No More Learning

"
"I feel I've been exposed as a bad theologian," Ulrich conceded with a smile, and asked: "Read it aloud! "
Agathe had a heavy Bible in her hands, not an especially old or pre- cious thing, but in any case not a recent edition, and read:
" 'Ye have heard that it hath been said, thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh the sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. ' "
"Do you know anything else? " Ulrich asked, eager to know.
''Yes," Agathe went on. "It is written: 'Ye have heard that it was said by them ofold time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger ofthe judgment: But I say unto you, that whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger ofthe judgment: . . . but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire. ' And then this too, which you know so well: 'But I say unto you, that ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, tum to him the
1398 • THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
other also. And ifany man will sue thee at the law and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. ' "
"Well, I don't like that! " Ulrich said.
Agathe thumbed through the pages. "Maybe you'll like this: ·And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profit- able for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. ' "
Ulrich took the book from her and leafed through it himself. ·There are even several variations," he exclaimed. Then he laid the book in the grass, pulled her beside him, and for some time said nothing. At last he replied: "Speaking seriously, I'm like Everyman, or at least like that man; it's natural for me to apply this saying in reverse. Ifhis hand offend thee, cut it off, and ifyou smite someone on the cheek, give him a hook to the heart too, just to make sure. ''
THE CONSTELLA TION OF BROTHER AND SISTER; OR, THE UNSEPARATED AND NOT UNITED
Even in those years when Ulrich had sought his path in life alone and not without bravado, the word "sister" had often been for him heavy with an undefined longing, although at that time he almost never thought that he possessed a real living sister. In this there was a contradiction point- ing to disparate origins, which were indicated in many ways that brother and sister ordinarily discounted. Not that they necessarily saw it as false, but it counted as little in relationship to the truth they knew they were approaching as an intruding comer signifies in the sweep of a grandly curving wall.
Without question, such things happen often. In many lives the unreal, invented sister is nothing other than the soaring youthful fonn of a need for love that later, in the condition ofchillier dreams, contents itselfwith a bird or another animal, or turns toward humanity or one's neighbor. In the life of many others, this sister is adolescent timidity and loneliness, an invented doppelganger full of shadowboxing chann, which softens the anxieties of loneliness in the tenderness of a lonely togetherness. And of many natures it need merely be said that this image that they
From the Posthumous Papers · 1399
cherish so ecstatically is nothing but the crassest egotism and selfishness: an excessive liking to be loved that has entered into a jeny-built agree- ment with sweet selflessness. But that many men and women bear the image of such a counterpart in their hearts there can be no doubt. It simply represents love and is always the sign of an unsatisfying and tense relation to the world. And it is not only those who are deficient or who are by nature without harmony who have such desires; balanced people have them too.
And so Ulrich began to speak to his sister about an experience he had related to her once already, and repeated the story of the most unforget- table woman who, with the exception of Agathe herself, had ever crossed his path. She was a child-woman, a girl of about twelve, remark- ably mature in her behavior, who had ridden in the same trolley car for a short distance with him and a companion, and had charmed him like a mysteriously bygone love poem whose traces are full of never-experi- enced bliss. Later, the flaming up of his infatuation had sometimes aroused doubts in him, for it was peculiar and admitted dubious infer- ences about himself. For that reason he did not relate the incident with feeling but spoke of the doubts, even though it was not without feeling that he generalized them. . . At that age, a girl quite often has more beau- tiful legs than she does later," he said. . . Their later sturdiness apparently comes from what they need to carry directly above them; in adolescence these legs are long and free and can run, and if their skirts expose the thigh in some activity, the curve already has something gently increas- ing-oh, the crescent moon occurs to me, toward the end of its tender first virginal moon phase-that's how glorious they look! Later I some- times investigated the reasons quite seriously. At that age hair has the softest sheen. The face shows its lovely naturalness. The eyes are like some smooth, never-crumpled silk. The mind, destined in future to become petty and covetous, is still a pure flame without much bright- ness among obscure desires. And what at this age is certainly not yet beautiful-for instance, the childish tummy or the blind expression of the breast-acquires through the clothing, to the extent that it cleverly simulates adulthood, and through the dreamy imprecision of love, ev- erything that a charming stage mask can achieve. So ifs quite in order to admire such a creature, and how else should one do so than through a slight attack of love! "
. . And it's not at all against nature for a child to be the object of such feelings? " Agathe asked.
''What would be against nature would be a straight-out lustful desire," Ulrich replied. . . But a person like that also drags the innocent or, in any event, unready and helpless creature into actions for which it is not des-
1400 • THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
tined. He must ignore the immaturity of the developing mind and body, and play the game of his passion with a mute and veiled opponent; no, he not only ignores whatever would get in his way, but brutally sweeps it aside! That's something quite different, with different consequences! "
"But perhaps a touch of the perniciousness of this 'sweeping aside' is already contained in the 'ignoring'? '' Agathe objected. She might have been jealous of her brother's tissue of thoughts; at any rate, she resisted. "I don't see any great distinction in whether one pays no attention to what might restrain one, or doesn't feel it! "
Ulrich countered: ''You're right and you're not right. I really just told the story because it's a prelimiruuy stage of the love between brother and sister. "
"Love between brother and sister? '' Agathe asked, and pretended to be astonished, as if she were hearing the term for the first time; but she was digging her nails into Ulrich's arm again, and perhaps she did so too strongly, and her fingers trembled. Ulrich, feeling as if five small warm wounds had opened side by side in his arm, suddenly said: "The person whose strongest stimulation is associated with experiences each of which is, in some way or other, impossible, isn't interested in possible experi- ences. It may be that imagination is a way of fleeing from life, a refuge and a den of iniquity, as many maintain; I think that the story of the little girl, as well as all the other examples we've talked about, point not to an abnormality or a weakness but to a revulsion against the world and a strong recalcitrance, an excessive and overpassionate desire for love! " He forgot that Agathe could know nothing of the other examples and equivocal comparisons with which his thoughts had previously as- sociated this kind of love; for he now felt himself in the clear again and had overcome, for the time being, the anesthetizing taste, the transfor- mation into the will-less and lifeless, that was part of his experience, so that the automatic reference slipped inadvertently through a gap in his thoughts.
