She used this word perhaps too often, without
thinking
enough about it.
Musil - Man Without Qualities - v2
For heaven's sake don't stumble, so they don't break!
Walter and Clarisse remained behind on their "stage. "
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 59 5
Addendum: Clarisse notices criminal instincts everywhere (which later lead to war).
The blue parasol of the sky stretched above the green parasol of the pines; the green parasol ofthe pines stretched over the red coral trunks; at the foot of one of the coral trunks Clarisse was sitting, feeling the large, armadillo-like scales of the bark against her back. Meingast was standing to one side in the meadow. The wind was playing with his lean- ness as it does around the fence ofa steel tower; Clarisse thought: Ifone could bend one's ear that way one would hear his joints sing. Her heart felt: I am his younger brother.
The struggles with Walter, those attempted embraces from which she had to push her way out-chiseling herself out, she called it, although she herselfwas not made ofstone-had left behind in her an excitement that at times chased over her skin in a flash, like a pack of wolves; she had no idea where it had broken out from or where it vanished to. But as she sat there, her lmees drawn up, listening to Meingast, who was speak- ing of men's groups, her panties under her thin dress lying as tight as boy's trousers against her thighs, she felt calmed.
- A league or covenant of men-Meingast was saying-is armed love that one can no longer find anywhere today. Today one lmows only love for women. A covenant of men demands: loyalty, obedience, standing one for all and all for one; today the manly virtues have been turned into the caricature of a general obligatory military service, but for the Greeks they were still living eros. Male eroticism is not restricted to the sexual; its original form is war, alliance, united energies. Overcoming the fear of death! He stood and spoke into the air.
-W hen a man loves a woman it is always the start of his becoming a bourgeois: Clarisse completed the thought, convinced. -T ell me, does one have any business wishing for a child in a time like ours?
-Oh God, a child! Meingast warded her off. -Well, yes; only chil- dren! You should desire a child. This eroticism ofthe bourgeoisie, it's all people lmow today, and the only possibility leading to suffering and sac- rifice is by means of a child. And anyway, childbearing is still one of the few great things in life. A certain rehabilitation.
Clarisse slowly shook her head. They had recently begun addressing each other again with the familiar Du and had recalled their friendship of long ago, but not in the sensual form it had had before. - I f it were only a childofyours! Clarissesaidwithasmile. -ButWalterisn'tfitforthat.
- M e ? That's a really new ideal Besides, I'm going back to Switzer- land in a few days. My book is finished.
1596 · THE MAN WITH 0 U T QUALITIES
- I ' m coming with you, Clarisse said.
-That's out of the question! My friends are expecting me. There's hard work to be done. We're subject to all sorts of dangers and have to stick together like a phalanx. Meingast said this with a quiet, inward- directed smile. -That's no job for women!
-I'm not a woman! Clarisse exclaimed, and jumped up. (-Didn't you call me "little fellow" when I was fifteen years old? )
The philosopher smiled. Clarisse jumped up and went over to him. - I want to go away with you! she said.
-Love can be revealed in any ofthe following relations-the philoso- pher answered-servant to master, friend to friend, child to parents, wife to spouse, soul to God.
Clarisse put her hand on his arm; with a wordless request and awk- wardly, but as deeply moving as a dog's faithfulness.
Meingast bent down and whispered something in her ear.
Clarisse whispered back hoarsely: -I'm no woman, Meingastl I am the hermaphrodite!
- Y o u ? Meingast made no effort to hide a little contempt.
- I ' m traveling with you. You'll see. I'll show you the first night. W e won't become one, but you will be two. I can leave my body. You will have two bodies.
Meingast shook his head. -Duality ofbodies with a certain cancella- tion of the emphasis on self: a woman can accomplish that. But a woman will never lose herself in a higher community-
-Y ou don't understand mel Clarisse said. - I have the power of transforming myself into a hermaphrodite. I'll be very useful to you in your band of men. You hear that I'm speaking very calmly, but pay atten- tion to what I'm saying: Look at these trees and this round sky above them. Your breath goes further, your heart goes further, health is work- ing ip. your viscera. But the longer you look, the more the picture sucks you out of yourself. Your body remains standing in its place alone. The world sucks you up, I say. Your eyes make you a woman. And i f all your feelings could reach the top, for the world you would be dead and your body decayed.
-Am I right? But there are other days. Then all your muscles and thoughts become urgent. Then I'm a man. Then I stand here and raise my arm, and the sky shoots down into my arm. As if I were tearing down a banner, I say to you. I'm not a megalomaniac. My arm, too, tears me away from the place where I'm standing. Whether I dance, fight, weep, or sing: all that's left are my movements, my song, my tears; the world and I are blown up.
From the PosthuTTWUS Papers · 1597
- N o w do you believe that I belong in the league of men?
Meingast had been listening to Clarisse with an uncertain and almost anxious expression. Now he bent down and kissed her on the forehead. His words inspired Clarisse. - 1 did not lmow you! he said. - B u t it still won't do. A woman's love renders me infertile.
With this, he walked slowly with his high gait through the meadows on the shortest way back to the house. Clarisse did not run after him and did not let any word run after him. She lmew that he was leaving. She wanted to wait, to spare him the leave-taking. She was certain that he needed time to come to terms with her proposal, and that a letter would soon call her. Her lips were still murmuring words, like two little sisters talking over an exciting event; she reprimanded them, and closed them.
Addition to hennaphrodite: For the first time again like it used to be, when young girls had secrets. You really lmow what it means to be mar- ried, and you lmow how Walter is. (Each of these sentences occurs to her as at the beginning. ) And I'm sometimes a man. I've never "per- ished" in a man's arms; I push! I permeate him! I don't belong to any- one; I'm so strong that I could have a friendship with several men at once. A woman loves like an enormous pot that draws all the fire into itself. Clarisse says of herself: To love not like a woman but the way a brave little fox loves a big dog against which it is helpless. Or like a brave dog its master. That's what you love. Or: I'm a soldier, I disarm you, then disarm you just one degree more. Can't move a limb because ofso much superior strength. That's thewayyou love boys. Young people. But I'm a person too, why then just a woman.
But isn't she still-hermaphrodite-a woman too? Perhaps depict it this way: as i f a man would think it beautiful.
I go my way, I have my tasks; but you open my dress and fall upon me and draw my helplessness out of me. And I lean on you, unhappy at what you're doing to me but unable to resist. And go on and wear a black crepe on my helmet.
She would like to have intercourse (possibly with Walter too).
It is weakening.
From this the idea: You will weaken me, make me a woman, so that
you remain radiant . . . (at times)
We struggle hand to hand and are like the bath after the battle. Concretely: I have the character and duties of a man. I don't want
1598 ·THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
(this time) a child and don't want love, but I want the deep phenomenon of desire, of purification (salvation) through wealmess. I-you like you- me, even if servant and master.
? I'll press one leg against yours and wind the other around your hips, and your eyes will mist over.
I'll be insolent and forget my shyness toward you.
