The Play of the Eyes, page 6
But the widow didn’t give much time to the second trophy, for she was already thinking of the third, which was not in the sanctuary. She clapped her pudgy hands briskly and cried out: “Where’s my pussycat?”
Hardly a moment later a gazelle came tripping into the room, a light-footed, brown-haired creature disguised as a young girl, untouched by the splendor into which she had been summoned, younger in her innocence than her probable sixteen years. She radiated timidity even more than beauty, an angelic gazelle, not from the ark but from heaven. I jumped up, thinking to bar her entrance into this alcove of vice or at least to cut off her view of the poisoner on the wall, but Lucrezia, who never stopped playing her part, had irrepressibly taken the floor:
“Beautiful, isn’t she? This is my daughter Manon. By Gropius. In a class by herself. You don’t mind my saying so, do you, Annerl? What’s wrong with having a beautiful sister? Like father, like daughter. Did you ever see Gropius? A big handsome man. The true Aryan type. The only man who was racially suited to me. All the others who fell in love with me were little Jews. Like Mahler. The fact is, I go for both kinds. You can run along now, pussycat. Wait, go and see if Franzl is writing poetry. If he is, don’t bother him. If he isn’t, tell him I want him.”
With this commission Manon, the third trophy, slipped out of the room, as untouched as she had come; her errand didn’t seem to trouble her. I was greatly relieved at the thought that nothing could touch her, that she would always remain as she was and never become like her mother, the poisoner on the wall, the glassy, blubbery old woman on the sofa.
(I didn’t know how tragically my prophecy would be borne out. A year later the light-footed maiden was a paralytic; when her mother clapped her hands, she would be pushed in in a wheelchair. A year after that she was dead. Alban Berg dedicated his last work “To the memory of an angel.”)
In one of the upper rooms stood Werfel’s desk, at which he wrote standing. Anna had once showed me this attic room when I visited her upstairs. Her mother didn’t know that I had already met him at a concert I went to with Anna. There she sat between the two of us, and during the music I felt an eye staring at me, his. He was leaning far to the right to get a better look at me, and the better to observe the expression of his eyes, my left eye had turned almost as far to the left. Our two staring eyes met; for a moment, feeling caught in the act, they retreated but finally, as their mutual interest could not be concealed, they got on with their business. I don’t know what was being played; if I had been Werfel, that would have been my first thought, but I wasn’t a social lion, I was in love with Anna and that was all. She was not ashamed of me, though I was wearing knickers and was hardly dressed for a concert, as she hadn’t told me until the last moment that she had an extra ticket. She was sitting on my left, and it seemed to me that I kept darting furtive glances at her, but in the same direction I collided with Werfel’s jutting right eye. It occurred to me that he had a mouth like a carp’s, to which his right pop eye was excellently suited. Soon my left eye was behaving just like his right. This was our first meeting, enacted during music between two eyes which, separated by Anna, could not get closer together. Her eyes, her best feature, eyes that no one they had once looked at ever forgot, remained aloof from this play of eyes—though to speak of “play” is grotesque misrepresentation, considering how inexpressive, how utterly lusterless Werfel’s eyes and mine were. But words, in the passionate flow of which he was a master, were also inactive, since we were sitting silently in a concert hall. (Friedl Feuermaul3 was the name given him by Musil, the greatest of his contemporaries.) Nor was I ordinarily (in Anna’s presence, for instance) tongue-tied. Yet both of us were silent, intent on the concert, and possibly it was this first meeting that decided our enmity, which seriously affected my life, his hostility and my dislike.
But for the present I’m still sitting with Alma among her trophies, and she, knowing nothing of the concert, has just sent her third trophy to summon her fourth—whose name is Franzl—if he isn’t writing at the moment. It seems that he was writing poetry, for he did not appear on that occasion, and that suited me, for I was suffering under the corrosive impression of the immortal widow and her other trophies. I clung to that impression, I wanted to preserve it, none of Werfel’s “O Man!” rubbish was going to stop me. I don’t remember how I made my getaway, how I took my leave; in my memory I’m still sitting beside the immortal widow, still listening to her talk about “little Jews like Mahler.”
