"It was disloyal of you to conceal it from me," she
asserted
boldly.
Musil - Man Without Qualities - v2
"And what was the result?
"
"Oh, they were always very respectful to me and said: 'You shouldn't bother your head about that, General! ' Of course that may be a kind of arrogance they have; for though they nervously praise all new artists,
1346 · THE MAN WITH 0 U T QUALITIES
they nonetheless seem to imagine that these artists, in their own asser- tions, dangerously contradict each other, indeed that they feel some- thing like blind rage toward each other, and that summa summarum they perhaps don't know what they're doing! "
"And did you also find out what those sun-stricken minds that Di- otima cools with laurel think about the critics and professors, to the ex- tent these people don't praise them? " Ulrich asked. "As if the artists were the ones feeding these beasts ofintellect with their flesh, and these beasts were the ones who would leave a mere struggle over bones as the final remains of all man's humanity! "
"You've observed them well! " Stumm agreed as a delighted connois- seur.
"But in the face of so much contradiction, how do you recog- nize whether you've really got hold of a 'genius' or not? '' Ulrich asked logically.
Stumm's answer was honest, ifnot compelling: "I don't give a damn," he said.
Ulrich looked at him in silence. If he wanted merely to engage in a rear-guard skirmish and avoid problems that were more difficult than the circumstances warranted, then it was a mistake for him not to use this moment "to disengage himself from the enemy," as good tactics would have dictated. But he himself did not know what mood he was in. So he finally said: "Nothing gives fake geniuses so much luck with the masses as the incomprehension that genuine geniuses ordinarily have for each other, and, following their example, the pseudo-genuine ones; lamp polishers can't clean Prometheus! " At this conclusion Stumm looked up at him, uncomprehending but thoughtful. "Don't misunder- stand me," he added cautiously. "Remember my eagerness when I was searching for a great idea for Diotima. I know what intellectual aristoc- racy is. Nor am I Count Leinsdorf, for whom that's always a kind of minor nobility. Just now, for example, you brilliantly defined what age- nius is. How did it go? It finds a solution by doing something that hadn't occurred to anyone before! That really says the same thing I've been saying: the important thing is that a genius gets hold of his subject from the wrong end. But that's not intellectual aristocracy! And why isn't it intellectual aristocracy? Because the usual polestar of our age is that whatever the circumstances, what happens must be meaningful, but whether you call it genius or intellectual aristocracy, progress or, as you now often hear people say, a record, just doesn't matter much to our time! "
"But then why did you mention intellectual aristocracy? '' Ulrich prompted impatiently.
From the Posthurrwus Papers · 1347
"I can't really say precisely, for that very reason! " Stumm defended himself. "Anyway," he continued, thinking busily, "perhaps you could say in a way that an intellectual aristocracy in particular is not permitted to leave character in peace. Aren't I right? "
"Yes, you're right! " Ulrich encouraged him, made aware for the first time this precise moment, quite incidentally, as it happened, to heed a distinction like the one between genius and dexterity.
"Yes," Stumm repeated thoughtfully. And then he asked: "But what is character? Is it what helps a man develop the ideas that will distinguish him? Or is it what keeps him from having such ideas? For a man who has character doesn't do much flitting around! "
Ulrich decided to shrug his shoulders and smile.
"Presumably it's connected with what one is accustomed to calling great ideas," Stumm went on skeptically. "And then intellectual aristoc- racy would be nothing except the possession of great ideas. But how does one recognize that an idea is great? There are so many geniuses, at least a couple in every profession; indeed, it's a distinctive mark of our time that we have too many geniuses. How is one to understand them all and not overlook any! " His painful familiarity with the question ofwhat a really great idea was had brought him back to its role in genius.
Ulrich shrugged again.
"There are of course some people, and I've met them," Stumm said, "who never miss the smallest genius that can be dug up anywhere! "
Ulrich replied: ·'Those are the snobs and intellectual pretenders. " The General: "But Diotima is one of these people too. "
Ulrich: "Makes no difference. A person into whom everything he
finds can be stuffed must be built with no shape of his own, like a sack. " "It's true," the General replied rather reproachfully, "that you've often said that Diotima was a snob. And you've sometimes said it about Arnheim as well. But that made me imagine a snob to be someone who is quite stimulating! I've honestly tried hard to be one myself and not let anything slip past me. It's hard for me to suddenly hear you say that you can't even depend on a snob to understand genius. Because you said before that youth couldn't answer for it, nor age either. And then we discussed how geniuses don't, and critics not at all. Well then, genius will
finally have to reveal itself to everyone of its own accord! "
"That will happen in time," Ulrich soothed him, laughing. "Most peo-
ple believe that time naturally turns up what is significant. "
·'Yes, one hears that too. But tell me ifyou can," Stumm asked impa- tiently. "I can understand that one is cleverer at fifty than one was at twenty. But at eight o'clock in the evening I'm no cleverer than I was at eight in the morning; and that one should be cleverer after nineteen
1348 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
hundred and fourteen years than after eight hundred and fourteen, that I can't see either! " This led them to go on a bit discussing the difficult subject of genius, the only thing, in Ulrich's opinion, that justified man- kind, but at the same time the most exciting and confusing, because you never know whether you're looking at genius or at one of its half-baked imitations. What are its distinguishing characteristics? How is it passed on? Could it develop further ifit were not constantly being thwarted? Is it, as Stumm had asked, such a desirable thing anyway? These were problems that for Stumm belonged to the beauty of the civilian mind and its scandalous disorder, while Ulrich, on the other hand, compared them with a weather forecast that not only didn't know whether it would be fair tomorrow but didn't know whether it had been fair yesterday ei- ther. For the judgment of what constitutes genius changes with the spirit of the times, assuming that anyone is interested in it at all, which by no means need be the mark of greatness of soul or of mind.
Such puzzles would no doubt have been well worth solving, and so it came about in this part of the conversation that Stumm finally, after shaking his head a few times, proffered his observation about the Engi- neering[/Genius] Staff that Ulrich later repeated to his sister. This expla- nation, that genius needed a Genius Staff, reminded him somewhat painfully, moreover, of what Ulrich himself had half ironically called the General Secretariat of Precision and Soul, and Stumm did not neglect to remind him that he had last mentioned it in his own and Count Leins- dorf's presence during the unfortunate gathering at Diotima's. "At that time you were demanding something quite similar," he held up to him, "and if I'm not mistaken, it was a department for geniuses and the intel- lectual aristocracy. " Ulrich nodded silently. "For the intellectual aristoc- racy," Stumm continued, "would ultimately be what ordinary geniuses don't have. No matter how you define them, our geniuses are geniuses and nothing more, nothing but specialists! Am I right? I can really un- derstand why many people say: today there's no such thing as genius! "
Ulrich nodded again. A pause ensued.
"But there's one thing I'd like to know," Stumm asked with that hint of egotism that attaches to a recurrent perplexing thought: "Is it a re- proach or a distinction that people never say about a general: he's a genius? "
"Both. "
"Both? Why both? "
"I honestly don't know. "
Stumm was taken aback but, after thinking it over, said: "You put that
brilliantly! The people love an officer- as long as they aren't stirred up; and he gets to know the people: the people couldn't care less about ge-
From the Posthunwus Papers · 1349
niuses! But by the time he gets to be a general he has to be a specialist, and if he himself is a specialist genius he then falls into the category that there's no such thing as genius. So he never gets, as I would say if I spelled it out, to the point where the use ofthis wishy-washy term would be appropriate. Do you know, by the way, that I recently heard some- thing really clever? I was at your cousin's, in the most intimate circle, although Arnheim is away, and we were discussing intellectual ques- tions. Then someone pokes me in the ribs and explains Arnheim to me in a whisper: 'He's what you call a genius,' he said. 'More than all the oth- ers. A universal specialist! ' Why don't you say anything? " Ulrich found nothing to say. "The possibilities inherent in this point ofview surprised me. Besides, you yourself happen to be such a kind of universal special- ist. That's why you shouldn't neglect Arnheim so; because ultimately the Parallel Campaign might get its saving idea from him, and that could be dangerous! I would really much prefer that it came from you. "
And although Stumm had (finally) spoken far more than Ulrich, he took his leave with the words: "As always, it's a pleasure talking with you, because you understand all these things de facto much better than ev- eryone else! "
so
GENIUS AS A PROBLEM
Ulrich had related this conversation to his sister.