The woman has feminine feelings for the superior man, masculine feelings for the subordinate man. Therefore something hermaphroditic arises, a spiritually intertwined threesome.
Clarisse waited for Meingast's letter; the letter did not arrive. Clarisse became agitated. Ulrich, whom she suddenly thought of again, was away. She did not want to talk to Walter.
One morning, something strange happened. Clarisse was reading the newspaper; Walter had not yet left for the office. Suddenly Clarisse asked: -Wasn't there something in the paper yesterday about a train wreck near Budweis? -Y es, said Walter, who was reading another part ofthe paper. -How many dead? -Oh, ofcourse I can't remember; I think two or three; it was a small accident. Why are you asking? -Noth- ing. Reading on for a while, Clarisse said: -Because there's been an accident in America too. Where's Pennsylvania? - I don't know. In America. They went on reading. Clarisse saw strands like railroad tracks fanning out before her, which went on tangling wildly. Had she not seen these strands of tracks weeks or months ago? She reflected. Little trains shot out on the tracks, roared through curves, and collided. Clarisse said: -The engineers never mean for their locomotives to collide. -Of course not, Walter said, without paying attention. Clarisse asked whether her brother Siegfried was coming later that afternoon. Walter answered, he hoped so. He was bothered, it was time for him to be off, and Clarisse was constantly interrupting his reading.
Suddenly Clarisse said: - I want to talk with Siegfried about taking me to see Moosbrugger.
- W h o is Moosbrugger?
- Y o u mean you don't remember? Ulrich's friend the murderer. Now Walter understood whom she meant. She had once talked about
this man. - B u t Ulrich knows him either not at all or only very slightly, he corrected Clarisse.
-W ell, in any case--
- Y o u really shouldn't be so eccentric.
From the Posthumous Papers · 1599
Clarisse did not dignify this with a response. Walter leafed through the paper once more and thought he was surprised at not finding any mention of this person; he had assumed that Clarisse had been moved to make her comment because of some article; but he didn't have time for a question or genuine surprise, because he had to find his hat and rush off. Clarisse made an unpleasant face when he kissed her on the fore- head; two arrogant long lines ran down alongside her nose, and her chin jutted fmward. This very unreal face, which Walter did not notice, might have been grounds for anxiety.
But the strange thing that happened was this. While Clarisse was ask- ing her question, she had recognized that an accident happens not be- cause of evil intent but because in the confused network of tracks, switches, and signals that she saw before her, the human being loses the power of conscience with which he ought to have checked over his task once more; had that happened, he would certainly have done whatever was necessary to avoid the accident. At this moment, where she saw this before her eyes like a child's toy, she felt an enormous power of con- science. So she possessed it. She had to halfclose her eyes so that Walter would not notice their flashing. For she had recognized instantly that when one said "letting things prevail," it was only another expression for it. She understood that one was forced to let things have their way. But she did not let Walter have his, and would not do so.
That was the moment when Moosbrugger had occurred to her.
Everyone is familiar with what a miracle it is when a long-forgotten name, and one that moreover may be unimportant, suddenly pops up in one's memory. Or a face, with details that one is not at all aware of hav- ing seen. Evoked by some accidental stimulus. It is really as if a hole were to open in the sky. Clarisse was by no means wrong when she felt it as a process with two ends, Moosbrugger at one end, and far away, look- ing at him, herself; although one could of course say that in general this is not correct, because memory outside ourselves is nothing.
But precisely if something is not true in general, but is in particular, then this was something for Clarisse. It now occurred to her that Moos- brugger was a carpenter. And we know who else was a carpenter? Right. So at one end there was the carpenter, and at the other, Clarisse. Cla- risse, who was not permitted to let things prevail, who had a black mole on her thigh that fascinated every man. For there was no question that Meingast had run away from her; it had come too suddenly, he had wanted to save himself.
One cannot expect everything to be equally clear in the first moment. Somehow, of course, the carpenter was also connected with Ulrich; when a person whom one has almost forgotten after having loved him
1600 • THE MAN WITH0 UT QUALITIES
suddenly walks in the door, without, so to speak, being inwardly an- nounced, as Ulrich now did, even though in the company of other peo- ple, this is in and of itself something of the kind that makes one have to hold one's breath for a moment. Nor was it clear what all this had to do with the hermaphrodite that Clarisse was in order to enter the league of men; but she would get to that, she felt, and at the root of the emotion there most certainly was a connection; that could be seen in the manner of activity among these thoughts, which up there, on the outside, re- mained isolated for now.
For all these reasons Clarisse considered it her duty to meet Moos- brugger. That certainly wouldn't be difficult. Her brother was a physi- cian and could help her with it. She waited for him, and the time passed quickly. She considered how little Meingast had meant to her when she had known him before, and how great he had become since. While he was present, everything here in the house had been elevated. She had the feeling that he had simply taken her and Walter's sins upon himself, and that was what had made everything so easy. Perhaps now, in the next phase, she would have to take Meingast's sins upon herself.
But what are sins?
She used this word perhaps too often, without thinking enough about it. It is a poisonous Christian word. Clarisse could not discover what she herself meant, precisely. A butterfly occurred to her, which suddenly falls motionless to the ground and becomes an ugly worm with dead wings. Then naturally Walter, who sought the milk of love at her breast and thereafter became stiff and lazy. Besides, had she not once known quite clearly that she would redeem this carpenter from his sins? She had, had she not, once written a letter? It was uncanny to recall that only so dimly. It obviously signified that something was still to come.
No letter came from Meingast, the business with the league of men remained out of Clarisse's purview; sometimes she forgot it because of the new things that were happening. She had to think how she might get into the clinic again in spite of Dr. Friedenthal, who had forbidden her to return. She realized that it would be difficult. Climb over the wall surrounding the grounds? she thought; this idea of penetrating the for- bidden space like a warrior appealed to her greatly, but since the clinic was not in open country but in the city, ifit was to be done without being seen it could be risked only at night, and then, once on the grounds, how was Clarisse to find her way among the many locked buildings? She was
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 6 0 1
afraid. Although she knew that it would have to be considered out of the question, she was frightened by the image of falling into the hands of a madman among the black trees and being raped or strangled by him. She still had the screams of the maniacs in her ears: at the last station, before she went past the lovely ladies and returned once more to ratio- nal life. She often saw before her the naked man standing in the center of a totally empty room that had nothing in it but a low cot and a toilet that were of a piece with the floor. He had a blond beard and light- brown pubic hair. He ignored both the opening of the door and the peo- ple looking at him; he stood with his legs spread apart, kept his head lowered like a savage, had thick saliva in his beard, and repeated like a pendulum the same motion again and again, throwing his upper body around in a shallow circle, always with a push, always toward the same side, his arms forming an acute angle to his body, and the only thing that changed was that with every one of these motions another finger jumped up from his clenched fist; it was accompanied by a loud, panting scream, forced out by the requisite monstrous exertion of the whole body. Dr. Friedenthal had explained that this went on for hours, and had allowed Clarisse to look into other cells, where for the moment quiet reigned. But this had been if anything even more horrifying. He showed her the same bare cement room containing nothing but a person whose fit was imminent, and one of these people was sitting there still in his street clothes; ~<. nlyhis tie and collar had been removed. It was a lawyer with a lovely full beard and carefully parted hair; he sat there and glanced at the visitors as if he had been on the point of going to court and had sat down on this stone bench only because he was compelled, for God knows what reason, to wait. Clarisse was especially horrified by this per- son because he looked so natural; but Dr. Friedenthal said that just a few days before, in his first fit, he had killed his wife, and almost all the transient inhabitants of this section were murderers. Clarisse asked her- selfwhy she was afraid of them, when it was precisely these patients who were best secured and supervised? She feared them because she did not . understand them. There were several others in her memory who af- fected her the same way. -But that's still no reason for my having to meet them if I'm walking through the grounds at night! she said to herself.
