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Robert Musil

The Man Without Qualit-ies, Volume 2

From the Posthumous Papers

1961

FROM THEPOSTHUMOUS

PAPERS

TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN BY

BURTON PIKE

PREFACE

Musil did not finish The Man Without Qual-ities, although he often said he intended to.There is no way of telling from either theparts published in his lifetime or hisposthumous papers how he would have doneso, or indeed whether he could have done soto his own satisfaction. This is because of thenovels rigorously experimental structure,consisting of an open architecture thatcould be developed in many directions fromany given point. The novel does contain co-herent individual threads and incidents, butMusil firmly rejected the idea of a plottednarrative whole. Therefore, while the draftsof the twenty chapters in Part 1 of From thePosthumous Papers carry on from whereInto the Millennium left off, the material in

Part 2 is not preliminary to a final version inthe usual sense, but consists rather of notes,sketches, and drafts that Musil was keepingin suspension for possible use in some format some place in the ultimate text, a versionhe never decided upon and that must foreverremain the object of tantalizing speculation.

We have a fortuitous, if unhappy,benchmark for this posthumous material:When Musil had to leave Vienna in 1938, hetook with him into exile in Switzerland ma-terial that he considered most useful for hisfurther work on The Man Without Qualities.Everything left behind in Vienna was des-troyed during the war. (A further loss wassuffered when two of Musils surviving note-books were stolen from an editors car in Italyin 1970, before they could be transcribed.)

The extent to which Musil regarded thisnovel as experimental was extraordinary. Hehad begun work on it in earnest in 1924 andwas most reluctant when the urging of

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publishers and worsening external condi-tions forced him to publish parts of it in 1931and 1933 (pages 1-1130 in this edition). Fromhis point of view, the entire text oughtto haveremained open from the beginning until ithad all been written and he could then revisethe text as a whole. He complained that par-tial publication removed those parts of thenovel from the possibility of further altera-tion, as well as distorting the shape (again, anever defined, open shape) he had in mindfor the whole work. As it was, in 1938, in lessthan robust health and apparently appre-hensive that he would again be forced intopremature publication, he withdrew the firsttwenty chapters that appear in From thePosthumous Papers when they were alreadyset in galleys, in order to rework them stillfurther. These chapters were intended not toconclude the novel but to continue Into theMillennium. like Goethe, Musil had astrange sense of having infinite time

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stretching out before him in which to com-plete his task. One is tempted to see in hissolitary and stubborn pursuit of his idealmore than a little of Kafkas Hunger Artist.

Musils purpose in writing The ManWithout Qualities was a moral one. He hadset out to explore possibilities for the rightlife in a culture that had lost both its centerand its bearings but could not tear itselfaway from its outworn forms and habits ofthought, even while they were dissolving.Musil equated ethics and aesthetics, and wasconvinced that a union of precision andsoul, the language and discoveries of sciencewith ones inner life of perceptions and feel-ings, could be, and must be, achieved. Hemeant this novel to be experienced as a mor-al lever to move the world, as Emerson andNietzsche intended their writing to be exper-ienced, in such a way that (in Rilkes words)you must change your life. Musils anguishbecomes palpable as he pursues this search

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for the right life using the tools of scientificskepticism, while remaining all too aware ofthe apparently inherent limitations of humansocieties and, especially, of human nature.Fortunately, this anguish is leavened by asparkling wit of language and situation, aswhen a character is described as wearing awig of split hairs.

The search for the right life leads to anincreasing inwardness in the novel. Musil in-tended to have Ulrich and Agathe somehowrejoin the world after the failure of their at-tempt to achieve a unio mystica, but as thereader will see, this was left completely up inthe air among a welter of conflicting possibil-ities. Much of the material in Part 2 consistsof startlingly dramatic or even melodramaticnuclei that Musil weighed using at somepoint. He frequently inserts identical orslightly varied material in different places,obviously to try it out in alternative contexts,but without committing himself. Always an

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analytical thinker and a methodical worker,Musil used an elaborate and cryptic systemof referencing and cross-referencing codesand notations, some of them still un-deciphered, to remind himself of the manyinterconnections. These markings are ubi-quitous, indicating how thoroughly the dif-ferent parts of the work were simultaneouslypresent in his mind. These codes are to befound in the German edition but have beensuppressed here in the interest of readability.

Among the experiments Musil tries out,for example, are the possibilities of Ulrichhaving sexual relations, sometimes aggress-ive and perverse, with his sister, Agathe, hiscousin Diotima, and Clarisse, his friend Wal-ters wife. Moosbrugger, the sex murdererwho haunts the entire novel, is somehowfreed by Clarisse in one version, whileUlrichs attempt to free him himself, togetherwith some hired criminals, fails in another.Moosbrugger is executed, and Hans Sepp

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commits suicide (under a train in one place,by gunshot in another). Ulrichs escape tothe idyllic Italian island is now with Agathe,now with Clarisse; the idyll fails with Agathe,fails with Clarisse. Clarisse looms much lar-ger in these drafts than in the main text; herethe stages of her growing insanity are care-fully detailed. Ulrich appears crueler, moremorally indolent, as his successive failuresare recorded. (Musil should not be identifiedwith Ulrich; as is made quite clear here, inhis role as narrator Musil is usually critical ofUlrich.) These posthumous papers also sheda great deal of light on Musils concept ofmysticism and the Other Condition.

Musil had suffered a stroke in 1936, andthe tone of Part 1 of From the PosthumousPapers, written after that, is markedly dif-ferent from the earlier sections of the novel;quieter, strikingly inward, more difficult, thewriting often of a rare beauty. In the selec-tion of drafts, notes, and sketches presented

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in Part 2, which cover the span of timebetween 1920 and 1942, Musil makes clearhow the faults of his characters are intendedto mirror the larger faults of the age; as hesays, these figures live on an arc without be-ing able to close the circle. As the age comesunglued and spirals toward war, so do thecharacters spiral more clearly toward failure,helplessness, madness, and suicide, even asthey press forward in their firm belief in abetter future, if only they could find the key.The Man Without Qualities is not a pessim-istic work.

The contents of From the PosthumousPapers have riot been previously translatedinto English. Much of what is presented herebecame available in German for the first timeonly with the publication of the 1978 Germanedition of Musils collected works. This newGerman edition is not definitive, but it com-pletely supersedes the edition of the 1950son which the first, incomplete, English

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translation was based. The guiding principlein selecting the material for translation inFrom the Posthumous Papers was topresent to the English-speaking public inreadable form the major narrative portionsof the posthumous material in the 1978 Ger-man edition, as well as selections that illu-minate Musils methods of thinking andworking. Scholarly completeness could notbe the goal in any case, since the 1978 Ger-man edition offers only a major selectionfrom the extant posthumous papers, togeth-er with some scholarly apparatus. There ex-ists in manuscript even more material relat-ing to The Man Without Qualities than is inthe German edition: The various Musil re-search centers finished the painstaking pro-cess of transcribing these papers only in1990, and this transcription, 34 megabytes ofdata (not all of it relating to the novel), hasbeen made available in German on a CD-ROM disk. Omitted in what follows, aside

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from the cross-referencing codes, are (1)longer repetitive variations of chapters orsections in which the changes areslightMusil was an obsessive rewriter andpolisher; and (2) many brief notes, jottings,and indications that are too sketchy to be in-formative except to the specialist.

Except for the galley drafts of the firsttwenty chapters, this material is for the mostpart not polished or written up in finalform; some of it is quite sketchy, somemerely jotted notes. Over the years, Musilchanged the names of some of his charactersand switched others, and this can be confus-ing. The essence of the characters, however,seems to have been fixed from the earlystages, so these name changes are purelyverbal. Ulrich was originally called Anders,then called Achilles; the names, but not thecharacters, of Lindner and Meingast were re-versed. Clarisses brother is called Siegmundin the main text, Siegfried and Wotan here.

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In the interest of readability the names, withone or two obvious exceptions, have beenchanged to be consistent with those usedpreviously in the novel and are spelledoutMusil usually refers to them by theirinitialsas are most of the numerous otherabbreviations. Given the fragmentary natureof the texts in Part 2, and for the sake ofreadability, elisions have not been indicated;with very minor exceptions they are betweenselections, not within selections. Itemsbetween slashes or in parentheses areMusils; material in square brackets is mine.Double and triple ellipsis points in the textreproduce those in the German edition.

The only major departure from the 1978German edition in how this material appearshas to do with the ordering of the contents ofPart 2. The German edition presents this ma-terial in reverse chronology, beginning withwhat Musil was working on at his death andproceeding backward to the earliest sketches.

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It seemed to me that since Musil was think-ing about this material experimentally andnot chronologically, such an ordering is notnecessarily indicated, especially in the ab-sence of the authors ultimate intentionsabout the work as a whole.

