No More Learning

Double and triple ellipsis points in the text reproduce those in the German edition.
The only major departure from the 1978 German edition in how this material appears has to do with the ordering of the contents of Part 2. The German edition presents this material in reverse chro- nology, beginning with what Musil was working on at his death and proceeding backward to the earliest sketches. It seemed to me that since Musil was thinking about this material experimentally and not chronologically, such an ordering is not necessarily indicated, espe- cially in the absence of the author's ultimate intentions about the work as a whole.
A further problem was that in chronological order, whether for- ward or backward, the random mixture of elements in Part 2 of "From the Posthumous Papers" would put off the general reader, for whom this edition is intended. That would be unfortunate, since these pages contain some of Musil's most powerful and evocative writing. Rearranging the contents of Part 2 according to character groupings, narrative sections, and Musil's notes about the novel makes this material much more accessible, and given the author's experimental attitude toward these fragments this rearrangement seems not unreasonable. Readers who wish to see this material pre- sented in roughly chronological reverse order-some of it can be dated only approximately-should consult the German edition.
The original choice of material to include here was made in exten- sive consultation with Professor Philip Payne of the University of Lancaster, England, to whom I would like to express my apprecia- tion. I owe a profound debt of gratitude to Professor Adolf Frise, editor of the German edition, for his constant friendly encourage-
Preface · xv
xvi · Preface
ment and advice. Without his work, and without the unflagging pa- tience and skill with which he and the various Musil research teams in Vienna, Klagenfurt, Saarbriicken, and Reading deciphered Musil's difficult manuscripts, no Musil edition would have been pos- sible. And without the determination, persistence, fine German, and ear and eye for quality of Carol Janeway, Sophie Wilkins's and my editor at Knopf, this translation would never have come to fruition.
Burton Pike
PART 1
Musil had given chapters 39 through 58 to the printer. He re- vised them in galley proofs in 1937-1938, then withdrew them to work on themfurther. They were intended to continue "Into the Millennium," of 1932-1933, but not conclude it.
39
AFTER THE ENCOUNTER
As the man who had entered Agathe's life at the poet's grave, Profes- sor August Lindner, climbed down toward the valley, what he saw opening before him were visions of salvation.
I f she had looked around at him after they parted she would have been struck by the man's ramrod-stiff walk dancing down the stony path, for it was a peculiarly cheerful, assertive, and yet nervous walk. Lindner carried his hat in one hand and occasionally passed the other hand through his hair, so free and happy did he feel.
"How few people," he said to himself, "have a truly empathic soul! " He depicted to himself a soul able to immerse itself com- pletely in a fellow human being, feeling his inmost sorrows and low- ering itself to his innermost weaknesses. "What a prospect! " he exclaimed to himself. ''What a miraculous proximity of divine mercy, what consolation, and what a day for celebration! " But then he re- called how few people were even able to listen attentively to their fellow creatures; for he was one of those right-minded people who descend from the unimportant to the trivial without noticing the dif- ference. "How rarely, for instance, is the question 'How are you? ' meant seriously," he thought. "You need only answer in detail how you really feel, and soon enough you find yourself looking into a bored and distracted face! "
Well, he had not been guilty of this error! According to his princi- ples the particular and indispensable doctrine of health for the
1136 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
strong was to protect the weak; without such a benevolent, self-im- posed limitation, the strong were all too easily susceptible to brutal- ity; and culture, too, needed its acts of charity against the dangers inherent within itself. "Whoever tries to tell us what 'universal edu- cation' is supposed to be," he affirmed for himself through inner ex- clamation, mightily refreshed by a sudden lightning bolt loosed against his fellow pedagogue Hagauer, "should truly first be advised: experience what another person feels like! Knowing through empa- thy means a thousand times more than knowing through books! " He was evidently giving vent to an old difference of opinion, aimed on the one hand at the liberal concept of education and on the other at the wife of his professional brother, for Undner's glasses gazed around like two shields of a doubly potent warrior. He had been self- conscious in Agathe's presence, but if she were to see him now he would have seemed to her like a commander, but a commander of troops that were by no means frivolous. For a truly manly soul is ready to assist, and it is ready to assist because it is manly. He raised the question whether he had acted correctly toward the lovely woman, and answered himself: "It would be a mistake if the proud demand for subordination to the law were to be left to those who are too weak for it; and it would be a depressing prospect if only mind- less pedants were permitted to be the shapers and protectors ofman- ners and morals; that is why the obligation is imposed upon the vital and strong to require discipline and limits from their instincts of energy and health: they must support the weak, shake up the thoughtless, and rein in the licentious! " He had the impression he had done so.