But it was like this. It was almost certain that she would meet them; that was an idea it was impossible to eradicate, for no matter how often Clarisse imagined the process ofclimbing over the wall and then walking forward through the gloomy, widely spaced trees, sooner or later it came to a gruesome encounter. This was a given fact one had to reckon with, and therefore it was reasonable to ask what it meant. Even as solid a man
1602 • THE MAN WITH 0 U T QUALITIES
as the famous old American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson, whom she had read in her adolescence because her friends told her he was marvel- ous, maintained that it is a general law of nature and man that like is attracted by like. Clarisse remembered a sentence which went, roughly, that everything that comes to a person tends toward him ofitself, so that cause and effect only apparently succeed each other but in reality are simply two sides ofthe same thing, and all cleverness is bad because with every precautionary rule against danger one is put in the power of this danger. All Clarisse had to do, when she remembered this, was to apply it to herself. If it was established that she, even if at first only in some mysterious fashion in her mind, was continually meeting murderers, then she was attracting these murderers. But is like being attracted by like? That meant that she bore within herself the soul of a murderer. One can imagine what it means when such extraordinary thoughts sud- denly find solid ground beneath their feet! Meingast had run away from her; she was apparently too strong for him. It was like lightning bolts striking each other! Walter was attracted by her to murder his talent again and again in her, no matter how much she pushed him away. She carried a black medallion at the crease ofher hip, and the insane divined it: perhaps such people can see through clothes and came toward her rejoicing. In a confusing way, all the facts fit.
Laughter and difficulties struggled around Clarisse's mouth; it alter- nately opened and clamped tight. She had got up too early; Walter was still sleeping; she had hastily thrown on a light dress and gone outside. The singing of birds reached her from the woods through the empty morning stillness. The hemisphere of the sky had not yet filled with warmth. Even the light was still shallowly dispersed. - I t only reaches as far as my ankles-Clarisse thought-the faucet of the morning has just been opened. Everything was before its time. Clarisse was deeply moved that she was wandering through the world before its time. It al- most made her cry. She fervently regretted that during her visit to the madhouse she had seen through Moosbrugger's situation too late. What she had seen being played out before her was worthless devils gambling for a soul. She heard herself being called to tum back there once more, but Dr. Friedenthal blocked her path. She felt quite ashamed, and went on like that for a ways. But at some point a thought took shape that re- leased her from this depression: Many great men had been in insane asylums. And they had been derided by those who had remained in pos- session of their reason. They had now become incapable of explaining themselves to those for whom earlier they had had only contempt. She remembered the muteness ofthe late Nietzsche, whom she worshiped. And what had vexed her just now because she had not seen through it in
From the Posthumous Papers · 1603
time, how the three devils had intentionally brought her before Moos- brugger in so miserably casual a fashion in order to get the better of her through cunning and paralyze her, indeed that she had really shown her- self to be stupid and weak, now slowly made her understand as a sign that the fate of the great man among the repulsive jailers of the world would be laid upon her too. Her heart was filled by a drifting rain oflight and tears. It was uncanny, putting oneself on an equal footing with the insane; but being on the same footing with the uncanny is to cast one's lot for genius! She decided to free Moosbrugger from his jailers. Thoughts regarding how she might do this flitted around in her mind. The swallows had meanwhile begun to flit through the air. In some way it would have to work. Clarisse was so absorbed in these thoughts that she felt the depths like the narrow incline of an abyss. She had to draw in her shoulders and could only cautiously venture a smile. It occurred to her that this would be the "depth of antimoral inclination" that Nietz- sche demanded of his disciples. She was astonished at this, for she had not expected that it was possible to experience it so palpably. It was a path through a "landscape of countermorality. "
The landscape of countermorality lies deep beneath that of ordinary life, not deep in yards but many octaves deeper. That is how it seemed to her. Everything great lives in the landscape of countermorality (there). It goes the same ways others go, but without touching them. Against that Clarisse said to herself half aloud: - I am following in Nietzsche's foot- steps. She could also imagine that Moosbrugger had taken Nietzsche's sorrow upon himself and was Nietzsche in the shape of a sinner. But that was not her object at the moment. Now she had to take "the sorrow" upon herself: this is what preoccupied her. She felt it hovering, other- worldly, in the vacancy of the morning. She was carrying something that towered up hugely from her shoulders. But then she thought something over and went home.
When she got there, Walter was not yet up, although he ought to have been on his way to the office already. He slept so badly that he could not get up on time in the morning. Dreams tortured him, leaving behind when he woke up, although he could not remem~r them, a feeling of being inwardly wiped out. Walter felt like a piece o£ paper that has been rolled up by an unpleasant warmth, and so dried out that it cracks at the slightest touch. That was the effect of Clarisse, who slept beside him, dressed and undressed beside him, but hardly permitted him to kiss her. His blood stagnated and became restless. It was dammed up like a crowd of people that is stopped at its head, while behind, where people
1604 • THE MAN WITH0 UT QUALITIES
no longer see the cause, they begin to push forward until they're out of control. Walter pulled himselftogether; he did not want to hurt Clarisse, he understood her, she moved him with her childish resolve, there was nobility in her agonized exaggerating. But perhaps, too, that nervous ex- altation which stigmatized everything she did. It seemed to Walter that it was his duty to clear away the·obstacles she erected, even with force, if need be. It would be necessazy to go through such brutality in order to restore normal intellectual opposition, if opposition there had to be. He felt it in himself; both their minds needed a surgeon: a mental growth had proliferated wildly and needed to be cut out. But he was convinced that a sorrow such as had been laid upon them would not be any less deep or strange than Tristan and Isolde's.