A further problem was that in chronolo-gical order, whether forward or backward,the random mixture of elements in Part 2 ofFrom the Posthumous Papers would putoff the general reader, for whom this editionis intended. That would be unfortunate,since these pages contain some of Musilsmost powerful and evocative writing. Re-arranging the contents of Part 2 according tocharacter groupings, narrative sections, andMusils notes about the novel makes this ma-terial much more accessible, and given theauthors experimental attitude toward thesefragments this rearrangement seems not un-reasonable. Readers who wish to see this ma-terial presented in roughly chronological

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reverse ordersome of it can be dated onlyapproximatelyshould consult the Germanedition.

The original choice of material to in-clude here was made in extensive consulta-tion with Professor Philip Payne of theUniversity of Lancaster, England, to whom Iwould like to express my appreciation. I owea profound debt of gratitude to ProfessorAdolf Frise, editor of the German edition, forhis constant friendly encouragement and ad-vice. Without his work, and without the un-flagging patience and skill with which he andthe various Musil research teams in Vienna,Klagenfurt, Saarbriicken, and Reading de-ciphered Musils difficult manuscripts, noMusil edition would have been possible. Andwithout the determination, persistence, fineGerman, and ear and eye for quality of CarolJaneway, Sophie Wilkinss and my editor atKnopf, this translation would never havecome to fruition.

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BURTON PIKE17/1856

PART 1

Musil had given chapters 39 through 58

to the printer. He revised them in galley

proofs in 1937-1938, then withdrew them

to work on them further. They were in-

tended to continue Into the Millennium,

of 1932-1933, but not conclude it.

39

AFTER THE ENCOUNTER

As the man who had entered Agathes life atthe poets grave, Professor August Lindner,climbed down toward the valley, what he sawopening before him were visions of salvation.

If she had looked around at him afterthey parted she would have been struck bythe mans ramrod-stiff walk dancing downthe stony path, for it was a peculiarly cheer-ful, assertive, and yet nervous walk. Lindnercarried his hat in one hand and occasionallypassed the other hand through his hair, sofree and happy did he feel.

How few people, he said to himself,have a truly empathic soul! He depicted to

himself a soul able to immerse itself com-pletely in a fellow human being, feeling hisinmost sorrows and lowering itself to his in-nermost weaknesses. What a prospect! heexclaimed to himself. What a miraculousproximity of divine mercy, what consolation,and what a day for celebration! But then herecalled how few people were even able tolisten attentively to their fellow creatures; forhe was one of those right-minded peoplewho descend from the unimportant to thetrivial without noticing the difference. Howrarely, for instance, is the question How areyou? meant seriously, he thought. Youneed only answer in detail how you reallyfeel, and soon enough you find yourself look-ing into a bored and distracted face!

Well, he had not been guilty of this er-ror! According to his principles the particu-lar and indispensable doctrine of health forthe strong was to protect the weak; withoutsuch a benevolent, self-imposed limitation,

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the strong were all too easily susceptible tobrutality; and culture, too, needed its acts ofcharity against the dangers inherent withinitself. Whoever tries to tell us what univer-sal education is supposed to be, he affirmedfor himself through inner exclamation,mightily refreshed by a sudden lightning boltloosed against his fellow pedagogueHagauer, should truly first be advised: ex-perience what another person feels like!Knowing through empathy means a thou-sand times more than knowing throughbooks! He was evidently giving vent to anold difference of opinion, aimed on the onehand at the liberal concept of education andon the other at the wife of his professionalbrother, for Lindners glasses gazed aroundlike two shields of a doubly potent warrior.He had been self-conscious in Agathes pres-ence, but if she were to see him now hewould have seemed to her like a commander,but a commander of troops that were by no

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means frivolous. For a truly manly soul isready to assist, and it is ready to assist be-cause it is manly. He raised the questionwhether he had acted correctly toward thelovely woman, and answered himself: Itwould be a mistake if the proud demand forsubordination to the law were to be left tothose who are too weak for it; and it wouldbe a depressing prospect if only mindlesspedants were permitted to be the shapersand protectors of manners and morals; thatis why the obligation is imposed upon the vi-tal and strong to require discipline and limitsfrom their instincts of energy and health:they must support the weak, shake up thethoughtless, and rein in the licentious! Hehad the impression he had done so.

As the pious soul of the Salvation Armyemploys military uniform and customs, sohad Lindner taken certain soldierly ways ofthinking into his service; indeed, he did noteven flinch from concessions to the man of

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power Nietzsche, who was for middle-classminds of that time still a stumbling block,but for Lindner a whetstone as well. He wasaccustomed to say of Nietzsche that it couldnot be maintained that he was a bad person,but his doctrines were surely exaggeratedand ill equipped for life, the reason for thisbeing that he rejected empathy; for Nietz-sche had not recognized the marvelous coun-terbalancing gift of the weak person, whichwas to make the strong person gentle. Andopposing to this his own experience, hethought with joyful purpose: Truly greatpeople do not pay homage to a sterile cult ofthe self, but call forth in others the feeling oftheir sublimity by bending down to them andindeed, if it comes to that, sacrificing them-selves for them! Sure of victory and with anexpression of amicable censure that wasmeant to encourage them, he looked into theeyes of a pair of young lovers who, intricatelyintertwined, were coming up toward him.

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But it was a quite ordinary couple, and theyoung idler who formed its male componentsqueezed his eyelids shut as he responded tothis look of Lindners, abruptly stuck out histongue, and said: Nyaa! Lindner, unpre-pared for this mockery and vulgar menace,was taken aback; but he acted as if he did notnotice. He loved action, and his glancesought a policeman, who ought to have beenin the vicinity to guarantee honors publicsafety; but as he did so his foot struck astone, and the sudden stumbling motionscared off a swarm of sparrows that had beenregaling themselves at Gods table over a pileof horse manure. The explosion of wings waslike a warning shot, and he was just able atthe last moment, before falling ignomini-ously, to hop over the double obstacle with aballetically disguised jump. He did not lookback, and after a while was quite satisfiedwith himself. One must be hard as a dia-mond and tender as a mother! he thought,

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using an old precept from the seventeenthcentury.

Since he also esteemed the virtue ofmodesty, at no other time would he have as-serted anything like this in regard to himself;but there was something in Agathe that soexcited his blood! Then again, it formed thenegative pole of his emotions that this di-vinely tender female whom he had found intears, as the angel had found the maiden inthe dewoh, he did not want to be presump-tuous, and yet how presumptuous yielding tothe spirit of poetry does make one! And so hecontinued in a more restrained manner: thatthis wretched woman was on the point ofbreaking an oath placed in the hands ofGodfor that is how he regarded her desirefor a divorce. Unfortunately, he had notmade this forcefully clear when they hadstood face-to-faceGod, what nearnessagain in these words!unfortunately, he hadnot presented this idea with sufficient

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firmness; he merely remembered havingspoken to her in general about loose moralsand ways of protecting oneself against them.Besides, the name of God had certainly notpassed his lips, unless as a rhetorical flour-ish; and the spontaneity, the dispassionate,one might even say the irreverent, serious-ness with which Agathe had asked himwhether he believed in God offended himeven now as he remembered it. For the trulypious soul does not permit himself to simplyfollow a whim and think of God with crudedirectness. Indeed, the moment Lindnerthought of this unreasonable question hedespised Agathe as if he had stepped on asnake. He resolved that if he should ever bein the situation of repeating his admonitionsto her, he would follow only the dictates ofthat powerful logic which is in keeping withearthly matters and which has been placedon earth for that purpose, because not everyill-bred person can be permitted to ask God

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to trouble Himself on behalf of his long-es-tablished confusions; and so he began tomake use of this logic straightaway, andmany expressions occurred to him that itwould be appropriate to use to a person whohas stumbled. For instance, that marriage isnot a private affair but a public institution;that it has the sublime mission of evolvingfeelings of responsibility and empathy, andthe task (which hardens a people) of exer-cising mankind in the bearing of difficultburdens; perhaps indeed, although it couldonly be adduced with the greatest tact, thatprecisely by lasting over a fairly long periodof time, marriage constituted the best pro-tection against the excesses of desire. He hadan image of the human being, perhaps notwrongly, as a sack full of devils that had to bekept firmly tied shut, and he saw unshakableprinciples as the tie.

How this dutiful man, whose corporealpart could not be said to project in any

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direction but height, had acquired the con-viction that one had to rein oneself in atevery step was indeed a riddle, which couldonly be solved, though then quite easily,when one knew its benefit. When he hadreached the foot of the hill a procession ofsoldiers crossed his path, and he looked withtender compassion at the sweaty young men,who had shoved their caps back on theirheads, and with faces dulled from exhaustionlooked like a procession of dusty caterpillars.At the sight of these soldiers, his horror atthe frivolity with which Agathe had dealtwith the problem of divorce was dreamilysoftened by a joyful feeling that such a thingshould be happening to his free-thinking col-league Hagauer; and this stirring in anyevent served to remind him again of how in-dispensable it was to mistrust human nature.He therefore resolved to make ruthlesslyplain to Agatheshould the occasion actu-ally, and through no fault of his own,

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arisethat selfish energies could in the lastanalysis have only a destructive effect, andthat she should subordinate her personaldespair, however great it might be, to moralinsight, and that the true basic touchstone oflife is living together.