But even before that he had been speaking of difficulties connected
with the notion ofgenius. What enticedhim to do this? He had no inten- tion of claiming to be a genius himself, or of politely inquiring about the conditions that would enable a person to become one. On the contrary, he was convinced that the powerful, exhausted ambition in his time for the vocation of genius was the expression not of intellectual or spiritual greatness but merely of an incongruity. But as all contemporary ques- tions about life become impossibly entangled in an impenetrable thicket, so do the questions surrounding the idea ofgenius, which in part enticed one's thoughts to penetrate it and in part left them hung up on the difficulties.
After he finished his report, Ulrich had immediately come back to this. Ofcourse, whatever has genius must be significant; for genius is the
1350 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
significant accomplishment that originates under particularly distinctive conditions. But "significant" is not only the lesser but also the more gen- eral category. So the first thing was to inquire into this notion again. The words "significant" and "significance" themselves, like all terms that are much used, have different meanings. On the one hand, they are con- nected with the concepts of thinking and knowing. To say that some- thing signifies or has this significance means that it points to, gives to understand, indicates, or can represent in specific cases, or simply gen- erally, that it is the same as something else, or falls under the same head- ing and can be known and comprehended as the other. That is, of course, a relationship accessible to reason and involving the nature of reason; and in this manner anything and everything can signify some- thing, as it can also be signified. On the other hand, the term "signifying something" is used as well in the sense of something having significance or being of significance. In this sense, too, nothing is excluded. Not only a thought can be significant, but also an act, a work, a personality, a posi- tion, a virtue, and even an individual quality of mind. The distinction between this and the other kind of signifying is that a particular rank and value is ascribed to what is significant. That something is significant means in this sense that it is more significant than other things, or simply that it is unusually significant. What decides this? The ascription gives one to understand that it belongs to a hierarchy, an order of mental pow- ers that is aspired to, even should the attainable measure of order be in many things as undependable as it is strict in others. Does this hierarchy exist?
It is the human spirit itself: named not as a natural concept but as the objective spirit.
Agathe asked what this included; it is a notion that people more scien- tifically trained than she threw around so much that she ducked.
Ulrich nearly emulated her. He found the word used far too much. At that period it was used so often in scientific and pseudoscientific argu- ments that it simply revolved around itself. "For heaven's sake! You're becoming profound! " he retorted. The expression had inadvertently slipped from his own lips.
Ordinarily, one understands by "objective spirit" the works of the spirit, the relatively constant share it deposits in the world through the most various signs, in opposition to the subjective spirit as individual quality and individual experience; or one understood by it, and this could not be entirely separated from the first kind, the viable spirit, verifiable, constant in value, in opposition to the inspirations of mood and error. This touched two oppositions whose significance for Ulrich's life had certainly not been simply didactic but-and this he was well
From the Posthu11WUs Papers · 13 51
aware of and had expressed often enough-had become extremely allur- ing and worrisome. So what he meant had elements of both.
· Perhaps he could also have said to his sister that by "objective spirit" one understands everything that man has thought, dreamed, and de- sired; but, to do so means not looking at it as components of a spiritual, historical, or other temporal-actual development, and certainly not as something spiritual-suprasensmy either, but exclusively as itself, accord- ing to its own characteristic content and inner coherence. He could also have said, which appeared to contradict this but in the end came to the same thing, that it should be looked at with the reservation of all the contexts and orderings of which it is at all capable. For what something signifies or is in and of itself he equated with the result that coalesces out of the significances that could accrue to it under all possible conditions.
But one merely needs to put this differently, simply saying that in and of itself, something would be precisely what it never is in and of itself, but rather is in relation to its circumstances; and likewise that its signifi- cance is everything that it could signify; so one merely has to turn the expression on its head for the scruple connected with it to immediately become obvious. For of course the usual procedure, on the contrary, is to assume, even i f only from a usage oflanguage, that what something is in and of itself, or what it signifies, forms the origin and nucleus of every- thing that can be expressed about it in mutable relationships. So it was a particular conception of the nature of the notion and of signifying by which Ulrich had let himself be guided; and particularly because it is not unfamiliar, it might also be stated something like this: Whatever may be understood under the nature of the concept of a logical theory is in ap- plication, as a concept of something, nothing but the countervalue and the stored-up readiness for all possible true statements about that some- thing. This principle, which inverts the procedure of logic, is "empiri- cal," that is, it reminds one, ifone were to apply an already coined name to it, of that familiar line of philosophical thought, without, however, being meant in precisely the same sense. Ought Ulrich now to have ex- plained to his companion what empiricism was in its earlier form and what it had become in its more modest, and perhaps improved, modem version? As often happens when an idea gains in correctness, the more finely honed process of thinking renounces false answers but also some more profound questions as well.
What was baptized as empiricism in philosophical language was a doc- trine that arbitrarily declared the really astonishing presence and un- changeable sway of laws in nature and in the rules of the intellect to be a deceptive view that originated in habituation to the frequent repetition of the same experiences. The approximate classical formula for this was:
1352 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
Whatever repeats itself often enough seems to have to be so; and in this exaggerated form, which the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries be- stowed upon it, this formula was a repercussion of the long antecedent theological speculation: that is, of the faith placed in God, of being able to explain His works with the aid of whatever one takes into one's head. Notions and ideas demonstrate, when they are dominant, the same incli- nation to let themselves be worshiped and to broadcast capricious judg- ments as people do; and that probably led, when empiricism was established in modern times, to the admixture of a rather superficial op- position to totally convinced rationalism, which then, when it came to power itself, bore some of the responsibility for a shallow materialistic nature and societal mentality that at times has become almost popular.
Ulrich smiled when he thought of an example, but did not say why. For it was not reluctantly that one reproached empiricism, which was all too simpleminded and confined to its rules, that according to it the sun rises in the east and sets in the west for no other reason than that up till now it always has. And were he to betray this to his sister and ask her what she thought of it, she would probably answer arbitrarily, without bothering about the arguments and counterarguments, that the sun might one day do it differently. This was why he smiled as he thought of this example; for the relationship between youth and empiricism seemed to him profoundly natural, and youth's inclination to want to experience everything itself, and to expect the most surprising discover- ies, moved him to see this as the philosophy appropriate to youth. But from the assertion that awaiting the rising of the sun in the east every day merely has the security of a habit, it is only a step to asserting that all human lmowledge is felt only subjectively and at a particular time, or is indeed the presumption of a class or race, all of which has gradually become evident in European intellectual history. Apparently one should also add that approximately since the days of our great-grandfathers, a new kind of individuality has made its appearance: this is the type of the empirical man or empiricist, of the person of experience who has become such a familiar open question, the person who lmows how to make from a hundred of his own experiences a thousand new ones, which, however, always remain within the same circle ofexperience, and who has by this means created the gigantic, profitable-in-appearance monotony of the technical age. Empiricism as a philosophy might be taken as the philosophical children's disease of this type of person.
SKETCHES FOR A CONTINUA TION OF THE "GALLEY CHAPTERS," 1938 AND LATER
59
NIGHT TALK
In his room he had lit one lamp after the other, as if the stimulating excess ofillumination would make the words come more easily, and for a long time he wrote zealously. But after he had accomplished the most important part, he was overcome by the awareness that Agathe had not yet returned, and this became more and more disturbing. Ulrich did not lmow that she was with Lindner, nor did he lmow about these visits at all; but since that secret and his diaries were the only things they concealed from each other, he could surmise and also almost understand what she was doing. He did not take it more seriously than it deserved, and was more astonished at it than jealous; then too, he ascribed responsibility for it to his own lack of resolution, insofar as she pursued ways of her own that he could not approve of. It nevertheless inhibited him more and more, and diminished the readiness for belief that was weaving his thoughts together, that in this hour of collectedness he did not even lmow where she was or why she was late. He decided to interrupt his work and go out, to escape the enervating influence ofwaiting, but with the intention of soon returning to his labors. As he left the house it oc- curred to him that going to the theater not only would be the greatest diversion, but would also stimulate him; and so he went, although he was not dressed for it. He chose an inconspicuous seat and at first felt the great pleasure of coming into a performance that was already energeti- cally under way. It justified his coming, for this dynamic mirroring of emotions familiar a hundred times over, by which the theater is accus- tomed to live under the pretext that this gives it meaning, reminded Ul- rich of the value of the task he had left at home and renewed his desire
1354 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
to come to the end of the road that, proceeding from the origin of the emotions, ultimately had to lead to their significance. When he again directed his attention to the goings-on onstage, it occurred to him that most of the actors busily occupied up there, beautifully if meaninglessly imitating passions, bore titles such as Privy Councillor or Professor, for Ulrich was in the Hoftheater, and this raised everything to the level of state comedy. So although he left the theater before the end of the play, he nevertheless returned home with his spirits refreshed.