Only his most extreme personal need had prompted him, a few days before, to seek a consultation with Clarisse's brother Siegfried. - Y o u know Clarisse---he had said-that is, of course you don't know her, but you know a lot about her, and perhaps you can just this once, as a doctor, also give some advice. Siegfried gave this advice. It was remarkable how much patronizing he accepted from Walter. Life is full of such relation- ships, where one person humiliates and brushes aside another, who of- fers no resistance. Perhaps only healthy life. The world would probably already have perished at the time of the great migrations if people had all defended themselves to the last drop of blood; instead of which the weaker gave in and moved on, preferring to seek other neighbors, whom they in turn could brush aside. This is the model on which human rela- tionships are still carried on, and with time everything works out by it- self. In the circle where Walter was thought to be a genius who had not yet found his definitive expression, Siegfried was considered a lout and a blockhead. He had accepted that, never argued against it, and even today, ifit should come to an intellectual collision with Walter, Siegfried would be the one to yield and pay homage. But for years he had as good as never been in this situation, for they had grown apart, and the old relations had become quite insignificant in comparison with new ones. Siegfried not only had his practice as a doctor-and the doctor rules dif- ferently from the bureaucrat, through his own intellectual power and not that of others, and comes to people who are waiting for his help and accept it obediently-but he also possessed a wife with means, who within a short time had been required to present him with three chil- dren and whom he cheated on with other women, if not often at least now and then, when he felt like it. Siegfried was quite logically also in a situation where he could give Walter the advice he demanded. -Cla- risse---he diagnosed-is excessively nervous. It was always her way to charge through walls, and now her head has got stuck in a wall. You have
From the Posthumous Papers · z6os
to give a good tug, even if she resists. It is against her own advantage if you let her get away with too much. Neurotic people demand a certain sbictness. Walter had answered that doctors understand absolutely nothing about spiritual processes, but meanwhile he managed to put Siegfried's advice in a form that was personally agreeable to him: that two people had to suffer in order to accomplish their burdensome des- tiny of loving each other. As far as the situation itself was concerned, this amounted to the same thing. And he said to Clarisse: -Please, Clarisse, be reasonable!
Clarisse had just got home, had called out: You layabout! to Walter, filled the bath with cold water, and slipped out of her thin dress, when she felt Walter behind her. He was standing there the way he had got out of bed, in a long nightshirt that fell down to his bare feet, and had warm cheeks like a girl's, while Clarisse, in her brief panties and with her skinny arms, looked like a boy. She put her hand on his chest and shoved him back. But Walter reached out for her. With one hand he seized her arm, and with the other sought to grasp her by the crotch and pull her to him. Clarisse tore at the embrace, and when that didn't help shoved her free hand into Walter's face, into his nose and mouth. His face turned red and the blood trembled in his eyes while he struggled with Clarisse. He did not want to let her see that she was hurting him, but when he was in danger of suffocating he had to strike her hand from his face. Quick as lightning, she went at it again, and this time her nails tore two bleeding furrows in his skin. Clarisse was free. Just then Walter again snatched at her, this time with all his strength. He had become angry, and feared nothing in the whole world so much as becoming rational again. Clarisse struck at him. She had lost her shoe and kicked at him. She understood that this time it was for real. Walter was gasping out meaningless sen- tences. The voices of loneliness, as if a robber had jumped on them. She felt she had the strength of giants. Her clothing tore; Walter seized the shreds; she reached for his neck. She would have liked to kill him. She did not know what she was doing. Naked, slippery, she struggled like a wriggling fish in his arms. She bit Walter, whose strength was not suffi- cient to overpower her calmly; he swung her this way and that, and pain- fully sought to block her attacks. Clarisse got tired. Her muscles became numb and slack. There were pauses where she was pressed by Walter's weight against the wall or the floor and could no longer defend herself. Then again there would come a series of defensive movements and ruth- less attacks against sensitive parts ofthe body and face. Then suffocation again, powerlessness, and the heart's beating. Walter was intermittently ashamed. The pain hit him like a ray of light: Reasonable people don't act this way! He thought that Clarisse looked as ugly as a madwoman.
1606 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
But it had taken so much to get himself this far that the acting man ran on by himself, paying no attention to the feeling man. Clarisse, too, no longer had the feeling that she was being raped by Walter; she had only the feeling that she was not able to insist on her will, and when she was forced to yield she uttered a long, shrill, wild cry, like a locomotive. She herself found this inspiration quite strange. Perhaps her will was escap- ing in this cry, now that it was of no more use to her. Walter was scared. And while she had to endure his will she had the consolation: Just wait, I'll get my revenge!
The moment this repulsive scene was over, shame crashed down on Walter. Clarisse sat in a comer, naked as she was, with a thunderous face and made no response to his pleas for forgiveness. He had to get dressed; blood and tears flowed through his shaving foam. He had to leave in a hurry. He felt that he could not leave the beloved of all the days since his youth in this condition. He sought to at least move her to get dressed. Clarisse countered that she could just as well remain sitting this way until Judgment Day. In his despair and helplessness, his whole life as a man shrank back; he threw himself on his knees and with hands raised begged her to forgive him, as he had once prayed against blows; he could not think of anything else to do.
-I'll tell Ulrich everything! Clarisse said, slightly reconciled.
Walter begged her to forget it. There was something in his lack of dignity that called for reconciliation: he loved Clarisse; the shame was like a wound from which real, warm blood was flowing. But Clarisse did not forgive him. She could forgive him as little as an emperor who bears the responsibility for a kingdom can forgive; such people are something other than private individuals. She made him swear never to touch her again before she gave him permission. Walter was expected at a meet- ing; he gave his oath quickly, with the clock in his heart. Then Clarisse gave him the additional task of sending Ulrich over; she agreed to keep silent, but she needed the calming presence of a person she could trust.
During a break at work Walter took a taxi to Ulrich's, to get there as quickly as possible.
Ulrich was at home. His life wearied him. He did not know where Agathe was. Since she had separated herself from him he had had no news of her; he was tortured by worries about what might be happening to her. Everything reminded him of her. How short a time ago he had
From the Posthumous Papers · 1607
restrained her from a rash decision. Yet he did not believe she would do it without speaking to him once more.
Perhaps for that very reason: for the intoxication-a real intoxication, an enchantment! -was over. The experiment they had undertaken to shape their relationship had failed irrevocably. Vast regions of emotions and fancies that had endowed many things with a perennial splendor of unknown origin, like an opalizing sky, were now desolate. Ulrich's mind had dried out like soil beneath which the layers that conduct the mois- ture that nourishes all green things had disappeared. If what he had been forced to wish for was folly-and the exhaustion with which he thought of it admitted of no doubts about that! -then what had been best in his life had always been folly: the shimmer of thinking, the breath of presumption, those tender messengers of a better home that flutter among the things of the world. Nothing remained but to become reason- able; he had to do violence to his nature and apparently submit it to a school that was not only hard but also by definition boring. He did not want to think himself born to be an idler, but would now be one if he did not soon begin to make order out of the consequences of this failure. But when he checked them over, his whole being rebelled against them, and when his being rebelled against them, he longed for Agathe; that hap- pened without exuberance, but still as one yearns for a fellow sufferer when he is the only one with whom one can be intimate.
With distracted politeness, Walter inquired about Ulrich's absence; Ulrich waited with embarrassment for him to ask about Agathe, but for- tunately Walter forgot to. He had recently come to realize that it is in- sanity to doubt the love of a woman whom one loves oneself, he began. Even if one should be disappointed, it was only a matter of letting one- self be disappointed fruitfully, in such a way that the inner lives of all concerned be raised a degree.