But whether the occasion was onceagain to offer itself was evidently just thepoint toward which Lindners mental powerswere so excitedly urging him. There aremany people with noble qualities, which arejust not yet gathered into an unshakable con-viction, he thought of saying to Agathe; buthow should he do so if he did not see heragain; and yet the thought that she mightpay him a visit offended all his ideas abouttender and chaste femininity. It simply hasto be put before her as strongly as possible,and immediately! he resolved, and becausehe had arrived at this resolution he also nolonger doubted that she really would appear.He strongly admonished himself to selflessly

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work through with her the reasons she wouldadvance to excuse her behavior before hewent on to convince her of her errors. Withunwavering patience he would strike her tothe heart, and after he had imagined that tohimself too, a noble feeling of fraternal at-tention and solicitude came over his ownheart, a consecration as between brother andsister, which, he noted, was to rest entirelyon those relations that the sexes maintainwith each other. Hardly any men, he criedout, edified, have the slightest notion howdeep a need noble feminine natures have forthe noble man, who simply deals with thehuman being in the woman without beingimmediately distracted by her exaggerateddesire to please him sexually! These ideasmust have given him wings, for he had noidea how he had got to the terminus of thetrolley line, but suddenly there he was; andbefore getting in he took off his glasses in or-der to wipe them free of the condensation

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with which his heated inner processes hadcoated them. Then he swung himself into acorner, glanced around in the empty car, gothis fare ready, looked into the conductorsface, and felt himself entirely at his post,ready to begin the return journey in that ad-mirable communal institution called the mu-nicipal trolley. He discharged the fatigue ofhis walk with a contented yawn, in order tostiffen himself for new duties, and summedup the astonishing digressions to which hehad surrendered himself in the sentence:Forgetting oneself is the healthiest thing ahuman being can do!

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40

THE DO-GOODER

Against the unpredictable stirrings of a pas-sionate heart there is only one reliable rem-edy: strict and absolutely unremitting plan-ning; and it was to this, which he had ac-quired early, that Lindner owed the suc-cesses of his life as well as the belief that hewas by nature a man of strong passions andhard to discipline. He got up early in themorning, at the same hour summer andwinter, and at a washbasin on a small irontable washed his face, neck, hands, and oneseventh of his bodyevery day a differentseventh, of courseafter which he rubbedthe rest with a wet towel, so that the bath,that time-consuming and voluptuous

procedure, could be limited to one eveningevery two weeks. There was in this a clevervictory over matter, and whoever has had oc-casion to consider the inadequate washingfacilities and uncomfortable beds that fam-ous people who have entered history havehad to endure will hardly be able to dismissthe conjecture that there must be a connec-tion between iron beds and iron people, evenif we ought not exaggerate it, since otherwisewe might soon be sleeping on beds of nails.So here, moreover, was an additional task forreflection, and after Lindner had washedhimself in the glow of stimulating exampleshe also took advantage of drying himself offto do a few exercises by skillful manipulationof his towel, but only in moderation. It is,after all, a fateful mistake to base health onthe animal part of ones person; it is, rather,intellectual and moral nobility that producethe bodys capacity for resistance; and even ifthis does not always apply to the individual,

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it most certainly applies on a larger scale, forthe power of a people is the consequence ofthe proper spirit, and not the other wayaround. Therefore Lindner had also be-stowed upon his rubbings-down a specialand careful training, which avoided all theuncouth grabbing that constitutes the usualmale idolatry but on the contrary involvedthe whole personality, by combining themovements of his body with uplifting innertasks. He especially abhorred the perilousworship of smartness that, coming fromabroad, was already hovering as an ideal be-fore many in his fatherland; and distancinghimself from this was an integral part of hismorning exercises. He substituted for it, withgreat care, a statesmanlike attitude in thecalisthenic application of his limbs, combin-ing the tensing of his willpower with timelyyielding, the overcoming of pain with com-monsense humanity, and if perchance, in aconcluding burst of courage, he jumped over

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an upside-down chair, he did so with asmuch reserve as self-confidence. Such an un-folding of the whole wealth of human talentsmade his calisthenics, in the few years sincehe had taken them up, true exercises in vir-tue for him.

That much can also be said in passingagainst the bane of transitory self-assertionthat, under the slogan of body care, hastaken possession of the healthy idea ofsports, and there is even more to be saidagainst the peculiarly feminine form of thisbane, beauty care. Lindner flattered himselfthat in this, too, he was one of the few whoknew how to properly apportion light andshadow, and thus, as he was ever ready to re-move from the spirit of the times an unblem-ished kernel, he also recognized the moralobligation of appearing as healthy and agree-able as he possibly could. For his part, hecarefully groomed his beard and hair everymorning, kept his nails short and

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meticulously clean, put lotion on his skinand a little protective ointment on the feetthat in the course of the day had to endure somuch: given all this, who would care to denythat it is lavishing too much attention on thebody when a worldly woman spends herwhole day at it? But if it really could not beotherwisehe gladly approached womentenderly, because among them might bewives of very wealthy menthan thatbathwaters and facials, ointments and packs,ingenious treatments of hands and feet, mas-seurs and friseurs, succeed one another in al-most unbroken sequence, he advocated as acounterweight to such one-sided care of thebody the concept of inner beauty careinnercare, for shortwhich he had formulated in apublic speech. May cleanliness thus serve asan example to remind us of inner purity;rubbing with ointment, of obligations towardthe soul; hand massage, of that fate by whichwe are bound; and pedicure, that even in

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that which is more deeply concealed weshould offer a fair aspect. Thus he trans-ferred his image to women, but left it to themto adapt the details to the needs of their sex.

Of course it might have happened thatsomeone who was unprepared for the sightLindner offered during his health and beautyworship and, even more, while he was wash-ing and drying himself, might have beenmoved to laughter: for seen merely as phys-ical gestures, his movements evoked the im-age of a multifariously turning and twistingswans neck, which, moreover, consisted notof curves but of the sharp element of kneesand elbows; the shortsighted eyes, freedfrom their spectacles, looked with a martyredexpression into the distance, as if their gazehad been snipped off close to the eye, andbeneath his beard his soft lips pouted withthe pain of exertion. But whoever under-stood how to see spiritually might well ex-perience the spectacle of seeing inner and

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outer forces begetting each other in ripelyconsidered counterpoint; and if Lindner wasthinking meanwhile of those poor womenwho spend hours in their bathrooms anddressing rooms and solipsistically inflametheir imaginations through a cult of thebody, he could seldom refrain from reflectingon how much good it would do them if theycould once watch him. Harmless and pure,they welcome the modern care of the bodyand go along with it because in their ignor-ance they do not suspect that such exagger-ated attention devoted to their animal partmight all too easily awaken in it claims thatcould destroy life unless strictly reined in!

Indeed, Lindner transformed absolutelyeverything he came in contact with into amoral imperative; and whether he was inclothes or not, every hour of the day until heentered dreamless sleep was filled with somemomentous content for which that hour hadbeen permanently reserved. He slept for

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seven hours; his teaching obligations, whichthe Ministry had limited in consideration ofhis well-regarded writing activity, claimedthree to five hours a day, in which was in-cluded the lecture on pedagogy he held twiceweekly at the university; five consecutivehoursalmost twenty thousand in a dec-ade!were reserved for reading; two and ahalf served for the setting down on paper ofhis own articles, which flowed without pauselike a clear spring from the inner rocks of hispersonality; mealtimes claimed an hourevery day; an hour was dedicated to a walkand simultaneously to the elucidation of ma-jor questions of life and profession, while an-other was dedicated to the traveling back andforth determined by his profession and con-secrated also to what Lindner called hislittle musings, concentrating the mind onthe content of an activity that had recentlytranspired or that was to come; while otherfragments of time were reserved, in part

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permanently, in part alternating within theframework of the week, for dressing and un-dressing, gymnastics, letters, household af-fairs, official business, and profitable social-izing. And it was only natural that this plan-ning of his life not only was carried out alongits more general disciplinary lines but alsoinvolved all sorts of particular anomalies,such as Sunday with its nondaily obligations,the longer cross-country hike that took placeevery two weeks, or the bathtub soak, and itwas natural, too, for the plan to contain thedoubling of daily activities that there has notyet been room to mention, to which be-longed, by way of example, Lindners associ-ation with his son at mealtimes, or the char-acter training involved in patiently sur-mounting unforeseen difficulties while get-ting dressed at speed.

