allow the charming Austrian character to stand out more hospitably by renouncing a trib- ute from the other side, or whether the foreign beers and wines should be allowed to march along as well so that they can pay hom- age to ours, and whether they have to pay customs duties on them or
From the Posthmrwus Papers · 1 2 19
not. At any rate, one thing is certain: that there never has been and never can be a parade in this country without people in Old Ger- manic costumes sitting on carts with casks and on beer wagons drawn by horses; and I just can't imagine what it must have been like in the actual Middle Ages, when the Germanic costumes weren't yet old and wouldn't even have looked any older than a tuxedo does today! "
But after this question had been sufficiently appreciated, Ulrich asked a more delicate one. ''I'd like to know what our non-German nationalities will say to the whole thing! "
"That's simple: they'll be in the parade! " Stumm assured him cheerfully. "Because if they won't, we'll commandeer a regiment of Bohemian dragoons into the parade and make Hussite warriors out of them, and we'll drag in a regiment of Ulans as the Polish liberators of Vienna from the Turks. "
"And what does Leinsdorf say to these plans? '' Ulrich asked hesitantly.
Stumm placed his crossed leg beside the other and turned serious. "He's not exactly delighted," he conceded, relating that Count Leinsdorf never used the word "parade" but, in the most stubborn way possible, insisted on calling it a "demonstration. " "He's appar- ently still thinking of the demonstrations he experienced," Ulrich said, and Stumm agreed. "He has often said to me," he reported, " Whoever brings the masses into the street is taking a heavy respon- sibility upon himself, General! ' As if I could do anything for or against it! But you should also know that for some time we've been getting together fairly often, he and I. . . . "
Stumm paused, as if he wanted to leave space for a question, but when neither Agathe nor Ulrich asked it, he went on cautiously: "You see, His Excellency ran into another demonstration. Quite recently, on a trip, he was nearly beaten up in B - - by the Czechs as well as the Germans. "
"But why? " Agathe exclaimed, intrigued, and Ulrich, too, showed his curiosity.
"Because he is known as the bringer of peace! " Stumm pro- claimed. "Loving peace and people is not so simple in reality-"
"Like with the apple woman! " Agathe broke in, laughing.
"I really wanted to say, like with a candy jar," Stumm corrected her, adding to this discreet reproach for Ulrich the observation on
1220 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
Leinsdorf: "Still, a man like him, once he has made up his mind, will totally and completely exercise the office he has been given. "
"What office? " Ulrich asked.
"Every office! " the General stated. "On the festival reviewing stand he will sit beside the Emperor, only in the event, of course, that His Majesty sits on the reviewing stand; and, moreover, he is drafting the address ofhomage from our peoples, which he will hand to the All-Highest Ruler. But even ifthat should be all for the time being, I'm convinced it won't stay that way, because if he doesn't have any other worries, he creates some: such an active nature! By the way, he would like to speak with you," Stumm injected tenta- tively. ,
Ulrich seemed not to have heard this, but had become alert. "Leinsdorfis not 'given' an office! " he said mistrustfully. "He's been the knob on top of the flagstaff all his life! "
'Well," the General said reservedly. "I really didn't mean to say anything; of course he is and always was a high aristocrat. But look, for example, not long ago Tuzzi took me aside and said to me confi- dentially: 'General! If a man brushes past me in a dark alley, I step aside; but if in the same situation he asks me in a friendly way what time it is, then I not only reach for my watch but grope for my gun too! ' What do you say to that? ''
'What should I say to that? I don't see the connection. "
"That's just the government's caution," Stumm explained. "In re- lation to a World Peace Congress it thinks of all the possibilities, while Leinsdorfhas always been one to have his own ideas. "
Ulrich suddenly understood. "So in a word: Leinsdorf is to be removed from leadership because people are afraid ofhim? "
The General did not answer this directly. "He asks you through me to please resume your friendly relations with your cousin Tuzzi, in order to find out what's going on. I'm saying it straight out; he, of course, expressed it in a more reserved fashion," Stumm reported. And after a brief hesitation, he added by way of excuse: "They're not telling him everything! But then that's the habit of ministries: we don't tell each other everything among ourselves either! "
'What relationship did my brother really have with our cousin? " Agathe wanted to know.
Stumm, snared in the friendly delusion that he was pleasantly jok-
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 2 2 1
ing, unsuspectingly assured her: "He's one of her secret loves! " add- ing immediately to encourage Ulrich: "I have no idea what happened between you, but she certainly regrets it! She says that you are such an indispensable bad patriot that all the enemies of the Fatherland, whom we are trying to make feel at home here, must really love you. Isn't that nice ofher? But ofcourse she can't take the first step after you withdrew so willfully! "
From then on the leave-taking became rather monosyllabic, and Stumm was mightily oppressed at such a dim sunset after he had stood at the zenith.
Thus it was that Ulrich and Agathe got to hear something that brightened their faces again and also brought a friendly blush to the General's cheeks. 'We've got rid ofFeuermaul! " he reported, happy that he had remembered it in time and adding, full of scorn for that poet's love of mankind: "In any event, it's become meaningless. " Even the "nauseating'' resolution from the last session, that no one should be forced to die for other people's ideas, whereas on the other hand everyone should die for his own-even this resolution, which would fundamentally ensure peace, had, as was now apparent, been dropped, along with everything belonging to the past, and at the General's instigation was no longer even on the agenda. 'We sup- pressed a journal that printed it; no one believes such exaggerated rumors anymore! " Stumm added to this news, which seemed not quite clear in view ofthe preparations under way for a pacifistic con- gress. Agathe then inteivened a little on behalf of the young people, and even Ulrich finally reminded his friend that the incident had not been Feuermaul's fault. Stumm made no difficulties about this, and admitted that Feuermaul, whom he had met at the house of his pa- troness, was a charming person. "So full of sympathy with every- thing! And so spontaneously, absolutely, really good! " he exclaimed appreciatively.
"But then he would most certainly be an estimable addition to this Congress! " Ulrich again threw in.
But Stumm, who had meanwhile been making serious prepara- tions to leave, shook his head animatedly. "No! I can't explain so briefly what's involved," he said resolutely, "but this Congress ought not to be blown out ofproportion! "
1222
so
AGA THE FINDS ULRICH'S DIARY
While Ulrich was personally escorting the parting guest to the door, Agathe, defying an inner self-reproach, carried out something she had decided on with lightning speed. Even before Stumm's intru- sion, and again a second time in his presence, her eye had been caught by a pile of loose papers lying in one of the drawers of the desk, on both occasions through a suppressed motion of her brother's, which had given the impression that he would have liked to refer to these papers during the conversation but could not make up his mind-indeed, deliberately refrained from doing so. Her inti- macy with him had allowed her to sense this more than guess it on any substantive basis, and in the same way she also understood that this concealment must be connected with the two of them. So when he was barely out of the room she opened the drawer, doing so, whether it was justified or not, with that feeling which furthers quick decisions and does not admit moral scruples. But the notes that she took up in her hands, with many things crossed out, loosely con- nected and not always easily decipherable, immediately imposed a slower tempo on her passionate curiosity.
"Is love an emotion? This question may at first glance seem non- sensical, since it appears so certain that the entire nature oflove is a process of feeling; the correct answer is the more surprising: for emotion is really the least part oflove! Looked at merely as emotion, love is hardly as intense and overwhelming, and in any event not as strongly marked, as a toothache. "
The second, equally odd note ran: "A man may love his dog and his wife. A child may love a dog more dearly than a man his wife. One person loves his profession, another politics. Mostly, we seem to love general conditions; I mean-ifwe don't happen to hate them-their inscrutable way of working in concert, which I might call their 'horse-stall feeling': we are contentedly at home in our life the way a horse is in its stall!
