The Play of the Eyes, page 12
Hermann Broch had been invited, and to him I attached importance. For over a year I had looked upon him as a friend. I felt that he valued me most as a dramatist. On my return from Paris in the late autumn, I had taken him to meet Anna at her studio. We had also called on her mother together. “Annerl, look,” she had said in Broch’s presence, “Broch has meestical eyes.” The three of us, Anna, Broch and I, had been thoroughly embarrassed at this expression of supreme approval. I knew that Broch took a real interest in this play. I had often spoken to him about it and in view of his enthusiasm over The Wedding, I felt sure the Comedy would appeal to him. In short, I had high hopes of him. I meant nothing to this particular circle. If anything, I suspected, they regarded me as a troublemaker. Consequently, I saw Broch and Anna as my only real allies. Most of the others would be connected with the publishing house; Paul Zsolnay himself, whom I did not take very seriously, his managing editor, Costa, a bon vivant with an everlasting smile, and the head of the drama department, whom I’ve already mentioned.
The reading took place in the afternoon. I don’t believe there were a dozen people present. This wasn’t my first visit to the house. Old Frau Zsolnay had invited me several times and given me a warm welcome. She had a weakness for writers, it was to help them that she had set up the publishing house in her son’s name, but this had taken a long time. On the day of my reading, I was keenly aware of the incongruity between the fashionable drawing room and my play, the first part of which takes place in a sort of amusement park, among crude characters with a vocabulary that stops at nothing. I was afraid that in spite of myself, under the influence of this drawing room, I might read more softly and suavely than befitted the characters. I was determined that this should not happen. So before starting I said to the lady of the house: “It’s a kind of a folk play, and it’s not very refined.” This remark was received graciously, though with some incredulity. Zuckmayer, another of Zsolnay’s authors, was a writer of “folk plays,” so when the genre was mentioned these people inevitably thought of him. I could hardly have said anything more inept.
I felt alien in this circle. I was too inexperienced to realize why I was being granted a hearing. If I had known, I would certainly not have come. I put my reliance on two people, whom I regarded as friends, Broch and Anna. I felt sure they would help me. Him I esteemed, her I loved; though she had made short shrift of me and sent me packing, my feeling for her remained unchanged. Though they were sitting rather far apart, they had a good view of each other. As their approval meant everything to me, I kept an eye on them. Werfel sat spread out in front of me, not a stirring of his facial muscles escaped me; he was as close to me as to the door of the drawing room, through which he had entered last, as befitted the most important member of the audience. I couldn’t help seeing how eagerly all the others, especially the executives of the publishing house, watched for his reactions. He had a familiar way of saying “Grüss Gott” on entering the room, as though he were still a child, open, guileless, incapable of any ugly thought, on intimate terms with God and man, a pious pilgrim with room in his heart for all living creatures, and though I had little use for his books and for him none at all, I was childlike enough to put faith in his “Grüss Gott” and to apprehend no hostility from him in this, for me, critical situation.
I began with the barker. “And we and we and we, ladies and gentlemen!” From that point on, the action in my amusement park proceeded with such gusto and violence that I forgot Aunt Andy’s drawing room and the whole Paul Zsolnay Verlag, which I couldn’t stomach anyway. I read for Anna and Broch. I also imagined that I was reading for Fritz Wotruba, who wasn’t there of course, he wouldn’t have taken to these people. As I was thinking of him, I took on something of his tone for the barker, which wasn’t quite right, but it gave me a kind of protection, which I needed in that drawing room.
To Werfel I paid no attention at all until he made himself noticed and his gestures could no longer be ignored, but by then I was far along in the first part with Preacher Brosam. The violence of his sermon, its baroque tone, which, like so much blustering in German literature, derives from Abraham a Sancta Clara, must have irritated him particularly: he slapped his fat face, kept his hand pressed flat against his cheek and looked around the room as though pleading for help. I heard the slap and that attracted my attention. And there he was, sitting directly in front of me, looking unhappy, pressing his hand against his convulsed face, determined to preserve his tortured look. But refusing to be put out of countenance, I went right on reading.