These thoughts were still oriented toward the more general aspect, with which his personal case could be compared as well as contrasted; and if in favor of the inner coherence of these ideas one leaves aside how they succeeded and shaped one another, what remained was a more or less impersonal content that looked something like this: For the articula- tion of life, hate might be just as important as love. There seem to be as many reasons to love the world as to detest it. Both instincts lie in human nature ready for use, their powers in unequal proportions, which vary in individuals. But there,is no way of knowing how pleasure and bitterness balance each other in order to allow us to keep going on with our lives. The opinion we like to hear, that this calls for a preponderance of plea-
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 4 0 z
sure, is evidently false. For we also go on with our lives with bitterness, with an excess ofunhappiness, hatred, or contempt for life, and proceed as surely as we would with a superabundance of happiness. But it oc- curred to Ulrich that both are extremes, the life-loving person as well as the person shadowed by animosity, and this is what led him to think of the complicated balance that is the usual one. Belonging to this balance of love and hate, for example, and thereby to the processes and struc- tures with whose help they reach an accommodation, are justice and all other ways of observing moderation; but there belong to it no less the formation of fellowships of two or of vast numbers, combinations that are like feathered nests elaborately girdled with thorns; there belongs to it the certainty of God; and Ulrich knew that in this series the intellectual-sensual structure of the "sister" ultimately also had its place as a most daring expedient. From what weakness of soul this dream drew its nourishment stood hindmost, and foremost stood, as its origin, a really superhuman disparity. And apparently it was for this reason that Ulrich had spoken of revulsion toward the world, for whoever knows the depth ofgood and evil passion experiences the falling away ofevery kind of agreement that mediates between them, and he had not spoken the way he did in order to gloss over the passion for his own flesh and blood.
Without accounting for why he was doing so, he now told Agathe a second little story as well, which at the beginning seemed to have no connection at all with the first. "I once came across it, and it is supposed to have actually happened in the time of the Thirty Years' War, when individuals and peoples were thrown about in confusion," he began. "Most of the peasants from one isolated group of farms had been snatched away to serve in the war; none of them returned, and the women managed the farms by themselves, which was tiring and vexa- tious for them. Then it happened that one of the men who had disap- peared returned to the region, and after many adventures came to his wife. I'll say right off that it wasn't the right man but a tramp and de- ceiver, who had shared camp and march for a few months with the miss- ing and perhaps dead man, and had so successfully absorbed the other man's stories, when homesickness loosened his tongue, that he was able to pretend to be him. He knew the nicknames ofwife and cow, and the names and habits of the neighbors, who moreover lived some distance away. He had a beard exactly like the other man's. He had a way oflook- ing, with his two eyes ofnondescript color, that one might easily think he wouldn't have done it much differently before; and although his voice sounded strange at first, it could certainly be explained by saying that one was now listening more closely than one had before. In short, the man knew how to imitate his predecessor trait for trait, the way a coarse
1402 • THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
and unlike portrait at first repeals but becomes more of a likeness the longer one remains alone with it, and finally takes over one's recollection entirely. I can imagine that, from time to time, something like dread must have warned the woman that he was not her husband; but she wanted to have her man again, and perhaps just a man, and so the stran- ger became more and more established in his role-"
"And how did it end? " Agathe asked.
"I forget. Apparently the man must have been unmasked by some sort of accident. But man in general is never unmasked, his whole life long! " "You mean: One always only loves the stand-in for the right person? Or do you mean that when a person loves for the second time he doesn't confuse the two, but the image of the new one is in many places only an overpainting of the image of the first one? " Agathe asked, with a charm-
ingyawn.