Such calisthenics for the character arenot only possible but also extremely useful,and Lindner had a spontaneous preference

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for them. In the small things I do right I seean image of all the big things that are doneright in the world could already be read inGoethe, and in this sense a mealtime canserve as well as a task set by fate as the placefor the fostering of self-control and for thevictory over covetousness; indeed, in the res-istance of a collar button, inaccessible to allreflection, the mind that probes more deeplycould even learn how to handle children.Lindner of course did not by any means re-gard Goethe as a model in everything; butwhat exquisite humility had he not derivedfrom driving a nail into a wall with hammerblows, undertaking to mend a torn glovehimself, or repair a bell that was out of or-der: if in doing these things he smashed hisfingers or stuck himself, the resulting painwas outweighed, if not immediately thenafter a few horrible seconds, by joy at the in-dustrious spirit of mankind that resides evenin such trifling dexterities and their

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acquisition, although the cultivated persontoday imagines himself (to his general disad-vantage) as above all that. He felt with pleas-ure the Goethean spirit resurrected in him,and enjoyed it all the more in that thanks tothe methods of a more advanced age he alsofelt superior to the great classic master spractical dilettantism and his occasional de-light in discreet dexterity. Lindner was infact free of idolatry of the old writer, who hadlived in a world that was only halfway en-lightened and therefore overestimated theEnlightenment, and he took Goethe as amodel more in charming small things than inserious and great things, quite apart from theseductive Ministers notorious sensuality.

His admiration was therefore carefullymeted out. There had nevertheless beenevident in it for some time a remarkablepeevishness that often stimulated Lindner toreflection. He had always believed that hisview of what was heroic was more proper

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than Goethes. Lindner did not think muchof Scaevolas who stick their hands in the fire,Lucretias who run themselves through, orJudiths who chop the heads off the oppress-ors of their honorthemes that Goethewould have found meaningful anytime, al-though he had never treated them; indeed,Lindner was convinced, in spite of the au-thority of the classics, that those men andwomen, who had committed crimes for theirpersonal convictions, would nowadays be-long not on a pedestal but rather in thecourtroom. To their inclination to inflictsevere bodily injury he opposed an internal-ized and social concept of courage. Inthought and discourse he even went so far asto place a duly pondered entry on the subjectinto his classbook, or the responsible reflec-tion on how his housekeeper was to beblamed for precipitate eagerness, because inthat state one should not be permitted to fol-low ones own passions only, but also had to

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take the other persons motives into account.And when he said such things he had the im-pression of looking back, in the well-fittingplain clothes of a later century, on the bom-bastic moral costume of an earlier one.

He was by no means oblivious to theaura of absurdity that hovered around suchexamples, but he called it the laughter of thespiritual rabble, and he had two solid reas-ons for this. First, not only did he maintainthat every occasion could be equally well ex-ploited for the strengthening or weakening ofhuman nature, but it seemed to him that oc-casions of the smaller kind were better suitedfor strengthening it than the large ones,since the human inclination to arroganceand vanity is involuntarily encouraged by theshining exercise of virtue, while its incon-spicuous everyday exercise consists simply ofpure, unsalted virtue. And second, systemat-ic management of the peoples moral good(an expression Lindner loved, along with the

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military expression breeding and discip-line, with its overtones of both peasantryand being fresh from the factory) would alsonot despise the small occasions, for thereason that the godless belief advanced byliberals and Freemasons that great humanaccomplishments arise so to speak out ofnothing, even if it is called Genius, wasalready at that time going out of fashion. Thesharpened focus of public attention hadalready caused the hero, whom earliertimes had made into a phenomenon of ar-rogance, to be recognized as a tireless toilerover details who prepares himself to be a dis-coverer through unremitting diligence inlearning, as an athlete who must handle hisbody as cautiously as an opera singer hisvoice, and who as political rejuvenator of thepeople must always repeat the same thing atcountless meetings. And of this Goethe, whoall his life had remained a comfortablecitizen-aristocrat, had had no idea, while he,

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Lindner, saw it coming! So it was compre-hensible, too, that Lindner thought he wasprotecting Goethes better part against theephemeral part when he preferred the con-siderate and companionable, which Goethehad possessed in such gratifying measure, tothe tragic Goethe; it might also be arguedthat it did not happen without reflectionwhen, for no other reason than that he was apedant, he considered himself a personthreatened by dangerous passions.

Truly, it shortly afterward became oneof the most popular human possibilities tosubject oneself to a regimen, which may beapplied with the same success to overweightas it is to politics and intellectual life. In a re-gimen, patience, obedience, regularity,equanimity, and other highly respectablequalities become the major components ofthe individual in his private, personal capa-city, while everything that is unbridled, viol-ent, addictive, and dangerous, which he, as a

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crazy romantic, cannot dispense with either,has its admirable center in the regimen.Apparently this remarkable inclination tosubmit oneself to a regimen, or lead a fa-tiguing, unpleasant, and sorry life accordingto the prescription of a doctor, athleticcoach, or some other tyrant (although onecould just as well ignore it with the same fail-ure rate), is a result of the movement towardthe worker-warrior-anthill state towardwhich the world is moving: but here lay theboundary that Lindner was not able to cross,nor could he see that far, because his Go-ethean heritage blocked it.

To be sure, his piety was not of a sortthat could not have been reconciled to thismovement; he did leave the divine to God,and undiluted saintliness to the saints; buthe could not grasp the thought of renouncinghis personality, and there hovered beforehim as an ideal for the world a community offully responsible moral personalities, which

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as Gods civil army would certainly have tostruggle against the inconstancy of basernature and make everyday life a shrine, butwould also decorate this shrine with themasterpieces of art and science. Hadsomeone counted Lindners division of theday, it would have struck him that whateverthe version, it added up to only twenty-threehours; sixty minutes of a full day were lack-ing, and of these sixty minutes, forty were in-variably set aside for conversation and kindlyinvestigation into the striving and nature ofother people, as part of which he also coun-ted visits to art exhibitions, concerts, and en-tertainments. He hated these events. Almostevery time, their content affronted his mind;as he saw it, it was the infamous over-wrought nerves of the age that were lettingoff steam in these overblown and aimlessconstructions, with their superfluous stimu-lants and genuine suffering, with their insati-ability and inconstancy, their inquisitiveness

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and unavoidable moral decay. He evensmiled dis-concertedly into his scanty beardwhen on such occasions he saw ordinarymen and women idolize culture withflushed cheeks. They did not know that thelife force is enhanced by being circum-scribed, not by being fragmented. They allsuffered from the fear of not having time foreverything, not knowing that having timemeans nothing more than not having anytime for everything. Lindner had realizedthat the bad nerves did not come from workand its pressure, which in our age areblamed for them, but that on the contrarythey came from culture and humanitarian-ism, from breaks in routine, the interruptionof work, the free minutes in which the indi-vidual would like to live for himself and seekout something he can regard as beautiful, orfun, or important: these are the moments outof which the miasmas of impatience, unhap-piness, and meaninglessness arise. This was

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what he felt, and if he had had his waythatis, according to the visions he had at suchmomentshe would sweep away all these artworkshops with an iron broom, and festivalsof labor and edification, tightly tied to dailyactivity, would take the place of such so-called spiritual events; it really would requireno more than excising from an entire agethose few minutes a day that owed theirpathological existence to a falsely understoodliberality. But beyond making a few allu-sions, he had never summoned up the decis-iveness to stand up for this seriously and inpublic.

Lindner suddenly looked up, for duringthese dreamy thoughts he had still been rid-ing in the trolley; he felt irritated and de-pressed, as one does from being irresoluteand blocked, and for a moment he had theconfused impression that he had been think-ing about Agathe the entire time. She was ac-corded the additional honor that an

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annoyance that had begun innocently aspleasure in Goethe now fused with her, al-though no reason for this could be discerned.From habit, Lindner now admonished him-self. Dedicate part of your isolation to quietreflection about your fellowman, especially ifyou should not be in accord with him; per-haps you will then learn to better understandand utilize what repels you, and will knowhow to be indulgent toward his weaknessesand encourage his virtue, which may simplybe overawed, he whispered with mute lips.This was one of the formulas he had coinedagainst the dubious activities of so-calledculture and in which he usually found thecomposure to bear them; but this did nothappen, and this time it was apparently notrighteousness that was missing. He pulledout his watch, which confirmed that he hadaccorded Agathe more time than was allot-ted. But he would not have been able to do soif in his daily schedule there had not been

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those twenty leftover minutes set aside forunavoidable slippage. He discovered thatthis Loss Account, this emergency supply oftime, whose precious drops were the oil thatlubricated his daily works, even on this un-usual day, would still hold ten spare minuteswhen he walked into his house. Did thiscause his courage to grow? Another of hisbits of wisdom occurred to him, for thesecond time this day: The more unshakableyour patience becomes, said Lindner toLindner, the more surely you will strikeyour opponent to the heart! And to strike tothe heart was a pleasurable sensation, whichalso corresponded to the heroic in hisnature; that those so struck never strike backwas of no importance.