I averted my eyes and looked for Anna, in the hope of finding approval and support. But she wasn’t looking at me, she wasn’t paying attention to me; her eyes had plunged into Broch’s and his into hers. I knew that look; those eyes had once looked at me like that, and, as I thought, created me anew. But I had no eyes to answer with, and what I now saw was new. For Broch had eyes, and when I saw how immersed in each other the two of them were, I knew they didn’t hear me, that outside of themselves nothing existed, that the meaningless clatter of the world which my vociferous characters embodied for me did not exist for them, and that as far as they were concerned there was no need to combat this emptiness. They didn’t feel tormented by it, they were as out of place in this drawing room as I with my characters, nor would they get back to my characters later; they were released from everything into each other.
The play of Anna’s eyes was so effective that I paid no further attention to Werfel. I forgot him and went on reading. When I read the terrible ending of the first part—a woman flings herself into the fire but is saved at the last moment—the play of Anna’s eyes was rekindled within me, I was not yet free of it. I had given her an opportunity to turn it on someone else, and this someone was an esteemed writer, whom I had courted with a kind of passion and, I believed, in vain. She had the best means of winning him, I myself had brought him to her, and was now a witness to the inevitable. The incidental music to this principal event of the immediate future was my play, on which I had placed so much hope.
After the first part I announced an intermission. Werfel stood up and said without enthusiasm, but still with his “Grüss Gott” voice, as if he had forgotten his erstwhile sufferings: “You read it well.” His emphasis on read did not escape me; about the play itself he said nothing. Perhaps he sensed that those among the audience to whom I attached no particular importance had been moved by the crescendo of shorter and shorter scenes leading up to the fire, and he wished to reserve judgment. Anna was silent, she hadn’t heard a word, she was busy, she would have been repelled by the vulgarity of my scenes in any case, but as it was, with Broch to look at, she had no need to waste a thought on them. Broch too was silent. I sensed that this was no interested or benevolent silence. I was shocked, though in view of what I had seen, I expected nothing from him and certainly no help, his obvious state of bemusement came as a hard blow to me. I would have given up in that intermission if the others, who were not my friends, had not urged me to go on. Someone said: “But let him get his breath, he must be exhausted. It’s fatiguing to read like that.” That was “Aunt Andy,” who wasn’t afraid of showing pity for the unhappy reader. And it was from her that I had expected the worst resistance, the most decided revulsion for these “folk characters,” as I had called them in speaking to her. But when the baby screamed at the sight of the fire she had laughed aloud. Her son, who was connected with her laughter as by an umbilical cord, who derived what little vitality he had from her, had laughed too, and that may have accounted for Werfel’s momentary restraint.
I started the second part and soon sensed a radical change of mood. When the three friends, the widow Weihrauch, Sister Luise and Fräulein Mai, met at the lodgings of the longshoreman Barloch, the contrast between those sordid surroundings and the drawing room where we were all sitting—reader and listeners alike—became intolerable. What was shown in this scene was not only indigent but also ugly and immoral in a way unusual for Vienna. Wife and concubine in the same apartment, if you could call it an apartment, and mention was also made of two girls who lived there, though they did not appear on the stage. And then the friends visit the widow Weihrauch and the unbelievable living conditions in those cramped quarters are not only described but loudly heralded by the widow in her inimitable way; the peddler appears with his shard and his sales talk, which, precisely because it was accurate and familiar, provoked especial outrage.