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 2 2 3
"But what does it mean to bring all these things that are so dispar- ate together under the same word, 'love'?
A primordial idea has set- tled in my mind, alongside doubt and derision: Everything in the world is love! Love is the gentle, divine nature of the world, covered by ashes but inextinguishable! I wouldn't know how to express what I understand by 'nature'; but if I abandon myself to the idea as a whole without worrying about it, I feel it with a remarkably natural cer- tainty. At least at moments. "
Agathe blushed, for the following entries began with her name. "Agathe once showed me places in the Bible; I still vaguely remem- ber how they ran and have decided to write them down: 'Everything that happens in love happens in God, for God is love. ' And a second says: 'Love is from God, and whosoever loves God is born of God. ' Both these places stand in obvious contradiction to each other: in one, love comes from God; in the other, it is God!
"Therefore the attempts to express the relationship of 'love' to the world seem fraught with difficulty even for the enlightened person; how should the uninstructed understanding not fail to grasp it? That I called love the nature of the world was nothing but an excuse; it leaves the choice entirely open to say that the pen and inkpot I am writing with consist oflove in the moral realm of truth, or in the em- pirical realm of reality. But then how in reality? Would they then consist of love or would they be its consequences, the embodying phenomenon or intimation? Are they already themselves love, or is love only what they would be in their totality? Are they love by na- ture, or are we talking about a supranatural reality? And what about this 'in truth'? Is it a truth for the more heightened understanding, or for the blessedly ignorant? Is it the truth of thinking, or an incom- plete symbolic connection that will reveal its meaning completely only in the universality of mental events assembled around God? What of this have I expressed? More or less everything and nothing!
"I could also just as well have said about love that it is divine rea- son, the Neoplatonic logos. Or just as well something else: Love is the lap ofthe world: the gentle lap ofunselfconscious happening. Or, again differently: 0 sea oflove, about which only the drowning man, not the ship-borne traveler, knows! All these allusive exclamations can transmit their meaning only because one is as untrustworthy as another.
1224 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
"Most honest is the feeling: how tiny the earth is in space, and how man, mere nothing compared with the merest child, is thrown on the resources of love! But that is nothing more than the naked cry for love, without a trace of an answer!
"Yet I might perhaps speak in this way without exaggerating my words into emptiness: There is a condition in the world the sight of which is barred to us, but that things sometimes expose here or there when we fmd ourselves in a state that is excited in a particular way. And only in this state do we glimpse that things are 'made of love. ' And only in it, too, do we grasp what it signifies. And only this state is then real, and we would only then be true.
"That would be a description I would not have to retract in any part. But then, I also have nothing to add to it! "
Agathe was astonished. In these secret entries Ulrich was holding himself back much less than usual. And although she understood that he allowed himself to do this, even for himself, only under the reservation of secrecy, she still imagined she could see him before her, stirred and irresolute, in the act of opening his arms toward something.
The notes went on: "That, too, is a notion reason itself might al- most chance upon, although to be sure only reason that has to some extent managed to get out of its passive position: imagining the All- Loving as the Eternal Artist. He loves creation as long as he is creat- ing it, but his love turns away from the finished portions. For the artist must also love what is most hateful in order to shape it, but what he has already shaped, even if it is good, cools him off; it be- comes so bereft of love that he hardly still understands himself in it, and the moments when his love returns to delight in what it has done are rare and unpredictable. And so one could also think: What lords over us loves what it creates; but this love approaches and withdraws from the finished part of creation in a long ebbing flow and a short returning swell. This idea fits the fact that souls and things of the world are like dead people who are sometimes reawakened for seconds. "
Then came a few other quick entries, which looked as ifthey were only tentative.
"A lion under the morning sky! A unicorn in the moonlight! You have the choice between love's fire and rifle fire. Therefore there are
From the Posthunwus Papers · 1 2 2 5
at least two basic conditions: love and violence. And without doubt it is violence, not love, that keeps the world moving and from going to sleep!
"Here the assumption might also, of course, be woven in that the world has become sinful. Before, love and paradise. That means: the world as it is, sin! The possible world, love!
"Another dubious question: The philosophers imagine God as a philosopher, as pure spirit; wouldn't it make sense, then, for officers to imagine Him as an officer? But I, a mathematician, imagine the divine being as love? How did I arrive at that?
"And how are we to participate without more ado in one of the Eternal Artist's most intimate experiences? ''
The writing broke off. But then Agathe's face was again suffused with a blush when, without raising her eyes, she took up the next page and read on:
"Lately Agathe and I have frequently had a remarkable experi- ence! When we undertook our expeditions into town. When the weather is especially fine the world looks quite cheerful and harmo- nious, so that you really don't pay attention to how different all its component parts are, according to their age and nature. Everything stands and moves with the greatest naturalness. And yet, remarkably, there is in such an apparently incontrovertible condition of the pres- ent something that leads into a desert; something like an unsuccess- ful proposal of love, or some similar exposure, the moment one does not unreservedly participate in it.
"Along our way we find ourselves walking through the narrow vio- let-blue streets of the city, which above, where they open to the light, bum like fire. Or we step out of this tactile blue into a square over which the sun freely pours its light; then the houses around the square stand there looking taken back and, as it were, placed against the wall, but no less expressively, and as if someone had scratched them with the fine lines of an engraving tool, lines that make every- thing too distinct. And at such a moment we do not know whether all this self-fulfilled beauty excites us profoundly or has nothing at all to do with us. Both are the case. This beauty stands on a razor's edge between desire and grief.
"But does not the sight of beauty always have this effect of bright- ening the griefofordinary life and darkening its gaiety? It seems that
1226 ·THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
beauty belongs to a world whose depths hold neither grief nor gaiety. Perhaps in that world even beauty itself does not exist, but merely some kind of almost indescribable, cheerful gra~ty, and its name arises only through the refraction of its nameless splendor in our or- dinary atmosphere. We are both seeking this world, Agathe and I, without yet being able to make up our minds; we move along its bor- ders and cautiously enjoy the profound emanation at those points where it is still mingled with the powerful lights of every day and is almost invisible! "
It seemed as if Ulrich, through his sudden idea of speaking of an Eternal Artist, had been led to bring the question of beauty into his observations, especially since, for its part, beauty also expressed the oversensitivity that had arisen between brother and sister. But at the same time he had changed his manner of thinking. In this new se- quence ofentries he proceeded no longer from his dominant ideas as they faded down to the vanishing point of his experiences, but from the foreground, which was clearer but, in a few places that he noted, really too clear, and again almost permeable by the background.
Thus Ulrich went on. "I said to Agathe: 'Apparently beauty is nothing other than having been loved. ' For to love something and beautify it is one and the same. And to propagate its love and make others see its beauty is also one and the same. That's why everything can appear beautiful, and everything beautiful, ugly; in both cases it will depend on us no less than it compels us from outside, because love has no causality and knows no fixed sequence. I'm not certain how much I've said about that, but it also explains this other impres- sion that we have so vividly on our walks: We look at people and want to share in the joy that is in their faces; but these faces also radiate a discomfiture and an almost uncanny repulsion. It emanates, too, from the houses, clothes, and everything that they have created for themselves. When I considered what the explanation for this might be, I was led to a further group of ideas, and through that back to my first notes, which were apparently so fantastic.