As the pious soul of the Salvation Army employs military uniform and customs, so had Lindner taken certain soldierly ways of thinking into his service; indeed, he did not even flinch from concessions to the "man of power" Nietzsche, who was for middle-class minds of that time still a stumbling block, but for Lindner a whetstone as well. He was accustomed to say of Nietzsche that it could not be main- tained that he was a bad person, but his doctrines were surely exag- gerated and ill equipped for life, the reason for this being that he rejected empathy; for Nietzsche had not recognized the marvelous counterbalancing gift of the weak person, which was to make the strong person gentle. And opposing to this his own experience, he
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 1 3 7
thought with joyful purpose: "Truly great people do not pay homage to a sterile cult of the self, but call forth in others the feeling of their sublimity by bending down to them and indeed, if it comes to that, sacrificing themselves for them! " Sure ofvictory and with an expres- sion of amicable censure that was meant to encourage them, he looked into the eyes of a pair of young lovers who, intricately inter- twined, were coming up toward him. But it was a quite ordinary cou- ple, and the young idler who formed its male component squeezed his eyelids shut as he responded to this look of Undner's, abruptly stuck out his tongue, and said: "Nyaa! " Undner, unprepared for this mockery and vulgar menace, was taken aback; but he acted as if he did not notice. He loved action, and his glance sought a policeman, who ought to have been in the vicinity to guarantee honor's public safety; but as he did so his foot struck a stone, and the sudden stum- bling motion scared off a swarm of sparrows that had been regaling themselves at God's table over a pile of horse manure. The explosion of wings was like a warning shot, and he was just able at the last mo- ment, before falling ignominiously, to hop over the double obstacle with a balletically disguised jump. He did not look back, and after a while was quite satisfied with himself. "One must be hard as a dia- mond and tender as a mother! " he thought, using an old precept from the seventeenth century.
Since he also esteemed the virtue of modesty, at no other time would he have asserted anything like this in regard to himself; but there was something in Agathe that so excited his blood! Then again, it formed the negative pole of his emotions that this divinely tender female whom he had found in tears, as the angel had found the maiden in the dew . . . oh, he did not want to be presumptuous, and yet how presumptuous yielding to the spirit ofpoetry does make one! And so he continued in a more restrained manner: that this wretched woman was on the point of breaking an oath placed in the hands of God-for that is how he regarded her desire for a divorce. Unfortu- nately, he had not made this forcefully clear when they had stood face-to-face-God, what nearness again in these words! -unfortu- nately, he had not presented this idea with sufficient firmness; he merely remembered having spoken to her in general about loose morals and ways of protecting oneself against them. Besides, the name of God had certainly not passed his lips, unless as a rhetorical
1138 • THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
flourish; and the spontaneity, the dispassionate, one might even say the irreverent, seriousness with which Agathe had asked him whether he believed in God offended him even now as he remem- bered it. For the truly pious soul does not permit himself to simply follow a whim and think of God with crude directness. Indeed, the moment Lindner thought ofthis unreasonable question he despised Agathe as ifhe had stepped on a snake. He resolved that ifhe should ever be in the situation of repeating his admonitions to her, he would follow only the dictates of that powerful logic which is in keeping with earthly matters and which has been placed on earth for that pur- pose, because not every ill-bred person can be permitted to ask God to trouble Himself on behalf of his long-established confusions; and so he began to make use of this logic straightaway, and many expres- sions occurred to him that it would be appropriate to use to a person who has stumbled. For instance, that marriage is not a private affair but a public institution; that it has the sublime mission of evolving feelings of responsibility and empathy, and the task (which hardens a people) of exercising mankind in the bearing of difficult burdens; perhaps indeed, although it could only be adduced with the greatest tact, that precisely by lasting over a fairly long period of time, mar- riage constituted the best protection against the excesses of desire. He had an image of the human being, perhaps not wrongly, as a sack full of devils that had to be kept firmly tied shut, and he saw unshaka- ble principles as the tie.