Strasbourg 1933
I don’t know what Hermann Scherchen thought was to be gained by my attending his modern-music festival. I couldn’t possibly have contributed anything to the ample program. Concerts were given twice daily at the Conservatory. Musicians from all over the world had come, some stopped at hotels, most were invited to stay with townspeople.
My host was Professor Hamm, a prominent gynecologist. He lived in a house in the Old City, not far from the church of St. Thomas on Salzmanngasse. He was a busy man, but he called for me at the Conservatory office, which had assigned me to him, and walked me to Salzmanngasse. On the way he entertained me with interesting facts about the Old City. I was overwhelmed when we stopped outside the handsome, imposing house. I sensed that the Cathedral was nearby—I wouldn’t have dared imagine that I would be living so close to the goal of my desires, for it was mostly because of the Cathedral that I had accepted the invitation to Strasbourg. We entered the vestibule, it was larger than one might have expected in this narrow street. Professor Hamm led me up a broad stairway to the second floor and opened the door to the guest room: a large, comfortable room, furnished in the taste of the eighteenth century. In the doorway I was overtaken by a feeling that it was unseemly for me to sleep in this room, a feeling so intense that I fell silent. Professor Hamm, a lively man, who seemed very French, had expected a cry of delight, for who could have wished for a finer room? He felt the need of explaining where I was, pointed to the Cathedral spire, which seemed within reaching distance, and said: “In the eighteenth century this house was a hotel, it was then called the Auberge du Louvre. Herder spent a winter here. He was too ill to go out, and Goethe came to see him every day. We don’t know for sure, but tradition has it that Herder lived in this room.”
I was overwhelmed by the thought that Goethe had spoken with Herder in this very room.
“It was really here?”
“Definitely in this house.”
I looked at the bed, aghast. I stood by the window where Professor Hamm had shown me the view of the Cathedral; I scarcely dared go back into the room. I kept my eye on the door, as though awaiting Goethe’s visit. But there was more to come. As I soon found out, Professor Hamm had thought of more than the legendary tradition of the house. Stepping briskly over to the bedside table, he picked up a small book, an old pocket almanach (from the 1770s, I believe), and held it out to me.
“A little gift from your host,” he said. “An Almanach of the Muses. There’s a poem by Lenz in it.”
“By Lenz?”
“Oh yes. First publication. I thought it might interest you.”
How had he found that out? I had taken that young poet to my heart like a brother, I loved him, not as I loved those great men Goethe and Herder, but as one who had suffered an injustice, who had been cheated out of his rights. Lenz, to this day an avant-garde poet, whom I had got to know through Büchner’s novella, that incredible piece of German prose, Lenz, who was horrified at the thought of death, to whom it was not given to make his peace with death. Strasbourg, where an avant-garde, though a musical one, was now meeting, was the right place for Lenz. Here he had met Goethe, his idol, who was also his ruin; and sixty years later, Büchner, his disciple, who thanks to him had brought German drama to perfection in a fragment, had also been here. That much I knew, and it all converged in this town. But how did Professor Hamm know that these things meant so much to me? He would have been horrified if he had read The Wedding, he might even have hesitated to take me into his house. But with his pride in his house he combined the instinct of the true host and treated me as I might have deserved later on. He had actually invited me to sleep in the room where Herder had received Goethe, and who could deserve such an honor? But he had also given me the Almanach with Lenz’s poems in it. That touched me closely, for here there was a wrong to be righted, since Lenz had never been really admitted to the holy of holies where he belonged. My suitcase was brought up and I settled in.
There was plenty to occupy my mind at the festival, two concerts daily, of music that was anything but light, lectures (one, for instance, by Alois Hába about his quarter-tone music), and conversations with new people, some of them extremely interesting. What appealed to me most about these conversations was that they were about music rather than literature, because at that time I couldn’t bear public discussions of literature. In the evening there were receptions at the houses of the local notables and get-togethers in cafés and restaurants. I had the feeling that I was being kept busy, though unlike the musicians I wasn’t actually doing anything. But I was regarded as Scherchen’s personal guest and no one questioned my right to be there. It seems odd that no one ever asked me: “What have you written?” I didn’t feel like a fraud, for I had written Kant Catches Fire and The Wedding, which, I felt, entitled me to think that I too, like the composers present, had done something new. Apart from H. no one there had even heard of my work, but that didn’t trouble me.