"I intended to say a lot more, and it is much more boring," Ulrich
responded. "Try to imagine someone, color-blind, for whom shades of brightness and shadow represent almost the entire world of colors: he can't see a single color and yet can apparently act so that no one notices, for what he can see represents for him what he can't. But what happens in this case in a particular area is what really happens to us all with real- ity. In our experiences and investigations, reality never appears other- wise than through a glass that partially transmits one's glance and partially reflects back the image of the viewer. If I observe the delicately flushed white of your hand, or feel the refractory inwardness of your flesh in my fingers, I have something real before me, but not in the way in which it is real; and just as little when I reduce it to its ultimate atoms and formulas! "
"Then why make such an effort to reduce it to something loathsome! "
"Do you recall what I said about the intellectual portrayal of nature, of its being an image without similarity? There are many quite different ways in which anything can be apprehended as the exact image ofsome- thing else, but everything that occurs in this image, or results from it, must in just this one specific view always be a depiction of what investi- gating the original image demonstrates. If this also turns out to be the case where it could not have originally been foreseen, then the image is as justified as it can possibly be. That's a very general and quite unsen- sory notion of imageability. It presupposes a specific relationship of two areas, and gives to understand that it can be comprehended as a por- trayal whenever it covers both areas without exception. In this sense, a mathematical formula can be the image of a natural process, just as much as a portrayal established by external sensory similarity. A theory can in its consequences accord with reality, and the effects of reality with
From the Posthumous Papers · 1403
theory. The cylinder in a music box is the portrayal of a way of singing, and an action portrays a fluctuating feeling. In mathematics, where for the sake of unsullied progression of thought one would most like to trust only what can be counted offon one's fingers, one usually speaks only of the precision of coordinates, which has to be possible point for point. But fundamentally, everything can also be regarded as a portrayal that is called correspondence, representability for some purpose, equal value and exchangeability, or equality in respect to something, or undifferenti- ability, or mutual appropriateness according to some kind of standard. A portrayal, therefore, is something like a relationship of complete corre- spondence in view of any particular such relationship-"
Agathe interrupted this exposition, which Ulrich was pronouncing listlessly and out of a sense of duty, with the admonition: "You could really get one ofour modem painters fired up with all that-"
"Well, why not! " he replied. "Consider what sense there is in talking about fidelity to nature and similarity where the spatial is replaced by a surface, or the motley colors of life by metal or stone. That's why artists aren't entirely wrong to reject these notions of sensory imitation and similarity as photographic and, with the exception of a few traditional laws that go along with their medium and tools, why they recognize only inspiration, or some kind of theory that has been revealed to them; but the customers who are portrayed, who after the execution of these laws see themselves as victims of a miscarriage ofjustice, mostly aren't. . . . " Ulrich paused. Although he had intended to speak about the logically strict notion of portrayal only in order to be able to derive from it its free but by no means random consequences, which dominate the various imagistic relationships that occur in life, he was now silent. Observing himself in this attempt left him dissatisfied. He had lately forgotten many things that had formerly been at the tips ofhis fingers, or to put it better, he had pushed them aside; even the pointed expressions and concepts of his earlier profession, which he had used so often, were no longer viable for him, and in searching for them he not only felt an un- pleasant dryness but was also afraid of talking like a bungler.
"You said that a color-blind person isn't missing anything when he looks at the world," Agathe encouraged him.
"Yes. Of course I oughtn't to have put it quite that way," Ulrich re- sponded. "It's still an obscure question altogether. Even if you limit yourself to the intellectual image that the understanding derives from something, in confronting the problem ofwhether it's true you come up against the greatest difficulties, although the air you ordinarily breathe is always dry and crystalline. However, the images we make for ourselves in life so we can act and feel rightly, or even act and feel energetically,
1404 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
aren't determined just by the understanding; indeed, these images are often quite irrational and, according to rational standards, not at all ac- curate representations, and yet they must fulfill their purpose in order for us to remain in harmony with reality and with ourselves. They must also be precise and complete according to some kind of key or manual of images, and according to the notion that determines the manner in which they are portrayed, even if this notion leaves room for various methods-"
Agathe interrupted him excitedly. She had suddenly grasped the con- nection. "So the false peasant was a portrayal of the real one? " she asked.
Ulrich nodded. "Originally, an image always represented its object completely. It bestowed power over it. Whoever cut out the eyes or the heart ofan image killed the person portrayed. Whoever secretly got hold of the image of an inaccessible beauty was able to conquer her. The name, too, is part of these images; and so one was able to conjure God with His name, which is equivalent to making Him subservient. As you know, even today one makes off with secret remembrances, or gives oneself a ring with an engraved name, and wears pictures and locks of hair over one's heart as a talisman. In the course of time, something split off; but it has all sunk to the level of superstition, although one part has achieved the tedious dignity of photography, geometry, and such things. But just think of the hypnotized person, who with every sign of satisfac- tion bites into a potato that for him represents an apple, or think ofyour childhood dolls, which you loved more passionately the simpler they were and the less they looked like people; so you see that it doesn't de- pend on externalities, and you're back at the bolt-upright fetish column that represents a god-"
"Couldn't you almost say that the more dissimilar an image is, the greater the passion for it as soon as we've attached ourselves to it? " Agathe asked.
"Yes, absolutely! " Ulrich agreed. "Our reason, our perception, have separated themselves from our emotions in this matter. One could say that the most stirring representations always have something unlike. " Smiling, he observed her from the side and added: "When I'm not in your presence I don't see you before me in a way one would like to paint; it's rather as ifyou had glanced into some water and I was trying vainly to trace your image in the water with my finger. I maintain that it's only indifferent things that one sees properly and truly alike. "
"Strange! " his sister replied. "I see you before me precisely! Perhaps because my memory is entirely too precise and dependent! "
"Similarity ofportrayal is an approximation ofwhat the understanding
From the Posthu11Wf. lS Papers · 1405
finds real and equal; it is a concession to the understanding," Ulrich said agreeably, and went on in a conciliatory way: "But besides that, there are also the images that address themselves to our emotions, and an image in art is, for example, a mixture of both demands. But if, beyond that, you wish to take it to the point where something portrays something else only for the emotions, you'll have to think of such examples as a flag flying, which at certain moments is an image ofour honor-"
"But there you can only be talking about a symbol, you're no longer talking about images! " Agathe interjected.