"A city such as ours, lovely and old, with its superb architectural stamp, which over the course of ages has arisen from changing taste, is a single great witness to the capacity for loving and the incapacity for loving long. The proud sequence of this city's structures repre- sents not only a great history but also a constant change in the direc-
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 2 2 7
tion ofthought. Looked at in this manner, the city is a mutability that has become a chain of stone and that surveys itself differently every quarter century in order to be right, in the end, for eternal ages. Its mute eloquence is that of dead lips, and the more enchantingly se- ductive it is, the more violently it must evoke, in its most profound moment of pleasing and of expropriation, blind resistance and horror. "
"It's ridiculous, but tempting," Agathe responded to that. "In that case the swallowtail coats of these dawdlers, or the funny caps offi- cers wear on their heads like pots, would have to be beautiful, for they are most decidedly loved by their owners and displayed for love, and enjoy the favor ofwomen! "
'We made a game of it too. In a kind of merry bad temper we enjoyed it to the utmost and for a while asked ourselves at every step, in opposition to life: What, for example, does the red on that dress over there mean by oeing so red? Or what are these blues and yel- lows and whites really doing on the collars of those uniforms? And why in God's name are the ladies' parasols round and not square? We asked ourselves what the Greek pediment ofthe Parliament building was after, with its legs astraddle? Either 'doing a split,' as only a dancer or a pair of compasses can, or disseminating classical beauty? If you put yourself back that way into a preliminary state in which you are not touched by feelings, and where you do not infuse things with the emotions that they complacently expect, you destroy the faith and loyalty of existence. It's like watching someone eat silently, without sharing his appetite: You suddenly perceive only swallowing movements, which look in no way enviable.
"I call that cutting oneselfofffrom the 'meaning' oflife. To clarify this, I might begin with how we unquestionably seek the firm and solid in life as urgently as a land animal that has fallen into the water. This makes us overestimate the significance of knowledge, justice, and reason, as well as the necessity of compulsion and violence. Per- haps I shouldn't say overestimate; but in any case, by far the greatest number of manifestations of our life rest on the mind's insecurity. Faith, supposition, assumption, intimation, wish, doubt, inclination, demand, prejudice, persuasion, exemplification, personal views, and other conditions of semi-certainty predominate among them. And because meaning, on this scale, lies roughly halfway between reason-
1228 • THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
ing and capriciousness, I am applying its name to the whole. If what we express with words, no matter how magnificent they are, is mostly just a meaning, an opinion, then what we express without words is always one.
"Therefore I say: Our reality, as far as it is dependent on us, is for the most part only an expression of opinion, although we ascribe every imaginable kind of importance to it. We may give our lives a specific manifestation in the stones of buildings: it is always done for the sake of a meaning we impute to it. We may kill or sacrifice our- selves: we are acting only on the basis of a supposition. I might even say that all our passions are mere suppositions; how often we err in them; we can fall into them merely out of a longing for decisiveness! And also, doing something out of 'free' will really assumes that it is merely being done at the instigation of an opinion. For some time Agathe and I have been sensitive to a certain hauntedness in the em- pirical world. Every detail in which our surroundings manifest them- selves 'speaks to us. ' It means something. It shows that it has come into being with a purpose that is by no means fleeting. It is, to be sure, only an opinion, but it appears as a conviction. It is merely a sudden idea, but acts as ifit were an unshakable will. Ages and centu- ries stand upright with legs firmly planted, but behind them a voice whispers: Rubbish! Never has the Hour Struck, never has the Time Come!
"It seems to be willfulness, but it enables me to understand what I see if I note in addition: This opposition between the self-obsession that puffs out the chest ofeverything we have created in all its splen- dor, and the secret trait of being given up and abandoned, which likewise begins with the first minute, is wholly and completely in agreement with my calling everything merely an opinion. By this means we recognize that we are in a peculiar situation. For every attribution of meaning shows the same double peculiarity: as long as it is new it makes us impatient with every opposing meaning (when red parasols are having their day, blue ones are 'impossible'-but something similar is also true of our convictions); yet it is the second peculiarity of every meaning that it is nevertheless given up with time, entirely ofits own accord and just as surely, when it is no longer new. I once said that reality does away with itself. It could now be put like this: I f man is for the most part only proclaiming meanings, he is
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 2 2 9
never entirely and enduringly proclaiming himself; but even ifhe can never completely express himself, he will try it in the most various ways, and in doing so acquires a history. So he has a history only out ofweakness, it seems to me, although the historians understandably enough consider the ability to make history a particular badge of distinction! "
Here Ulrich seemed to have embarked on a digression, but he continued in this direction: "And this is apparently the reason why I have to take note of this today: History happens, events happen- even art happens-from a lack ofhappiness. But such a lack does not lie in circumstances-in other words, in their not allowing happiness to reach us-but in our emotions. Our feeling bears the cross ofthis double aspect: it suffers no other beside itself and itself does not en- dure. By this means everything connected with it acquires the aspect of being valid for eternity, but we all nonetheless strive to abandon the creations of our feelings and change the meanings that are ex- pressed in them. For a feeling changes in the instant of its existence; it has no duration or identity; it must be consummated anew. Emo- tions are not only changeable and inconstant-as they are well taken to b e - b u t the instant they weren't, they would become so. They are not genuine when they last. They must always arise anew if they are to endure, and even in doing this they become different emotions. An anger that lasted five days would no longer be anger but be a mental disorder; it transforms itself into either forgiveness or pre- parations for revenge, and something similar goes on with all the emotions.
"Our emotions always seek a foothold in what they form and shape, and always find it for a while. But Agathe and I feel an impris- oned ghostliness in our surroundings, the reverse magnetism of two connected poles, the recall in the call, the mobility of supposedly fixed walls; we see and hear it suddenly. To have stumbled 'into a time' seems to us like an adventure, and dubious company. We find ourselves in the enchanted forest. And although we cannot encom- pass 'our own,' differently constituted feeling, indeed hardly know what it is, we suffer anxiety about it and would like to hold it fast. But how do you hold a feeling fast? How could one linger at the highest stage of rapture, if indeed there were any way of getting there at all? Basically this is the only question that preoccupies us. We have inti-
1230 • THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
mations of an emotion removed from the entropy of the other emo- tions. It stands like a miraculous, motionless shadow in the flow before us. But would it not have to arrest the world in its course in order to exist? I arrive at the conclusion that it cannot be a feeling in the same sense as the other feelings. "
And suddenly Ulrich concluded: "So I come back to the question: Is love an emotion? I think not. Love is an ecstasy. And God Himself, in order to be able to lastingly love the world and, with the love of God-the-Artist, also embrace what has already happened, must be in a constant state of ecstasy. This is the only form in which he may be imagined-"
Here he had broken off this entry.
GREA T CHANGES
Ulrich had personally escorted the General out with the intention of discovering what he might have to say in confidence. As he accompa- nied him down the stairs, he sought at first to offer a harmless expla- nation for having distanced himself from Diotima and the others, so that the real reason would remain unstated. But Stumm was not sat- isfied, and asked: 'W ere you insulted? "
"Not in the least. "
"Then you had no right to! " Stumm replied firmly.
But the changes in the Parallel Campaign, about which in his with-
drawal from the world Ulrich had not had the least inkling, now had an invigorating effect on him, as if a window had suddenly been thrown open in a stuffy hall, and he continued: "I would still like to find out what's really going on. Since you've decided to open my eyes halfway, please finish the job! "
Stumm stopped, supporting his sword on the stone of the step, and raised his glance to his friend's face; a broad gesture, which
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 2 3 1
lasted the longer in that Ulrich was standing one step higher: "Noth- ing I'd like better," he said. "That's the reason I came. "
Ulrich calmly began to interrogate him. "Who's working against Leinsdorf? Tuzzi and Diotima? Or the Ministry ofWar with you and Arnheim-? "
"My dear friend, you're stumbling through abysses! " Stumm inter- rupted him. "And blindly walking past the simple truth, the way all intellectuals seem to do! Above all, I beg you to be convinced that I have passed on Leinsdorf's wish to have you visit him and Diotima only as the most selfless favor-"
"Your officer's word of honor? "
The General's mood turned sunny. "Ifyou're going to remind me of the spartan honor of my profession, you conjure up the danger that I really will start lying to you; for there might be an order from above that would obligate me to do so. So I'd rather give you my private word of honor," he said with dignity, and continued by way of explanation: "I was even intending to confide to you that recently I have seen myself at times compelled to reflect upon such difficulties; I find myself lying often these days, with the ease of a hog wallowing in garbage. " Suddenly he turned completely toward his more ele- vated friend and added the question: "How does it happen that lying is so agreeable, assuming you have an excuse? Just speaking the truth seems absolutely unproductive and frivolous by comparison! If you could tell me that, it would be, straight out, one ofthe reasons I came to hunt you up. "
"Then tell me honestly what's going on," Ulrich asked, unyielding.