Walter and Clarisse remained behind on their "stage. "
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 59 5
Addendum: Clarisse notices criminal instincts everywhere (which later lead to war).
The blue parasol of the sky stretched above the green parasol of the pines; the green parasol ofthe pines stretched over the red coral trunks; at the foot of one of the coral trunks Clarisse was sitting, feeling the large, armadillo-like scales of the bark against her back. Meingast was standing to one side in the meadow. The wind was playing with his lean- ness as it does around the fence ofa steel tower; Clarisse thought: Ifone could bend one's ear that way one would hear his joints sing. Her heart felt: I am his younger brother.
The struggles with Walter, those attempted embraces from which she had to push her way out-chiseling herself out, she called it, although she herselfwas not made ofstone-had left behind in her an excitement that at times chased over her skin in a flash, like a pack of wolves; she had no idea where it had broken out from or where it vanished to. But as she sat there, her lmees drawn up, listening to Meingast, who was speak- ing of men's groups, her panties under her thin dress lying as tight as boy's trousers against her thighs, she felt calmed.
- A league or covenant of men-Meingast was saying-is armed love that one can no longer find anywhere today. Today one lmows only love for women. A covenant of men demands: loyalty, obedience, standing one for all and all for one; today the manly virtues have been turned into the caricature of a general obligatory military service, but for the Greeks they were still living eros. Male eroticism is not restricted to the sexual; its original form is war, alliance, united energies. Overcoming the fear of death! He stood and spoke into the air.
-W hen a man loves a woman it is always the start of his becoming a bourgeois: Clarisse completed the thought, convinced. -T ell me, does one have any business wishing for a child in a time like ours?
-Oh God, a child! Meingast warded her off. -Well, yes; only chil- dren! You should desire a child. This eroticism ofthe bourgeoisie, it's all people lmow today, and the only possibility leading to suffering and sac- rifice is by means of a child. And anyway, childbearing is still one of the few great things in life. A certain rehabilitation.
Clarisse slowly shook her head. They had recently begun addressing each other again with the familiar Du and had recalled their friendship of long ago, but not in the sensual form it had had before. - I f it were only a childofyours! Clarissesaidwithasmile. -ButWalterisn'tfitforthat.
- M e ? That's a really new ideal Besides, I'm going back to Switzer- land in a few days. My book is finished.
1596 · THE MAN WITH 0 U T QUALITIES
- I ' m coming with you, Clarisse said.
-That's out of the question! My friends are expecting me. There's hard work to be done. We're subject to all sorts of dangers and have to stick together like a phalanx. Meingast said this with a quiet, inward- directed smile. -That's no job for women!
-I'm not a woman! Clarisse exclaimed, and jumped up. (-Didn't you call me "little fellow" when I was fifteen years old? )
The philosopher smiled. Clarisse jumped up and went over to him. - I want to go away with you! she said.
-Love can be revealed in any ofthe following relations-the philoso- pher answered-servant to master, friend to friend, child to parents, wife to spouse, soul to God.
Clarisse put her hand on his arm; with a wordless request and awk- wardly, but as deeply moving as a dog's faithfulness.
Meingast bent down and whispered something in her ear.
Clarisse whispered back hoarsely: -I'm no woman, Meingastl I am the hermaphrodite!
- Y o u ? Meingast made no effort to hide a little contempt.
- I ' m traveling with you. You'll see. I'll show you the first night. W e won't become one, but you will be two. I can leave my body. You will have two bodies.
Meingast shook his head. -Duality ofbodies with a certain cancella- tion of the emphasis on self: a woman can accomplish that. But a woman will never lose herself in a higher community-
-Y ou don't understand mel Clarisse said. - I have the power of transforming myself into a hermaphrodite. I'll be very useful to you in your band of men. You hear that I'm speaking very calmly, but pay atten- tion to what I'm saying: Look at these trees and this round sky above them. Your breath goes further, your heart goes further, health is work- ing ip. your viscera. But the longer you look, the more the picture sucks you out of yourself. Your body remains standing in its place alone. The world sucks you up, I say. Your eyes make you a woman. And i f all your feelings could reach the top, for the world you would be dead and your body decayed.
-Am I right? But there are other days. Then all your muscles and thoughts become urgent. Then I'm a man. Then I stand here and raise my arm, and the sky shoots down into my arm. As if I were tearing down a banner, I say to you. I'm not a megalomaniac. My arm, too, tears me away from the place where I'm standing. Whether I dance, fight, weep, or sing: all that's left are my movements, my song, my tears; the world and I are blown up.
From the PosthuTTWUS Papers · 1597
- N o w do you believe that I belong in the league of men?
Meingast had been listening to Clarisse with an uncertain and almost anxious expression. Now he bent down and kissed her on the forehead. His words inspired Clarisse. - 1 did not lmow you! he said. - B u t it still won't do. A woman's love renders me infertile.
With this, he walked slowly with his high gait through the meadows on the shortest way back to the house. Clarisse did not run after him and did not let any word run after him. She lmew that he was leaving. She wanted to wait, to spare him the leave-taking. She was certain that he needed time to come to terms with her proposal, and that a letter would soon call her. Her lips were still murmuring words, like two little sisters talking over an exciting event; she reprimanded them, and closed them.
Addition to hennaphrodite: For the first time again like it used to be, when young girls had secrets. You really lmow what it means to be mar- ried, and you lmow how Walter is. (Each of these sentences occurs to her as at the beginning. ) And I'm sometimes a man. I've never "per- ished" in a man's arms; I push! I permeate him! I don't belong to any- one; I'm so strong that I could have a friendship with several men at once. A woman loves like an enormous pot that draws all the fire into itself. Clarisse says of herself: To love not like a woman but the way a brave little fox loves a big dog against which it is helpless. Or like a brave dog its master. That's what you love. Or: I'm a soldier, I disarm you, then disarm you just one degree more. Can't move a limb because ofso much superior strength. That's thewayyou love boys. Young people. But I'm a person too, why then just a woman.
But isn't she still-hermaphrodite-a woman too? Perhaps depict it this way: as i f a man would think it beautiful.
I go my way, I have my tasks; but you open my dress and fall upon me and draw my helplessness out of me. And I lean on you, unhappy at what you're doing to me but unable to resist. And go on and wear a black crepe on my helmet.
She would like to have intercourse (possibly with Walter too).
It is weakening.
From this the idea: You will weaken me, make me a woman, so that
you remain radiant . . . (at times)
We struggle hand to hand and are like the bath after the battle. Concretely: I have the character and duties of a man. I don't want
1598 ·THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
(this time) a child and don't want love, but I want the deep phenomenon of desire, of purification (salvation) through wealmess. I-you like you- me, even if servant and master.
? I'll press one leg against yours and wind the other around your hips, and your eyes will mist over.
I'll be insolent and forget my shyness toward you.
The woman has feminine feelings for the superior man, masculine feelings for the subordinate man. Therefore something hermaphroditic arises, a spiritually intertwined threesome.