Werfel soon opened his campaign; instead of slapping himself on the face again, he ran first one hand, then the other over his cheeks, buried his eyes in one hand, as though the sight of the reader was more than he could bear, looked up again, sought other eyes, especially those of his subordinates at the publishing house, to whom he wished to communicate his displeasure, shook his head solemnly at every gross phrase, wriggled massively in his chair, and suddenly, in the middle of the peddler’s speech, cried out: “You’re an imitator of animal voices, that’s what you are,” meaning me. This he regarded as an annihilatingly cruel insult that would make it impossible for me to go on reading, but he accomplished the exact opposite, because I had been aiming at just that: every character was meant to be as clearly differentiated from the others as a specific animal, and I wanted them all to be recognizable by their voices. Suddenly it dawned on me that he had hit the nail on the head with his insults, though of course he could not suspect what I was driving at with my imitation of animal voices.
In defiance of his open hostility, with which he was trying to infect the others, I went on reading. The scene drew to an end amid the bellowing of the longshoreman Barloch, who lets the peddler go. Werfel said: “It sounds like Breitner with his idiotic luxury tax.” But he kept his seat, for he was planning a more effective demonstration. In the next scene, the aged porter, Franzl Nada, is heard; standing on a street corner, he is treating the passersby to flattering remarks, and they reward him with a few coins. The mood of the audience shifted, I felt a sudden wave of warmth. But before the scene had ended, Werfel jumped up and shouted: “This is unbearable.” Turning his back on me, he headed for the door. I stopped reading. In the doorway he turned around and shouted: “Give it up! Give it up!” This last insult, designed to demolish both me and my play, aroused old Frau Zsolnay to pity, and she called after him in a loud voice: “You should read his novel, Franzl!” He shrugged his shoulders, said: “Sure, sure,” and left.
With that my Comedy’s goose was cooked. He may have come just for this killing. Or perhaps while listening to me he had recognized a disciple of Karl Kraus, who was his bitter enemy, and that was what infuriated him. I was well aware of the disaster but went on reading, unwilling to admit my defeat. I paid no attention to anyone, I don’t know whether or not Anna was put off by Werfel’s behavior and suspended her eye-work. I tend to think that she ignored Werfel’s outburst and kept on doing what seemed most important to her at the moment. I broke off my reading in the middle as planned, after the scene in Therese Kreiss’s shop. Her last frantic words were: “The Devil! The Devil!”
When I stopped, Broch spoke up for the first time. He too, like old Frau Zsolnay, felt sorry for me, and said something that restored my right to exist. “It wouldn’t surprise me,” he said, “if that turned out to be the drama of the future.” If he wasn’t exactly standing up for me, at least he was raising a question and granting that I had attempted something new. Old Frau Zsolnay thought he was going too far. “Not necessarily,” she said. “And tell me, do you call that a folk play?” Nothing that could be said after that would have counted. The real power in this house was Werfel, who couldn’t have stated his opinion more plainly. But decorum was maintained. It was arranged that I should complete my reading in a week’s time.
Apart from the protagonist, the same people came. I read for the sake of the characters, whose voices I had seldom heard as yet. Hope, I had none; nothing would be done with my play. And yet my faith in it—I find this hard to explain—was enormously increased by this reading that served no purpose and brought no hope. It is defeats of such catastrophic proportions that keep a writer alive.
I Discover a Good Man
There were quite a few people in Vienna at that time with whom I associated, whom I saw fairly often, whom I did not avoid. They can be broken down into two contrasting groups. The one, numbering perhaps six or seven, I admired for their work and the seriousness with which they took it. They went their own ways and let no one deter them, they hated all convention, and shrank back from success in the common sense of the word. They had roots, though not always their first roots, in Vienna; it was hard to conceive of them living anywhere else, but they did not let Vienna corrupt them. I admired these people, they taught me that it is possible to carry a project through even if the world shows no interest in it whatsoever. True, they all hoped to find recognition in their lifetime, yet, though intelligent enough to realize that their hopes might be vain and that contempt and derision might dog them to the end of their days, they went right on with the tasks they had set themselves. It may sound bombastic to speak of them as heroes, and I am sure they themselves thought nothing of the kind, but courage they undoubtedly had, and their patience was almost superhuman.