"In total honesty, and also quite simply: I don't know! " Stumm protested.
"But you have a mission! " Ulrich probed.
The General answered: "In spite of your truly unfriendly dis- appearance, I have stepped over the corpse of my self-respect to confide this mission to you. But it is a partial mission. A teeny com- mission. I am now a little wheel. A tiny thread. A little Cupid who has been left with only a single arrow in his quiver! " Ulrich observed the portly figure with the gold buttons. Stumm had definitely become more self-reliant; he did not wait for Ulrich's response but set him- self in motion toward the door, his sword clanking on every step. And as the entry hall, whose noble furnishings would otherwise have in-
1232 ·THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
stilled in him a reverence for the master ofthe house, arched up over the two of them as they came down, he said over his shoulder to this master: "It's clear you still have not quite grasped that the Parallel Campaign is now no longer a private or family undertaking but a po- litical process of international stature! "
"So now it's being run by the Foreign Minister? " Ulrich volleyed. "Apparently. "
"And consequently Tuzzi? ''
"Presumably; but I don't know," Stumm quickly added. "And of
course he acts as if he knows nothing at all! You know what he's like: these diplomats pretend to be ignorant even when they really are! "
They walked through the front door, and the carriage drove up. Suddenly Stumm turned, confidingly and comically pleading, to Ul- rich: "But that's why you should really start frequenting the house again, so that we have a quasi-confidant there! "
Ulrich smiled at this scheming, and laid his arm around the Gen- eral's shoulder; he felt reminded of Diotima. "What is she up to? '' he asked. "Does she now recognize the man in Tuzzi? ''
"What she's up to? " the General responded, vexed. "She gives the impression of being irritated. " And he added good-naturedly: "To the discriminating glance, perhaps even a moving impression. The Ministry of Education gives her hardly any other assignments than deciding whether the patriotic association Wiener Schnitzel should be allowed to march in the parade, or a group called Roast Beefwith Dumplings as well-"
Ulrich interrupted him suspiciously.
"It is not a candy jar! Friend Stumm! " Ulrich implored, seized by the disgraceful desire to chat with him about it. "If you fall in love with a saddle and harness that are too expensive for you, or a uniform or a pair of riding boots you see in a shop window: what are you in love with? "
"You're being outrageous! I don't love things like that! " the Gen- eral protested.
"Don't deny it! " Ulrich replied. "There are people who can dream day and night of a suit fabric or a piece of luggage they have seen in a shop; everyone's known something like that; and the same thing will have happened to you, at least with your first lieutenant's uniform! And you'll have to admit that you might have no use for this material or this suitcase, and that you don't even have to be in the position of being able to really desire it: so nothing is easier than loving some- thing before you know it and without knowing it. May I, moreover, remind you that you loved Diotima at first sight? "
This time, the General looked up cunningly. Agathe had in the meantime asked him to sit down and also procured a cigar for him, since her brother had forgotten his duty. Stumm, fringed with blue
1214 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
clouds, said innocently: "Since then she's become a textbook of love, and I didn't much like textbooks in school, either. But I still admire and respect this woman," he added with a dignified composure that was new to him.
Ulrich, unfortunately, didn't notice it immediately. "All those things are idols," he went on, pursuing the questions he had directed at Stumm. "And now you see where they came from. The instincts embedded in our nature need only a minimum of external motiva- tion and justification; they are enormous machines set in motion by a tiny switch. But they equip the object they are applied to with only as many ideas that can bear investigation as perhaps correspond to the flickering oflight and shadow in the light ofan emergency lamp-"
"Stop! " Stumm begged from his cloud ofsmoke. 'What is 'object'? Are you talking about the boots and that suitcase again? "
''I'm speaking of passion. Of longing for Diotima, just as much as longing for a forbidden cigarette. I want to make clear to you that every emotional relationship had the groundwork laid for it by pre- liminary perceptions and ideas that belong to reality; but that such a relationship also immediately conjures up perceptions and ideas that it fits out in its own way. In short, affect sets up the object the way it needs it to be, indeed it creates it so that the affect finally applies to an object that, having come about in such a way, is no longer recog- nizable. But affect isn't destined for knowledge, either, but really for passion! This object that is born of passion and hovers in it," Ulrich concluded, returning to his starting point, "is of course something different from the object on which it is outwardly fastened and which it can reach out to grasp, and this is therefore also true oflove. 'I love you' is mistaken; for 'you,' this person who has evoked the passion and whom you can seize in your arms, is the one you think you love; the person evoked by passion, this wildly religious invention, is the one you really love, but it is a different person. "
"Ustening to you"-Agathe interrupted her brother with a re- proach that betrayed her inner sympathies-"you might think you don't really love the real person, but really love an unreal person! "
"That's precisely what I meant to say, and I've also heard you say- ing much the same. "
"But in reality both are ultimately one person! "
"That's exactly the major complication, that the hovering image of
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 2 1 5
the person you love has to be represented in every outward connec- tion by the person himself and is indeed one and the same. That's what leads to all the confusions that give the simple business of love such an excitingly ghostly quality! "
"But perhaps it's only love that makes the real person entirely real? Perhaps he's not complete before then? ''
"But the boot or the suitcase you dream about is in reality none other than the one you could actually buy! "
"Perhaps the suitcase only becomes completely real ifyou love it! "
"In a word, we come to the question of what is real. Love's old question! " Ulrich exclaimed impatiently, yet somehow satisfied.
"Oh, let's forget the suitcase! " To the astonishment of both, it was the General's voice that interrupted their sparring. Stumm had com- fortably squeezed one leg over the other, which, once achieved, lent him great security. "Let's stay with the person," he went on, and praised Ulrich: "So far you've said some things terrifically well! Peo- ple always believe that nothing is easier than loving each other, and then you have to remind them every day: 'Dearest, it's not as easy as it is for the apple woman! ' " In explanation of this more military than civilian expression, he turned politely to Agathe. "The 'apple woman,' dear lady, is an army expression for when someone thinks something is easier than it is: in higher mathematics, for example, when you're doing short division so short that, willy-nilly, you come up with a false result! Then the appple woman is held up to you, and it's applied the same way in other places as well, where an ordinary person might just say: that's not so simple! " Now he turned back to Ulrich and continued: "Your doctrine of the two persons interests me a good deal, because I'm also always telling people that you can love people only in two parts: in theory, or, as you put it, as a hovering person, is the way you ought to love someone, as I see it; but in prac- tice, you have to treat a person strictly and, in the last analysis, harshly too! That's the way it is between man and woman, and that's the way it is in life in general! The pacifists, for instance, with their love that has no soles on its shoes, haven't the slightest notion of this; a lieutenant knows ten times as much about love as these dilettantes! "
Through his earnestness, through his carefully weighed manner of speaking, and not least through the boldness with which, despite
1216 • THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
Agathe's presence, he had condemned woman to obedience, Stumm von Bordwehr gave the impression of a man to whom something im- portant had happened and who had striven, not without success, to master it. But Ulrich still had not grasped this, and proposed: 'Well, you decide which person is truly worth loving and which has the walk-on part! "
"That's too deep for me! " Stumm stated calmly, and, inhaling from his cigar, added with the same composure: "It's a pleasure to hear again how well you speak; but on the whole you speak in such a way that one really must ask oneself whether it's your only occupation. I must confess that after you disappeared I expected to find you, God knows, busy with more important matters! "
"Stumm, this is important! " Ulrich exclaimed. "Because at least halfthe history ofthe world is a love story! Ofcourse you have to take all the varieties of love together! "
The General nodded his resistance. "That may well be. " He bar- ricaded himself behind the busyness of cutting and lighting a fresh cigar, and grumbled: "But then the other halfis a story ofanger. And one shouldn't underestimate anger! I have been a specialist in love for some time, and I know! "
Now at last Ulrich understood that his friend had changed and, curious, asked him to tell what had befallen him.