"Mental image, simile, metaphor, they shade into one another," Ul- rich said. "Even such examples as the image ofa disease and the doctor's plan for curing it belong here. They must have imagination's inventive lack of precision, but the precision of executability as well. This flexible boundary between imagining the plan, and the image that endures in the face of reality, is important everywhere in life, but hard to find. "
"How different we are! " Agathe repeated thoughtfully.
Ulrich parried the reproach with a smile. "Very much so! I'm speaking of the lack of precision in taking something/or something, as of a divin- ity bestowing fruitfulness and life, and I'm trying to impart as much order to it as it will bear; and you don't notice that I've been talking for a long time about the truthful possibility of twins who are doppelgangers, who have two souls, but are one? '' He went on spiritedly: "Imagine twins who resemble each other 'interchangeably'; place them before you, each in the same attitude, separated only by a wall indicated by a line to con- finn that they are two independent beings. And in an uncanny augmen- tation, they can repeat themselves in whatever they do, so that you spontaneously assume the same about their inner processes. What's un- canny about this performance? That there's absolutely nothing by which we can distinguish them, and that yet they are two! That in everything we might undertake with them, one is as good as the other, although in the process something like a destiny is being fulfilled! In short, they are the same for us but not for themselves! "
"Why are you playing such gruesome and spooky games with these twins? '' Agathe asked.
"Because it's a case that happens often. It's the case of mistaking things, of indifference, of perceiving and acting wholesale, of represent- ability: in other words, a major chapter from the usages of life. I've only prettied it up in order to dramatize something for you. Now let me tum it around: Under what circumstances would the twins be two for us and one for themselves? Is that spooky too? "
Agathe pressed his arm and sighed. Then she admitted: "If it's possi- ble for two people to be the same for the world, it could also be that a
1406 ·THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
person appears to us doubled- But you're making me speak nonsense! " she added.
"Imagine two goldfish in a bowl," Ulrich asked.
"No! " Agathe said firmly, but laughing at the same time. ''I'm not going along with any more of this! "
"Please, imagine them! A large bowl in the shape of a ball, as you sometimes see in someone's living room. You can, incidentally, imagine the bowl to be as large as the boundaries of our property. And two red- dish-gold fish, moving their fins slowly up and down like veils. Let's leave aside whether they are really two or one. For each other, at least, they will be two, for the time being; their jealousy over feeding and sex will see to that. They avoid each other, too, whenever they come too near each other. But I can well imagine that for me they can become one: I need only concentrate on this motion that slowly draws in upon itself and unfolds, and then this single shimmering creature becomes merely a dependent part of this common up-and-down motion. Now I ask when this might also happen to them-"
"They're goldfish! " Agathe admonished. "Not a group of dancers suf- fering from supernatural delusions! "
"They are you and I," her brother responded pensively, "and that's why I would like to try to bring the comparison to a proper conclusion. It seems to me a soluble problem to imagine how the world glides past in its separate-but-united motion.
It's no different from the world undulat- ing past from a railway car going around curves, except that it happens twice over, so that at every one of the double being's moments, the world occupies two positions, which somehow must coincide in the soul. That means that the idea of getting from one to the other through some motion will never be associated with these double beings; the impres- sion of a distance existing between them will not arise; and more such things. I think I can imagine that one would also manage to be tolerably comfortable in such a world and could doubtless puzzle out in various ways the necessary constitution of the mental tools and procedures needed to make sense of things. " Ulrich stopped for a moment and re- flected. He had become aware of many objections, and the possibility of overcoming them also suggested itself. He smiled guiltily. Then he said: "But ifwe assume that the constitution ofthat other world is the same as ours, the task is much easier! Both hovering creatures will then feel themselves as one without being bothered by the difference in their per- ception and without there being any need of a higher geometry or physi- ology to attain it, as long as you are simply willing to believe that spiritually they are bound to each other more firmly than they are to the world. If anything at all important that they share is infinitely stronger
From the Posthumous Papers · 1407
than the difference of their experiences; if it bridges these differences and doesn't even let them reach awareness; ifthe disturbances reaching them from the world aren't worth being aware of, then it will happen. And a shared suggestion can have this effect; or a sweet indolence and imprecision of the habits of receptiveness, which mix everything up; or a one-sided tension and exaltation that allows only what is desired to get through: one thing, it seems to me, as good as the next-"
Now Agathe laughed at him: "Then why did I have to march through all that precision about the conditions ofportrayal? " she asked.
Ulrich shrugged his shoulders. "It's all interconnected," he answered, falling silent.