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41

BROTHER AND SISTER THE NEXTMORNING

Ulrich and his sister came to speak of thisman once more when they saw each otheragain the morning after Agathes sudden dis-appearance from their cousins party. On theprevious day Ulrich had left the excited andquarrelsome gathering soon after she had,but had not got around to asking her why shehad up and left him; for she had locked her-self in, and was either already sleeping orpurposely ignoring the listener with his softinquiry as to whether she was still awake.Thus the day she had met the curiousstranger had closed just as capriciously as ithad begun. Nor was any information to be

had from her this morning. She herself didnot know what her real feelings were. Whenshe thought of her husbands letter, whichhad forced its way to her and which she hadnot been able to bring herself to read again,although from time to time she noticed it ly-ing beside her, it seemed to her incrediblethat not even a day had passed since she hadreceived it; so often had her conditionchanged in the meantime. Sometimes shethought the letter deserved the horror tagghosts from the past; still, it reallyfrightened her, too. And at times it arousedin her merely a slight unease of the kind thatcan be aroused by the unexpected sight of aclock that has stopped; at other times, shewas plunged into futile brooding that theworld from which this letter came was claim-ing to be the real world for her. That whichinwardly did not so much as touch her sur-rounded her outwardly in an invisible webthat was not yet broken. She involuntarily

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compared this with the things that hadhappened between her and her brother sincethe arrival of this letter. Above all they hadbeen conversations, and despite the fact thatone of them had even brought her to think ofsuicide, its contents had been forgotten,though they were evidently still ready toreawaken, and not surmounted. So it reallydid not matter much what the subject of aconversation was, and pondering her heart-stopping present life against the letter, shehad the impression of a profound, constant,incomparable, but powerless movement.From all this she felt this morning partly ex-hausted and disillusioned, and partly tenderand restless, like a fever patient after histemperature has gone down.

In this state of animated helplessnessshe said suddenly: To empathize in such away that one truly experiences another per-sons mood must be indescribably difficult!To her surprise, Ulrich replied immediately:

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There are people who imagine they can doit. He said this ill-humoredly and offens-ively, having only half understood her. Herwords caused something to move aside andmake room for an annoyance that had beenleft behind the day before, although he oughtto find it contemptible. And so this conversa-tion came to an end for the time being.

The morning had brought a day of rainand confined brother and sister to theirhouse. The leaves of the trees in front of thewindows glistened desolately, like wet lino-leum; the roadway behind the gaps in the fo-liage was as shiny as a rubber boot. The eyescould hardly get a hold on the wet view.Agathe was sorry for her remark, and nolonger knew why she had made it. She sighedand began again: Today the world remindsme of our nursery. She was alluding to thebare upper rooms in their father s house andthe astonishing reunion they had both celeb-rated with them. That might be farfetched;

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but she added: Its a persons first sadness,surrounded by his toys, that always keepscoming back! After the recent stretch ofgood weather, expectations had automatic-ally been directed toward a lovely day, andthis filled the mind with frustrated desireand impatient melancholy. Ulrich, too, nowlooked out the window. Behind the gray,streaming wall of water, will-o-the-wisps ofoutings never taken, open green, and an end-less world beckoned; and perhaps, too, theghost of a desire to be alone once more andfree again to move in any direction, the sweetpain of which is the story of the Passion andalso the Resurrection of love. He turned tohis sister with something of this still in theexpression on his face, and asked her almostvehemently: Im surely not one of thosepeople who can respond empathically toothers?

No, you really arent! she responded,and smiled at him.

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But just what such people presume,he went on, for it was only now that he un-derstood how seriously her words had beenmeant, namely, that people can suffer to-gether, is as impossible for them as it is foranyone else. At most they have a nursingskill in guessing what someone in need likesto hear

In which case they must know whatwould help him, Agathe objected.

Not at all! Ulrich asserted more stub-bornly. Apparently the only comfort theygive is by talking: whoever talks a lot dis-charges another persons sorrow drop bydrop, the way rain discharges the electricityin a cloud. Thats die well-known alleviationof every grief through talking!

Agathe was silent.

People like your new friend, Ulrichnow said provocatively, perhaps work theway many cough remedies do: they dont get

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rid of the sore throat but soothe its irritation,and then it often heals by itself!

In any other situation he could have ex-pected his sisters assent, but Agathe, whosince yesterday had been in a peculiar frameof mind because of her sudden weakness fora man whose worth Ulrich doubted, smiledunyieldingly and played with her fingers. Ul-rich jumped up and said urgently: But Iknow him, even if only fleetingly; Ive heardhim speak several times!

You even called him a Vacuous fool,Agathe interjected.

And why not? Ulrich defended it.People like him know less than anyoneabout how to empathize with another per-son! They dont even know what it means.They simply dont feel the difficulty, the ter-rible equivocation, of this demand!

Agathe then asked: Why do you thinkthe demand is equivocal?

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Now Ulrich was silent. He even lit a ci-garette to underline that he was not going toanswer; they had, after all, talked about itenough yesterday. Agathe knew this too. Shedid not want to provoke any new explana-tions. These explanations were as enchantingand as devastating as looking at the sky whenit forms gray, pink, and yellow cities ofmarble cloud. She thought, How fine itwould be if he would only say: 1 want to loveyou as myself, and I can love you that waybetter than any other woman because youare my sister! But because he was notabout to say it, she took a small pair of scis-sors and carefully cut off a thread that wassticking out somewhere, as if this were atthat moment the only thing in the entireworld that deserved her full attention. Ulrichobserved this with the same attention. Shewas at this instant more seductively presentto all his senses than ever, and he guessedsomething of what she was hiding, even if

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not everything. For she meanwhile had hadtime to resolve: if Ulrich could forget thatshe herself was laughing at the stranger whopresumed he could be of help here, he wasnot going to find it out from her now.Moreover, she had a happy presentimentabout Lindner. She did not know him. Butthat he had offered his assistance selflesslyand wholeheartedly must have inspired con-fidence in her, for a joyous melody of theheart, a hard trumpet blast of will, confid-ence, and pride, which were in salutary op-position to her own state, now seemed to beplaying for her and refreshing her beyond allthe comedy of the situation. No matter howgreat difficulties may be, they mean nothingif one seriously wills oneself to deal withthem! she thought, and was unexpectedlyovercome by remorse, so that she now brokethe silence in something of the way a floweris broken off so that two heads can bend overit, and added as a second question to her

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first: Do you still remember that you alwayssaid that love thy neighbor is as differentfrom an obligation as a cloudburst of bliss isfrom a drop of satisfaction?

She was astonished at the vehemencewith which Ulrich answered her: Im notunaware of the irony of my situation. Sinceyesterday, and apparently always, I havedone nothing but raise an army of reasonswhy this love for ones neighbor is no joy buta terribly magnificent, half-impossible task!So nothing could be more understandablethan that youre seeking protection with aperson who has no idea about any of this,and in your position Id do the same!

But its not true at all that Im doingthat! Agathe replied curtly.

Ulrich could not keep himself fromthrowing her a glance that held as muchgratitude as mistrust. Its hardly worth thebother of talking about, he assured her. I

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really didnt want to either. He hesitated amoment and then went on: But look, if youdo have to love someone else the way youlove yourself, however much you love him itreally remains a self-deceiving lie, becauseyou simply cant feel along with him how hishead or his finger hurts. It is absolutely un-bearable that one really cant be part of aperson one loves, and its an absolutelysimple thing. Thats the way the world is or-ganized. We wear our animal skin with thehair inside and cannot shake it out. And thishorror within the tenderness, this nightmareof coming to a standstill in getting close toone another, is something that the peoplewho are conventionally correct, the lets beprecise people, never experience. What theycall their empathy is actually a substitute forit, which they use to make sure they didntmiss anything!

Agathe forgot that she had just saidsomething that was as close to a lie as a non-

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lie. She saw illuminated in Ulrichs words thedisillusion over the vision of sharing in eachother, before which the usual proofs of love,goodness, and sympathy lost their meaning;and she understood that this was the reasonhe spoke of the world more often than ofhimself, for if it was to be more than idledreaming, one must remove oneself alongwith reality like a door from its hinges. Atthis moment she was far away from the manwith the sparse beard and timid severity whowanted to do her good. But she couldnt sayit. She merely looked at Ulrich and thenlooked away, without speaking. Then she didsomething or other, then they looked at eachother again. After the shortest time the si-lence gave the impression of having lastedfor hours.

The dream of being two people and one:in truth the effect of this fabrication was atmany moments not unlike that of a dreamthat has stepped outside the boundaries of

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night, and now it was hovering in such astate of feeling between faith and denial, inwhich reason had nothing more to say. It wasprecisely the bodys unalterable constitutionby which feeling was referred back to reality.These bodies, since they loved each other,displayed their existence before the inquiringgaze, for surprises and delights that renewedthemselves like a peacocks tail sweepingback and forth in currents of desire; but assoon as ones glance no longer lingered onthe hundred eyes of the spectacle that loveoffers to love, but attempted to penetrate in-to the thinking and feeling being behind it,these bodies transformed themselves intohorrible prisons. One found oneself againseparated from the other, as so often before,not knowing what to say, because foreverything that desire still had to say or re-peat a far too remote, protective, coveringgesture was needed, for which there was nosolid foundation.

