The Torch in my Ear, page 16
The results struck even the unschooled reader of twenty as dissatisfying and incongruent. True, I had no experience in theory; but in practice, I knew the crowd from the inside. I had unresistingly fallen prey to a crowd in Frankfurt for the first time. Since then, I had never forgotten how gladly one falls prey to the crowd. This was what had so greatly astonished me. I saw crowds around me, but I also saw crowds within me, and no explanatory delimitation could help me. What I missed most in Freud’s discussion was recognition of the phenomenon. This phenomenon struck me as no less elementary than the libido or hunger. I didn’t set out to get rid of this phenomenon by tracing it back to special constellations of the libido. On the contrary, the point was to focus on it squarely, as something that had always existed, and that existed now more than ever, as a given phenomenon to be thoroughly investigated, namely to be first experienced and then described. To describe it without experiencing it was virtually misleading.
I had found nothing as yet. All that had happened was that I had planned to do something. But behind my resolution was a determination to commit a lifetime to it, as many years and decades as would prove necessary to carry out the task. To demonstrate how fundamental and ineluctable this phenomenon is, I spoke about a crowd instinct, which, I felt, was as much of a drive as the sexual drive. My first few comments on Freud’s investigation were tentative and clumsy. They didn’t evince much more than my dissatisfaction with the text, my resistance to it, my determination not to be talked into anything, much less have anything put over on me. For what I feared most was the disappearance of things whose existence I could not doubt because I had experienced them. Our conversations at home had made me aware of how blind one could be if one wanted to be blind. I began to understand that books were no different in this respect, that a reader has to be alert; that it is dangerous to get lazy, putting off criticism and accepting whatever you’re told.
Thus, during the ten mornings in the Sellrain Valley, I learned how to be an alert reader. I regard this period, from August 1 to August 10, 1925, as the true beginning of my independent intellectual life. My rejection of Freud came at the start of my work on the book, which I didn’t deliver to the public until thirty-five years later, in 1960.
During those August days, I also struggled for and attained my independence as a person. For the days were long, I was alone; after the five hours of work in the morning came the soliloquy of the afternoon. I explored the valley, climbed up to Praxmar, and then farther up to the passes leading into the neighboring valleys. Two or three times, I climbed the Rosskogel, the mountain immediately over Gries. I was happy about my effort and also about reaching goals that I had set; for these goals, unlike those big goals that I had placed far, far away, were attainable. I talked to myself a lot, probably to articulate the chaos of hatred, resentment, and confinement that had accumulated in me during the previous year. I wanted to put that chaos into words, organize it, and banish it from my mind. I confided it to the air around me, in which there was so much space as well as clarity and direction of the wind. It was blissful to have nasty words float off in the wind and disappear. They didn’t sound ridiculous, because they didn’t strike any ears. But I made sure not to be arbitrary; I released nothing that didn’t yearn to take shape after being under pressure for so long. I replied to accusations that had insulted and frightened me; I was utterly truthful, heedless of any auditor whose feelings I would have had to spare. All the answers that formed in me were released, they were weighty and new, and they didn’t adhere to ready-made forms.
The chief interlocutor for all my back talk was she who had become my irreconcilable enemy with the mission to tear out from my soil everything that she herself had planted in it. That was how I saw it, and it was good that I saw it like that; for how else could I have gathered the strength to put up a defense and not succumb? I was not being just; how could I have been? In this life-and-death struggle, I failed to see what I was to blame for; I failed to see that for years I had cultivated my opponent with my harshness and the cruel earnestness of my convictions. This was no time for justice, it was a time for freedom. And here, no one could twist my words or cut off my breath.
At nightfall, I sat down in the tavern and wrote down many of these things, in the second notebook, which was reserved for personal dealings.
I have since found this notebook and reread it. It was frightening to read it again after fifty-four years. What wildness, what great pathos! I found every sentence with which I had been threatened and insulted. None was forgotten, none omitted; the most embarrassing things that I had been unjustly charged with were included. But I also found the retort to everything and a passion going way beyond its goal, betraying homicidal strength that I hadn’t realized I’d possessed.
If that had been all, if I hadn’t then begun casting about on all sides, reaching for knowledge that could serve this passion, things would have ended badly and violently for me, and I wouldn’t be here to justify that enormous ten-day anger.
In the evening, many people gathered at the tavern, farmers and outsiders, drinking, singing; but I managed not to get involved. I sat with a glass of wine in front of me, silently writing, a thin, bespectacled, unengaging student, who had every reason to make others forget his unattractive appearance by asking them questions and toasting. But I was busy with my justification. And though I took in everything with an alert eye, I never let on that I was doing so. I seemed so emphatically absorbed in my writing that eventually no one paid me any heed. Since I had the muscatel in front of me, my presence wasn’t resented. I felt I mustn’t get into any conversations. They would have shattered my soliloquy and weakened the strength of my justification. With these perfect strangers, I could not be myself. The hatred I was filled with would have seemed like madness to them. Nor was I in any mood to play a role.