How this dutiful man, whose corporeal part could not be said to project in any direction but height, had acquired the conviction that one had to rein oneself in at every step was indeed a riddle, which could only be solved, though then quite easily, when one knew its benefit. When he had reached the foot of the hill a procession of soldiers crossed his path, and he looked with tender compassion at the sweaty young men, who had shoved their caps back on their heads, and with faces dulled from exhaustion looked like a proces- sion of dusty caterpillars. At the sight of these soldiers, his horror at the frivolity with which Agathe had dealt with the problem ofdivorce was dreamily softened by a joyful feeling that such a thing should be happening to his free-thinking colleague Hagauer; and this stirring in any event served to remind him again of how indispensable it was to mistrust human nature. He therefore resolved to make ruthlessly
From the Posthu11WUs Papers · 1139
plain to Agathe-should the occasion actually, and through no fault ofhis own, arise-that selfish energies could in the last analysis have only a destructive effect, and that she should subordinate her per- sonal despair, however great it might be, to moral insight, and that the true basic touchstone of life is living together.
But whether the occasion was once again to offer itself was evi- dently just the point toward which Lindner's mental powers were so excitedly urging him. "There are many people with noble qualities, which are just not yet gathered into an unshakable conviction," he thought ofsaying to Agathe; but how should he do so ifhe did not see her again; and yet the thought that she might pay him a visit offended all his ideas about tender and chaste femininity. "It simply has to be put before her as strongly as possible, and immediately! " he resolved, and because he had arrived at this resolution he also no longer doubted that she really would appear. He strongly admonished him- selfto selflessly work through with her the reasons she would advance to excuse her behavior before he went on to convince her of her er- rors. With unwavering patience he would strike her to the heart, and after he had imagined that to himself too, a noble feeling of fraternal attention and solicitude came over his own heart, a consecration as between brother and sister, which, he noted, was to rest entirely on those relations that the sexes maintain with each other. "Hardly any men," he cried out, edified, "have the slightest notion how deep a need noble feminine natures have for the noble man, who simply deals with the human being in the woman without being immediately distracted by her exaggerated desire to please him sexually! " These ideas must have given him wings, for he had no idea how he had got to the terminus of the trolley line, but suddenly there he was; and before getting in he took off his glasses in order to wipe them free of the condensation with which his heated inner processes had coated them. Then he swung himself into a comer, glanced around in the empty car, got his fare ready, looked into the conductor's face, and felt him- self entirely at his post, ready to begin the return journey in that admi- rable communal institution called the municipal trolley. He discharged the fatigue ofhis walk with a contented yawn, in order to
stiffen himselffor new duties, and summed up the astonishing digres- sions to which he had surrendered himselfin the sentence: "Forget- ting oneselfis the healthiest thing a human being can do! "
THE DO-GOODER
Against the unpredictable stirrings of a passionate heart there is only one reliable remedy: strict and absolutely unremitting planning; and it was to this, which he had acquired early, that Lindner owed the successes of his life as well as the belief that he was by nature a man of strong passions and hard to discipline. He got up early in the morning, at the same hour summer,and winter, and at a washbasin on a small iron table washed his face, neck, hands, and one seventh of his body-every day a different seventh, of course-after which he rubbed the rest with a wet towel, so that the bath, that time-consum- ing and voluptuous procedure, could be limited to one evening every two weeks. There was in this a clever victory over matter, and who- ever has had occasion to consider the inadequate washing facilities and uncomfortable beds that famous people who have entered his- tory have had to endure will hardly be able to dismiss the conjecture that there must be a connection between iron beds and iron people, even ifwe ought not exaggerate it, since otherwise we might soon be sleeping on beds of nails. So here, moreover, was an additional task for reflection, and after Lindner had washed himself in the glow of stimulating examples he also took advantage of drying himself off to do a few exercises by skillful manipulation of his towel, but only in moderation. It is, after all, a fateful mistake to base health on the animal part ofone's person; it is, rather, intellectual and moral nobil- ity that produce the body's capacity for resistance; and even if this does not always apply to the individual, it most certainly applies on a larger scale, for the power of a people is the consequence of the proper spirit, and not the other way around. Therefore Lindner had also bestowed upon his rubbings-down a special and careful training, which avoided all the uncouth grabbing that constitutes the usual male idolatry but on the contrary involved the whole personality, by combining the movements of his body with uplifting inner tasks. He especially abhorred the perilous worship of smartness that, coming
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 1 4 1
from abroad, was already hovering as an ideal before many in his fa- therland; and distancing himself from this was an integral part of his morning exercises. He substituted for it, with great care, a states- manlike attitude in the calisthenic application of his limbs, combin- ing the tensing ofhis willpower with timely yielding, the overcoming ofpain with commonsense humanity, and ifperchance, in a conclud- ing burst ofcourage, he jumped over an upside-down chair, he did so with as much reserve as self-confidence. Such an unfolding of the whole wealth ofhuman talents made his calisthenics, in the few years since he had taken them up, true exercises in virtue for him.