Stumm von Bordwehr looked at him f¢ a while without answer- ing, then looked at Agathe, and finally replied in a way that made it impossible to distinguish whether he was hesitating from irritation or enjoyment: "Oh, it will hardly seem worth mentioning in comparison with your occupations. Just one thing has happened: the Parallel Campaign has found a goal! "
This news about something to which so much sympathy, even if counterfeit, had been accorded would have broken through even a fully guarded state of seclusion, and when Stumm saw the effect he had achieved he was reconciled with fortune, and found again for quite a while his old, guileless joy in spreading news. "Ifyou'd rather, I could just as well say: the Parallel Campaign has come to an end! " he offered obligingly.
It had happened quite incidentally: 'W e all of us had got so used to nothing happening, while thinking that something ought to hap- pen," Stumm related. "And then all of a sudden, instead of a new
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 2 1 7
proposal, someone brought the news that this coming autumn a Con- gress for World Peace is to meet, and here in Austria! "
"That's odd! " Ulrich said.
"What's odd? We didn't know the least thing about it! "
"That's just what I mean. "
'Well, there you're not entirely off the track," Stumm von B9rd-
wehr agreed. "It's even being asserted that the news was a plant from abroad. Leinsdorf and Tuzzi went so far as to suspect that it might be a Russian plot against our patriotic campaign, ifnot ultimately even a Gennan plot. For you must consider that we have four years before we have to be ready, so it's entirely possible that someone wants to rush us into something we hadn't planned. Beyond that, the different versions part company; but it's no longer possible to find out what the truth of the matter is, although of course we immediately wrote off everywhere to learn more. Remarkably enough, it seems that people all over already knew about this pacifistic Congress-I assure you: in the whole world! And private individuals as well as newspaper and government offices! But it was assumed, or bandied about, that it emanated from us and was part of our great world campaign, and people were merely surprised because they couldn't get any kind of rational response from us to their questions and queries. Maybe someone was playing a joke on us; Tuzzi was discreetly able to get hold of a few invitations to this Peace Congress; the signatures were quite naive forgeries, but the letter paper and the style were good as gold! Of course we then called in the police, who quickly discovered that the whole manner of execution pointed to a domestic origin, and in the course of this it emerged that there really are people here who would like to convene a World Peace Congress here in the autumn- because some woman who has written a pacifist novel is going to cel- ebrate her umpteenth birthday or, in case she's died, would have: But it quickly became clear that these people quite evidently had not the least connection with disseminating the material that was aimed at us, and so the origin of the affair has remained in the dark," Stumm said resignedly, but with the satisfaction that every well-told tale provides. The effortful exposition of the difficulties had drawn shadows over his face, but now the sun of his smile burst through this perplexity, and with a trace of scorn that was as unconstrained as it was candid, he added: 'What's most remarkable is that everyone
1218 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
agreed that there should be such a congress, or at least no one wanted to say no! And now I ask you: what are we to do, especially since we have already announced that we are undertaking something meant to serve as a model for the whole world and have constantly been spreading the slogan 'Action! ' around? For two weeks we've simply had to work like savages, so that retroactively at least it looks the way it would have looked prospectively, so to speak, under other circumstances. And so we showed ourselves equal to the organi- zational superiority of the Prussians-assuming that it was the Prussians! We're now calling it a preliminary celebration. The gov- ernment is keeping an eye on the political part, and those of us in the campaign are working more on the ceremonial and cultural-human aspects, because that is simply too burdensome for a ministry-"
"But what a strange story it is! " Ulrich asserted seriously, although he had to laugh at this development.
"A real accident of history," the General said with satisfaction. "Such mystifications have often been important. "
"And Diotima? " Ulrich inquired cautiously.
'Well, she has speedily had to jettison Amor and Psyche and is now, together with a painter, designing the parade of regional cos- tumes. It will be called: 'The clans of Austria and Hungary pay hom- age to internal and external peace,' " Stumm reported, and now turned pleadingly toward Agathe as he noticed that she, too, was parting her lips to smile. "I entreat you, dear lady, please don't say anything against it, and don't permit any objection to it either! " he begged. "For the parade of regional costumes, and apparently a mili- tary parade, are all that is definite so far about the festivities. The Tyrolean militia will march down the Ringstrasse, because they al- ways look picturesque with their green suspenders, the rooster feath- ers in their hats, and their long beards; and then the beers and wines of the Monarchy are to pay tribute to the beers and wines of the rest of the world. But even here there is still no unanimity on whether, for instance, only Austro-Hungarian beers and wines shall pay trib- ute to those of the rest of the world, which would allow the charming Austrian character to stand out more hospitably by renouncing a trib- ute from the other side, or whether the foreign beers and wines should be allowed to march along as well so that they can pay hom- age to ours, and whether they have to pay customs duties on them or
From the Posthmrwus Papers · 1 2 19
not. At any rate, one thing is certain: that there never has been and never can be a parade in this country without people in Old Ger- manic costumes sitting on carts with casks and on beer wagons drawn by horses; and I just can't imagine what it must have been like in the actual Middle Ages, when the Germanic costumes weren't yet old and wouldn't even have looked any older than a tuxedo does today! "
But after this question had been sufficiently appreciated, Ulrich asked a more delicate one. ''I'd like to know what our non-German nationalities will say to the whole thing! "
"That's simple: they'll be in the parade! " Stumm assured him cheerfully. "Because if they won't, we'll commandeer a regiment of Bohemian dragoons into the parade and make Hussite warriors out of them, and we'll drag in a regiment of Ulans as the Polish liberators of Vienna from the Turks. "
"And what does Leinsdorf say to these plans? '' Ulrich asked hesitantly.
Stumm placed his crossed leg beside the other and turned serious. "He's not exactly delighted," he conceded, relating that Count Leinsdorf never used the word "parade" but, in the most stubborn way possible, insisted on calling it a "demonstration. " "He's appar- ently still thinking of the demonstrations he experienced," Ulrich said, and Stumm agreed. "He has often said to me," he reported, " Whoever brings the masses into the street is taking a heavy respon- sibility upon himself, General! ' As if I could do anything for or against it! But you should also know that for some time we've been getting together fairly often, he and I. . . . "
Stumm paused, as if he wanted to leave space for a question, but when neither Agathe nor Ulrich asked it, he went on cautiously: "You see, His Excellency ran into another demonstration. Quite recently, on a trip, he was nearly beaten up in B - - by the Czechs as well as the Germans. "
"But why? " Agathe exclaimed, intrigued, and Ulrich, too, showed his curiosity.
"Because he is known as the bringer of peace! " Stumm pro- claimed. "Loving peace and people is not so simple in reality-"
"Like with the apple woman! " Agathe broke in, laughing.
"I really wanted to say, like with a candy jar," Stumm corrected her, adding to this discreet reproach for Ulrich the observation on
1220 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
Leinsdorf: "Still, a man like him, once he has made up his mind, will totally and completely exercise the office he has been given. "
"What office? " Ulrich asked.