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And it was not long before the bodilymotions, too, involuntarily grew slower andcongealed. The rain beyond the windows wasstill filling the air with its twitching curtainof drops and the lullaby of sounds throughwhose monotony the sky-high desolationflowed downward. It seemed to Agathe thather body had been alone for centuries, andtime flowed as if it were flowing with the wa-ter from the sky. The light in the room nowwas like that of a hollowed-out silver die.Blue, sweetish scarves of smoke from heed-lessly burning cigarettes coiled around thetwo of them. She no longer knew whethershe was tender and sensitive to the core ofher being or impatient and out of sorts withher brother, whose stamina she admired.She sought out his eyes and found them hov-ering in this uncertain atmosphere like twodead moons. At the same instant somethinghappened to her that seemed to come notfrom her will but from outside: the surging

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water beyond the windows suddenly becamefleshy, like a fruit that has been sliced, andits swelling softness pressed between herselfand Ulrich. Perhaps she was ashamed oreven hated herself a little for it, but a com-pletely sensual wantonnessand not at allonly what one calls an unleashing of thesenses but also, and far more, a voluntaryand unconstrained draining of the sensesaway from the worldbegan to gain controlover her; she was just able to anticipate itand even hide it from Ulrich by telling himwith the speediest of all excuses that she hadforgotten to take care of something, jumpedup, and left the room.

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42

UP JACOBS LADDER INTO ASTRANGERS DWELLING

Hardly had that been done when she re-solved to look up the odd man who hadoffered her his help, and immediately carriedout her resolution. She wanted to confess tohim that she no longer had any idea what todo with herself. She had no clear picture ofhim; a person one has seen through tearsthat dried up in his company will not easilyappear to someone the way he actually is. Soon the way, she thought about him. Shethought she was thinking clearheadedly, butactually it was fantasy. She hastened throughthe streets, bearing before her eyes the lightfrom her brothers room. It had not been a

proper kind of light at all, she considered;she should rather say that all the objects inthe room had suddenly lost their composure,or a kind of understanding that they mustcertainly have otherwise had. But if it werethe case that it was only she herself who hadlost her composure, or her understanding, itwould not have been limited just to her, forthere had also been awakened in the objectsa liberation that was astir with miracles.The next moment it would have peeled usout of our clothes like a silver knife, withoutour having moved a finger! she thought.

She gradually let herself be calmed bythe rain, whose harmless gray water bouncedoff her hat and down her coat, and herthoughts became more measured. This wasperhaps helped, too, by the simple clothesshe had hastily thrown on, for they directedher memory back to schoolgirl walks withoutan umbrella, and to guiltless states. As shewalked she even thought unexpectedly of an

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innocent summer she had spent with a girl-friend and the friends parents on a small is-land in the north: there, between the harshsplendors of sea and sky, she had discovereda seabirds nesting place, a hollow filled withwhite, soft bird feathers. And now she knew:the man to whom she was being drawn re-minded her of this nesting place. The ideacheered her. At that time, to be sure, in viewof the strict sincerity that is part of youthsneed for experience, she would have hardlylet it pass that at the thought of the softnessand whiteness she would be abandoning her-self to an unearthly shudder, as illogically,indeed as youthfully and immaturely, as shewas now allowing to happen with such as-siduity. This shudder was for Professor Lind-ner; but the unearthly was also for him.

The intimation, amounting to certainty,that everything that happened to her wasconnected as in a fairy tale with somethinghidden was familiar to her from all the

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agitated periods of her life; she sensed it as anearness, felt it behind her, and was inclinedto wait for the hour of the miracle, when shewould have nothing to do but close her eyesand lean back. But Ulrich did not see anyhelp in unearthly dreaminess, and his atten-tion seemed claimed mostly by transforming,with infinite slowness, unearthly content in-to an earthly one. In this Agathe recognizedthe reason why she had now left him for thethird time within twenty-four hours, fleeingin the confused expectation of somethingthat she had to take into her keeping and al-low to rest from the afflictions, or perhapsjust from the impatience, of her passions.But then as soon as she calmed down shewas herself again, standing by his side andseeing in what he was teaching her all thepossibilities for healing; and even now thislasted for a while. But as the memory of whathad almost happened at homeand yet nothappened!reasserted itself more vividly,

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she was again profoundly at a loss. First shewanted to convince herself that the infiniterealm of the unimaginable would have cometo their aid if they had stuck it out for anoth-er instant; then she reproached herself thatshe had not waited to see what Ulrich woulddo; finally, however, she dreamed that thetruest thing would have been simply to yieldto love and make room for a place for over-taxed nature to rest on the dizzying Jacobsladder they were climbing. But hardly hadshe made this concession than she thought ofherself as one of those incompetent fairytalecreatures who cannot restrain themselves,and in their womanly weakness prematurelybreak silence or some other oath, causingeverything to collapse amid thunderclaps.

If her expectation now directed itselfagain toward the man who was to help herfind counsel, he not only enjoyed the greatadvantage bestowed on order, certainty,kindly strictness, and composed behavior by

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an undisciplined and desperate mode of con-duct, but this stranger also had the particularquality of speaking about God with certaintyand without feeling, as if he visited Godshouse daily and could announce thateverything there that was mere passion andimagining was despised. So what might beawaiting her at Lindners? While she wasasking herself this she set her feet morefirmly on the ground as she walked, andbreathed in the coldness of the rain so thatshe would become quite clearheaded; andthen it started to seem highly probable to herthat Ulrich, even though he judged Lindnerone-sidedly, still judged him more correctlythan she did, for before her conversationswith Ulrich, when her impression of Lindnerwas still vivid, she herself had thought quitescornfully of this good man. She was amazedat her feet, which were taking her to himanyway, and she even took a bus going in the

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same direction so she would get theresooner.

Shaken about among people who werelike rough, wet pieces of laundry, she foundit hard to hold on to her inner fantasy com-pletely, but with an exasperated expressionon her face she persevered, and protected itfrom being torn to shreds. She wanted tobring it whole to Lindner. She even dis-paraged it. Her whole relation to God, if thatname was to be applied to such adventurous-ness at all, was limited to a twilight thatopened up before her every time life becametoo oppressive and repulsive or, which wasnew, too beautiful. Then she ran into it, seek-ing. That was all she could honestly sayabout it. And it had never led to anything, asshe told herself with a sigh. But she noticedthat she was now really curious about howher unknown man would extricate himselffrom this affair that was being confided tohim, so to speak, as Gods representative; for

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such a purpose, after all, some omnisciencemust have rubbed off on him from the greatInaccessible One, because she had mean-while firmly resolved, squeezed between allkinds of people, on no account to deliver acomplete confession to him right away. Butas she got out she discovered in herself, re-markably enough, the deeply concealed con-viction that this time it would be differentfrom before, and that she had also made upher mind to bring this whole incomprehens-ible fantasy out of the twilight and into thelight on her own. Perhaps she would havequickly extinguished this overblown expres-sion again if it had entered her consciousnessat all; but all that was present there was not aword, but merely a surprised feeling thatwhirled her blood around as if it were fire.

The man toward whom such passionateemotions and fantasies were en route wasmeanwhile sitting in the company of his son,Peter, at lunch, which he still ate, following a

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good rule of former times, at the actual hourof noon. There was no luxury in his sur-roundings, or, as it would be better to say inthe German tongue, no excess[Oberfluss, literally,overflow]; for the German word reveals thesense that the alien word obscures. Luxuryalso has the meaning of the superfluous anddispensable that idle wealth might accumu-late; excess, on the other hand, is not somuch superfluousto which extent it is syn-onymous with luxuryas it is overflowing,thus signifying a padding of existence thatgently swells beyond its frame, or that sur-plus ease and magnanimity of European lifewhich is lacking only for the extremely poor.Lindner discriminated between these twosenses of luxury, and just as luxury in thefirst sense was absent from his home, it waspresent in the second. One already had thispeculiar impression, although it could not besaid where it came from, when the entrydoor opened and revealed the moderately

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large foyer. If one then looked around, noneof the arrangements created to serve man-kind through useful invention was lacking:an umbrella stand, soldered from sheet met-al and painted with enamel, took care of um-brellas. A runner with a coarse weave re-moved from shoes the dirt that the mudbrush might not have caught. Two clothesbrushes hung in a pouch on the wall, and thestand for hanging up outer garments was notmissing either. A bulb illuminated the space;even a mirror was present, and all theseutensils were lovingly maintained andpromptly replaced when they were damaged.But the lamp had the lowest wattage bywhich one could just barely make things out;the clothes stand had only three hooks; themirror encompassed only four fifths of anadult face; and the thickness as well as thequality of the carpet was just great enoughthat one could feel the floor through itwithout sinking into softness: even if it was

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futile to describe the spirit of the placethrough such details, one only needed toenter to feel overcome by a peculiar generalatmosphere that was not strict and not lax,not prosperous and not poor, not spiced andnot bland, but just something like a positiveproduced by two negatives, which might bestbe expressed in the term absence of prodig-ality. This by no means excluded, uponones entering the inner rooms, a feeling forbeauty, or indeed of coziness, which waseverywhere in evidence. Choice prints hungframed on the walls; the window besideLindners desk was adorned with a colorfulshowpiece of glass representing a knightwho, with a prim gesture, was liberating amaiden from a dragon; and in the choice ofseveral painted vases that held lovely paperflowers, in the provision of an ashtray by thenonsmoker, as well as in the many triflingdetails through which, as it were, a ray ofsunshine falls into the serious circle of duty

