Confusion (4 page)

And now, with a sudden change of direction, the dazzling discourse is turned on us: “So now do you see why I don't begin my course of lectures in chronological order, with King Arthur and Chaucer, but with the Elizabethans, in defiance of all the rules? And do you see that what I most want is for you to be familiar with them, get a sense of that liveliest of periods? One can't have literary comprehension without real experience, mere grammatical knowledge of the words is useless without recognition of their values, and when you young people want to understand a country and its language you should start by seeing it at its most beautiful, in the strength of its youth, at its most passionate. You should begin by hearing the language in the mouths of the poets who create and perfect it, you must have felt poetry warm and alive in your hearts before we start anatomizing it. That's why I always begin with the gods, for England is Elizabeth, is Shakespeare and the Shakespeareans, all that comes earlier is preparation, all that comes afterwards pale imitation of that true bold leap into infinity—but here, and you must feel it for yourselves, young people, here is the most truly alive youthfulness in the world. All phenomena, all humanity is to be recognized only in its fiery form, only in passion. For the intellect arises from the blood, thought from passion, passion from enthusiasm—so look at Shakespeare and his kind first, for they alone will make you young people genuinely young! Enthusiasm first, then diligence—enthusiasm giving you the finest, most extreme and greatest tutorial in the world, before you turn to studying the words.

“Well, that's enough for today—goodbye to you!” With an abrupt concluding gesture his hand rose in the air and imperiously descended again with an unexpected movement, and he jumped down from the desk at the same time. As if shaken apart, the dense crowd of students dispersed, seats creaked and banged, desks were pushed back, twenty hitherto silent throats suddenly began to speak, to clear themselves, to take a deep breath—only now did I realize how magnetic had been the spell closing all those living lips. The tumultuous discussion in that small space was all the more heated and uninhibited now; several students approached the lecturer with thanks, or some other comment, while the others exchanged impressions, their faces flushed, but no one stood by calmly, no one was left untouched by the electric tension, its contact now suddenly broken, yet its aura and its fire still seeming to crackle in the close air of the room.

I myself could not move—I felt I had been pierced to the heart. Of an emotional nature myself, unable to grasp anything except in terms of passion, my senses racing headlong on, I had felt carried away for the first time by another human being, a teacher; I had felt a superior force before which it was both a duty and a pleasure to bow. I felt the blood hot in my veins, my breath came faster, that racing rhythm throbbed through my body, seizing impatiently on every joint in it. Finally I gave way to instinct and slowly made my way to the front to see the man's face, for strange to say, as he spoke I had not perceived his features at all, so indistinct had they seemed, so immersed in what he was saying. Even now I could at first see only the indistinct outline of a shadowy profile; he was standing in the dim light by the window, half turning towards one of the students, hand laid in a friendly manner on his shoulder. Yet even that fleeting movement had an intimacy and grace about it which I would never have thought possible in an academic.

Meanwhile some of the students had noticed me, and to avoid appearing too much of an unwanted intruder I took a few more steps towards the professor and waited until he had finished his conversation. Only then did I see his face clearly: a Roman head, with a brow like domed marble, and a wave of hair cascading back, a shining white shock, bushy at the sides, the upper part of the face of an impressively bold and intellectual cast—but below the deeply shadowed eyes it was immediately made softer, almost feminine, by the smooth curve of the chin, the mobile lips with the nerves fluttering around the restless line of the sporadic smile. The attractive masculinity of the forehead was resolved by the more pliant lines of the flesh in the rather slack cheeks and mobile mouth; seen at close quarters his countenance, at first imposing and masterful, appeared to make up a whole only with some difficulty. His bearing told a similarly ambiguous story. His left hand rested casually on the desk, or at least seemed to rest there, for little tremors constantly passed over the knuckles, and the slender fingers, slightly too delicate and soft for a man's hand, impatiently traced invisible figures on the bare wooden surface, while his eyes, covered by heavy lids, were lowered in interest as he talked. Whether he was simply restless, or whether the excitement was still quivering in his agitated nerves, the fidgety movement of his hand contrasted with the quiet expectancy of his face as he listened; he seemed immersed in his conversation with the student, weary yet attentive.

At last my turn came. I approached him, gave him my name and said what I wanted, and at once his bright eyes turned on me, the pupils almost shining with blue light. For two or three full seconds of inquiry that glance traversed my face from chin to hairline; I may well have flushed under this mildly inquisitorial observation, for he answered my confusion with a quick smile. “So you want to enrol with me? Well, we must have a longer talk. Please forgive me, but I can't see to it at once; I have something else I must do, but perhaps you'll wait for me down by the entrance and walk home with me.” So saying, he gave me his hand, a slender and delicate hand that touched my fingers more lightly than a glove, and then turned in a friendly manner to the next student.