He again turned on all the lights in his room, and it gave him pleasure to listen to himself writing in the porous stillness of the night. This time, when he had entered the house, all sorts of fleeting signs barely assimi- lated by his consciousness told him that Agathe had returned; but when he subsequently thought of it and everything was without a sound, he was afraid to look around him. Thus the night became late. He had been once more in the garden, which lay in complete darkness, as inhospita- ble, indeed as mortally hostile, as deep black ocean; nevertheless, he had groped his way to a bench and persevered there for quite a while. It was difficult, even under these circumstances, to believe that what he was writing was important. But when he was again sitting in the light, he set to work to write to the end, as far as his plan extended this time. He didn't have far to go, but had hardly begun when a soft noise interrupted him. For Agathe, who had been in his room while he was at the theater and had repeated this secret visit while he was in the garden, slipping out upon his return, hesitated a short while outside the door and now softly turned the knob.
Agathe's entrance: she is wearing the historical lounging attire, etc. Lets her hand glide over his head, sits with crossed legs on the sofa.
Or: wrapper. Perhaps better. Describe it? Not transparent; on the contrary, heavy material. She was enveloped in a wrapper of old velvet material that reached to her ankles and looked like a completely dark- ened picture that had once been painted on a gold ground. Like a magi- cian's cape. Her ankles bare, the span of her foot as bare as her hand. Her slippers were of violet silk the color of spindle-tree fruit hanging on its bush in autumn. A collar of some soft weave, whose color hovered between ivory, milk, and dull gilt silver.
She had never worn this wrapper before; Ulrich did not recall it.
Ibidem. When he is near her, Ulrich feels the flowing back into emo- tion of what is outside and what inside, and the vigorous action of the
From the Posthu11WUs Papers · 1355
emotion. Also the sexual propensity, which belongs to a different sphere. The woman who becomes a guiding image in a different aspect and the woman who is the fulfillment of desire as examples of conceptions of
different levels that in life exist side by side.
She settles down on the sofa. Her torso comfortably supported and
her legs drawn up beneath her so that only her foot peeks out beneath the hem that forms a wheel. Later she briskly changes position, but at the beginning her posture was thoughtful and her face serious.
'Tve read it! " she informed her brother, like a chess player who, after a short pause for reflection, makes his first move.
"It seems to me you shouldn't have," he responded in the same manner.
Agathe burst out laughing.
"It was disloyal of you to conceal it from me," she asserted boldly.
If the description of the dress stays, don't have the laughing right after it-
Ulrich listened to her voice and contemplated her beauty. "These re- flections make me understand more about myself than many years were able to previously," he said quite calmly.
"And they have nothing to do with me? "
"Yes, it concerns you as well! "
"But why then are you doing it secretly? Why haven't you ever told
me about it?
"Why are you secretly visiting that man of tears Lindner? "
"Also to understand myself better. And anyway, he weeps tears of
anger. "
"Were you there today? "
"Yes. " Agathe looked steadily at her brother and noticed the resent-
ment in his eyes.
He strove to control himself and responded as tersely as possible: "I
don't like your doing that. "
"I don't like doing it myself," Agathe said, continuing after a brief
pause: "But I like what you write. The beginning and the end, and what's in between too. I didn't understand everything, but I read it all. I think you could explain a lot of things to me, and because I'm afraid of strain- ing myself, I'll believe a lot without any explanation at all. "
(Post datum. This is really an example of an inner form of cheerful- ness as distinct from outer. )
1356 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
She laughed again, and it pealed softly. She seemed to be laughing over nothing and only from joy; and although Ulrich could be quite sen- sitive to people's laughter when it was aroused by something, for then it sometimes seemed to him just as humdrum an occurrence as sneezing, it immediately enticed him into an impossible task, that of adequately describing this pleasant, unmotivated sound. If, into the bargain, one threw in a little poetic commonplace, the impression could then be com- pared with that of a small, low-tuned silver bell: a dark bass tone sub- merged in a soft overflowing sparkle. But while Ulrich was listening to these cheerful sounds spreading out in the quiet room, his eyes also thought they were seeing all its lamps burning that much more quietly I as brightly. Precisely the simplest sensory impressions that populate the world occasionally have surprises in store when it comes to describing them, as ifthey came from anotherworld.
Influenced by this weakness, Ulrich suddenly felt a confession on his tongue about which he himself had not thought for goodness knew how long. "I once made a devilish bet with our big cousin Tzi, which I will never write down and which I don't think I ever told you about," he began to confess. "He suspected that I would write books, and, as it seems to me, he considered books that did not praise his politics to be deleterious and those that did superfluous, aside from the historical lit- erature and memoirs a diplomat customarily employs. But I swore to him that I would kill myself before I succumbed to the temptation of writing a book; and I really meant it. For what I was able to write would do nothing more than prove that one is able to live differently in some specific fashion; but that I should write a book about it would at the very least be the counterproof that I'm not able to live in that fashion. I didn't expect it would turn out differently. "
His sister had listened to him without stirring, without even a muscle in her face twitching. 'W e can kill each other ifit turns into a book," she said. "But it seems to me we have less reason to than before. "
Ulrich involuntarily looked her in the eye.
"Rather more reason for the opposite," she went on.
"You can't yet say that (too)," Ulrich objected calmly.
Agathe found that the supporting pillow at her side needed rearrang-
ing, which turned her face away from him. "Don't be angry with me," she replied from this posture, "but even though I admire what you write, I still don't quite understand why you write. Indeed, sometimes I've found it enormously comical. You carefully dissect according to natural and moral laws the possibility of extending your hand. Why don't you simply reach out? "
From the Posthumous Papers · 1357
"It's ruinous simply to reach out. Did I ever tell you the story of the major's wife? "
Agathe nodded mutely.
"It can't end the way that did! "
The small furrow appeared between Agathe's brows. "The major's
wife was a commonplace person," she declared coolly.
"That's right. But whether one discovers a world or goes on a Don
Quixote adventure doesn't depend, unfortunately, on the worth of the person in whose honor one embarks on the trip. "
"Who knows! " Agathe replied. A moment later she impatiently aban- doned her comfortable position and sat down in the ordinary way right in front of her brother, as if she were going to test something. She looked at him (almost grimly) but said nothing. "Well? " Ulrich asked encouragingly, expecting an attack (that was awaiting him).
"Doesn't everything you've written down"-she pointed to the table and the papers lying on it-"answer everything we've been asking our- selves so often and have been so uncertain about? "
"I almost t:hin)<: so. "
"I have the feeling that everything we've been discussing back and forth for so long is resolved in these papers. But why didn't you hit on it sooner? I'm even immodest enough to maintain that you've left us both in the dark for quite a while. "
"We're still in the dark. You shouldn't overestimate these ideas. And it's been hard for me to open up to you. Sometimes in a dream you have delightful thoughts, but ifyou carry on with them after you wake up, they're ridiculous. "
"Really? But if I've understood you correctly, you're certain that for every emotion there are two worlds and that it depends on us which one we wish to live in! "
"Two images of the world! But only one reality! Within it, of course, you,can perhaps live in one way or the other. And that is when you ap- parently have the one or the other reality before you. "
"Apparently, but totally? Apparently, and with no gaps? But if every- thing were living in this other way, wouldn't that be the Millennium? "
Ulrich cautiously confirmed the possibility of this conclusion.
"So the intimation of this other world would also be what brought about beliefin a paradise? Don't laugh at me, but it's made me conclude that in this way one would of necessity arrive in paradise just by living according to the other part of one's feelings, as you call it. "
1358 ·THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
"Put correctly, paradise would then have to arrive on earth," Ulrich rectified.
''I'm not laughing at all. I just have to add: as far as one can! " I Or: mysticism as anomalous psychology of normal life: You believe that mys- ticism is a secret through which we enter another world; but it is only, or even, the secret of living differently in our world. "
"Oh? Yes, that's what you wrote. But didn't you even much earlier sometimes call it the concave, submerged world? " Agathe ascertained. "You spoke of an encompassing and an encompassed possibility of feel- ing as if they were old tales. Of gods and goddesses. Of two branches of development in life. Ofmoon-nights and day. Oftwo inseparable twins! "
It is the answer to all our conversations, all our peculiarities.