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represented by the preservation and care of ahousehold, Lindner had gladly allowed a lib-eral taste to prevail. Still, the twelve-edgedseverity of the rooms shape emerged every-where as a reminder of the hardness of life,which one should not forget even in amenity;and wherever something stemming fromearlier times that was undisciplined in a fem-inine way managed to break through thisunitya little cross-stitch table scarf, a pil-low with roses, or the petticoat of a lamp-shadethe unity was strong enough to pre-vent the voluptuous element from being ex-cessively obtrusive. Nevertheless, on thisday, and not for the first time since the daybefore, Lindner appeared at mealtime nearlya quarter of an hour late. The table was set;the plates, three high at each place, looked athim with the frank glance of reproach; thelittle glass knife rests, from which knife,spoon, and fork stared like barrels from guncarriages, and the rolled-up napkins in their

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rings, were deployed like an army left in thelurch by its general. Lindner had hastilystuffed the mail, which he usually opened be-fore the meal, in his pocket, and with a badconscience hastened into the dining room,not knowing in his confusion what he wasmeeting with thereit might well have beensomething like mistrust, since at the samemoment, from the other side, and just ashastily as he, his son, Peter, entered as if hehad only been waiting for his father to comein.

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43

THE DO-GOODER AND THE DO-NO-GOODER; BUT AGATHE TOO

Peter was a quite presentable fellow of aboutseventeen, in whom Lindners precipitousheight had been infused and curtailed by abroadened body; he came up only as far ashis fathers shoulders, but his head, whichwas like a large, squarish-round bowlingball, sat on a neck of taut flesh whose cir-cumference would have served for one ofPapas thighs. Peter had tarried on the soccerfield instead of in school and had on the wayhome unfortunately got into conversationwith a girl, from whom his manly beauty hadwrung a half-promise to see him again: thuslate, he had secretly slunk into the house and

to the door of the dining room, uncertain tothe last minute how he was going to excusehimself; but to his surprise he had heard noone in the room, had rushed in, and, just onthe point of assuming the bored expressionof long waiting, was extremely embarrassedwhen he collided with his father. His red faceflushed with still redder spots, and he imme-diately let loose an enormous flood of words,casting sidelong glances at his father whenhe thought he wasnt noticing, while lookinghim fearlessly in the eye when he felt hisfathers eyes on him. This was calculated be-havior, and often called upon: its purposewas to fulfill the mission of arousing the im-pression of a young man who was vacant andslack to the point of idiocy and who would becapable of anything with the one exception ofhiding something. But if that wasnt enough,Peter did not recoil from letting slip, appar-ently inadvertently, words disrespectful ofhis father or otherwise displeasing to him,

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which then had the effect of lightning rodsattracting electricity and diverting it fromdangerous paths. For Peter feared his fatherthe way hell fears heaven, with the awe ofstewing flesh upon which the spirit gazesdown. He loved soccer, but even there hepreferred to watch it with an expert expres-sion and make portentous comments than tostrain himself by playing. He wanted to be-come a pilot and achieve heroic featssomeday; he did not, however, imagine thisas a goal to be worked toward but as a per-sonal disposition, like creatures whose nat-ural attribute it is that they will one day beable to fly. Nor did it influence him that hislack of inclination for work was in contradic-tion to the teachings of school: this son of awell-known pedagogue was not in the leastinterested in being respected by his teachers;it was enough for him to be physically thestrongest in his class, and if one of his fellowpupils seemed to him too clever, he was

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ready to restore the balance of the relation-ship by a punch in the nose or stomach. Aswe know, one can lead a respected existencethis way; but his behavior had the one disad-vantage that he could not use it at homeagainst his father; indeed, that his fathershould find out as little about it as possible.For faced with this spiritual authority thathad brought him up and held him in gentleembrace, Peters vehemence collapsed intowailing attempts at rebellion, which Lindnersenior called the pitiable cries of the desires.Intimately exposed since childhood to thebest principles, Peter had a hard time deny-ing their truth to himself and was able to sat-isfy his honor and valor only with the cun-ning of an Indian in avoiding open verbalwarfare. He too, of course, used lots of wordsin order to adapt to his opponent, but henever descended to the need to speak thetruth, which in his view was unmanly andgarrulous.

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So this time, too, his assurances andgrimaces bubbled forth at once, but they metwith no reaction from his master. ProfessorLindner had hastily made the sign of thecross over the soup and begun to eat, silentand rushed. At times, his eye rested brieflyand distractedly on the part in his sons hair.On this day the part had been drawn throughthe thick, reddish-brown hair with comb,water, and a good deal of pomade, like anarrow-gauge railroad track through a re-luctantly yielding forest thicket. WheneverPeter felt his fathers glance resting on it helowered his head so as to cover with his chinthe red, screamingly beautiful tie with whichhis tutor was not yet acquainted. For an in-stant later the eye could gently widen uponmaking such a discovery and the mouth fol-low it, and words would emerge about sub-jection to the slogans of clowns and fops orsocial toadiness and servile vanity, whichoffended Peter. But this time nothing

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happened, and it was only a while later,when the plates were being changed, thatLindner said kindly and vaguelyit was noteven at all certain whether he was referringto the tie or whether his admonition wasbrought about by some unconsciously per-ceived sightPeople who still have tostruggle a lot with their vanity should avoidanything striking in their outwardappearance.

Peter took advantage of his fathers un-expected absentmindedness of character toproduce a story about a poor grade he waschivalrously supposed to have received be-cause, tested after a fellow pupil, he had de-liberately made himself look unprepared inorder not to outshine his comrade by demon-strating the incredible demands that weresimply beyond the grasp of weaker pupils.

Professor Lindner merely shook hishead at this.

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But when the middle course had beentaken away and dessert came on the table, hebegan cautiously and ruminatively: Look,its precisely in those years when the appet-ites are greatest that one can win the mostmomentous victories over oneself, not for in-stance by starving oneself in an unhealthyway but through occasionally renouncing afavorite dish after one has eaten enough.

Peter was silent and showed no under-standing of this, but his head was againvividly suffused with red up to his ears.

It would be wrong, his father contin-ued, troubled, if I wanted to punish you forthis poor grade, because aside from the factthat you are lying childishly, you demon-strate such a lack of the concept of moralhonor that one must first make the soiltillable in order for the punishment to havean effect on it. So Im not asking anything ofyou except that you understand this yourself,

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and Im sure that then youll punishyourself!

This was the moment for Peter to pointanimatedly to his weak health and also to theoverwork that could have caused his recentfailures in school and that rendered it im-possible for him to steel his character by re-nouncing dessert.

The French philosopher Comte, Pro-fessor Lindner replied calmly, was accus-tomed after dining, without particular in-ducement, to chew on a crust of dry bread in-stead of dessert, just to remember those whodo not have even dry bread. It is an admir-able trait, which reminds us that every exer-cise of abstemiousness and plainness hasprofound social significance!

Peter had long had a most unfavorableimpression of philosophy, but now his fatheradded literature to his bad associations bycontinuing: The writer Tolstoy, too, says

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that abstemiousness is the first step towardfreedom. Man has many slavish desires, andin order for the struggle against all of themto be successful, one must begin with themost elemental: the craving for food, idle-ness, and sensual desires. Professor Lindnerwas accustomed to pronounce any of thesethree terms, which occurred often in his ad-monitions, as impersonally as the others;and long before Peter had been able to con-nect anything specific with the expressionsensual desires he had already been intro-duced to the struggle against them, alongsidethe struggles against idleness and the cravingfor food, without thinking about them anymore than his father, who had no need tothink further about them because he was cer-tain that basic instruction in these strugglesbegins with self-determination. In this fash-ion it came about that on a day when Peterdid not yet know sensual longing in its mostdesired form but was already slinking about

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its skirts, he was surprised for the first timeby a sudden feeling of angry revulsionagainst the loveless connection between itand idleness and the craving for food that hisfather was accustomed to make; he was notallowed to come straight out with this buthad to lie, and cried: Im a plain and simpleperson and cant compare myself withwriters and philosophers!whereby, inspite of his agitation, he did not choose hiswords without reflection.

His tutor did not respond.

Im hungry! Peter added, still morepassionately.

Lindner put on a pained and scornfulsmile.

Ill die if I dont get enough to eat!Peter was almost blubbering.

The first response of the individual toall interventions and attacks from without

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occurs through the instrument of the voice!his father instructed him.