He himself knew that with all his efforts he had nowhere made a breach, and their variety confused his recollection. He foresaw that they would repeat themselves. But he was tired. And as the world becomes snugly heavy in the evaporating light and draws all its limbs up to itself, so did Agathe's nearness again force its way physically among his thoughts while his mind was giving up. They had both become accus- tomed to conducting such difficult conversations, and for rather a long time these had already been such a mixture ofthe pulsating power ofthe imagination, and the vain utmost effort of the understanding to secure it, that it was nothing new for either of them at one time to hope for a resolution, at another to allow their own words to rock them to sleep much as one listens to the childishly happy conversation of a fountain, babbling to itself happily about eternity. In this condition Ulrich now belatedly thought of something, and again had recourse to his carefully prepared parable. "It's amazingly simple, but at the same time strange, and I don't know how to present it to you convincingly," he said. "You see that cloud over there in a somewhat different position than I do, and also presumably in a different way; and we've discussed how whatever you see and do and what occurs to you will never be the same as what happens to me and what I do. And we've investigated the question of whether, in spite of that, it still might not be possible to be one being to the ultimate degree, and live as two with one soul. We've measured out all sorts of answers with a compass, but I forgot the simplest: that both people could be minded and able to take everything they experience only as a simile! Just consider that for the understanding every simile is equivocal, but for the emotions it's unequivocal. For someone to whom the world is just a simile could also probably, according to his standards, experience as one thing what according to the world's standards is two. " At this moment the idea also hovered before Ulrich that, in an attitude toward life for which being in one place is merely a metaphor for being in another, even that which cannot be experienced-being one person
1408 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
in two hodies wandering about separately-would lose the sting of its impossibility; and he made ready to talk about this further.
But Agathe pointed at the cloud and interrupted him glibly: "Hamlet: 'Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel? ' Polonius: 'By th' mass, and 'tis like a camel indeed. ' Hamlet: 'Methinks it is like a weasel. ' Polonius: 'It is back'd like a weasel. ' Hamlet: 'Or like a whale? ' Polonius: 'Very like a whale! ' " She said this so that it was a caricature of assiduous accord.
Ulrich understood the objection, but it did not prevent him from con- tinuing: "One says of a simile, too, that it is an image. And it could be said just as well ofevery image that it's a simile. But none is an equation. And just for that reason, the fact that it's part of a world ordered not by equality but by similitude explains the enormous power of representa- tion, the forceful effect that characterizes even quite obscure and unlike copies, which we've already spoken about! " This idea itself burgeoned through its twilight, but he did not complete it. The immediate recollec- tion ofwhat they had said about portrayals combined in it with the image of the twins and with the picture-perfect numbness Agathe had experi- enced, which had repeated itself before her brother's eyes; and this brew was animated by the distant memory of how often such conversa- tions, when they were at their finest and came from heart and soul, themselves proclaimed an inclination to express themselves only in similes. But today that did not happen, and Agathe again hit the sensitive spot like a marksman as she upset her brother with a remark. "Why, for heaven's sake, are all your words and desires directed at a woman who, oddly enough, is supposed to be your exact second edition? '' she ex- claimed, innocently offending. She was, nevertheless, a little afraid of the reply, and protected herself with the generalization: "Is it compre- hensible that in the whole world the ideal of all lovers is to become one being, without considering that these ungrateful people owe almost all the chann oflove to the fact that they are two beings, and of seductively different sexes? " She added sanctimoniously, but with even craftier pur- pose: "They even sometimes say to one another, as if they wanted to accommodate you, 'You're my doll'! "
But Ulrich accepted the ridicule. He considered it justified, and it was difficult to counter it with a new accommodation. At the moment it was not necessary either. For although brother and sister were speaking quite differently, they were still in agreement. From some undeter- mined boundary on, they felt as one being: the way that from two people playing piano four-handedly, or reading with two voices a scripture im- portant for their salvation, a single being arises, whose animated, brighter outline is indistinctly set off from a shadowy background. As in
From the Posthunwus Papers · 1409
a dream, what hovered before them was a melting into one form-just as incomprehensibly, convincingly, and passionately beautifully as it happens that two people exist alongside each other and are secretly the same; and this unity was partly supported and partly upset by Ule dubi- ous manipulation that had lately emerged. It can be said ofthese reflec- tions that it should not be impossible that the effects the emotions can achieve in sleep can be repeated when one is wide awake; perhaps with omissions, certainly in an altered fashion and through different pro- cesses, but it could also be expected that it would then happen with greater resistance to dissolving influences. To be sure, they saw them- selves sufficiently removed from this, and even the choice of means they preferred distinguished them from each other, to the extent that Ulrich inclined more to accounting for things, and Agathe to spontaneously credulous resolution.
That is why it often happened that the end of a discussion appeared to be further from its goal than its beginning, as was also the case this time in the garden, where the meeting had begun almost as an attempt to stop breathing and had then gone over to suppositions about ways of building variously imagined houses of cards. But it was basically natural that they should feel inhibited about acting according to their all too dar- ing ideas. For how were they to tum into reality something that they themselves planned as pure unreality, and how should it be easy for them to act in one spirit, when it was really an enchanted spirit of inac- tion? This was why in the midst of this conversation far removed from the world they suddenly had the urgent desire to come into contact with people again.
PART 2
DRAFTS OF CHARACTER AND INCIDENT
ULRICH I ULRICH AND AGATHE I AGATHE MID 19. 20S
[Ulrich visits the clinic]
He encountered Moosbrugger towering broadly among the cunning deceivers. It was heroic, the futile struggle of a giant among these peo- ple. He seemed through some quality or other to actually deserve the admiration that he found a sham but enjoyed in a naively ridiculous way. In the grossest distortions of insanity, there is still a self struggling to find something to hang on to. He was like a heroic ballad in the midst of an age that creates quite different kinds of songs but out of habitual admi- ration still preserves the old things. Defenseless, admired power, like a club among the arrows of the mind. One could laugh at this person and yet feel that what was comic in. him was shattering. / The clouding of this mind was connected with that of the age.