Agathe was pressing, but Ulrich yielded of his own accord: "You can add anything you like: everything that has truly moved me has its expla- nation here. The victories that come from acting in the world, and the emotions that go with them, have always been alien to me, even if at times I felt an obligation to them. An apparently inactive state I called love, without loving a woman, was opposed in me to the processes of knowledge that gave me the passion a rider has for his horse I which I called the world of love because I couldn't love in the everyday world! I We always imagined a different life before us. "
Agathe interrupted him animatedly. But it was hard for her to fmd the right words. At the beginning, although soon swept away by what she was saying, there was a little awkwardness in her voice, as when a boy tries to speak in a man's bass voice, or when a girl paints a mustache on her face, as she began: "You know that I'm no shrinking touch-me-not. And I've often reproached myself for my so-called passions, which have always left me completely unmoved. I clearly felt that I was being moved by them only because I hadn't found what could truly move us. " Possibly better this way: When she applied the expression "touch-me-not" to herself. She said Ulrich knew that she wasn't one and that she attached no importance to it. But also (that is: he knew) that she found her so- called passions most shameful after the fact. "You scrape yourself like a cow against a tree, just as happily, and suddenly stop in the same bewil- derment," she said.
Ulrich: A person is passionate in two senses. A kind of appetitive sense, which reaches out for everything and undertakes everything, and another, which is timid, has a hard time making up its mind to do things, and is full ofinexpressible longing. One probably has both within oneself.
Agathe: The man with qualities and the man without qualities! Mar-
From the Posthumous Papers · 1359
velous, marvelous. If someone understands you properly he has saved his life! What author wouldn't be flattered by such praise! Ulrich re- sponded: It's not immaterial that we are talking about a passionate per- son in two quite different senses. We've become accustomed to applying the term chiefly to people we really ought to call lustful, to gluttons in every kind of passion, while we rather tend to regard people who are profoundly passionate within themselves as weak in affect, people who ascetically serve some sort of nobler passion of life. That leads to stupid mixups.
Agathe: I'm reproached for acting badly-
Who reproaches you? (a little suspiciously)
Agathe violently twitched her shoulders. "Professor Hagauer. Think
ofhis letters. Indeed, I've often reproached myselffor having done what I did with the will-"
"We'll make amends for it," Ulrich intervened.
"What a situation to be in, feeling that you're not a good person and yet not wanting it any other way! You yourself once reproached me about this, and I was insulted-"
Ulrich interrupted her with anapologetic, defensive gesture. Proba- bly (too) from the author, that it's important that they have now recog- nized that they've got to the center oftheir difficulties.
Agathe: "Oh, you've often talked about morality. You've set before me at least ten different definitions; every time, listening to you was a totally new experience. But now I'm reproached for being immoral, I'm made to believe it myself, but for all that I'm an absolute marvel of morality! "
Ulrich: And why a marvel?
Agathe: You showed me the way! The only condition I love and seek needs no morality, it is morality! Every twitch of the little toe that hap- pens in it is moral. Am I right? (laughs)
Ulrich: Yes, you're right.
Agathe: But first I want to ask you something else . . . Everything we've been talking about half jokingly and half seriously for the last few days: is it all settled?
Ulrich: Of course.
Agathe: T o love your neighbor as yourself is an ecstatic demand? Ulrich: It is the natural morality of mystic ecstasy, which teaches
something that never quite fits the ord[inary] activity of our lives.
EARLy-MORNING wALK
Part I
Around Clarisse's mouth laughter was struggling with the difficulties facing her; her mouth kept opening and then pressing itself tightly shut. 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 hemi- sphere ofthe sky had not yet filled with warmth. Even the light was still shallowly dispersed. "It only reaches my ankles," Clarisse thought. "The cock of the morning has just been wound up! Everything is before its time! " Clarisse was deeply moved that she was wandering through the world before it was time. It almost made her cry.
Without saying anything about it to Walter or Ulrich, Clarisse had been to the asylum a second time. Since then she had been especially sensitive. She applied everything she had seen or heard during her two visits to herself. Three events especially preoccupied her. The first was that she had been addressed and greeted as the Emperor's son and a man. When this assertion had been repeated, she had quite distinctly felt her resistance to it yield, as if something ordinary that usually stood in the way of this royal quality was vanishing. And she was filled with an inexpressible desire. The second thing that excited her was that Mein- gast, too, was transforming himself, and was obviously using her and Walter's proximity in the process. Since she had surprised him in the vegetable garden-it might have been a few weeks agcr-and terrified him with her truly prophetic shout that she could transform herself too and also be a man, he had been avoiding her company. Since then she had not seen him often, even at meals; he locked himself in with his work or spent the whole day out of the house, and whenever he was hungry he secretly took something to eat from the pantry (without ask- ing). It had been just a short time ago that she had succeeded in talking to him again alone. She had told him: "Walter has forbidden me to talk about how you're undergoing a transformation in our house! " and had blinked her eyes. But even here Meingast kept himself concealed and acted surprised, indeed annoyed. He did not want to let her in on the secret he was busily working on. This seemed to be the explanation. But Clarisse had said to him: "Perhaps I'll steal a march on you! " And she connected that with the first event. There was little reflection in this, and on that account its relation to reality was unclear; but what was clearly palpable was the lustful emergence of a different being from within the foundation of her own.
From the Posthunwus Papers · 1361
Clarisse was now convinced that the insane people had found her out (that she had offered to Meingast that she could also be a man). And since then she had one secret more: when an invitation to repeat the interrupted visit did not arrive, either from the secretly resisting General von Stumm or from Ulrich, she had after long hesitation her- self called Dr. Friedenthal and announced that she would visit him at the hospital. And the doctor had promptly found time for Clarisse. When she asked him immediately upon her arrival whether mad peo- ple did not know a great deal that healthy people could not even guess at, he smiled and shook his head, but gazed deeply into her eyes and answered in a tone of complacency: "The doctors of the insane know a lot that healthy people don't even suspect! " And when he had to go on his rounds he had offered to take Clarisse along, and to begin where they had stopped the last time. As if it were already a matter of course, Clarisse again slipped into the white doctor's coat that Friedenthal held for her.
But-and this was the third event that still excited Clarisse after the fact, and even more than the others-she again did not get to see Moos- brugger. For something remarkable happened. They had left the last pavilion and were breathing in the spicy air of the grounds as they walked, during which Friedenthal ventured: "Now it's time for Moos- brugger! " when again a guard came running up with a message. Frie- denthal shrugged his shoulders and said: "Strange! It's not going to work out this time either! At this moment the Director and a Commission are with Moosbrugger. I can't take you with me. " And after he had assured her on his own initiative that he would invite her to continue her visit at the first opportunity, he left with rapid strides, while the guard con- ducted Clarisse back to the street.
Clarisse found it striking and extraordinary that her visits had twice come to nothing, and suspected that there was something behind it. She had the impression that she was intentionally not being allowed to see Moosbrugger and that a new excuse was being thought up each time, perhaps even with the purpose of making Moosbrugger disappear before she could get through to him.
But when Clarisse thought this over again, she nearly cried. She had let herself be outsmarted and felt quite ashamed; for she had heard nothing from Friedenthal. But while she was getting so upset, she was also calming down again. A thought occurred to her that often preoc- cupied her now, that in the course of the history of mankind many great men had been spirited away and tortured by their contemporaries, and that in the madhouse many had even disappeared. "They could neither defend themselves nor explain, because all they felt for their time was
1362 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
scorn! " she thought. And she recalled Nietzsche, whom she idolized, with his great, sad mustache and grown totally mute behind it.
But this gave her an uncanny feeling. What had just now insulted or provoked her, her defeat at the hands of the cunning doctor, was sud- denly revealed to her as a sign that the destiny ofsuch a great man might also have been preordained for her. Her eyes sought the direction in which the asylum lay, and she knew that she always felt this direction as something special, even when she wasn't thinking of it.
It was extremely oppressive to feel oneself so at one with madmen, but she told herself that "to put oneself on the level of the uncanny is to decide for genius! "
Meanwhile the sun had come up, and this made the landscape even emptier; it was green and cool, with bloody wisps; the world was still low, and reached up only to Clarisse's ankles on the little rise she was stand- ing on. Here and there a bird's voice shrieked like a lost soul. Her nar- row mouth expanded and smiled at the course of the morning. She stood girded round by her smile like the Blessed Virgin on the earth embraced by sin I crescent moon. She mulled over what she should do.