I waited outside the entrance for ten minutes, my heart beating fast. What was I to say if he asked after my studies, how could I confess that I had never thought about poetry much in either my work or my hours of leisure? Would he not despise me, even exclude me without more ado from that ardent circle which had so magically surrounded me today? But no sooner did he appear, rapidly striding closer with a smile, than his presence dispelled all my awkwardness, and I confessed unasked (unable to conceal anything about myself from him) to the way in which I had wasted my first term. Yet again that warm and sympathetic glance dwelt on me. “Well, music has rests as well as notes,” he said with an encouraging smile, and obviously intent on not shaming my ignorance further he turned to humdrum personal questions—where was my home, where was I going to lodge here? When I told him that I had not yet found a room he offered his help, suggesting that I might like to enquire first in the building where he himself lived; a half-deaf old lady had a nice little room to rent, and any of his students who took it had always been happy there. He'd see to everything else himself, he said; if I really showed that I meant what I said about taking my studies seriously, he would consider it a pleasant duty to help me in every way. On reaching his rooms he once again offered me his hand and invited me to visit him at home next evening, so that we could work out a programme of study for me together. So great was my gratitude for this man's unhoped-for kindness that I merely shook his hand respectfully, raised my hat in some confusion, and forgot to say even a word of thanks.

Of course I immediately rented the little room in the same building. I would have taken it even if it had not appealed to me at all, solely for the naively grateful notion of being physically closer to this captivating man, who had taught me more in an hour than anyone else I had ever heard. But the room was charming anyway: on the attic floor above my professor's own lodgings, it was a little dark because of the overhanging wooden gables, and its window offered a panoramic view of the nearby rooftops and the church tower. There was a green square in the distance, and the clouds I loved at home sailed overhead. The landlady, a little old lady who was deaf as a post, looked after her lodgers with a touchingly maternal concern; I had come to an agreement with her within a couple of minutes, and an hour later I was hauling my suitcase up the creaking wooden stairs.

I did not go out that evening; I even forgot to eat or smoke. The first thing I did was to take the Shakespeare I happened to have packed out of my case and read it impatiently, for the first time in years. That lecture had aroused my passionate curiosity, and I read the poet's words as never before. Can one account for such transformations? A new world suddenly opened up on the printed page before me, the words moved vigorously towards me as if they had been seeking me for centuries; the verse coursed through my veins in a fiery torrent, carrying me away, inducing the same strange sense of relaxation behind the brow as one feels in a dream of flight. I shook, I trembled, I felt the hot surge of my blood like a fever—I had never had such an experience before, yet I had done nothing but listen to an impassioned lecture. However, the exhilaration of that lecture must have lingered on within me, and when I read a line aloud I heard my voice unconsciously imitating his, the sentences raced on in the same headlong rhythm, my hands felt impelled to move, arching in the air like his own—as if by magic, in a single hour, I had broken through the wall which previously stood between me and the world of the intellect, and passionate as I was by nature, I had discovered a new passion, one which has remained with me to the present day: a desire to share my enjoyment of all earthly delights in the inspired poetic word. By chance I had come upon Coriolanus, and as if reeling in a frenzy I discovered in myself all the characteristics of that strangest of the Romans: pride, arrogance, wrath, contempt, mockery, all the salty, leaden, golden, metallic elements of the emotions. What a new delight it was to divine and understand all this at once, as if by magic! I read on and on until my eyes were burning, and when I looked at the time it was three-thirty in the morning. Almost alarmed by this new force which had both stirred and numbed my senses for six hours on end, I put out the light. But the images still glowed and quivered within me; I could hardly sleep with longing for the next day and looking forward to it, a day which was to expand the world so enchantingly opened up to me yet further and make it entirely my own.

Next day, however, brought disappointment. My impatience had made me one of the first to arrive at the lecture hall, where my teacher (as I will call him from now on) was to speak on English phonetics. Even as he came in I received a shock—was this the same man as yesterday, or was it only my excited mood and my memory that had made him a Coriolanus, wielding words in the Forum like lightning, heroically bold, crushing, compelling? The figure who entered the room, footsteps dragging slightly, was a tired old man. As if a shining but opaque film had been lifted from his countenance I now saw, from where I was sitting in the front row of desks, his almost unhealthily pallid features, furrowed by deep wrinkles and broad crevices, with blue shadows wearing channels away in the dull grey of his cheeks. Lids too heavy for his eyes shadowed them as he read his lecture, and the mouth, its lips too pale, too thin, delivered the words with no resonance: where was his merriment, where were the high spirits rejoicing in themselves? Even the voice sounded strange, moving stiffly through grey, crunching sand at a monotonous and tiring pace, as if sobered by the grammatical subject.