Clarisse waited for Meingast's letter; the letter did not arrive. Clarisse became agitated. Ulrich, whom she suddenly thought of again, was away. She did not want to talk to Walter.
One morning, something strange happened. Clarisse was reading the newspaper; Walter had not yet left for the office. Suddenly Clarisse asked: -Wasn't there something in the paper yesterday about a train wreck near Budweis? -Y es, said Walter, who was reading another part ofthe paper. -How many dead? -Oh, ofcourse I can't remember; I think two or three; it was a small accident. Why are you asking? -Noth- ing. Reading on for a while, Clarisse said: -Because there's been an accident in America too. Where's Pennsylvania? - I don't know. In America. They went on reading. Clarisse saw strands like railroad tracks fanning out before her, which went on tangling wildly. Had she not seen these strands of tracks weeks or months ago? She reflected. Little trains shot out on the tracks, roared through curves, and collided. Clarisse said: -The engineers never mean for their locomotives to collide. -Of course not, Walter said, without paying attention. Clarisse asked whether her brother Siegfried was coming later that afternoon. Walter answered, he hoped so. He was bothered, it was time for him to be off, and Clarisse was constantly interrupting his reading.
Suddenly Clarisse said: - I want to talk with Siegfried about taking me to see Moosbrugger.
- W h o is Moosbrugger?
- Y o u mean you don't remember? Ulrich's friend the murderer. Now Walter understood whom she meant. She had once talked about
this man. - B u t Ulrich knows him either not at all or only very slightly, he corrected Clarisse.
-W ell, in any case--
- Y o u really shouldn't be so eccentric.
From the Posthumous Papers · 1599
Clarisse did not dignify this with a response. Walter leafed through the paper once more and thought he was surprised at not finding any mention of this person; he had assumed that Clarisse had been moved to make her comment because of some article; but he didn't have time for a question or genuine surprise, because he had to find his hat and rush off. Clarisse made an unpleasant face when he kissed her on the fore- head; two arrogant long lines ran down alongside her nose, and her chin jutted fmward. This very unreal face, which Walter did not notice, might have been grounds for anxiety.
But the strange thing that happened was this. While Clarisse was ask- ing her question, she had recognized that an accident happens not be- cause of evil intent but because in the confused network of tracks, switches, and signals that she saw before her, the human being loses the power of conscience with which he ought to have checked over his task once more; had that happened, he would certainly have done whatever was necessary to avoid the accident. At this moment, where she saw this before her eyes like a child's toy, she felt an enormous power of con- science. So she possessed it. She had to halfclose her eyes so that Walter would not notice their flashing. For she had recognized instantly that when one said "letting things prevail," it was only another expression for it. She understood that one was forced to let things have their way. But she did not let Walter have his, and would not do so.
That was the moment when Moosbrugger had occurred to her.
Everyone is familiar with what a miracle it is when a long-forgotten name, and one that moreover may be unimportant, suddenly pops up in one's memory. Or a face, with details that one is not at all aware of hav- ing seen. Evoked by some accidental stimulus. It is really as if a hole were to open in the sky. Clarisse was by no means wrong when she felt it as a process with two ends, Moosbrugger at one end, and far away, look- ing at him, herself; although one could of course say that in general this is not correct, because memory outside ourselves is nothing.
But precisely if something is not true in general, but is in particular, then this was something for Clarisse. It now occurred to her that Moos- brugger was a carpenter. And we know who else was a carpenter? Right. So at one end there was the carpenter, and at the other, Clarisse. Cla- risse, who was not permitted to let things prevail, who had a black mole on her thigh that fascinated every man. For there was no question that Meingast had run away from her; it had come too suddenly, he had wanted to save himself.
One cannot expect everything to be equally clear in the first moment. Somehow, of course, the carpenter was also connected with Ulrich; when a person whom one has almost forgotten after having loved him
1600 • THE MAN WITH0 UT QUALITIES
suddenly walks in the door, without, so to speak, being inwardly an- nounced, as Ulrich now did, even though in the company of other peo- ple, this is in and of itself something of the kind that makes one have to hold one's breath for a moment. Nor was it clear what all this had to do with the hermaphrodite that Clarisse was in order to enter the league of men; but she would get to that, she felt, and at the root of the emotion there most certainly was a connection; that could be seen in the manner of activity among these thoughts, which up there, on the outside, re- mained isolated for now.
For all these reasons Clarisse considered it her duty to meet Moos- brugger. That certainly wouldn't be difficult. Her brother was a physi- cian and could help her with it. She waited for him, and the time passed quickly. She considered how little Meingast had meant to her when she had known him before, and how great he had become since. While he was present, everything here in the house had been elevated. She had the feeling that he had simply taken her and Walter's sins upon himself, and that was what had made everything so easy. Perhaps now, in the next phase, she would have to take Meingast's sins upon herself.
But what are sins?
She used this word perhaps too often, without thinking enough about it. It is a poisonous Christian word. Clarisse could not discover what she herself meant, precisely. A butterfly occurred to her, which suddenly falls motionless to the ground and becomes an ugly worm with dead wings. Then naturally Walter, who sought the milk of love at her breast and thereafter became stiff and lazy. Besides, had she not once known quite clearly that she would redeem this carpenter from his sins? She had, had she not, once written a letter? It was uncanny to recall that only so dimly. It obviously signified that something was still to come.
No letter came from Meingast, the business with the league of men remained out of Clarisse's purview; sometimes she forgot it because of the new things that were happening. She had to think how she might get into the clinic again in spite of Dr. Friedenthal, who had forbidden her to return. She realized that it would be difficult. Climb over the wall surrounding the grounds? she thought; this idea of penetrating the for- bidden space like a warrior appealed to her greatly, but since the clinic was not in open country but in the city, ifit was to be done without being seen it could be risked only at night, and then, once on the grounds, how was Clarisse to find her way among the many locked buildings? She was
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 6 0 1
afraid. Although she knew that it would have to be considered out of the question, she was frightened by the image of falling into the hands of a madman among the black trees and being raped or strangled by him. She still had the screams of the maniacs in her ears: at the last station, before she went past the lovely ladies and returned once more to ratio- nal life. She often saw before her the naked man standing in the center of a totally empty room that had nothing in it but a low cot and a toilet that were of a piece with the floor. He had a blond beard and light- brown pubic hair. He ignored both the opening of the door and the peo- ple looking at him; he stood with his legs spread apart, kept his head lowered like a savage, had thick saliva in his beard, and repeated like a pendulum the same motion again and again, throwing his upper body around in a shallow circle, always with a push, always toward the same side, his arms forming an acute angle to his body, and the only thing that changed was that with every one of these motions another finger jumped up from his clenched fist; it was accompanied by a loud, panting scream, forced out by the requisite monstrous exertion of the whole body. Dr. Friedenthal had explained that this went on for hours, and had allowed Clarisse to look into other cells, where for the moment quiet reigned. But this had been if anything even more horrifying. He showed her the same bare cement room containing nothing but a person whose fit was imminent, and one of these people was sitting there still in his street clothes; ~<. nlyhis tie and collar had been removed. It was a lawyer with a lovely full beard and carefully parted hair; he sat there and glanced at the visitors as if he had been on the point of going to court and had sat down on this stone bench only because he was compelled, for God knows what reason, to wait. Clarisse was especially horrified by this per- son because he looked so natural; but Dr. Friedenthal said that just a few days before, in his first fit, he had killed his wife, and almost all the transient inhabitants of this section were murderers. Clarisse asked her- selfwhy she was afraid of them, when it was precisely these patients who were best secured and supervised? She feared them because she did not . understand them. There were several others in her memory who af- fected her the same way. -But that's still no reason for my having to meet them if I'm walking through the grounds at night! she said to herself.