"Oh, they were always very respectful to me and said: 'You shouldn't bother your head about that, General! ' Of course that may be a kind of arrogance they have; for though they nervously praise all new artists,
1346 · THE MAN WITH 0 U T QUALITIES
they nonetheless seem to imagine that these artists, in their own asser- tions, dangerously contradict each other, indeed that they feel some- thing like blind rage toward each other, and that summa summarum they perhaps don't know what they're doing! "
"And did you also find out what those sun-stricken minds that Di- otima cools with laurel think about the critics and professors, to the ex- tent these people don't praise them? " Ulrich asked. "As if the artists were the ones feeding these beasts ofintellect with their flesh, and these beasts were the ones who would leave a mere struggle over bones as the final remains of all man's humanity! "
"You've observed them well! " Stumm agreed as a delighted connois- seur.
"But in the face of so much contradiction, how do you recog- nize whether you've really got hold of a 'genius' or not? '' Ulrich asked logically.
Stumm's answer was honest, ifnot compelling: "I don't give a damn," he said.
Ulrich looked at him in silence. If he wanted merely to engage in a rear-guard skirmish and avoid problems that were more difficult than the circumstances warranted, then it was a mistake for him not to use this moment "to disengage himself from the enemy," as good tactics would have dictated. But he himself did not know what mood he was in. So he finally said: "Nothing gives fake geniuses so much luck with the masses as the incomprehension that genuine geniuses ordinarily have for each other, and, following their example, the pseudo-genuine ones; lamp polishers can't clean Prometheus! " At this conclusion Stumm looked up at him, uncomprehending but thoughtful. "Don't misunder- stand me," he added cautiously. "Remember my eagerness when I was searching for a great idea for Diotima. I know what intellectual aristoc- racy is. Nor am I Count Leinsdorf, for whom that's always a kind of minor nobility. Just now, for example, you brilliantly defined what age- nius is. How did it go? It finds a solution by doing something that hadn't occurred to anyone before! That really says the same thing I've been saying: the important thing is that a genius gets hold of his subject from the wrong end. But that's not intellectual aristocracy! And why isn't it intellectual aristocracy? Because the usual polestar of our age is that whatever the circumstances, what happens must be meaningful, but whether you call it genius or intellectual aristocracy, progress or, as you now often hear people say, a record, just doesn't matter much to our time! "
"But then why did you mention intellectual aristocracy? '' Ulrich prompted impatiently.
From the Posthurrwus Papers · 1347
"I can't really say precisely, for that very reason! " Stumm defended himself. "Anyway," he continued, thinking busily, "perhaps you could say in a way that an intellectual aristocracy in particular is not permitted to leave character in peace. Aren't I right? "
"Yes, you're right! " Ulrich encouraged him, made aware for the first time this precise moment, quite incidentally, as it happened, to heed a distinction like the one between genius and dexterity.
"Yes," Stumm repeated thoughtfully. And then he asked: "But what is character? Is it what helps a man develop the ideas that will distinguish him? Or is it what keeps him from having such ideas? For a man who has character doesn't do much flitting around! "
Ulrich decided to shrug his shoulders and smile.
"Presumably it's connected with what one is accustomed to calling great ideas," Stumm went on skeptically. "And then intellectual aristoc- racy would be nothing except the possession of great ideas. But how does one recognize that an idea is great? There are so many geniuses, at least a couple in every profession; indeed, it's a distinctive mark of our time that we have too many geniuses. How is one to understand them all and not overlook any! " His painful familiarity with the question ofwhat a really great idea was had brought him back to its role in genius.
Ulrich shrugged again.
"There are of course some people, and I've met them," Stumm said, "who never miss the smallest genius that can be dug up anywhere! "
Ulrich replied: ·'Those are the snobs and intellectual pretenders. " The General: "But Diotima is one of these people too. "
Ulrich: "Makes no difference. A person into whom everything he
finds can be stuffed must be built with no shape of his own, like a sack. " "It's true," the General replied rather reproachfully, "that you've often said that Diotima was a snob. And you've sometimes said it about Arnheim as well. But that made me imagine a snob to be someone who is quite stimulating! I've honestly tried hard to be one myself and not let anything slip past me. It's hard for me to suddenly hear you say that you can't even depend on a snob to understand genius. Because you said before that youth couldn't answer for it, nor age either. And then we discussed how geniuses don't, and critics not at all. Well then, genius will
finally have to reveal itself to everyone of its own accord! "
"That will happen in time," Ulrich soothed him, laughing. "Most peo-
ple believe that time naturally turns up what is significant. "
·'Yes, one hears that too. But tell me ifyou can," Stumm asked impa- tiently. "I can understand that one is cleverer at fifty than one was at twenty. But at eight o'clock in the evening I'm no cleverer than I was at eight in the morning; and that one should be cleverer after nineteen
1348 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
hundred and fourteen years than after eight hundred and fourteen, that I can't see either! " This led them to go on a bit discussing the difficult subject of genius, the only thing, in Ulrich's opinion, that justified man- kind, but at the same time the most exciting and confusing, because you never know whether you're looking at genius or at one of its half-baked imitations. What are its distinguishing characteristics? How is it passed on? Could it develop further ifit were not constantly being thwarted? Is it, as Stumm had asked, such a desirable thing anyway? These were problems that for Stumm belonged to the beauty of the civilian mind and its scandalous disorder, while Ulrich, on the other hand, compared them with a weather forecast that not only didn't know whether it would be fair tomorrow but didn't know whether it had been fair yesterday ei- ther. For the judgment of what constitutes genius changes with the spirit of the times, assuming that anyone is interested in it at all, which by no means need be the mark of greatness of soul or of mind.
Such puzzles would no doubt have been well worth solving, and so it came about in this part of the conversation that Stumm finally, after shaking his head a few times, proffered his observation about the Engi- neering[/Genius] Staff that Ulrich later repeated to his sister. This expla- nation, that genius needed a Genius Staff, reminded him somewhat painfully, moreover, of what Ulrich himself had half ironically called the General Secretariat of Precision and Soul, and Stumm did not neglect to remind him that he had last mentioned it in his own and Count Leins- dorf's presence during the unfortunate gathering at Diotima's. "At that time you were demanding something quite similar," he held up to him, "and if I'm not mistaken, it was a department for geniuses and the intel- lectual aristocracy. " Ulrich nodded silently. "For the intellectual aristoc- racy," Stumm continued, "would ultimately be what ordinary geniuses don't have. No matter how you define them, our geniuses are geniuses and nothing more, nothing but specialists! Am I right? I can really un- derstand why many people say: today there's no such thing as genius! "
Ulrich nodded again. A pause ensued.
"But there's one thing I'd like to know," Stumm asked with that hint of egotism that attaches to a recurrent perplexing thought: "Is it a re- proach or a distinction that people never say about a general: he's a genius? "
"Both. "
"Both? Why both? "
"I honestly don't know. "
Stumm was taken aback but, after thinking it over, said: "You put that
brilliantly! The people love an officer- as long as they aren't stirred up; and he gets to know the people: the people couldn't care less about ge-
From the Posthunwus Papers · 1349
niuses! But by the time he gets to be a general he has to be a specialist, and if he himself is a specialist genius he then falls into the category that there's no such thing as genius. So he never gets, as I would say if I spelled it out, to the point where the use ofthis wishy-washy term would be appropriate. Do you know, by the way, that I recently heard some- thing really clever? I was at your cousin's, in the most intimate circle, although Arnheim is away, and we were discussing intellectual ques- tions. Then someone pokes me in the ribs and explains Arnheim to me in a whisper: 'He's what you call a genius,' he said. 'More than all the oth- ers. A universal specialist! ' Why don't you say anything? " Ulrich found nothing to say. "The possibilities inherent in this point ofview surprised me. Besides, you yourself happen to be such a kind of universal special- ist. That's why you shouldn't neglect Arnheim so; because ultimately the Parallel Campaign might get its saving idea from him, and that could be dangerous! I would really much prefer that it came from you. "
And although Stumm had (finally) spoken far more than Ulrich, he took his leave with the words: "As always, it's a pleasure talking with you, because you understand all these things de facto much better than ev- eryone else! "
so
GENIUS AS A PROBLEM
Ulrich had related this conversation to his sister.