"Every office! " the General stated. "On the festival reviewing stand he will sit beside the Emperor, only in the event, of course, that His Majesty sits on the reviewing stand; and, moreover, he is drafting the address ofhomage from our peoples, which he will hand to the All-Highest Ruler. But even ifthat should be all for the time being, I'm convinced it won't stay that way, because if he doesn't have any other worries, he creates some: such an active nature! By the way, he would like to speak with you," Stumm injected tenta- tively. ,
Ulrich seemed not to have heard this, but had become alert. "Leinsdorfis not 'given' an office! " he said mistrustfully. "He's been the knob on top of the flagstaff all his life! "
'Well," the General said reservedly. "I really didn't mean to say anything; of course he is and always was a high aristocrat. But look, for example, not long ago Tuzzi took me aside and said to me confi- dentially: 'General! If a man brushes past me in a dark alley, I step aside; but if in the same situation he asks me in a friendly way what time it is, then I not only reach for my watch but grope for my gun too! ' What do you say to that? ''
'What should I say to that? I don't see the connection. "
"That's just the government's caution," Stumm explained. "In re- lation to a World Peace Congress it thinks of all the possibilities, while Leinsdorfhas always been one to have his own ideas. "
Ulrich suddenly understood. "So in a word: Leinsdorf is to be removed from leadership because people are afraid ofhim? "
The General did not answer this directly. "He asks you through me to please resume your friendly relations with your cousin Tuzzi, in order to find out what's going on. I'm saying it straight out; he, of course, expressed it in a more reserved fashion," Stumm reported. And after a brief hesitation, he added by way of excuse: "They're not telling him everything! But then that's the habit of ministries: we don't tell each other everything among ourselves either! "
'What relationship did my brother really have with our cousin? " Agathe wanted to know.
Stumm, snared in the friendly delusion that he was pleasantly jok-
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 2 2 1
ing, unsuspectingly assured her: "He's one of her secret loves! " add- ing immediately to encourage Ulrich: "I have no idea what happened between you, but she certainly regrets it! She says that you are such an indispensable bad patriot that all the enemies of the Fatherland, whom we are trying to make feel at home here, must really love you. Isn't that nice ofher? But ofcourse she can't take the first step after you withdrew so willfully! "
From then on the leave-taking became rather monosyllabic, and Stumm was mightily oppressed at such a dim sunset after he had stood at the zenith.
Thus it was that Ulrich and Agathe got to hear something that brightened their faces again and also brought a friendly blush to the General's cheeks. 'We've got rid ofFeuermaul! " he reported, happy that he had remembered it in time and adding, full of scorn for that poet's love of mankind: "In any event, it's become meaningless. " Even the "nauseating'' resolution from the last session, that no one should be forced to die for other people's ideas, whereas on the other hand everyone should die for his own-even this resolution, which would fundamentally ensure peace, had, as was now apparent, been dropped, along with everything belonging to the past, and at the General's instigation was no longer even on the agenda. 'We sup- pressed a journal that printed it; no one believes such exaggerated rumors anymore! " Stumm added to this news, which seemed not quite clear in view ofthe preparations under way for a pacifistic con- gress. Agathe then inteivened a little on behalf of the young people, and even Ulrich finally reminded his friend that the incident had not been Feuermaul's fault. Stumm made no difficulties about this, and admitted that Feuermaul, whom he had met at the house of his pa- troness, was a charming person. "So full of sympathy with every- thing! And so spontaneously, absolutely, really good! " he exclaimed appreciatively.
"But then he would most certainly be an estimable addition to this Congress! " Ulrich again threw in.
But Stumm, who had meanwhile been making serious prepara- tions to leave, shook his head animatedly. "No! I can't explain so briefly what's involved," he said resolutely, "but this Congress ought not to be blown out ofproportion! "
1222
so
AGA THE FINDS ULRICH'S DIARY
While Ulrich was personally escorting the parting guest to the door, Agathe, defying an inner self-reproach, carried out something she had decided on with lightning speed. Even before Stumm's intru- sion, and again a second time in his presence, her eye had been caught by a pile of loose papers lying in one of the drawers of the desk, on both occasions through a suppressed motion of her brother's, which had given the impression that he would have liked to refer to these papers during the conversation but could not make up his mind-indeed, deliberately refrained from doing so. Her inti- macy with him had allowed her to sense this more than guess it on any substantive basis, and in the same way she also understood that this concealment must be connected with the two of them. So when he was barely out of the room she opened the drawer, doing so, whether it was justified or not, with that feeling which furthers quick decisions and does not admit moral scruples. But the notes that she took up in her hands, with many things crossed out, loosely con- nected and not always easily decipherable, immediately imposed a slower tempo on her passionate curiosity.
"Is love an emotion? This question may at first glance seem non- sensical, since it appears so certain that the entire nature oflove is a process of feeling; the correct answer is the more surprising: for emotion is really the least part oflove! Looked at merely as emotion, love is hardly as intense and overwhelming, and in any event not as strongly marked, as a toothache. "
The second, equally odd note ran: "A man may love his dog and his wife. A child may love a dog more dearly than a man his wife. One person loves his profession, another politics. Mostly, we seem to love general conditions; I mean-ifwe don't happen to hate them-their inscrutable way of working in concert, which I might call their 'horse-stall feeling': we are contentedly at home in our life the way a horse is in its stall!
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 2 2 3
"But what does it mean to bring all these things that are so dispar- ate together under the same word, 'love'?
A primordial idea has set- tled in my mind, alongside doubt and derision: Everything in the world is love! Love is the gentle, divine nature of the world, covered by ashes but inextinguishable! I wouldn't know how to express what I understand by 'nature'; but if I abandon myself to the idea as a whole without worrying about it, I feel it with a remarkably natural cer- tainty. At least at moments. "
Agathe blushed, for the following entries began with her name. "Agathe once showed me places in the Bible; I still vaguely remem- ber how they ran and have decided to write them down: 'Everything that happens in love happens in God, for God is love. ' And a second says: 'Love is from God, and whosoever loves God is born of God. ' Both these places stand in obvious contradiction to each other: in one, love comes from God; in the other, it is God!
"Therefore the attempts to express the relationship of 'love' to the world seem fraught with difficulty even for the enlightened person; how should the uninstructed understanding not fail to grasp it? That I called love the nature of the world was nothing but an excuse; it leaves the choice entirely open to say that the pen and inkpot I am writing with consist oflove in the moral realm of truth, or in the em- pirical realm of reality. But then how in reality? Would they then consist of love or would they be its consequences, the embodying phenomenon or intimation? Are they already themselves love, or is love only what they would be in their totality? Are they love by na- ture, or are we talking about a supranatural reality? And what about this 'in truth'? Is it a truth for the more heightened understanding, or for the blessedly ignorant? Is it the truth of thinking, or an incom- plete symbolic connection that will reveal its meaning completely only in the universality of mental events assembled around God? What of this have I expressed? More or less everything and nothing!
"I could also just as well have said about love that it is divine rea- son, the Neoplatonic logos. Or just as well something else: Love is the lap ofthe world: the gentle lap ofunselfconscious happening. Or, again differently: 0 sea oflove, about which only the drowning man, not the ship-borne traveler, knows! All these allusive exclamations can transmit their meaning only because one is as untrustworthy as another.
1224 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
"Most honest is the feeling: how tiny the earth is in space, and how man, mere nothing compared with the merest child, is thrown on the resources of love! But that is nothing more than the naked cry for love, without a trace of an answer!
"Yet I might perhaps speak in this way without exaggerating my words into emptiness: There is a condition in the world the sight of which is barred to us, but that things sometimes expose here or there when we fmd ourselves in a state that is excited in a particular way. And only in this state do we glimpse that things are 'made of love. ' And only in it, too, do we grasp what it signifies. And only this state is then real, and we would only then be true.