- D o you have a friend? Ulrich asked in a moment when they were unobserved. - 1 mean, Moosbrugger, don't you have anyone who could get you out of here? There's no other way. Moosbrugger said he did, but he wouldn't be easy to find. What is he? A locksmith. But he's a lock- smith who works on cabinets, Moosbrugger grinned rather sheepishly, (he's not easy to find), he works in many places. He'd do it, but Ulrich would have to go to his wife and get his address from her. And he didn't want to impose that on him, this wife was an awful person. Moosbrugger was visibly cutting capers and preening in a courtly way before Ulrich. Ulrich said she would probably give him the information, whether she was awful or not. Yes, she no doubt would; he would have to mention Moosbrugger's name. Before his last wandering, when he was working in Vienna, he had lived with her himself, the heart of the matter now emerged; he, Moosbrugger; but she was a woman with low tastes, a
1414 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
criminal, a quite common sort. . . . Moosbrugger shows all the symptoms of his hatred for women only because he is afraid that Ulrich might have a poor opinion of him when he sees this woman.
So she would tell Ulrich where he could meet her partner.
Ulrich went to see her. Borne by the automatism that accompanies all deeds ofdaring. He was really not in the least surprised when he entered an apartment that looked like forty others in a building on the outskirts of the city, and encountered in the kitchen a young woman doing chores, who must have been just like the forty other housewives. Nor did the suspicion with which he was greeted in any way differ from the suspicion one often finds in these circles. As soon as he entered he had to say something, and through the general European courtesies he uttered was immediately placed in a quite impersonal relationship. There wasn't a breath of crime in this environment. She was a coarse young woman, and her breasts moved under her blouse like a rabbit under a cloth.
When he brought up the name of Moosbrugger Fraulein Hornlicher smiled deprecatingly, as if to say: the useless crazy things he gets himself into; but she was willing to help him. Of course it depended on Karl, but she didn't think he'd leave Moosbrugger in the lurch. This all took place in courteous exchanges, as when a businessman who's got himself into a comer begs his solid neighbors for support.
She gave Ulrich the name of a small tavern where he would presum- ably find Karl. He'd probably have to go several times, since Karl's movements were never entirely predictable. He should tell the tavern keeper who had sent him and whom he wanted to speak to and calmly sit down and wait.
Ulrich was lucky, and found Karl Biziste on his first try. Again an auto- matic play of limbs and thoughts carried him there; but this time Ulrich was paying attention, and followed with curiosity what seemed to be happening to him rather than to be something he was doing. His emo- tions were the same as they were the time when he had been arrested. From that moment, when Clarisse's interest had cautiously begun to tickle him like the end of a thread, until now, where events were already being woven into a heavy rope, things had taken their own course, one thing leading to another with a necessity that merely carried him along. It seemed incredibly strange to him that the course of most people's lives is this course of things that so alienated him, while on the contrary for other people it is quite natural to let themselves be borne along by whatever turns up, and thus finally be raised to a solid existence. Ulrich also felt that soon he would no longer be able to tum around, but this made him as curious as when one suddenly notices the inexorable move- ment of one's own breathing.
From the Posthumous Papers · 1415
And he made yet another observation. When he imagined how much mischief could arise from what he was proposing to do, and that it soon would no longer be in his power to avoid initiating the process. With an evil deed that he felt on his conscience as ifit had already been commit- ted, he saw the world he was walking through in a different way. Almost as if he had a vision in his heart. Of God, or a great invention, or a great happiness. Even the starry sky is a social phenomenon, a structure of the shared fantasy of our species, man, and changes when one steps out of its circle.
Moosbrugger-Ulrich told himself-will wreak more havoc if I help him to freedom. There's no denying that sooner or later he will again fall victim to his disposition, and I will bear the responsibility for it. -But when he tried grave self-reproach in order to stop himself, there was something really untruthful in it. About as if one were to take the stance of being able to see clearly through a fog. The suffer- ings of those victims were really not certain. Had he seen the suffering creatures before him, he would probably have been overcome by a fierce empathy, for he was a person of oscillations, and that also meant of sympathetic oscillations. But as long as this suggestive power of ex- periencing with the senses was missing, and everything remained only a play of men:tal forces, these victims remained adherents of a man- kind that he would really have liked to abolish, or at least greatly change, and no amount of sympathy diminished the emotional force of this dislike. There are people whom this horrifies; they are under the impress of a very strong moral or social power of suggestion; they speak up and start shouting as soon as they notice even the most re- mote injustice, and are furious at the badness and coldness of feeling that they frequently find in the world. They demonstrate violent emo- tions, but in most cases these are the emotions imposed on them by their ideas and principles: that is, an enduring suggestiveness, which like all powers of suggestion has something automatic and mechanical about it, whose path never dips into the realm of living emotions. The person who lives disinterestedly is, in contrast to them, ill-disposed and indifferent toward everything that does not touch his own circle of interests; he not only has the indifference of a mass murderer, in its passive form, when he reads in his morning paper about the accidents and misfortunes of the previous day, but he can also quite easily wish all kinds of misfortune on people he doesn't care about, if they annoy him. Certain phenomena lead one to assume that a forward-marching civilization based on shared works also strengthens the repressed and immured antagonists of these emotions. This was what was going through Ulrich's mind as he walked along. Moosbrugger's victims were
1416 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
abstract, threatened, like all the thousands who are exposed to the dangers of factories, railroads, and automobiles.