But even before that he had been speaking of difficulties connected
with the notion ofgenius. What enticedhim to do this? He had no inten- tion of claiming to be a genius himself, or of politely inquiring about the conditions that would enable a person to become one. On the contrary, he was convinced that the powerful, exhausted ambition in his time for the vocation of genius was the expression not of intellectual or spiritual greatness but merely of an incongruity. But as all contemporary ques- tions about life become impossibly entangled in an impenetrable thicket, so do the questions surrounding the idea ofgenius, which in part enticed one's thoughts to penetrate it and in part left them hung up on the difficulties.
After he finished his report, Ulrich had immediately come back to this. Ofcourse, whatever has genius must be significant; for genius is the
1350 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
significant accomplishment that originates under particularly distinctive conditions. But "significant" is not only the lesser but also the more gen- eral category. So the first thing was to inquire into this notion again. The words "significant" and "significance" themselves, like all terms that are much used, have different meanings. On the one hand, they are con- nected with the concepts of thinking and knowing. To say that some- thing signifies or has this significance means that it points to, gives to understand, indicates, or can represent in specific cases, or simply gen- erally, that it is the same as something else, or falls under the same head- ing and can be known and comprehended as the other. That is, of course, a relationship accessible to reason and involving the nature of reason; and in this manner anything and everything can signify some- thing, as it can also be signified. On the other hand, the term "signifying something" is used as well in the sense of something having significance or being of significance. In this sense, too, nothing is excluded. Not only a thought can be significant, but also an act, a work, a personality, a posi- tion, a virtue, and even an individual quality of mind. The distinction between this and the other kind of signifying is that a particular rank and value is ascribed to what is significant. That something is significant means in this sense that it is more significant than other things, or simply that it is unusually significant. What decides this? The ascription gives one to understand that it belongs to a hierarchy, an order of mental pow- ers that is aspired to, even should the attainable measure of order be in many things as undependable as it is strict in others. Does this hierarchy exist?
It is the human spirit itself: named not as a natural concept but as the objective spirit.
Agathe asked what this included; it is a notion that people more scien- tifically trained than she threw around so much that she ducked.
Ulrich nearly emulated her. He found the word used far too much. At that period it was used so often in scientific and pseudoscientific argu- ments that it simply revolved around itself. "For heaven's sake! You're becoming profound! " he retorted. The expression had inadvertently slipped from his own lips.
Ordinarily, one understands by "objective spirit" the works of the spirit, the relatively constant share it deposits in the world through the most various signs, in opposition to the subjective spirit as individual quality and individual experience; or one understood by it, and this could not be entirely separated from the first kind, the viable spirit, verifiable, constant in value, in opposition to the inspirations of mood and error. This touched two oppositions whose significance for Ulrich's life had certainly not been simply didactic but-and this he was well
From the Posthu11WUs Papers · 13 51
aware of and had expressed often enough-had become extremely allur- ing and worrisome. So what he meant had elements of both.
· Perhaps he could also have said to his sister that by "objective spirit" one understands everything that man has thought, dreamed, and de- sired; but, to do so means not looking at it as components of a spiritual, historical, or other temporal-actual development, and certainly not as something spiritual-suprasensmy either, but exclusively as itself, accord- ing to its own characteristic content and inner coherence. He could also have said, which appeared to contradict this but in the end came to the same thing, that it should be looked at with the reservation of all the contexts and orderings of which it is at all capable. For what something signifies or is in and of itself he equated with the result that coalesces out of the significances that could accrue to it under all possible conditions.
But one merely needs to put this differently, simply saying that in and of itself, something would be precisely what it never is in and of itself, but rather is in relation to its circumstances; and likewise that its signifi- cance is everything that it could signify; so one merely has to turn the expression on its head for the scruple connected with it to immediately become obvious. For of course the usual procedure, on the contrary, is to assume, even i f only from a usage oflanguage, that what something is in and of itself, or what it signifies, forms the origin and nucleus of every- thing that can be expressed about it in mutable relationships. So it was a particular conception of the nature of the notion and of signifying by which Ulrich had let himself be guided; and particularly because it is not unfamiliar, it might also be stated something like this: Whatever may be understood under the nature of the concept of a logical theory is in ap- plication, as a concept of something, nothing but the countervalue and the stored-up readiness for all possible true statements about that some- thing. This principle, which inverts the procedure of logic, is "empiri- cal," that is, it reminds one, ifone were to apply an already coined name to it, of that familiar line of philosophical thought, without, however, being meant in precisely the same sense. Ought Ulrich now to have ex- plained to his companion what empiricism was in its earlier form and what it had become in its more modest, and perhaps improved, modem version? As often happens when an idea gains in correctness, the more finely honed process of thinking renounces false answers but also some more profound questions as well.
What was baptized as empiricism in philosophical language was a doc- trine that arbitrarily declared the really astonishing presence and un- changeable sway of laws in nature and in the rules of the intellect to be a deceptive view that originated in habituation to the frequent repetition of the same experiences. The approximate classical formula for this was:
1352 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
Whatever repeats itself often enough seems to have to be so; and in this exaggerated form, which the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries be- stowed upon it, this formula was a repercussion of the long antecedent theological speculation: that is, of the faith placed in God, of being able to explain His works with the aid of whatever one takes into one's head. Notions and ideas demonstrate, when they are dominant, the same incli- nation to let themselves be worshiped and to broadcast capricious judg- ments as people do; and that probably led, when empiricism was established in modern times, to the admixture of a rather superficial op- position to totally convinced rationalism, which then, when it came to power itself, bore some of the responsibility for a shallow materialistic nature and societal mentality that at times has become almost popular.
Ulrich smiled when he thought of an example, but did not say why. For it was not reluctantly that one reproached empiricism, which was all too simpleminded and confined to its rules, that according to it the sun rises in the east and sets in the west for no other reason than that up till now it always has. And were he to betray this to his sister and ask her what she thought of it, she would probably answer arbitrarily, without bothering about the arguments and counterarguments, that the sun might one day do it differently. This was why he smiled as he thought of this example; for the relationship between youth and empiricism seemed to him profoundly natural, and youth's inclination to want to experience everything itself, and to expect the most surprising discover- ies, moved him to see this as the philosophy appropriate to youth. But from the assertion that awaiting the rising of the sun in the east every day merely has the security of a habit, it is only a step to asserting that all human lmowledge is felt only subjectively and at a particular time, or is indeed the presumption of a class or race, all of which has gradually become evident in European intellectual history. Apparently one should also add that approximately since the days of our great-grandfathers, a new kind of individuality has made its appearance: this is the type of the empirical man or empiricist, of the person of experience who has become such a familiar open question, the person who lmows how to make from a hundred of his own experiences a thousand new ones, which, however, always remain within the same circle ofexperience, and who has by this means created the gigantic, profitable-in-appearance monotony of the technical age. Empiricism as a philosophy might be taken as the philosophical children's disease of this type of person.
SKETCHES FOR A CONTINUA TION OF THE "GALLEY CHAPTERS," 1938 AND LATER
59
NIGHT TALK
In his room he had lit one lamp after the other, as if the stimulating excess ofillumination would make the words come more easily, and for a long time he wrote zealously. But after he had accomplished the most important part, he was overcome by the awareness that Agathe had not yet returned, and this became more and more disturbing. Ulrich did not lmow that she was with Lindner, nor did he lmow about these visits at all; but since that secret and his diaries were the only things they concealed from each other, he could surmise and also almost understand what she was doing. He did not take it more seriously than it deserved, and was more astonished at it than jealous; then too, he ascribed responsibility for it to his own lack of resolution, insofar as she pursued ways of her own that he could not approve of. It nevertheless inhibited him more and more, and diminished the readiness for belief that was weaving his thoughts together, that in this hour of collectedness he did not even lmow where she was or why she was late. He decided to interrupt his work and go out, to escape the enervating influence ofwaiting, but with the intention of soon returning to his labors. As he left the house it oc- curred to him that going to the theater not only would be the greatest diversion, but would also stimulate him; and so he went, although he was not dressed for it. He chose an inconspicuous seat and at first felt the great pleasure of coming into a performance that was already energeti- cally under way. It justified his coming, for this dynamic mirroring of emotions familiar a hundred times over, by which the theater is accus- tomed to live under the pretext that this gives it meaning, reminded Ul- rich of the value of the task he had left at home and renewed his desire
1354 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
to come to the end of the road that, proceeding from the origin of the emotions, ultimately had to lead to their significance. When he again directed his attention to the goings-on onstage, it occurred to him that most of the actors busily occupied up there, beautifully if meaninglessly imitating passions, bore titles such as Privy Councillor or Professor, for Ulrich was in the Hoftheater, and this raised everything to the level of state comedy. So although he left the theater before the end of the play, he nevertheless returned home with his spirits refreshed.