That much can also be said in passing against the bane of transi- tory self-assertion that, under the slogan of body care, has taken pos- sessionofthehealthyideaofsports,andthereis evenmoretobesaid against the peculiarly feminine form of this bane, beauty care. Lind- ner flattered himself that in this, too, he was one of the few who knew how to properly apportion light and shadow, and thus, as he was ever ready to remove from the spirit of the times an unblem- ished kernel, he also recognized the moral obligation of appearing as healthy and agreeable as he possibly could. For his part, he carefully groomed his beard and hair every morning, kept his nails short and meticulously clean, put lotion on his skin and a little protective oint- ment on the feet that in the course ofthe day had to endure so much: given all this, who would care to deny that it is lavishing too much attention on the body when a worldly woman spends her whole day at it? But if it really could not be otherwise-he gladly approached women tenderly, because among them might be wives of very wealthy men-than that bathwaters and facials, ointments and packs, ingenious treatments ofhands and feet, masseurs and friseurs, succeed one another in almost unbroken sequence, he advocated as a counterweight to such one-sided care of the body the concept of inner beauty care-inner care, for short-which he had formulated in a public speech. May cleanliness thus serve as an example to re- mind us ofinner purity; rubbing with ointment, ofobligations toward the soul; hand massage, ofthat fate bywhich we are bound; and ped- icure, that even in that which is more deeply concealed we should offer a fair aspect. Thus he transferred his image to women, but left it to them to adapt the details to the needs of their sex.
Of course it might have happened that someone who was unpre-
1142 • THE MAN WITH 0 U T QUALITIES
pared for the sight Lindner offered during his health and beauty worship and, even more, while he was washing and drying himself, might have been moved to laughter: for seen merely as physical ges- tures, his movements evoked the image of a multifariously turning and twisting swan's neck, which, moreover, consisted not of curves but of the sharp element of knees and elbows; the shortsighted eyes, freed from their spectacles, looked with a martyred expression into the distance, as if their gaze had been snipped off close to the eye, and beneath his beard his soft lips pouted with the pain of exertion. But whoever understood how to see spiritually might well experience the spectacle of seeing inner and outer forces begetting each other in ripely considered counterpoint; and if Lindner was thinking mean- while of those poor women who spend hours in their bathrooms and dressing rooms and solipsistically inflame their imaginations through a cult of the body, he could seldom refrain from reflecting on how much good it would do them if they could once watch him. Hannless and pure, they welcome the modem care of the body and go along with it because in their ignorance they do not suspect that such exag- gerated attention devoted to their animal part might all too easily awaken in it claims that could destroy life unless strictly reined in!