When he happened to look around on his way to Herr Biziste, he thought he could see that all the life we have created has been made possible only through our neglecting our duty to care for our more dis- tant neighbor. Otherwise we would never think of putting on the street machines that kill him; indeed, we would never let him go out on the street himself, as is actually the case with cautious parents and their chil- dren. Instead of this, however, we live with a statistically predictable an- nual percentage of murders, which we commit rather than deviate from our manner of living and the line of development we hope to maintain. Ulrich suddenly thought, too, that part of this was a general division of labor in which it is always the task of a particular group of people to heal injuries caused by the indispensable activities of others; but we never restrain a force by demanding that it moderate itself; and finally there are still quite specific institutions, like parliaments, kings, and the like, that serve exclusively as equalizers. Ulrich concluded from this that for him to assist Moosbrugger's escape had no significance, for there were enough other people whose job it was to prevent any injuries that might result, and if they fulfilled their obligations they were bound to succeed, which made his personal deed no worse than an irregularity. This indi- vidual, moral prohibition-that he was nevertheless obliged as an indi- vidual not to let things go that far-was in this context nothing more than a doubled coefficient of security, which the knowledgeable person could afford to neglect.
The vision of a different order of things hovering far in advance of these specific ideas, an order that was more honest, one might say tech- nically without cliches, accompanied Ulrich even as the adventure en- ticed him, tired as he was of the indecisive life of a person of today. I Possibly: It was not his good fortune to be effective in the world and to be defined by that. Like Thomas Mann or the good upstanding citizen of this age. Nor was he involved in the struggle for something. I Thus this path was not unlike the dive into the water, well known to Ulrich, from a height of thirty feet. On the way down one sees one's own image rushing toward one faster and faster in a watery reflection and can adjust small errors in one's position; but for the rest, one can no longer change any- thing in what is taking place.
When he had found the tavern, Ulrich did everything as Fraulein Hornlicher had indicated. He mentioned her name, told the proprietor what he wanted, was asked to sit down and told that he might have to
From the Posthumous Papers · 1417
wait quite a while. He inspected the guests, many of whom spoke to the proprietor as they entered and left; felt himself observed, but could not make out a great deal himself. It was an hour at which the patrons were intermingled with workers and petit bourgeois. Finally, he thought he could make out the criminals among the guests by the peculiarly ridicu- lous elegance of their clothes.
Ulrich had not made out Herr Biziste, who, when he came in, spoke with the proprietor like the others after glancing quickly around the room and, after he had sat down, was looked at in the same way by everyone else around the room, and who was dressed with an equally counterfeit elegance I with a somewhat different elegance. Nor did the owner give Ulrich any sign. Biziste was drinking with several men, then stood up to go, stopped as if idly by Ulrich's table, and asked him dismissively what it was he was after. Ulrich had the tact not to stand, but to look up carelessly and offer Biziste a chair. This was of course presumptuous, but since he could be certain that Biziste was still interested in Moosbrugger, he could permit himselfto meet the great man on the same level. He told him that Moosbrugger would be executed within a few weeks if no one helped him. For some reason or other, Ulrich seemed to himself like a spoiled boy who is playing with street urchins and is showing off with fairy tales he has invented. Biziste seemed to disapprove ofUlrich as ofan incorrigi- ble blockhead. Still dismissive, he asked Ulrich how he thought this could be done. Ulrich quickly emptied his glass and by a rather vague gesture left it to the proprietor whether he was to bring another glass for himself and his tablemate as well. Then he related that arranging an escape from the observation clinic would not be all that difficult. Herr Biziste was interested in this new milieu that Ulrich described to him. Ulrich became inventive; it amused him to think it out in front of a hardened criminal, and on the spot he made up a specific plan in which only the hour re- mained unfixed but that otherwise, thanks to Ulrich's exact knowledge of the place, didn't seem at all bad. Three men would be needed, one as a lookout outside the garden wall they had to climb over, so that on their way out they would not fall into the hands of a police patrol or give them- selves away to passersby; the other two would be enough to bring Moos- brugger civilian clothes and hold off any guard who might come by until Moosbrugger had changed.
The arrogant irony with which Biziste listened to this plan, as Ulrich spoke faster and faster from nervousness, was striking.
Then Biziste stood up and said: Ifyou come to such and such a place on Wednesday, perhaps we can talk about it some more.
Will you bring along a third person?
Biziste shrugged his shoulders, and Ulrich was dismissed.
1418 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
It gave Ulrich a peculiar, bitter pleasure that in the meantime every- thing else went on inexorably.
On the day Biziste had set, he had gone to the rendezvous but did not meet the third man. Bi. ziste, treating the whole business casually, merely said to him that for a certain sum this third man had declared himself willing. He mentioned a day and time, and revealed that Ulrich would have to go over the wall too, since he was the only one who knew the layout.
All Biziste probably wanted to do was frighten him, and for money a new partner could have been found, but the bizarre situation attracted Ulrich; since one could also break one's neck skiing, why should he not climb over a wall in the night with criminals? Incidentally, he heartily wished the police on this puffed-up Biziste.