But it was like this. It was almost certain that she would meet them; that was an idea it was impossible to eradicate, for no matter how often Clarisse imagined the process ofclimbing over the wall and then walking forward through the gloomy, widely spaced trees, sooner or later it came to a gruesome encounter. This was a given fact one had to reckon with, and therefore it was reasonable to ask what it meant. Even as solid a man
1602 • THE MAN WITH 0 U T QUALITIES
as the famous old American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson, whom she had read in her adolescence because her friends told her he was marvel- ous, maintained that it is a general law of nature and man that like is attracted by like. Clarisse remembered a sentence which went, roughly, that everything that comes to a person tends toward him ofitself, so that cause and effect only apparently succeed each other but in reality are simply two sides ofthe same thing, and all cleverness is bad because with every precautionary rule against danger one is put in the power of this danger. All Clarisse had to do, when she remembered this, was to apply it to herself. If it was established that she, even if at first only in some mysterious fashion in her mind, was continually meeting murderers, then she was attracting these murderers. But is like being attracted by like? That meant that she bore within herself the soul of a murderer. One can imagine what it means when such extraordinary thoughts sud- denly find solid ground beneath their feet! Meingast had run away from her; she was apparently too strong for him. It was like lightning bolts striking each other! Walter was attracted by her to murder his talent again and again in her, no matter how much she pushed him away. She carried a black medallion at the crease ofher hip, and the insane divined it: perhaps such people can see through clothes and came toward her rejoicing. In a confusing way, all the facts fit.
Laughter and difficulties struggled around Clarisse's mouth; it alter- nately opened and clamped tight. She had got up too early; Walter was still sleeping; she had hastily thrown on a light dress and gone outside. The singing of birds reached her from the woods through the empty morning stillness. The hemisphere of the sky had not yet filled with warmth. Even the light was still shallowly dispersed. - I t only reaches as far as my ankles-Clarisse thought-the faucet of the morning has just been opened. Everything was before its time. Clarisse was deeply moved that she was wandering through the world before its time. It al- most made her cry. She fervently regretted that during her visit to the madhouse she had seen through Moosbrugger's situation too late. What she had seen being played out before her was worthless devils gambling for a soul. She heard herself being called to tum back there once more, but Dr. Friedenthal blocked her path. She felt quite ashamed, and went on like that for a ways. But at some point a thought took shape that re- leased her from this depression: Many great men had been in insane asylums. And they had been derided by those who had remained in pos- session of their reason. They had now become incapable of explaining themselves to those for whom earlier they had had only contempt. She remembered the muteness ofthe late Nietzsche, whom she worshiped. And what had vexed her just now because she had not seen through it in
From the Posthumous Papers · 1603
time, how the three devils had intentionally brought her before Moos- brugger in so miserably casual a fashion in order to get the better of her through cunning and paralyze her, indeed that she had really shown her- self to be stupid and weak, now slowly made her understand as a sign that the fate of the great man among the repulsive jailers of the world would be laid upon her too. Her heart was filled by a drifting rain oflight and tears. It was uncanny, putting oneself on an equal footing with the insane; but being on the same footing with the uncanny is to cast one's lot for genius! She decided to free Moosbrugger from his jailers. Thoughts regarding how she might do this flitted around in her mind. The swallows had meanwhile begun to flit through the air. In some way it would have to work. Clarisse was so absorbed in these thoughts that she felt the depths like the narrow incline of an abyss. She had to draw in her shoulders and could only cautiously venture a smile. It occurred to her that this would be the "depth of antimoral inclination" that Nietz- sche demanded of his disciples. She was astonished at this, for she had not expected that it was possible to experience it so palpably. It was a path through a "landscape of countermorality. "
The landscape of countermorality lies deep beneath that of ordinary life, not deep in yards but many octaves deeper. That is how it seemed to her. Everything great lives in the landscape of countermorality (there). It goes the same ways others go, but without touching them. Against that Clarisse said to herself half aloud: - I am following in Nietzsche's foot- steps. She could also imagine that Moosbrugger had taken Nietzsche's sorrow upon himself and was Nietzsche in the shape of a sinner. But that was not her object at the moment. Now she had to take "the sorrow" upon herself: this is what preoccupied her. She felt it hovering, other- worldly, in the vacancy of the morning. She was carrying something that towered up hugely from her shoulders. But then she thought something over and went home.
When she got there, Walter was not yet up, although he ought to have been on his way to the office already. He slept so badly that he could not get up on time in the morning. Dreams tortured him, leaving behind when he woke up, although he could not remem~r them, a feeling of being inwardly wiped out. Walter felt like a piece o£ paper that has been rolled up by an unpleasant warmth, and so dried out that it cracks at the slightest touch. That was the effect of Clarisse, who slept beside him, dressed and undressed beside him, but hardly permitted him to kiss her. His blood stagnated and became restless. It was dammed up like a crowd of people that is stopped at its head, while behind, where people
1604 • THE MAN WITH0 UT QUALITIES
no longer see the cause, they begin to push forward until they're out of control. Walter pulled himselftogether; he did not want to hurt Clarisse, he understood her, she moved him with her childish resolve, there was nobility in her agonized exaggerating. But perhaps, too, that nervous ex- altation which stigmatized everything she did. It seemed to Walter that it was his duty to clear away the·obstacles she erected, even with force, if need be. It would be necessazy to go through such brutality in order to restore normal intellectual opposition, if opposition there had to be. He felt it in himself; both their minds needed a surgeon: a mental growth had proliferated wildly and needed to be cut out. But he was convinced that a sorrow such as had been laid upon them would not be any less deep or strange than Tristan and Isolde's.