Indeed, Lindner transformed absolutely everything he came in contact with into a moral imperative; and whether he was in clothes or not, every hour of the day until he entered dreamless sleep was filled with some momentous content for which that hour had been permanently reserved. He slept for seven hours; his teaching obliga- tions, which the Ministry had limited in consideration of his well- regarded writing activity, claimed three to five hours a day, in which was included the lecture on pedagogy he held twice weekly at the university; five consecutive hours-almost twenty thousand in a dec- ade! -were reserved for reading; two and a half served for the set- ting down on paper of his own articles, which flowed without pause like a clear spring from the inner rocks of his personality; mealtimes claimed an hour every day; an hour was dedicated to a walk and simultaneously to the elucidation of major questions of life and pro- fession, while another was dedicated to the traveling back and forth determined by his profession and consecrated also to what Lindner called his "little musings," concentrating the mind on the content of an activity that had recently transpired or that was to come; while
From the Posthumous Papers · I I 43
other fragments of time were reserved, in part permanently, in part alternating within the framework of the week, for dressing and un- dressing, gymnastics, letters, household affairs, official business, and profitable socializing. And it was only natural that this planning o f his life not only was carried out along its more general disciplinary lines but also involved all sorts of particular anomalies, such as Sunday with its nondaily obligations, the longer cross-country hike that took place every two weeks, or the bathtub soak, and it was natural, too, for the plan to contain the doubling of daily activities that there has not yet been room to mention, to which belonged, by way of exam- ple, Lindner's association with his son at mealtimes, or the character training involved in patiently surmounting unforeseen difficulties while getting dressed at speed.
Such calisthenics for the character are not only possible but also extremely useful, and Lindner had a spontaneous preference for them. "In the small things I do right I see an image of all the big things that are done right in the world" could already be read in Goe- the, and in this sense a mealtime can serve as well as a task set by fate as the place for the fostering of self-control and for the victory over covetousness; indeed, in the resistance of a collar button, inaccessi- ble to all reflection, the mind that probes more deeply could even learn how to handle children. Lindner of course did not by any means regard Goethe as a model in everything; but what exquisite humility had he not derived from driving a nail into a wall with ham- mer blows, undertaking to mend a tom glove himself, or repair a bell that was out oforder: ifin doing these things he smashed his fingers or stuck himself, the resulting pain was outweighed, if not immedi- ately then after a few horrible seconds, by joy at the industrious spirit of mankind that resides even in such trifling dexterities and their ac- quisition, although the cultivated person today imagines himself (to his general disadvantage) as above all that. He felt with pleasure the Goethean spirit resurrected in him, and enjoyed it all the more in that thanks to the methods of a more advanced age he also felt supe- rior to the great classic master's practical dilettantism and his occa- sional delight in discreet dexterity. Lindner was in fact free of idolatry of the old writer, who had lived in a world that was only half- way enlightened and therefore overestimated the Enlightenment, and he took Goethe as a model more in charming small things than in
1144 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
serious and great things, quite apart from the seductive Minister's notorious sensuality.
His admiration was therefore carefully meted out. There had nev- ertheless been evident in it for some time a remarkable peevishness that often stimulated Lindner to reflection. He had always believed that his view of what was heroic was more proper than Goethe's. Lindner did not think much of Scaevolas who stick their hands in the fire, Lucretias who run themselves through, or Judiths who chop the heads off the oppressors of their honor-themes that Goethe would have found meaningful anytime, although he had never treated them; indeed, Lindner was convinced, in spite of the authority of the classics, that those men and women, who had committed crimes for their personal convictions, would nowadays belong not on a pedestal but rather in the courtroom. To their inclination to inflict severe bodily injury he opposed an "internalized and social" concept of courage. In thought and discourse he even went so far as to place a duly pondered entry on the subject into his classbook, or the respon- sible reflection on how his housekeeper was to be blamed for precip- itate eagerness, because in that state one should not be permitted to follow one's own passions only, but also had to take the other per- son's motives into account. And when he said such things he had the impression of looking back, in the well-fitting plain clothes of a later century, on the bombastic moral costume of an earlier one.