He put on his oldest suit, omitted a collar, and topped it off with a sports cap; in this way his silhouette in the shadows of the night was not conspicuously different from that of the other people one might encoun- ter on the remote street along which the wall of the asylum garden ran. Moosbrugger had been alerted; over time, three linen sheets had disap- peared in the hospital, to serve as a rope on which he was to let himself down. Ulrich could probably have smuggled in a climber's rope, but he wanted to avoid anything that might betray the assistance supplied, since it was not out of the question that suspicion would fall on him. On this night the window of Moosbrugger's room was dimly lit; Ulrich had got him the stump of a candle so that they would be able to orient them- selves in the darkness of the moonless night.
Biziste had climbed onto the back of the second "gentleman," swung himself up on top of the wall, and could be heard jumping down into the leaves on the other side. As Ulrich was about to follow, voices were heard; the "gentleman" stood up so inconsiderately that Ulrich, who had already got a foot up to mount on his back, nearly fell, and the other man strolled, hands in pockets, into the night.
Ulrich's heart was pounding and he felt a need to run, which he con- trolled with effort; but in order not to attract attention by behaving oddly, he imagined that he ought not to be walking alone, caught up with the "gentleman," and took his arm like that of a drinking companion, which the "gentleman" seemed to find ridiculously overdone.
The voices died away, and the "gentleman" again offered his back; Ulrich grasped the mortar and brick dust, felt the stab ofa pulled muscle in his leg, so forcefully had he swung it up in his excitement, hung there, let himself fall into the darkness, and ended in an applauding sound of
From the Posthumous Papers · 1419
dead leaves such as he had not heard since his boyhood. He stood up in total darkness, unable to discern the slightest trace of Biziste. He groped right and left, in the hope that another noise would answer his own, but it remained as quiet as it was dark. He had to make up his mind to go in the direction of the building alone, hoping that he would meet up with Biziste on the way.
Again Ulrich's heart pounded; the bushes scratched, as ifin his fear he was making only inappropriate movements. Distances, odors, physical contacts, sounds--everything was new, never experienced. He had to stop, collect his will, and tell himself that he had no other recourse than to see this stupid adventure through. He stumbled onto a path and de- duced which direction would lead to the building most quickly, but was suddenly overcome by the problem of whether he should walk on the crunching gravel or go on working his way through the bushes.
That damned Biziste ought to have waited for him, but at the same time he longed for him as ifhe were a stronger brother. Ifhe would not have been ashamed ofhimself because ofthe fellow on the other side of the wall, Ulrich would have turned around. But he did not even know what signal he was supposed to give to find out whether all was clear on the other side. He realized that he was a fool, and gained some respect for these rogues. But he was not a man to let himself be defeated so easily; it would have been ridiculous for an intellectual not to be able to cope with this too. Ulrich marched forward straight through the shrub- bery; the excitement he was in and the self-control his progress required (entirely without reflection; it was simply moral pains) made him ruth- lessly crack, break, and rustle the bushes. To have slunk forward like an Indian seemed to him just then incredibly silly and childish, and this was the moment in which the normal person in him began to reawaken.
When he came to the edge, Biziste, as Ulrich really might have ex- pected from the first, was squatting there observing the building, and he turned a witheringly punitive glance toward his noisy arrival. Moosbrug- ger's window was dimly lit; Biziste whistled through his teeth. The huge shoulders of the murderer filled the rectangle of the window, the rope fashioned from the sheets rolled down; but Moosbrugger was not skilled in crime and had underestimated the strength of the rescue line re- quired for his enormous weight; hardly had he suspended himself from it when it broke, and the force ofhis landing exploded the stillness with a muflled detonation. At this moment two guards materialized in the half- light that illuminated the wall.
Two days earlier, two mentally ill prisoners had escaped from another observation clinic, but Ulrich had neither heard nor read about it. And so he had not known that since yesterday security had been generally
1420 • THE MAN WITH 0 U T QUALITIES
tightened and old, long-forgotten measures were again being enforced for a while. Among these was the two-man patrol, which, perhaps drawn by the noises Ulrich had made and now alarmed by the muffied fall, stopped, looked around, recognized in the sand a heavy body that with great effort was trying to get up, rushed over, saw a rope hanging from the window, and with all their lung power signaled for help through shrill little whistles. Moosbrugger had dislocated his shoulder and bro- ken an ankle, otherwise it would have been an unhappy encounter for the guards who jumped on him; as it was, he knocked one bleeding into the sand, but when he tried to straighten up to shake off the second, pain deprived him of his footing. The guard hung on his neck and whistled piercingly; the second man, full of pain and rage, pounced on him, and at this moment Biziste sprang out of the bushes. With a powerful blow of his fist, he smashed one guard's whistle between his teeth so that he tumbled off Moosbrugger, but now the other whistled like mad and rushed at Biziste. Such guards are strong men, and Biziste was not ex- ceptionally powerful. If at this instant Ulrich had come fmward to help, with his considerable trained strength, they would no doubt have suc- ceeded in rendering both attackers mute and motionless for a while, but Ulrich did not feel the slightest desire to do so. In the tangle before him his sympathies lay quite honestly with the men unexpectedly set upon, who were fighting for their duty, and if he had only followed his emo- tions, he would have grabbed this Biziste by the collar and given him a solid hook to the chin. But perhaps that was also merely the somewhat comical maternal voice of bourgeois order in him, and as the situation tensed his muscles and nerves, so his mind ebbed, filling him with dis- gust at contradictions whose resolution was not worth the effort.