Late at night I came home to the room which I am certain no one but me looked upon as Herder’s room at the Auberge du Louvre. I couldn’t get rid of the feeling that I was a usurper. Night after night I experienced the same agitation, a kind of terror, I felt guilty of a profanation, for which I was being punished by insomnia. But when it came time to get up in the morning, I wasn’t tired, I was glad to hurl myself into the bustle of the festival, and during the day I gave no thought to what awaited me at night. For my anguish over the past into which I had drifted by mistake as it were, and to which I would gladly have belonged, there was only one compensation. But this was something so wonderful that each day I took time for it. I am speaking of the Cathedral.
I had been in Strasbourg only once, on my way back from Paris to Vienna in the spring of 1927. I had stopped over in Alsace to see the Strasbourg Cathedral and the Isenheim altar in Colmar. After spending an hour or two in Strasbourg I had gone looking for the Cathedral. And then suddenly—late in the afternoon—I was on Krämergasse, and there it loomed in front of me. I hadn’t expected the red glow of the stone of the immense west façade; all the photographs I had seen had been black and white.
And now, six years later, I was back in this town, not for a few hours, but for several weeks, for a whole month. It had all come about by accident, or seemingly so. In his restless search for new men, H. had invited me; if I wasn’t a musician, I was at least a playwright, and he had picked me from among a hundred others to lend spice to his festival. In accepting his invitation, I had involuntarily cut short my violent passion for Anna, for which H., by using me as a messenger, had also been responsible. Despite outward difficulties, I did not seriously hesitate. I had started The Comedy of Vanity and was still working on the first part. Thus I had two things to hold me in Vienna, both very serious, my first passion since my meeting with Veza and—after the novel and The Wedding—a third literary work, begun under the impact of the events in Germany. Since the burning of the books my mind had been aflame with the Comedy. My relationship with Anna began to go bad only when my departure for Strasbourg, though decided on, was delayed by passport problems. The Comedy became increasingly urgent while I was sitting about in consulates waiting. I wrote the sermon of Crumb at the French Consulate, while waiting for my visa.
When I ask myself today what turned the balance in favor of attendance at the festival—apart from Scherchen’s overpowering will—I believe it was the name of Strasbourg, that short glimpse of the Cathedral in the late afternoon, and all I knew about Herder, Goethe and Lenz in Strasbourg. I do not think I was clearly aware of all this; my recollection of the Cathedral cannot have been all that irresistible, but my feeling for the Storm and Stress period in German literature was strong, and it was bound up with Strasbourg. And this literature was now in danger. What had chiefly distinguished it at that time, its drive for freedom, was threatened, and that was the essential content of the play I was then full of. But Strasbourg, the breeding ground of that movement, was still free. Small wonder that it attracted me along with my Comedy, only a small but powerful part of which was written. And what of Büchner, who had introduced me to Lenz? Hadn’t I for the last two years regarded Büchner as the fountainhead of all drama?
* * *
The Old City was not large and I always ended up in front of the Cathedral. Not deliberately, yet that was what I really wanted. I was drawn to the figures on the portals, the Prophets and especially the Foolish Virgins. The Wise Virgins didn’t move me, I think it was the smiles on the faces of the Foolish ones that won me over. I fell in love with one, who struck me as the most beautiful. I met her later in the Old City and took her to see her likeness, which no one had ever shown her before. She was amazed at the sight of herself hewn in stone; a stranger had the good fortune to discover her in her native town and convince her that she had been there long before she was born, smiling on the church portal, a Foolish Virgin, who in reality, as it turned out, was not so foolish at all, for it was her smile that had charmed the artist into putting her among the seven figures on the left portal. And among the Prophets I found a local burgher, whose acquaintance I also made in the course of those weeks. He was a specialist in Alsatian history, a hesitant, skeptical man, who spoke little and wrote less. God knows how he had come to be one of the Prophets, but there he was, and if I didn’t lead the man himself to the portal, I told him and his clever wife where he was to be found. While he, the skeptic, found nothing to say about my discovery, his wife agreed with me.