He was by no means oblivious to the aura of absurdity that hov- ered around such examples, but he called it the laughter of the spiri- tual rabble, and he had two solid reasons for this. First, not only did he maintain that every occasion could be equally well exploited for the strengthening or weakening of human nature, but it seemed to him that occasions of the smaller kind were better suited for strengthening it than the large ones, since the human inclination to arrogance and vanity is involuntarily encouraged by the shining ex- ercise of virtue, while its inconspicuous everyday exercise consists simply of pure, unsalted virtue. And second, systematic management of the people's moral good (an expression Lindner loved, along with the military expression "breeding and discipline," with its overtones of both peasantry and being fresh from the factory) would also not despise the "small occasions," for the reason that the godless belief advanced by "liberals and Freemasons" that great human accom-
From the Posthu11WUs Papers · 1145
plishments arise so to speak out ofnothing, even ifit is called Genius, was already at that time going out offashion. The sharpened focus of public attention had already caused the "hero," whom earlier times had made into a phenomenon of arrogance, to be recognized as a tireless toiler over details who prepares himself to be a discoverer through unremitting diligence in learning, as an athlete who must handle his body as cautiously as an opera singer his voice, and who as political rejuvenator ofthe people must always repeat the same thing at countless meetings. And of this Goethe, who all his life had re- mained a comfortable citizen-aristocrat, had had no idea, while he, Lindner, saw it coming! So it was comprehensible, too, that Lindner thought he was protecting Goethe's better part against the ephem- eral part when he preferred the considerate and companionable, which Goethe had possessed in such gratifying measure, to the tragic Goethe; it might also be argued that it did not happen without reflec- tion when, for no other reason than that he was a pedant, he consid- ered himself a person threatened by dangerous passions.
Truly, it shortly afterward became one of the most popular human possibilities to subject oneself to a "regimen," which may be applied with the same success to overweight as it is to politics and intellectual life. In a regimen, patience, obedience, regularity, equanimity, and other highly respectable qualities become the major components of the individual in his private, personal capacity, while everything that is unbridled, violent, addictive, and dangerous, which he, as a crazy romantic, cannot dispense with either, has its admirable center in the "regimen. " Apparently this remarkable inclination to submit oneself to a regimen, or lead a fatiguing, unpleasant, and sorry life according to the prescription of a doctor, athletic coach, or some other tyrant (although one could just as well ignore it with the same failure rate), is a result of the movement toward the worker-warrior-anthill state toward which the world is moving: but here lay the boundary that Lindner was not able to cross, nor could he see that far, because his Goethean heritage blocked it.
To be sure, his piety was not of a sort that could not have been reconciled to this movement; he did leave the divine to God, and undiluted saintliness to the saints; but he could not grasp the thought of renouncing his personality, and there hovered before him as an ideal for the world a community offully responsible moral personali-
1146 • THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
ties, which as God's civil army would certainly have to struggle against the inconstancy of baser nature and make everyday life a shrine, but would also decorate this shrine with the masterpieces of art and science. Had someone counted Lindner's division ofthe day, it would have struck him that whatever the version, it added up to only twenty-three hours; sixty minutes of a full day were lacking, and ofthese sixty minutes, forty were invariably set aside for conversation and kindly investigation into the striving and nature ofother people, as part of which he also counted visits to art exhibitions, concerts, and entertainments. He hated these events. Almost every time, their content affronted his mind; as he saw it, it was the infamous over- wrought nerves of the age that were letting off steam in these over- blown and aimless constructions, with their superfluous stimulants and genuine suffering, with their insatiability and inconstancy, their inquisitiveness and unavoidable moral decay. He even smiled dis- concertedly into his scanty beard when on such occasions he saw "or- dinary men and women" idolize culture with flushed cheeks. They did not know that the life force is enhanced by being circumscribed, not by being fragmented. They all suffered from the fear of not hav- ing time for everything, not knowing that having time means nothing more than not having any time for everything. Lindner had realized that the bad nerves did not come from work and its pressure, which in our age are blamed for them, but that on the contrary they came from culture and humanitarianism, from breaks in routine, the inter- ruption ofwork, the free minutes in which the individual would like to live for himself and seek out something he can regard as beautiful, or fun, or important: these are the moments out ofwhich the mias- mas of impatience, unhappiness, and meaninglessness arise. This was what he felt, and ifhe had had his way-that is, according to the visions he had at such moments-he would sweep away all these art workshops with an iron broom, and festivals oflabor and edification, tightly tied to daily activity, would take the place of such so-called spiritual events; it really would require no more than excising from an entire age those few minutes a day that owed their pathological existence to a falsely understood liberality. But beyond making a few allusions, he had never summoned up the decisiveness to stand up for this seriously and in public.