I was overcome by restlessness. This was not the man I had been waiting for since the early hours of the morning—where was the astrally radiant countenance he had shown me yesterday? This was a worn-out professor droning his way objectively through his subject; I listened with growing anxiety, wondering whether yesterday's tone might return after all, the warmly vibrant note that had struck my feelings like a hand playing music, moving them to passion. Increasingly restless, I raised my eyes to him, full of disappointment as I scanned that now alien face: yes, this was undeniably the same countenance, but as if emptied, drained of all its creative forces, tired and old, the parchment mask of an elderly man. Were such things possible? Could a man be so youthful one minute and have aged so much the next? Did such sudden surges of the spirit occur that they could change the countenance as well as the spoken word, making it decades younger?

The question tormented me. I burned within, as if with thirst, to know more about the dual aspect of this man, and as soon as he had left the rostrum and walked past us without a glance, I hurried off to the library, following a sudden impulse, and asked for his works. Perhaps he had just been tired today, his energy muted by some physical discomfort, but here, in words set down to endure, I would find the key to his nature, which I found so curiously challenging, and the way to approach it. The library assistant brought the books; I was surprised to find how few there were. So in twenty years the ageing man had published only this sparse collection of unbound pamphlets, prefaces, introductions, a study of whether or not Pericles was genuinely by Shakespeare, a comparison between Hölderlin and Shelley (this admittedly at a time when neither poet was regarded as a genius by his own people)—and apart from that mere odds and ends of literary criticism? It was true that all these works announced a forthcoming two-volume publication:
The Globe Theatre: History, Productions, Poets
—but the first mention of it was dated two decades ago, and when I asked again the librarian confirmed that it had never appeared. Rather hesitantly, with only half my mind on them, I leafed through these writings, longing for them to revive that powerful voice, that surging rhythm. But these works moved at a consistently measured pace; nowhere did I catch the ardently musical rhythm of his headlong discourse, leaping over itself as wave breaks over wave. What a pity, something sighed within me. I could have kicked myself, I felt so angry and so suspicious of the feelings I had too quickly and credulously entertained for him.

But I recognized him again in that afternoon's class. This time he did not begin by speaking himself. Following the custom of English college debates the students, a couple of dozen of them, were divided into those supporting the motion and those opposing it. The subject itself was from his beloved Shakespeare, namely, whether Troilus and Cressida (from his favourite work) were to be understood as figures of burlesque: was the work itself a satyr play, or did its mockery conceal tragedy? Soon what began as mere intellectual conversation became electrical excitement and took fire, with his skilful hand fanning the flames—forceful argument countered claims made casually, sharp and keen interjections heated the discussion until the students were almost at loggerheads with each other. Only once the sparks were really flying did he intervene, calming the overexcited atmosphere and cleverly bringing the debate back to its subject, but at the same time giving it stronger intellectual stimulus by moving it surreptitiously into a timeless dimension—and there he suddenly stood amidst the play of these dialectical flames, in a state of high excitement himself, both urging on and holding back the clashing opinions, master of a stormy wave of youthful enthusiasm which broke over him too. Leaning against the desk, arms crossed, he looked from one to another, smiling at one student, making a small gesture encouraging another to contradict, and his eyes shone with as much excitement as yesterday. I felt he had to make an effort not to take the words out of their mouths. But he restrained himself—by main force, as I could tell from the way his hands were pressed more and more firmly over his breast like the stave of a barrel, as I guessed from the mobile corners of his mouth, which had difficulty in suppressing the words rising to his lips. And suddenly he could do it no longer, he flung himself into the debate like a swimmer into the flood—raising his hand in an imperious gesture he halted the tumult as if with a conductor's baton; everyone immediately fell silent, and now he summed up all the arguments in his own vaulting fashion. And as he spoke the countenance he had worn yesterday re-emerged, wrinkles disappeared behind the flickering play of nerves, his throat arched, his whole bearing was bold and masterful, and abandoning his quiet, attentive attitude he flung himself into the talk as if into a torrent. Improvisation carried him away—now I began to guess that, sober-minded in himself, when he was teaching a factual subject or was alone in his study he lacked that spark of dynamite which here, in our intense and breathlessly spellbound company, broke down his inner walls; he needed—oh yes, I felt it—he needed our enthusiasm to kindle his own, our receptive attitude for his own extravagance, our youth for his own rejuvenated fervour. As a player of the cymbals is intoxicated by the increasingly wild rhythm of his own eager hands, his discourse became ever grander, ever more ardent, ever more colourful as his words grew more fervent, and the deeper our silence (I could not help feeling that we were all holding our breath in that room) the more elevated, the more intense was his performance, the more did it sound like an anthem. In those moments we were all entirely his, all ears, immersed in his exuberance.