"That would be a description I would not have to retract in any part. But then, I also have nothing to add to it! "
Agathe was astonished. In these secret entries Ulrich was holding himself back much less than usual. And although she understood that he allowed himself to do this, even for himself, only under the reservation of secrecy, she still imagined she could see him before her, stirred and irresolute, in the act of opening his arms toward something.
The notes went on: "That, too, is a notion reason itself might al- most chance upon, although to be sure only reason that has to some extent managed to get out of its passive position: imagining the All- Loving as the Eternal Artist. He loves creation as long as he is creat- ing it, but his love turns away from the finished portions. For the artist must also love what is most hateful in order to shape it, but what he has already shaped, even if it is good, cools him off; it be- comes so bereft of love that he hardly still understands himself in it, and the moments when his love returns to delight in what it has done are rare and unpredictable. And so one could also think: What lords over us loves what it creates; but this love approaches and withdraws from the finished part of creation in a long ebbing flow and a short returning swell. This idea fits the fact that souls and things of the world are like dead people who are sometimes reawakened for seconds. "
Then came a few other quick entries, which looked as ifthey were only tentative.
"A lion under the morning sky! A unicorn in the moonlight! You have the choice between love's fire and rifle fire. Therefore there are
From the Posthunwus Papers · 1 2 2 5
at least two basic conditions: love and violence. And without doubt it is violence, not love, that keeps the world moving and from going to sleep!
"Here the assumption might also, of course, be woven in that the world has become sinful. Before, love and paradise. That means: the world as it is, sin! The possible world, love!
"Another dubious question: The philosophers imagine God as a philosopher, as pure spirit; wouldn't it make sense, then, for officers to imagine Him as an officer? But I, a mathematician, imagine the divine being as love? How did I arrive at that?
"And how are we to participate without more ado in one of the Eternal Artist's most intimate experiences? ''
The writing broke off. But then Agathe's face was again suffused with a blush when, without raising her eyes, she took up the next page and read on:
"Lately Agathe and I have frequently had a remarkable experi- ence! When we undertook our expeditions into town. When the weather is especially fine the world looks quite cheerful and harmo- nious, so that you really don't pay attention to how different all its component parts are, according to their age and nature. Everything stands and moves with the greatest naturalness. And yet, remarkably, there is in such an apparently incontrovertible condition of the pres- ent something that leads into a desert; something like an unsuccess- ful proposal of love, or some similar exposure, the moment one does not unreservedly participate in it.
"Along our way we find ourselves walking through the narrow vio- let-blue streets of the city, which above, where they open to the light, bum like fire. Or we step out of this tactile blue into a square over which the sun freely pours its light; then the houses around the square stand there looking taken back and, as it were, placed against the wall, but no less expressively, and as if someone had scratched them with the fine lines of an engraving tool, lines that make every- thing too distinct. And at such a moment we do not know whether all this self-fulfilled beauty excites us profoundly or has nothing at all to do with us. Both are the case. This beauty stands on a razor's edge between desire and grief.
"But does not the sight of beauty always have this effect of bright- ening the griefofordinary life and darkening its gaiety? It seems that
1226 ·THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
beauty belongs to a world whose depths hold neither grief nor gaiety. Perhaps in that world even beauty itself does not exist, but merely some kind of almost indescribable, cheerful gra~ty, and its name arises only through the refraction of its nameless splendor in our or- dinary atmosphere. We are both seeking this world, Agathe and I, without yet being able to make up our minds; we move along its bor- ders and cautiously enjoy the profound emanation at those points where it is still mingled with the powerful lights of every day and is almost invisible! "
It seemed as if Ulrich, through his sudden idea of speaking of an Eternal Artist, had been led to bring the question of beauty into his observations, especially since, for its part, beauty also expressed the oversensitivity that had arisen between brother and sister. But at the same time he had changed his manner of thinking. In this new se- quence ofentries he proceeded no longer from his dominant ideas as they faded down to the vanishing point of his experiences, but from the foreground, which was clearer but, in a few places that he noted, really too clear, and again almost permeable by the background.
Thus Ulrich went on. "I said to Agathe: 'Apparently beauty is nothing other than having been loved. ' For to love something and beautify it is one and the same. And to propagate its love and make others see its beauty is also one and the same. That's why everything can appear beautiful, and everything beautiful, ugly; in both cases it will depend on us no less than it compels us from outside, because love has no causality and knows no fixed sequence. I'm not certain how much I've said about that, but it also explains this other impres- sion that we have so vividly on our walks: We look at people and want to share in the joy that is in their faces; but these faces also radiate a discomfiture and an almost uncanny repulsion. It emanates, too, from the houses, clothes, and everything that they have created for themselves. When I considered what the explanation for this might be, I was led to a further group of ideas, and through that back to my first notes, which were apparently so fantastic.
"A city such as ours, lovely and old, with its superb architectural stamp, which over the course of ages has arisen from changing taste, is a single great witness to the capacity for loving and the incapacity for loving long. The proud sequence of this city's structures repre- sents not only a great history but also a constant change in the direc-
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 2 2 7
tion ofthought. Looked at in this manner, the city is a mutability that has become a chain of stone and that surveys itself differently every quarter century in order to be right, in the end, for eternal ages. Its mute eloquence is that of dead lips, and the more enchantingly se- ductive it is, the more violently it must evoke, in its most profound moment of pleasing and of expropriation, blind resistance and horror. "
"It's ridiculous, but tempting," Agathe responded to that. "In that case the swallowtail coats of these dawdlers, or the funny caps offi- cers wear on their heads like pots, would have to be beautiful, for they are most decidedly loved by their owners and displayed for love, and enjoy the favor ofwomen! "
'We made a game of it too. In a kind of merry bad temper we enjoyed it to the utmost and for a while asked ourselves at every step, in opposition to life: What, for example, does the red on that dress over there mean by oeing so red? Or what are these blues and yel- lows and whites really doing on the collars of those uniforms? And why in God's name are the ladies' parasols round and not square? We asked ourselves what the Greek pediment ofthe Parliament building was after, with its legs astraddle? Either 'doing a split,' as only a dancer or a pair of compasses can, or disseminating classical beauty? If you put yourself back that way into a preliminary state in which you are not touched by feelings, and where you do not infuse things with the emotions that they complacently expect, you destroy the faith and loyalty of existence. It's like watching someone eat silently, without sharing his appetite: You suddenly perceive only swallowing movements, which look in no way enviable.
"I call that cutting oneselfofffrom the 'meaning' oflife. To clarify this, I might begin with how we unquestionably seek the firm and solid in life as urgently as a land animal that has fallen into the water. This makes us overestimate the significance of knowledge, justice, and reason, as well as the necessity of compulsion and violence. Per- haps I shouldn't say overestimate; but in any case, by far the greatest number of manifestations of our life rest on the mind's insecurity. Faith, supposition, assumption, intimation, wish, doubt, inclination, demand, prejudice, persuasion, exemplification, personal views, and other conditions of semi-certainty predominate among them. And because meaning, on this scale, lies roughly halfway between reason-
1228 • THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
ing and capriciousness, I am applying its name to the whole. If what we express with words, no matter how magnificent they are, is mostly just a meaning, an opinion, then what we express without words is always one.
"Therefore I say: Our reality, as far as it is dependent on us, is for the most part only an expression of opinion, although we ascribe every imaginable kind of importance to it. We may give our lives a specific manifestation in the stones of buildings: it is always done for the sake of a meaning we impute to it. We may kill or sacrifice our- selves: we are acting only on the basis of a supposition. I might even say that all our passions are mere suppositions; how often we err in them; we can fall into them merely out of a longing for decisiveness! And also, doing something out of 'free' will really assumes that it is merely being done at the instigation of an opinion. For some time Agathe and I have been sensitive to a certain hauntedness in the em- pirical world. Every detail in which our surroundings manifest them- selves 'speaks to us. ' It means something. It shows that it has come into being with a purpose that is by no means fleeting. It is, to be sure, only an opinion, but it appears as a conviction. It is merely a sudden idea, but acts as ifit were an unshakable will. Ages and centu- ries stand upright with legs firmly planted, but behind them a voice whispers: Rubbish! Never has the Hour Struck, never has the Time Come!