And the pitiable cries of the desires,as Lindner called them, died away. On thisparticularly manly day Peter did not want tocry, but the necessity of developing the spiritfor voluble verbal defense was a terrible bur-den to him. He could not think of anythingmore at all to say, and at this moment heeven hated the lie because one had to speakin order to use it. Eagerness for murder al-ternated in his eyes with howls of complaint.When it had got to this point, ProfessorLindner said to him kindly: You must im-pose on yourself serious exercises in being si-lent, so that it is not the careless and ignor-ant person in you who speaks but the reflect-ive and well-brought-up one, who utterswords that bring joy and firmness! Andthen, with a friendly expression, he lapsedinto reflection. I have no better advice, ifone wants to make others goodhe finally

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revealed to his son the conclusion he hadcome tothan to be good oneself; MatthiasClaudius says too: I cant think of any otherway except by being oneself the way onewants children to be! And with these wordsProfessor Lindner amiably but decisivelypushed away the dessert, although it was hisfavoriterice pudding with sugar andchocolatewithout touching it, through suchloving inexorability forcing his son, who wasgnashing his teeth, to do the same.

At this moment the housekeeper camein to report that Agathe was there. AugustLindner straightened up in confusion. Soshe did come! a horribly distinct mute voicesaid to him. He was prepared to feel indig-nant, but he was also ready to feel a fraternalgentleness that combined in sympathetic un-derstanding with a delicate sense of moralaction, and these two countercurrents, withan enormous train of principles, staged awild chase through his entire body before he

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was able to utter the simple command toshow the lady into the living room. You waitfor me here! he said to Peter severely, andhastily left. But Peter had noticed somethingunusual about his fathers behavior, he justdidnt know what; in any event, it gave himso much rash courage that after the lattersdeparture, and a brief hesitation, he scoopedinto his mouth a spoonful of the chocolatethat was standing ready to be sprinkled, thena spoonful of sugar, and finally a big spoon-ful of pudding, chocolate, and sugar, a pro-cedure he repeated several times beforesmoothing out all the dishes to cover histracks. And Agathe sat for a while alone inthe strange house and waited for ProfessorLindner; for he was pacing back and forth inanother room, collecting his thoughts beforegoing to encounter the lovely and perilous fe-male. She looked around and suddenly feltanxious, as if she had lost her way climbingamong the branches of a dream tree and had

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to fear not being able to escape in one piecefrom its world of contorted wood and myriadleaves. A profusion of details confused her,and in the paltry taste they evinced there wasa repellent acerbity intertwined in the mostremarkable way with an opposite quality, forwhich, in her agitation, she could not imme-diately find words. The repulsion was per-haps reminiscent of the frozen stiffness ofchalk drawings, but the room also looked asif it might smell in a grandmotherly, cloyingway of medicines and ointments; and old-fashioned and unmanly ghosts, fixated withunpleasant maliciousness upon human suf-fering, were hovering within its walls. Agathesniffed. And although the air held nothingmore than her imaginings, she graduallyfound herself being led further and furtherbackward by her feelings, until she re-membered the rather anxious smell of heav-en, that aroma of incense half aired andemptied of its spices which clung to the

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scarves of the habits her teachers had onceworn when she was a girl being brought uptogether with little friends in a pious conventschool without at all succumbing to pietyherself. For as edifying as this odor may befor people who associate it with what is right,its effect on the hearts of growing, worldly-oriented, and resistant girls consisted in avivid memory of smells of protest, just asideas and first experiences were associatedwith a mans mustache or with his energeticcheeks, pungent with cologne and dustedwith talc. God knows, even that odor doesnot deliver what it promises! And as Agathesat on one of Lindners renunciative up-holstered chairs and waited, the empty smellof the world closed inescapably about herwith the empty smell of heaven like two hol-low hemispheres, and an intimation cameover her that she was about to make up for anegligently endured class in the school oflife.

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She knew now where she was. Afraidyet ready, she tried to adapt to these sur-roundings and think of the teachings fromwhich she had perhaps let herself be divertedtoo soon. But her heart reared up at this do-cility like a horse that refuses to respond toencouragement, and began to run wild withterror, as happens in the presence of feelingsthat would like to warn the understandingbut cant find any words. Nevertheless, aftera while she tried again, and in supportthought of her father, who had been a liberalman and had always exhibited a somewhatsuperficial Enlightenment style and yet, intotal contradiction, had made up his mind tosend her to a convent school for her educa-tion. She was inclined to regard this as a kindof conciliatory sacrifice, an attempt, pro-pelled by a secret insecurity, to do for oncethe opposite of what one thinks is ones firmconviction: and because she felt a kinshipwith any kind of inconsistency, the situation

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into which she had got herself seemed to herfor an instant like a daughters secret, uncon-scious act of repetition. But even this second,voluntarily encouraged shudder of piety didnot last; apparently she had definitively losther ability to anchor her animated imagin-ings in a creed when she had been placed un-der that all-too-clerical care: for all she hadto do was inspect her present surroundingsagain, and with that cruel instinct youth hasfor the distance separating the infinitude of ateaching from the finiteness of the teacher,which indeed easily leads one to deduce themaster from the servant, the sight of thehome surrounding her, in which she had im-prisoned herself and settled full of expecta-tion, suddenly and irresistibly impelled herto laughter.

Yet she unconsciously dug her nails intothe wood of the chair, for she was ashamedof her lack of resolution. What she mostwanted to do was suddenly and as quickly as

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possible fling into the face of this unknownman everything that was oppressing her, ifhe would only finally deign to show himself:The criminal trafficking with her fatherswillabsolutely unpardonable, if one re-garded it undefiantly. Hagauers letters, dis-torting her image as horribly as a bad mirrorwithout her being quite able to deny the like-ness. Then, too, that she wanted to destroythis husband without actually killing him;that she had indeed once married him, butnot really, only blinded by self-contempt.There were in her life nothing but unusualincompletions; and finally, bringingeverything together, she would also have totalk about the presentiment that hoveredbetween herself and Ulrich, and this shecould never betray, under any circum-stances! She felt as churlish as a child who isconstantly expected to perform a task that istoo difficult. Why was the light she some-times glimpsed always immediately

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extinguished again, like a lantern bobbingthrough a vast darkness, its gleam altern-ately swallowed up and exposed? She wasrobbed of all resolution, and superfluouslyremembered that Ulrich had once said thatwhoever seeks this light has to cross an abyssthat has no bottom and no bridge. Did hehimself, therefore, in his inmost soul, not be-lieve in the possibility of what it was theywere seeking together? This was what shewas thinking, and although she did not reallydare to doubt, she still felt herself deeplyshaken. So no one could help her except theabyss itself! This abyss was God: oh, whatdid she know! With aversion and contemptshe examined the tiny bridge that was sup-posed to lead across, the humility of theroom, the pictures hung piously on the walls,everything feigning a confidential relation-ship with Him. She was just as close to abas-ing herself as she was to turning away in hor-ror. What she would probably most have

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liked to do was run away once more; butwhen she remembered that she always ranaway she thought of Ulrich again and seemedto herself a terrible coward. The silence athome had been like the calm before a storm,and the pressure of what was approachinghad catapulted her here. This was the wayshe saw it now, not without quite suppress-ing a smile; and it was also natural thatsomething else Ulrich had said should occurto her, for he had said at some time or other:A person never finds himself a total coward,because if something frightens him he runsjust far enough away to consider himself ahero again! And so here she sat!

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44

A MIGHTY DISCUSSION

At this moment Lindner entered, havingmade up his mind to say as much as his visit-or would; but once they found themselvesface-to-face, things turned out differently.Agathe immediately went on the verbal at-tack, which to her surprise turned out to befar more ordinary than what led up to itwould have indicated.

You will of course recall that I askedyou to explain some things to me, shebegan. Now Im here. I still remember quitewell what you said against my getting a di-vorce. Perhaps Ive understood it even bettersince!

They were sitting at a large round table,separated from each other by the entire spanof its diameter. In relation to her final mo-ments alone Agathe first felt herself, at thevery beginning of this encounter, deep underwater, but then on solid ground; she laid outthe word divorce like a bait, although hercuriosity to learn Lindners opinion wasgenuine too.

And Lindner actually answered at al-most the same instant: I know quite wellwhy you are asking me for this explanation.People will have been murmuring to youyour whole life long that a belief in thesupra-human, and obeying commandmentsthat have their origin in this belief, belong tothe Middle Ages! You have discovered thatsuch fairy tales have been disposed of by sci-ence! But are you certain thats really theway it is?

Agathe noticed to her astonishmentthat at every third word or so, his lips puffed

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out like two assailants beneath his scantybeard. She gave no answer.

Have you thought about it? Lindnercontinued severely. Do you know the vastnumber of problems it involves? Its clearyou dont! But you have a magnificent way ofdismissing this with a wave of your hand,and you apparently dont even realize thatyoure simply acting under the influence ofan external compulsion!

He had plunged into danger. It was notclear what murmurers he had in mind. Hefelt himself carried away. His speech was along tunnel he had bored right through amountain in order to fall upon an idea, liesof freethinking men, which was sparklingon the other side in a cocksure light. He wasnot thinking of either Ulrich or Hagauer butmeant both of them, meant everyone. Andeven if you had thought about ithe ex-claimed