Lindner suddenly looked up, for during these dreamy thoughts he
From the Posthu11WUs Papers · 1147
had still been riding in the trolley; he felt irritated and depressed, as one does from being irresolute and blocked, and for a moment he had the confused impression that he had been thinking about Agathe the entire time. She was accorded the additional honor that an an- noyance that had begun innocently as pleasure in Goethe now fused with her, although no reason for this could be discerned. From habit, Lindner now admonished himself. "Dedicate part of your isolation to quiet reflection about your fellowman, especially ifyou should not be in accord with him; perhaps you will. then learn to better under- stand and utilize what repels you, and will know how to be indulgent toward his weaknesses and encourage his virtue, which may simply be overawed," he whispered with mute lips. This was one of the for- mulas he had coined against the dubious activities of so-called cul- ture and in which he usually found the composure to bear them; but this did not happen, and this time it was apparently not righteousness that was missing. He pulled out his watch, which confirmed that he had accorded Agathe more time than was allotted. But he would not have been able to do so if in his daily schedule there had not been those twenty leftover minutes set aside for unavoidable slippage. He discovered that this Loss Account, this emergency supply of time, whose precious drops were the oil that lubricated his daily works, even on this unusual day, would still hold ten spare minutes when he walked into his house. Did this cause his courage to grow? Another of his bits of wisdom occurred to him, for the second time this day: "The more unshakable your patience becomes," said Lindner to Lindner, "the more surely you will strike your opponent to the heart! " And to strike to the heart was a pleasurable sensation, which also corresponded to the heroic in his nature; that those so struck
never strike back was of no importance.
1148 · THE MAN WITH 0 U T QUALITIES
41
BROTHER AND SISTER THE NEXT MORNING
Ulrich and his sister came to speak of this man once more when they saw each other again the morning after Agathe's sudden disappear- ance from their cousin's party. On the previous day Ulrich had left the excited and quarrelsome gathering soon after she had, but had not got around to asking her why she had up and left him; for she had locked herself in, and was either already sleeping or purposely ignor- ing the listener with his soft inquiry as to whether she was still awake. Thus the day she had met the curious stranger had closed just as ca- priciously as it had begun. Nor was any information to be had from her this morning. She herself did not know what her real feelings were. When she thought ofher husband's letter, which had forced its way to her and which she had not been able to bring herself to read again, although from time to time she noticed it lying beside her, it seemed to her incredible that not even a day had passed since she had received it; so often had her condition changed in the meantime. Sometimes she thought the letter deserved the horror tag "ghosts from the past"; still, it really frightened her, too. And at times it aroused in her merely a slight unease of the kind that can be aroused by the unexpected sight of a clock that has stopped; at other times, she was plunged into futile brooding that the world from which this letter came was claiming to be the real world for her. That which inwardly did not so much as touch her surrounded her outwardly in an invisible web that was not yet broken. She involuntarily compared this with the things that had happened between her and her brother since the arrival of this letter. Above all they had been conversations, and despite the fact that one of them had even brought her to think of suicide, its contents had been forgotten, though they were evi- dently still ready to reawaken, and not surmounted. So it really did not matter much what the subject of a conversation was, and ponder- ing her heart-stopping present life against the letter, she had the im- pression of a profound, constant, incomparable, but powerless
From the Posthumous Papers · 1149
movement. From all this she felt this morning partly exhausted and disillusioned, and partly tender and restless, like a fever patient after his temperature has gone down.
In this state of animated helplessness she said suddenly: "To em- pathize in such a way that one truly experiences another person's mood must be indescribably difficult! " To her surprise, Ulrich re- plied immediately: "There are people who imagine they can do it. " He said this ill-humoredly and offensively, having only half under- stood her. Her words caused something to move aside and make room for an annoyance that had been left behind the day before, al- though he ought to find it contemptible. And so this conversation came to an end for the time being.
The morning had brought a day of rain and confined brother and sister to their house. 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
II56 • THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
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
II64 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
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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44
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.