"It seems to be willfulness, but it enables me to understand what I see if I note in addition: This opposition between the self-obsession that puffs out the chest ofeverything we have created in all its splen- dor, and the secret trait of being given up and abandoned, which likewise begins with the first minute, is wholly and completely in agreement with my calling everything merely an opinion. By this means we recognize that we are in a peculiar situation. For every attribution of meaning shows the same double peculiarity: as long as it is new it makes us impatient with every opposing meaning (when red parasols are having their day, blue ones are 'impossible'-but something similar is also true of our convictions); yet it is the second peculiarity of every meaning that it is nevertheless given up with time, entirely ofits own accord and just as surely, when it is no longer new. I once said that reality does away with itself. It could now be put like this: I f man is for the most part only proclaiming meanings, he is
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 2 2 9
never entirely and enduringly proclaiming himself; but even ifhe can never completely express himself, he will try it in the most various ways, and in doing so acquires a history. So he has a history only out ofweakness, it seems to me, although the historians understandably enough consider the ability to make history a particular badge of distinction! "
Here Ulrich seemed to have embarked on a digression, but he continued in this direction: "And this is apparently the reason why I have to take note of this today: History happens, events happen- even art happens-from a lack ofhappiness. But such a lack does not lie in circumstances-in other words, in their not allowing happiness to reach us-but in our emotions. Our feeling bears the cross ofthis double aspect: it suffers no other beside itself and itself does not en- dure. By this means everything connected with it acquires the aspect of being valid for eternity, but we all nonetheless strive to abandon the creations of our feelings and change the meanings that are ex- pressed in them. For a feeling changes in the instant of its existence; it has no duration or identity; it must be consummated anew. Emo- tions are not only changeable and inconstant-as they are well taken to b e - b u t the instant they weren't, they would become so. They are not genuine when they last. They must always arise anew if they are to endure, and even in doing this they become different emotions. An anger that lasted five days would no longer be anger but be a mental disorder; it transforms itself into either forgiveness or pre- parations for revenge, and something similar goes on with all the emotions.
"Our emotions always seek a foothold in what they form and shape, and always find it for a while. But Agathe and I feel an impris- oned ghostliness in our surroundings, the reverse magnetism of two connected poles, the recall in the call, the mobility of supposedly fixed walls; we see and hear it suddenly. To have stumbled 'into a time' seems to us like an adventure, and dubious company. We find ourselves in the enchanted forest. And although we cannot encom- pass 'our own,' differently constituted feeling, indeed hardly know what it is, we suffer anxiety about it and would like to hold it fast. But how do you hold a feeling fast? How could one linger at the highest stage of rapture, if indeed there were any way of getting there at all? Basically this is the only question that preoccupies us. We have inti-
1230 • THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
mations of an emotion removed from the entropy of the other emo- tions. It stands like a miraculous, motionless shadow in the flow before us. But would it not have to arrest the world in its course in order to exist? I arrive at the conclusion that it cannot be a feeling in the same sense as the other feelings. "
And suddenly Ulrich concluded: "So I come back to the question: Is love an emotion? I think not. Love is an ecstasy. And God Himself, in order to be able to lastingly love the world and, with the love of God-the-Artist, also embrace what has already happened, must be in a constant state of ecstasy. This is the only form in which he may be imagined-"
Here he had broken off this entry.
GREA T CHANGES
Ulrich had personally escorted the General out with the intention of discovering what he might have to say in confidence. As he accompa- nied him down the stairs, he sought at first to offer a harmless expla- nation for having distanced himself from Diotima and the others, so that the real reason would remain unstated. But Stumm was not sat- isfied, and asked: 'W ere you insulted? "
"Not in the least. "
"Then you had no right to! " Stumm replied firmly.
But the changes in the Parallel Campaign, about which in his with-
drawal from the world Ulrich had not had the least inkling, now had an invigorating effect on him, as if a window had suddenly been thrown open in a stuffy hall, and he continued: "I would still like to find out what's really going on. Since you've decided to open my eyes halfway, please finish the job! "
Stumm stopped, supporting his sword on the stone of the step, and raised his glance to his friend's face; a broad gesture, which
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 2 3 1
lasted the longer in that Ulrich was standing one step higher: "Noth- ing I'd like better," he said. "That's the reason I came. "
Ulrich calmly began to interrogate him. "Who's working against Leinsdorf? Tuzzi and Diotima? Or the Ministry ofWar with you and Arnheim-? "
"My dear friend, you're stumbling through abysses! " Stumm inter- rupted him. "And blindly walking past the simple truth, the way all intellectuals seem to do! Above all, I beg you to be convinced that I have passed on Leinsdorf's wish to have you visit him and Diotima only as the most selfless favor-"
"Your officer's word of honor? "
The General's mood turned sunny. "Ifyou're going to remind me of the spartan honor of my profession, you conjure up the danger that I really will start lying to you; for there might be an order from above that would obligate me to do so. So I'd rather give you my private word of honor," he said with dignity, and continued by way of explanation: "I was even intending to confide to you that recently I have seen myself at times compelled to reflect upon such difficulties; I find myself lying often these days, with the ease of a hog wallowing in garbage. " Suddenly he turned completely toward his more ele- vated friend and added the question: "How does it happen that lying is so agreeable, assuming you have an excuse? Just speaking the truth seems absolutely unproductive and frivolous by comparison! If you could tell me that, it would be, straight out, one ofthe reasons I came to hunt you up. "
"Then tell me honestly what's going on," Ulrich asked, unyielding.
"In total honesty, and also quite simply: I don't know! " Stumm protested.
"But you have a mission! " Ulrich probed.
The General answered: "In spite of your truly unfriendly dis- appearance, I have stepped over the corpse of my self-respect to confide this mission to you. But it is a partial mission. A teeny com- mission. I am now a little wheel. A tiny thread. A little Cupid who has been left with only a single arrow in his quiver! " Ulrich observed the portly figure with the gold buttons. Stumm had definitely become more self-reliant; he did not wait for Ulrich's response but set him- self in motion toward the door, his sword clanking on every step. And as the entry hall, whose noble furnishings would otherwise have in-
1232 ·THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
stilled in him a reverence for the master ofthe house, arched up over the two of them as they came down, he said over his shoulder to this master: "It's clear you still have not quite grasped that the Parallel Campaign is now no longer a private or family undertaking but a po- litical process of international stature! "
"So now it's being run by the Foreign Minister? " Ulrich volleyed. "Apparently. "
"And consequently Tuzzi? ''
"Presumably; but I don't know," Stumm quickly added. "And of
course he acts as if he knows nothing at all! You know what he's like: these diplomats pretend to be ignorant even when they really are! "
They walked through the front door, and the carriage drove up. Suddenly Stumm turned, confidingly and comically pleading, to Ul- rich: "But that's why you should really start frequenting the house again, so that we have a quasi-confidant there! "
Ulrich smiled at this scheming, and laid his arm around the Gen- eral's shoulder; he felt reminded of Diotima. "What is she up to? '' he asked. "Does she now recognize the man in Tuzzi? ''
"What she's up to? " the General responded, vexed. "She gives the impression of being irritated. " And he added good-naturedly: "To the discriminating glance, perhaps even a moving impression. The Ministry of Education gives her hardly any other assignments than deciding whether the patriotic association Wiener Schnitzel should be allowed to march in the parade, or a group called Roast Beefwith Dumplings as well-"
Ulrich interrupted him suspiciously.