But my great experience during those weeks so full of people, smells and sounds was climbing to the top of the Cathedral. This I did every day, omitting none. I did not climb slowly and patiently, I was in a hurry to reach the platform and was out of breath when I got there. A day that didn’t begin with this climb was for me no day at all, and I counted the days according to my visits to the Cathedral tower. Accordingly, I spent more days in Strasbourg than there were in the month, for sometimes I succeeded, in spite of all there was to hear, in visiting the tower in the afternoon as well. I envied the man who lived up there, for he had a head start on the long way up the winding stairs. I had fallen in love with the view of the mysterious city rooftops and with every stone that I grazed in climbing. I saw the Vosges and the Black Forest together, and made no mistake about what divided them in this year. The war that had ended fifteen years before still weighed on my mind, and I felt that before many years there would be another.
I crossed over to the finished spire, and there I stood a few steps from the tablet on which Goethe, Lenz and their friends had written their names. I thought of Goethe, how he had waited up here for Lenz, who in a blissful letter had spoken to Caroline Herder of the imminent meeting. “I can write no more. Goethe is with me, he has been waiting for me atop the Cathedral spire for the last half hour.”
* * *
Nothing was more alien to the spirit of this town than Scherchen’s festival. I had nothing against modernism, not against modern art at least, that would have been unthinkable. But at night, after the concert, when I sat at the Broglie, the most fashionable café in town, among the visiting musicians, few of whom could afford expensive dishes, and watched H. devouring his caviar—he always, he and no one else, ordered caviar on toast—I wondered if he had even noticed the presence of a cathedral in this town. He liked people to watch him eating his caviar, and if they watched him hungrily enough, he would order a third portion, for himself of course, concentrated food for the man who worked so hard. Gustel, his wife, was busy until late with Scherchen’s paperwork and seldom attended the caviar eating; she would be waiting at the hotel. He couldn’t bear for anyone in his entourage to be idle; like a true orchestra conductor, he kept everyone busy.
He never felt guilty about the constant strain he imposed on others, for he himself was under the worst pressure. He would sit at the Broglie until midnight over caviar and champagne, though he had summoned a singer to the hotel at six in the morning for a tryout. No hour was too early for him, he would regularly tack a few minutes on to the beginning of the day, and since he took the lead with his terrifying industry, no one would have dared complain of the early hours. No fees were paid for any of the work done at this festival. The musicians had come for love of the new music. The Conservatory and the concert halls were made available free of charge. After all, number one, the man who was contributing the most, far more as he thought than anyone else, was also lending his services for nothing. Innumerable concerts were given; despite the difficult, unfamiliar music, they all “came off”; the captain worked like a dog, kept his eye on everything, made sure that nothing went wrong. An impressive achievement; the conductor after all was much more important than the composers, it was he who had taken the initiative of presenting a wide variety of music, much of it for the first time; nothing could have been done without him. A few handpicked, culture-loving locals, who had opened their homes to visiting musicians or given sumptuous receptions, were privileged to sit at Scherchen’s table at the Broglie and watch him eat his caviar. All felt that he had richly deserved it and his champagne as well. One of them, a doctor whom I knew to be an unbeliever, turned to me one evening and said: “There’s something Christlike about him.”
But the day was not yet over. A much smaller group would carry on at the Maison Rouge, the hotel where H. was staying. These were the initiates, as it were, no townspeople or common musicians, but only the upper crust, who, by the nature of things, lived at the Maison Rouge. The younger Jessner with his wife, he too an impresario (he had been engaged to direct Milhaud’s Le Pauvre Matelot at the Stadtheater); Gundolf’s widow, who had left Heidelberg; Gundolf had died only recently, but she enjoyed the lively, often boisterous conversations. When H. was not being silent or giving orders, he made cynical remarks; the select guests felt honored and chimed in.