Despite these unusual circumstances, I did make friends. These friends were children, and they showed up outside my window at 6 A.M. They were three boys, the youngest five, the eldest eight years old. On the first day, they had seen me sitting at my little table, writing, and this struck them as so unusual that they watched me for a time. Eventually, all of them in unison asked me what my name was. I liked them so much that I told them my first name, but it was too odd for them. They repeated it skeptically, shaking their heads. My name made me more alien to them than before. However, the eldest had a flash of genius and told the others: “It’s a doggy name!” From that moment on, I was as dear to them as a dog. Every morning, they were my clock, waking me up with my name. When I withdrew to Freud and my notebook, they stood in a row for a long time, without disturbing me. Then they got bored and trotted away, in quest of other, better dogs.
In the afternoon, when I set out to do what I’d planned, they showed up, accompanying me part of the way. I asked them for the names of plants and animals in their dialect, about their fathers and mothers and relatives. They knew they weren’t allowed to go too far from the village, and they suddenly halted as if on schedule. The thing they enjoyed most was waving. Once, when I forgot to wave back, they rebuked me the next morning. They were my company during these seemingly mute days. In my exalted condition, which was fed by the threats, curses, and promises of justification, no creature could have moved me more deeply than these children. And every morning, when they stood in a row to the side of my table—not too close in order not to disturb me—and watched me write, I felt them to be a kind of well-deserved boon.
Part Three
The School of Hearing
Vienna 1926-1928
The Asylum
Toward mid-August, I returned to Vienna. I don’t recall the first time I saw my mother again. The freedom I had won by “settling accounts” had a staggering effect on me. Without timidity or guilt feelings, I went to see the only person I felt drawn to, the only person I could speak to in my state. Whenever I dropped in on Veza and we talked about books and paintings that we loved, I never forgot with what strength and resolution she had won her freedom: the room in which everything looked as she wanted it to look, in which she could occupy herself with the things that suited her.
Her struggle had been a lot harder than mine: the age-old man, who was always there, even if no longer making his presence felt with his assaults, was an enemy to everyone. He cared only about himself. In order to escape his siege, one had to besiege him first, always observe him. And such actions were less consistent with Veza’s character than the struggles with my mother were consistent with my character. After all, my struggles were true battles, between opponents who understood very well what they were accusing each other of.
And now, the asylum that Veza had created for herself became my asylum, too. I could go there at any time, my presence was never inconvenient, my visits were desired, but there was no obligation on either side. We always talked about something that excited us. I arrived filled with something, and I left no less filled. Whatever was on my mind would be transformed within two hours as in an alchemical process: it seemed purer and clearer, but no less urgent. It would pre-occupy me in a different, a surprising, fashion even during the next few days, until I had so many new questions that they served as the reason for the next visit.
Now I talked about everything that I had failed to talk about at my first visit, in May, because of my impetuous plea on behalf of unending life for King Lear. It wasn’t that I complained about what was happening in my home. I was too proud to tell Veza the truth about that. Also, I clung to the image that people had of my mother, as though it had the power to change her back into her earlier self. She was only just forty and still considered beautiful; she was so well read that her literary knowledge had become legendary among those who knew about her. I don’t believe that she read very many new things now. But since she forgot nothing, everything she had ever read was at her fingertips. And aside from things that she had to find out about from me, she always sounded elegant and clever. I was the only person to whom she let on to what extent her old character had died. Whenever things got very bad between us, she would claim that I had killed that old character.
During the early period of my visits to Veza, perhaps the first six months, I mentioned none of these things. Veza didn’t mind that I never discussed my mother. She placed her very far above herself. And I only got an inkling of the capabilities that she ascribed to my mother when Veza once asked me, almost shyly, why my mother had never published anything. Veza was firmly convinced that my mother wrote books. And when I denied this (although flattered), she refused to believe me and hit on an explanation for the secrecy of her writing. “She thinks we’re all chatterboxes. And she’s right. We admire the great books and just talk about them all the time. She writes them and has such scorn for us that she speaks about them to no one. Someday we’ll find out what pseudonym she publishes under. Then we’ll all be so embarrassed that we never realized it.”
I insisted it was impossible; I’d have noticed it if she wrote.
“She does it only when she’s alone. During her sanatorium stays, when she withdraws from you boys. She’s not really sick at those times. She’s just after peace and quiet, so she can write. You’ll be absolutely astonished when you read your mother’s books!”
I caught myself wishing it were true, and I was quite certain it couldn’t be true. Veza filled every person with faith in himself. Now, she had succeeded, albeit only halfway, to fill me with expectation about someone I had lost faith in. Veza didn’t realize how greatly this splitting effect helped my defection. Mother missed no opportunity to hold up my ingratitude to me, and she painted her own future in somber colors: she would be without her eldest son, who would destroy himself by then or else reduce himself so woefully as to be no longer present for her. At such times, the mirage of her secret writing was now aroused in me: perhaps it was true, and she’d be able to comfort herself with that.
Far more important was the fact that during these visits with Veza everything was different from anything I had ever known before. The recent past dissolved; I had no history. False notions that had settled in were corrected, but without a struggle. I didn’t feel compelled to hold on to anything merely because it was under attack.