Only his most extreme personal need had prompted him, a few days before, to seek a consultation with Clarisse's brother Siegfried. - Y o u know Clarisse---he had said-that is, of course you don't know her, but you know a lot about her, and perhaps you can just this once, as a doctor, also give some advice. Siegfried gave this advice. It was remarkable how much patronizing he accepted from Walter. Life is full of such relation- ships, where one person humiliates and brushes aside another, who of- fers no resistance. Perhaps only healthy life. The world would probably already have perished at the time of the great migrations if people had all defended themselves to the last drop of blood; instead of which the weaker gave in and moved on, preferring to seek other neighbors, whom they in turn could brush aside. This is the model on which human rela- tionships are still carried on, and with time everything works out by it- self. In the circle where Walter was thought to be a genius who had not yet found his definitive expression, Siegfried was considered a lout and a blockhead. He had accepted that, never argued against it, and even today, ifit should come to an intellectual collision with Walter, Siegfried would be the one to yield and pay homage. But for years he had as good as never been in this situation, for they had grown apart, and the old relations had become quite insignificant in comparison with new ones. Siegfried not only had his practice as a doctor-and the doctor rules dif- ferently from the bureaucrat, through his own intellectual power and not that of others, and comes to people who are waiting for his help and accept it obediently-but he also possessed a wife with means, who within a short time had been required to present him with three chil- dren and whom he cheated on with other women, if not often at least now and then, when he felt like it. Siegfried was quite logically also in a situation where he could give Walter the advice he demanded. -Cla- risse---he diagnosed-is excessively nervous. It was always her way to charge through walls, and now her head has got stuck in a wall. You have
From the Posthumous Papers · z6os
to give a good tug, even if she resists. It is against her own advantage if you let her get away with too much. Neurotic people demand a certain sbictness. Walter had answered that doctors understand absolutely nothing about spiritual processes, but meanwhile he managed to put Siegfried's advice in a form that was personally agreeable to him: that two people had to suffer in order to accomplish their burdensome des- tiny of loving each other. As far as the situation itself was concerned, this amounted to the same thing. And he said to Clarisse: -Please, Clarisse, be reasonable!
Clarisse had just got home, had called out: You layabout! to Walter, filled the bath with cold water, and slipped out of her thin dress, when she felt Walter behind her. He was standing there the way he had got out of bed, in a long nightshirt that fell down to his bare feet, and had warm cheeks like a girl's, while Clarisse, in her brief panties and with her skinny arms, looked like a boy. She put her hand on his chest and shoved him back. But Walter reached out for her. With one hand he seized her arm, and with the other sought to grasp her by the crotch and pull her to him. Clarisse tore at the embrace, and when that didn't help shoved her free hand into Walter's face, into his nose and mouth. His face turned red and the blood trembled in his eyes while he struggled with Clarisse. He did not want to let her see that she was hurting him, but when he was in danger of suffocating he had to strike her hand from his face. Quick as lightning, she went at it again, and this time her nails tore two bleeding furrows in his skin. Clarisse was free. Just then Walter again snatched at her, this time with all his strength. He had become angry, and feared nothing in the whole world so much as becoming rational again. Clarisse struck at him. She had lost her shoe and kicked at him. She understood that this time it was for real. Walter was gasping out meaningless sen- tences. The voices of loneliness, as if a robber had jumped on them. She felt she had the strength of giants. Her clothing tore; Walter seized the shreds; she reached for his neck. She would have liked to kill him. She did not know what she was doing. Naked, slippery, she struggled like a wriggling fish in his arms. She bit Walter, whose strength was not suffi- cient to overpower her calmly; he swung her this way and that, and pain- fully sought to block her attacks. Clarisse got tired. Her muscles became numb and slack. There were pauses where she was pressed by Walter's weight against the wall or the floor and could no longer defend herself. Then again there would come a series of defensive movements and ruth- less attacks against sensitive parts ofthe body and face. Then suffocation again, powerlessness, and the heart's beating. Walter was intermittently ashamed. The pain hit him like a ray of light: Reasonable people don't act this way! He thought that Clarisse looked as ugly as a madwoman.
1606 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
But it had taken so much to get himself this far that the acting man ran on by himself, paying no attention to the feeling man. Clarisse, too, no longer had the feeling that she was being raped by Walter; she had only the feeling that she was not able to insist on her will, and when she was forced to yield she uttered a long, shrill, wild cry, like a locomotive. She herself found this inspiration quite strange. Perhaps her will was escap- ing in this cry, now that it was of no more use to her. Walter was scared. And while she had to endure his will she had the consolation: Just wait, I'll get my revenge!
The moment this repulsive scene was over, shame crashed down on Walter. Clarisse sat in a comer, naked as she was, with a thunderous face and made no response to his pleas for forgiveness. He had to get dressed; blood and tears flowed through his shaving foam. He had to leave in a hurry. He felt that he could not leave the beloved of all the days since his youth in this condition. He sought to at least move her to get dressed. Clarisse countered that she could just as well remain sitting this way until Judgment Day. In his despair and helplessness, his whole life as a man shrank back; he threw himself on his knees and with hands raised begged her to forgive him, as he had once prayed against blows; he could not think of anything else to do.
-I'll tell Ulrich everything! Clarisse said, slightly reconciled.
Walter begged her to forget it. There was something in his lack of dignity that called for reconciliation: he loved Clarisse; the shame was like a wound from which real, warm blood was flowing. But Clarisse did not forgive him. She could forgive him as little as an emperor who bears the responsibility for a kingdom can forgive; such people are something other than private individuals. She made him swear never to touch her again before she gave him permission. Walter was expected at a meet- ing; he gave his oath quickly, with the clock in his heart. Then Clarisse gave him the additional task of sending Ulrich over; she agreed to keep silent, but she needed the calming presence of a person she could trust.
During a break at work Walter took a taxi to Ulrich's, to get there as quickly as possible.
Ulrich was at home. His life wearied him. He did not know where Agathe was. Since she had separated herself from him he had had no news of her; he was tortured by worries about what might be happening to her. Everything reminded him of her. How short a time ago he had
From the Posthumous Papers · 1607
restrained her from a rash decision. Yet he did not believe she would do it without speaking to him once more.
Perhaps for that very reason: for the intoxication-a real intoxication, an enchantment! -was over. The experiment they had undertaken to shape their relationship had failed irrevocably. Vast regions of emotions and fancies that had endowed many things with a perennial splendor of unknown origin, like an opalizing sky, were now desolate. Ulrich's mind had dried out like soil beneath which the layers that conduct the mois- ture that nourishes all green things had disappeared. If what he had been forced to wish for was folly-and the exhaustion with which he thought of it admitted of no doubts about that! -then what had been best in his life had always been folly: the shimmer of thinking, the breath of presumption, those tender messengers of a better home that flutter among the things of the world. Nothing remained but to become reason- able; he had to do violence to his nature and apparently submit it to a school that was not only hard but also by definition boring. He did not want to think himself born to be an idler, but would now be one if he did not soon begin to make order out of the consequences of this failure. But when he checked them over, his whole being rebelled against them, and when his being rebelled against them, he longed for Agathe; that hap- pened without exuberance, but still as one yearns for a fellow sufferer when he is the only one with whom one can be intimate.
With distracted politeness, Walter inquired about Ulrich's absence; Ulrich waited with embarrassment for him to ask about Agathe, but for- tunately Walter forgot to. He had recently come to realize that it is in- sanity to doubt the love of a woman whom one loves oneself, he began. Even if one should be disappointed, it was only a matter of letting one- self be disappointed fruitfully, in such a way that the inner lives of all concerned be raised a degree.