He again turned on all the lights in his room, and it gave him pleasure to listen to himself writing in the porous stillness of the night. This time, when he had entered the house, all sorts of fleeting signs barely assimi- lated by his consciousness told him that Agathe had returned; but when he subsequently thought of it and everything was without a sound, he was afraid to look around him. Thus the night became late. He had been once more in the garden, which lay in complete darkness, as inhospita- ble, indeed as mortally hostile, as deep black ocean; nevertheless, he had groped his way to a bench and persevered there for quite a while. It was difficult, even under these circumstances, to believe that what he was writing was important. But when he was again sitting in the light, he set to work to write to the end, as far as his plan extended this time. He didn't have far to go, but had hardly begun when a soft noise interrupted him. For Agathe, who had been in his room while he was at the theater and had repeated this secret visit while he was in the garden, slipping out upon his return, hesitated a short while outside the door and now softly turned the knob.
Agathe's entrance: she is wearing the historical lounging attire, etc. Lets her hand glide over his head, sits with crossed legs on the sofa.
Or: wrapper. Perhaps better. Describe it? Not transparent; on the contrary, heavy material. She was enveloped in a wrapper of old velvet material that reached to her ankles and looked like a completely dark- ened picture that had once been painted on a gold ground. Like a magi- cian's cape. Her ankles bare, the span of her foot as bare as her hand. Her slippers were of violet silk the color of spindle-tree fruit hanging on its bush in autumn. A collar of some soft weave, whose color hovered between ivory, milk, and dull gilt silver.
She had never worn this wrapper before; Ulrich did not recall it.
Ibidem. When he is near her, Ulrich feels the flowing back into emo- tion of what is outside and what inside, and the vigorous action of the
From the Posthu11WUs Papers · 1355
emotion. Also the sexual propensity, which belongs to a different sphere. The woman who becomes a guiding image in a different aspect and the woman who is the fulfillment of desire as examples of conceptions of
different levels that in life exist side by side.
She settles down on the sofa. Her torso comfortably supported and
her legs drawn up beneath her so that only her foot peeks out beneath the hem that forms a wheel. Later she briskly changes position, but at the beginning her posture was thoughtful and her face serious.
'Tve read it! " she informed her brother, like a chess player who, after a short pause for reflection, makes his first move.
"It seems to me you shouldn't have," he responded in the same manner.
Agathe burst out laughing.
"It was disloyal of you to conceal it from me," she asserted boldly.
If the description of the dress stays, don't have the laughing right after it-
Ulrich listened to her voice and contemplated her beauty. "These re- flections make me understand more about myself than many years were able to previously," he said quite calmly.
"And they have nothing to do with me? "
"Yes, it concerns you as well! "
"But why then are you doing it secretly? Why haven't you ever told
me about it?
"Why are you secretly visiting that man of tears Lindner? "
"Also to understand myself better. And anyway, he weeps tears of
anger. "
"Were you there today? "
"Yes. " Agathe looked steadily at her brother and noticed the resent-
ment in his eyes.
He strove to control himself and responded as tersely as possible: "I
don't like your doing that. "
"I don't like doing it myself," Agathe said, continuing after a brief
pause: "But I like what you write. The beginning and the end, and what's in between too. I didn't understand everything, but I read it all. I think you could explain a lot of things to me, and because I'm afraid of strain- ing myself, I'll believe a lot without any explanation at all. "
(Post datum. This is really an example of an inner form of cheerful- ness as distinct from outer. )
1356 · THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
She laughed again, and it pealed softly. She seemed to be laughing over nothing and only from joy; and although Ulrich could be quite sen- sitive to people's laughter when it was aroused by something, for then it sometimes seemed to him just as humdrum an occurrence as sneezing, it immediately enticed him into an impossible task, that of adequately describing this pleasant, unmotivated sound. If, into the bargain, one threw in a little poetic commonplace, the impression could then be com- pared with that of a small, low-tuned silver bell: a dark bass tone sub- merged in a soft overflowing sparkle. But while Ulrich was listening to these cheerful sounds spreading out in the quiet room, his eyes also thought they were seeing all its lamps burning that much more quietly I as brightly. Precisely the simplest sensory impressions that populate the world occasionally have surprises in store when it comes to describing them, as ifthey came from anotherworld.
Influenced by this weakness, Ulrich suddenly felt a confession on his tongue about which he himself had not thought for goodness knew how long. "I once made a devilish bet with our big cousin Tzi, which I will never write down and which I don't think I ever told you about," he began to confess. "He suspected that I would write books, and, as it seems to me, he considered books that did not praise his politics to be deleterious and those that did superfluous, aside from the historical lit- erature and memoirs a diplomat customarily employs. But I swore to him that I would kill myself before I succumbed to the temptation of writing a book; and I really meant it. For what I was able to write would do nothing more than prove that one is able to live differently in some specific fashion; but that I should write a book about it would at the very least be the counterproof that I'm not able to live in that fashion. I didn't expect it would turn out differently. "
His sister had listened to him without stirring, without even a muscle in her face twitching. 'W e can kill each other ifit turns into a book," she said. "But it seems to me we have less reason to than before. "
Ulrich involuntarily looked her in the eye.
"Rather more reason for the opposite," she went on.
"You can't yet say that (too)," Ulrich objected calmly.
Agathe found that the supporting pillow at her side needed rearrang-
ing, which turned her face away from him. "Don't be angry with me," she replied from this posture, "but even though I admire what you write, I still don't quite understand why you write. Indeed, sometimes I've found it enormously comical. You carefully dissect according to natural and moral laws the possibility of extending your hand. Why don't you simply reach out? "
From the Posthumous Papers · 1357
"It's ruinous simply to reach out. Did I ever tell you the story of the major's wife? "
Agathe nodded mutely.
"It can't end the way that did! "
The small furrow appeared between Agathe's brows. "The major's
wife was a commonplace person," she declared coolly.
"That's right. But whether one discovers a world or goes on a Don
Quixote adventure doesn't depend, unfortunately, on the worth of the person in whose honor one embarks on the trip. "
"Who knows! " Agathe replied. A moment later she impatiently aban- doned her comfortable position and sat down in the ordinary way right in front of her brother, as if she were going to test something. She looked at him (almost grimly) but said nothing. "Well? " Ulrich asked encouragingly, expecting an attack (that was awaiting him).
"Doesn't everything you've written down"-she pointed to the table and the papers lying on it-"answer everything we've been asking our- selves so often and have been so uncertain about? "
"I almost t:hin)<: so. "
"I have the feeling that everything we've been discussing back and forth for so long is resolved in these papers. But why didn't you hit on it sooner? I'm even immodest enough to maintain that you've left us both in the dark for quite a while. "
"We're still in the dark. You shouldn't overestimate these ideas. And it's been hard for me to open up to you. Sometimes in a dream you have delightful thoughts, but ifyou carry on with them after you wake up, they're ridiculous. "
"Really? But if I've understood you correctly, you're certain that for every emotion there are two worlds and that it depends on us which one we wish to live in! "
"Two images of the world! But only one reality! Within it, of course, you,can perhaps live in one way or the other. And that is when you ap- parently have the one or the other reality before you. "
"Apparently, but totally? Apparently, and with no gaps? But if every- thing were living in this other way, wouldn't that be the Millennium? "
Ulrich cautiously confirmed the possibility of this conclusion.
"So the intimation of this other world would also be what brought about beliefin a paradise? Don't laugh at me, but it's made me conclude that in this way one would of necessity arrive in paradise just by living according to the other part of one's feelings, as you call it. "
1358 ·THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
"Put correctly, paradise would then have to arrive on earth," Ulrich rectified.
''I'm not laughing at all. I just have to add: as far as one can! " I Or: mysticism as anomalous psychology of normal life: You believe that mys- ticism is a secret through which we enter another world; but it is only, or even, the secret of living differently in our world. "
"Oh? Yes, that's what you wrote. But didn't you even much earlier sometimes call it the concave, submerged world? " Agathe ascertained. "You spoke of an encompassing and an encompassed possibility of feel- ing as if they were old tales. Of gods and goddesses. Of two branches of development in life. Ofmoon-nights and day. Oftwo inseparable twins! "
It is the answer to all our conversations, all our peculiarities.