Veza recited lots of poetry by heart without getting on anyone’s nerves. There was one poem we had in common: Goethe’s “Prometheus.” She wanted to hear it from me. I read it to her. She didn’t recite it along, which would have been easy for her to do; she really wanted to hear it. And when she then said, “You haven’t taken anything away from it,” I was absolutely delighted. It wasn’t until later that I realized she had a longer poem in mind, for which she wanted to arouse my liking: Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven.” She was obsessed with it. It is a very long poem, she had memorized it when very young, and now she recited it to me in full. She wasn’t put off by my astonishment at how obsessed she was (and yet she was exceedingly sensitive to everything going on in other people). I realized I mustn’t interrupt her, when I itched to cry out, “Enough!,” but I was afraid she’d never invite me over again if I gave in to this itch. Thus I listened to “The Raven” until the end and was then caught myself. The bird flew into my nerves; I began to twitch in the rhythm of the poem. And when she was done, and I was still twitching slightly, she said cheerily, “Now it’s grabbed you, too. That’s what happened to me. One should always read poems out loud, not just mutely to oneself.”
The conversation soon turned to Karl Kraus, of course. She asked me why I avoided her at the lectures. She believed she knew the reason; and if it was the reason, then she had to respect it. I was, she said, so overcome that I couldn’t talk to anyone. I wanted to take everything along unbroken and undiscussed. She, too, liked going to his readings by herself; however, she preferred talking about them afterwards to silence. After all, one didn’t agree with everything that was said. She had the utmost veneration for Karl Kraus; but she wouldn’t let him prescribe what one could or couldn’t read. She showed me Heine’s French Conditions. Had I read it? She said it was one of the most intelligent and most entertaining books she’d ever read. She had read the book three years ago, after going to Paris, and now she was reading it a second time.
I refused to take hold of the volume. There was no one Karl Kraus so utterly disapproved of as Heine. I didn’t believe her: I thought she was playing a joke on me, and I was even terrified about the joke. But she insisted on showing me her independence. She held the title under my nose, read it aloud, leafed through the pages in front of me, and said: “Right?”
“But you haven’t read it. It’s bad enough you’ve got it lying around!”
“I’ve got all of Heine here. Look!” She opened the door of a bookcase, which contained the heart of her library, “the books I wouldn’t want to live without.” And there, although not at the top, was a complete edition of Heine. After this blow, which she had enjoyed dealing me, she showed me the books I expected: Goethe, Shakespeare, Molière, Byron’s Don Juan, Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, Tom Jones, Vanity Fair, Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov, and, one of her very favorite books, Hebbel’s Journals. These weren’t all, these were only what she picked out, the most important things. The novels meant a great deal to her; those she showed me were books she had read and reread over and over. And here, too, she proved her independence from Karl Kraus. “He’s not interested in novels. He’s not interested in paintings either. He’s not interested in anything that could weaken his wrath. It’s grand. But it can’t be imitated. Wrath has to be inside a person; you can’t borrow it.”
These words sounded perfectly natural, and yet they shocked me. I saw her before me, in the front row at Karl Kraus’s readings, sparkling and full of expectation. And yet she had been reading Heine, French Conditions, perhaps just recently. How did she dare sit in front of Kraus? Every sentence of his was a demand. If you couldn’t meet the demand, you had no business being there. For a year and a half, I had gone to every reading, and I was filled with him as with a Bible. I did not doubt a single word he said. Never, under any circumstances, would I have acted against him. He was my conviction. He was my strength. Without him on my mind, I couldn’t have endured the idiotic culinary arts in the laboratory for even one day. When he read from The Last Days of Mankind, he populated Vienna for me. I heard only his voices. Were there any others? It was only in him that you found justice—no, you didn’t find justice, he was justice. One frown on his part, and I would have broken off with my best friend. One gesture, and I would have thrown myself into fire for him.
I said this to her, I had to say it, I said more, I said everything. A tremendous shamelessness came over me, forcing me to blurt out my secret slave emotions. She listened, she didn’t interrupt, she heard me out. I grew more and more vehement; she was deadly serious when she suddenly—I don’t know where she got it—held a Bible in her hand and said: “This is my Bible!”
I sensed that she wanted to justify me. She wasn’t against the absoluteness with which I professed my god. But, although not really religious, she took the word God more seriously than I and gave no human being the right to become God. The Bible was the book that she read most frequently. She loved the stories, the psalms, the proverbs, the prophets. More than anything else, she loved the Song of Songs. She knew the Bible well, but never quoted it. She didn’t bother anyone with it; but basically, she measured literature against it, and she also measured people’s behavior against the demands of the Bible.
However, I am painting a colorless picture of her by listing the intellectual contents of her life. The titles of famous books strung together sound like concepts. One ought to take a single character and describe how that character gradually emerged from her lips, in order to give you some idea of what a flourishing and independent life that character led in Veza. None developed all at once; the character formed in the course of many conversations. And it was only after several visits that one had the feeling of really knowing a character that she cited. No more surprises were to be expected; her reactions were definite; one could rely on them. And the mystery of the character was totally absorbed in Veza’s mystery.