And then there were the others, those who would go to any lengths for money, fame or power. They too fascinated me, though in a very different way. I wanted to know them inside and out, to fathom every fiber of their being; it was as though the salvation of my soul depended on understanding them and seeing them as complete characters. I saw them no less frequently than the others, I may have been even more eager to see them, because I could never quite believe my perception of them and felt the need of confirming it over and over again. But it should not be thought that I demeaned myself in their company, I did not adapt to them, I did not try to please, but often enough they were slow to find out what I really thought of them. Here too there were six or seven main characters, the most rewarding being Alma Mahler.
What I found hardest to bear were the relations between the two groups. Alban Berg, whom I loved, was a close friend of Alma Mahler; he came and went freely in her house and attended every reception of any importance; I was always relieved to find him in the corner with his wife, Helene, and join him. True, he held aloof from the others, he took no part in Alma’s feverish activity when there were new or “special” guests to be introduced. True, he made remarks about certain of those present which might have come from Die Fackel and which relieved me as much as they did him, but the fact remained that he was always there, and I never heard him say a word against the lady of the house.
Broch, too, called on undesirable people. When we were alone, he told me frankly what he thought of them, but it would never have occurred to him to avoid them. The others whom I respected and took seriously behaved the same way. They all had a second, class-B world in which they moved without sullying themselves; indeed, it often looked as if they needed this second world to keep their own world pure. The most standoffish was Musil. He was very careful in choosing the people he wished to associate with, and when by chance he found himself in a café or elsewhere among people he disapproved of, he fell silent and nothing could move him to open his mouth.
In my conversations with Broch one of us raised a question that may seem strange: Was there such a thing as a good man? And if so, what would he be like? Would he lack certain drives that motivate others? Would he be reclusive or would it be possible for him to associate with people, react to their challenges and nevertheless be “good”? The question fascinated us both. We did not try to evade it by hairsplitting. We both doubted that a good man could exist in the life around us. But if he did exist, we felt sure that we knew what he was like, that if we met him, we would recognize him at once. There was a strange urgency in this discussion of ours, and we wasted no time in sterile argument about the meaning of goodness. This was most unusual, if only because of the many matters on which we agreed to differ. We both harbored a pristine image of the good person. Was he a mere image? Or was there such an individual? And if so, where?
We passed all the people we knew in review. At first we discussed people we had only heard about, but soon realized that we didn’t know enough about them. What was the point in forming opinions for or against if we couldn’t check them against direct observation? We then decided to consider only persons we knew and knew well. As one or another came to mind, we studied him closely.
This sounds pedantic, but in practical terms it meant only that we reported aspects of his life that one or both of us had observed, that we could vouch for, as it were. Obviously we were not looking for a naïve person, the person we had in mind must know what he was doing. He must have within him a number of drives and motives to choose among. He must not be feebleminded or diminished, he must not be innocent about the world or blind about people. He must not let them deceive him or lull him, he must be vigilant, sensitive and alert, and only if he had all these qualities, could one put the question: Is he nevertheless good? Both Broch and I knew, or had known, plenty of people. But one after another they fell like tenpins, and after a while we began to feel ashamed of ourselves, for who were we to set ourselves up as judges? I felt ashamed for not giving anyone a passing mark, and Broch, though less impetuous than I, may have felt the same way, for suddenly he cried out: “I know one! I know one! My friend Sonne! He’s our good man!” I had never heard the name. “Is that really his name?” I asked. “Yes, or call him Dr. Sonne if you prefer. That sounds less mythical. He’s just the man we’re looking for. That may be why I didn’t think of him sooner.” I learned that Dr. Sonne lived in retirement, met with only a few friends and rarely, very rarely, called on them. “You just spoke of Georg Merkel, the painter.” He had been one of our “candidates.” “He goes to see Merkel now and then, out in Penzing. You can meet him there. That’s the simplest, most natural way.”