Agathe was pressing, but Ulrich yielded of his own accord: "You can add anything you like: everything that has truly moved me has its expla- nation here. The victories that come from acting in the world, and the emotions that go with them, have always been alien to me, even if at times I felt an obligation to them. An apparently inactive state I called love, without loving a woman, was opposed in me to the processes of knowledge that gave me the passion a rider has for his horse I which I called the world of love because I couldn't love in the everyday world! I We always imagined a different life before us. "
Agathe interrupted him animatedly. But it was hard for her to fmd the right words. At the beginning, although soon swept away by what she was saying, there was a little awkwardness in her voice, as when a boy tries to speak in a man's bass voice, or when a girl paints a mustache on her face, as she began: "You know that I'm no shrinking touch-me-not. And I've often reproached myself for my so-called passions, which have always left me completely unmoved. I clearly felt that I was being moved by them only because I hadn't found what could truly move us. " Possibly better this way: When she applied the expression "touch-me-not" to herself. She said Ulrich knew that she wasn't one and that she attached no importance to it. But also (that is: he knew) that she found her so- called passions most shameful after the fact. "You scrape yourself like a cow against a tree, just as happily, and suddenly stop in the same bewil- derment," she said.
Ulrich: A person is passionate in two senses. A kind of appetitive sense, which reaches out for everything and undertakes everything, and another, which is timid, has a hard time making up its mind to do things, and is full ofinexpressible longing. One probably has both within oneself.
Agathe: The man with qualities and the man without qualities! Mar-
From the Posthumous Papers · 1359
velous, marvelous. If someone understands you properly he has saved his life! What author wouldn't be flattered by such praise! Ulrich re- sponded: It's not immaterial that we are talking about a passionate per- son in two quite different senses. We've become accustomed to applying the term chiefly to people we really ought to call lustful, to gluttons in every kind of passion, while we rather tend to regard people who are profoundly passionate within themselves as weak in affect, people who ascetically serve some sort of nobler passion of life. That leads to stupid mixups.
Agathe: I'm reproached for acting badly-
Who reproaches you? (a little suspiciously)
Agathe violently twitched her shoulders. "Professor Hagauer. Think
ofhis letters. Indeed, I've often reproached myselffor having done what I did with the will-"
"We'll make amends for it," Ulrich intervened.
"What a situation to be in, feeling that you're not a good person and yet not wanting it any other way! You yourself once reproached me about this, and I was insulted-"
Ulrich interrupted her with anapologetic, defensive gesture. Proba- bly (too) from the author, that it's important that they have now recog- nized that they've got to the center oftheir difficulties.
Agathe: "Oh, you've often talked about morality. You've set before me at least ten different definitions; every time, listening to you was a totally new experience. But now I'm reproached for being immoral, I'm made to believe it myself, but for all that I'm an absolute marvel of morality! "
Ulrich: And why a marvel?
Agathe: You showed me the way! The only condition I love and seek needs no morality, it is morality! Every twitch of the little toe that hap- pens in it is moral. Am I right? (laughs)
Ulrich: Yes, you're right.
Agathe: But first I want to ask you something else . . . Everything we've been talking about half jokingly and half seriously for the last few days: is it all settled?
Ulrich: Of course.
Agathe: T o love your neighbor as yourself is an ecstatic demand? Ulrich: It is the natural morality of mystic ecstasy, which teaches
something that never quite fits the ord[inary] activity of our lives.
EARLy-MORNING wALK
Part I
Around Clarisse's mouth laughter was struggling with the difficulties facing her; her mouth kept opening and then pressing itself tightly shut. 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 hemi- sphere ofthe sky had not yet filled with warmth. Even the light was still shallowly dispersed. "It only reaches my ankles," Clarisse thought. "The cock of the morning has just been wound up! Everything is before its time! " Clarisse was deeply moved that she was wandering through the world before it was time. It almost made her cry.
Without saying anything about it to Walter or Ulrich, Clarisse had been to the asylum a second time. Since then she had been especially sensitive. She applied everything she had seen or heard during her two visits to herself. Three events especially preoccupied her. The first was that she had been addressed and greeted as the Emperor's son and a man. When this assertion had been repeated, she had quite distinctly felt her resistance to it yield, as if something ordinary that usually stood in the way of this royal quality was vanishing. And she was filled with an inexpressible desire. The second thing that excited her was that Mein- gast, too, was transforming himself, and was obviously using her and Walter's proximity in the process. Since she had surprised him in the vegetable garden-it might have been a few weeks agcr-and terrified him with her truly prophetic shout that she could transform herself too and also be a man, he had been avoiding her company. Since then she had not seen him often, even at meals; he locked himself in with his work or spent the whole day out of the house, and whenever he was hungry he secretly took something to eat from the pantry (without ask- ing). It had been just a short time ago that she had succeeded in talking to him again alone. She had told him: "Walter has forbidden me to talk about how you're undergoing a transformation in our house! " and had blinked her eyes. But even here Meingast kept himself concealed and acted surprised, indeed annoyed. He did not want to let her in on the secret he was busily working on. This seemed to be the explanation. But Clarisse had said to him: "Perhaps I'll steal a march on you! " And she connected that with the first event. There was little reflection in this, and on that account its relation to reality was unclear; but what was clearly palpable was the lustful emergence of a different being from within the foundation of her own.
From the Posthunwus Papers · 1361
Clarisse was now convinced that the insane people had found her out (that she had offered to Meingast that she could also be a man). And since then she had one secret more: when an invitation to repeat the interrupted visit did not arrive, either from the secretly resisting General von Stumm or from Ulrich, she had after long hesitation her- self called Dr. Friedenthal and announced that she would visit him at the hospital. And the doctor had promptly found time for Clarisse. When she asked him immediately upon her arrival whether mad peo- ple did not know a great deal that healthy people could not even guess at, he smiled and shook his head, but gazed deeply into her eyes and answered in a tone of complacency: "The doctors of the insane know a lot that healthy people don't even suspect! " And when he had to go on his rounds he had offered to take Clarisse along, and to begin where they had stopped the last time. As if it were already a matter of course, Clarisse again slipped into the white doctor's coat that Friedenthal held for her.
But-and this was the third event that still excited Clarisse after the fact, and even more than the others-she again did not get to see Moos- brugger. For something remarkable happened. They had left the last pavilion and were breathing in the spicy air of the grounds as they walked, during which Friedenthal ventured: "Now it's time for Moos- brugger! " when again a guard came running up with a message. Frie- denthal shrugged his shoulders and said: "Strange! It's not going to work out this time either! At this moment the Director and a Commission are with Moosbrugger. I can't take you with me. " And after he had assured her on his own initiative that he would invite her to continue her visit at the first opportunity, he left with rapid strides, while the guard con- ducted Clarisse back to the street.
Clarisse found it striking and extraordinary that her visits had twice come to nothing, and suspected that there was something behind it. She had the impression that she was intentionally not being allowed to see Moosbrugger and that a new excuse was being thought up each time, perhaps even with the purpose of making Moosbrugger disappear before she could get through to him.
But when Clarisse thought this over again, she nearly cried. She had let herself be outsmarted and felt quite ashamed; for she had heard nothing from Friedenthal. But while she was getting so upset, she was also calming down again. A thought occurred to her that often preoc- cupied her now, that in the course of the history of mankind many great men had been spirited away and tortured by their contemporaries, and that in the madhouse many had even disappeared. "They could neither defend themselves nor explain, because all they felt for their time was
1362 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
scorn! " she thought. And she recalled Nietzsche, whom she idolized, with his great, sad mustache and grown totally mute behind it.
But this gave her an uncanny feeling. What had just now insulted or provoked her, her defeat at the hands of the cunning doctor, was sud- denly revealed to her as a sign that the destiny ofsuch a great man might also have been preordained for her. Her eyes sought the direction in which the asylum lay, and she knew that she always felt this direction as something special, even when she wasn't thinking of it.
It was extremely oppressive to feel oneself so at one with madmen, but she told herself that "to put oneself on the level of the uncanny is to decide for genius! "
Meanwhile the sun had come up, and this made the landscape even emptier; it was green and cool, with bloody wisps; the world was still low, and reached up only to Clarisse's ankles on the little rise she was stand- ing on. Here and there a bird's voice shrieked like a lost soul. Her nar- row mouth expanded and smiled at the course of the morning. She stood girded round by her smile like the Blessed Virgin on the earth embraced by sin I crescent moon. She mulled over what she should do.
