Soul of the Age (20 page)

TO LOUIS MOILLIET
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Montagnola, July 24, 1919

Caro amico,

I have bolted the door and the window, there's a bottle of Chianti on the desk, it's chilly and disgusting outside. Life is often quite unbearable.

I just finished the piece I've been working on just about every evening since I got here. It's a long novella,
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the best thing I have ever done, a break with my earlier style, and the beginning of something entirely new. The piece is certainly not beautiful or comely, a bit like potassium cyanide, but it's good and needed to be done. I'm drinking wine and starting a new piece,
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and without the work and the wine, everything would seem intolerable.

You have occasionally seen me when I was sad and ill, since, after all, one cannot always be a
figlio d'un ricco Signore.
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By the Lord Zebaoth, I hope this doesn't scare you away. I assure you, my dear Moilliet, that your presence in this odd world comforts me no end.

We have had some beautiful, enchanting days; at night the moon chased like mad around the heavens; morning soon dawned, and we crawled home with red wine all over our waistcoats. We were in Carona, saw the cannonballs
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again and Generoso
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all violet. Our elegant Ruth
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ran around in a fiery little red dress, accompanied by a splendid menagerie: an aunt, two dogs, and a piano tuner, who was unfortunately insane. The whole affair finished up in a dark grotto, which was suspended somewhere in the air, lit-up trains roared by below, women were kissed, and also some tree trunks. It was painfully beautiful.

Little pleasures like this cheer up our poor hearts and shorten the lengthy trajectory of life. Unfortunately, my eyes have been out of action for the past few weeks and hurt a lot. At times the going is rough, and unfortunately, these days it's impossible to do any painting outdoors. I often put a blob of geranium lacquer on a sheet of white paper at home, and use it to draw illustrations or something imaginary. In the evenings, when I cannot work or my eyes are troubling me, I can always succumb to the lure of a rustic tavern, where I can sing praise to the Lord and see double versions of my stars on the ceiling.

TO WALTER SCHÄDELIN

August 16, 1919

I was delighted to get your letter this morning. Many thanks! You have a strong faith in God, and your life has a center. In my case, the pressures are centrifugal. But I'm also determined to mature fully; you're perfectly free to rename the phenomenon that I call the will to self-destruction. Now that I'm alone and more in touch with myself, I'm gradually coming to terms with the loss of everything that has disintegrated over the past few years. I tend to interpret my own experiences, and those of my people symbolically, viewing them as part of a larger development.

We seem to have misunderstood each other in our letters. You wrote saying that I shouldn't leave the boys with my wife, since you felt she couldn't provide any stability. That fear, the thought that my wife could have another breakdown, is the sword that has been hanging over my head since the fall of 1918. So your letter came as a shock, since I know that if I start worrying about that again, I shall be racked with infernal torments for days and nights on end. My own feeling is that I cannot adopt your suggestion to cut off my wife completely, treat her like an invalid, have her confined, and take away the children. That would deal her a mortal blow. Besides, she still means a lot more to the children than I ever could. Nothing is left of family life except the worries; the rest has receded into the past. At the moment, I'm trying to center my life on my intellectual, creative activity or task, whatever one wants to call it, because I have to, if I want to survive. I'm being crushed by fate, and just have to let the wine in me flow. That isn't always easy. The world has changed and with it my life, and these developments pose intellectual and artistic challenges for me. My previous methods are not equal to that kind of challenge; I now live in a makeshift hut, and each day I have to produce and test some new tools and weapons.

You like to imagine there is a wide disparity between the two of us, and I find that rather sad, since I feel you do so out of habit rather than modesty. My aim in life is no different from yours or anybody else's, but I have had to face up to deeper inner conflicts, and am compelled by my temperament and disposition to create art—i.e., somehow I need to express and shape my inner life. For years (prewar) I was rather complacent about my literary successes and accomplishments, but the war and the catastrophes in my private life have induced me to make drastic changes and, ultimately, start again from scratch. During the war, after the fake German splendor had crumbled, I saw that my intuitive premonitions were accurate, and seeing the young people helped renew my faith. But that was my only positive experience; everything else affected me negatively. I'm ready now to close the books on this matter and begin assuming new tasks. I'm sure very few of my friends will like my current style of writing, and I shall feel as hemmed in and isolated as I did during the war, in both political and human terms.

I shan't budge from here as long as I keep making headway with my work. I haven't been in a railway station or train since April, and haven't bought a newspaper since the first of July. It's possible I shall stay isolated for quite some time; that would be delightful, but I cannot swear it will happen.

Letters are a poor substitute for friendship. On the whole, I must have seemed very passive during our friendship. But when I love somebody I don't let go easily, and as you can see, I'm forcing myself on you again.

Red wine still plays a part in all of this, but my work has the lead role. In any case, dear forester and chum, the chestnut trees in the forest reverberate at night to the sound of your friend's folly.

If Walter Schädelin ever comes through the Gotthard Pass, I shall have lots to show him, and not just wine bars and watercolors, even though my room is full of the latter.

TO GEORG REINHART
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Montagnola, September 8, 1919

Please accept my sincere thanks for your kind letter!

At first, I was tempted to accept your kind offer immediately, since my present troubles are, of course, partly financial. Because of the exchange rate for the mark, my income has sunk to a fourth of what it was previously. I probably stand to lose even more of this income, since I have changed tack, and my old readers may not be quite as eager to sample my latest works.

But, really, the more I think it over, the more I realize that my difficulties extend far beyond those financial concerns, and the prospect of complete financial security wouldn't necessarily make me happy or relieve my main worries. My family is a great cause of concern, because its well-being depends very much on my wife's condition. Since she is moving to Ascona this month, I shall probably visit her soon; I haven't seen her in six months.

So, under present circumstances, I should like to keep on trying to make ends meet on my own. If you wish to do me a favor and be of some help, you could perhaps give me a small electric heater as a present, since I fear I shall have heating problems this winter. The current is 600 volts.

My dear Herr Reinhart, could I possibly accept a modified version of your offer? If the worries keep mounting and the situation becomes oppressive, I shall approach you and ask for help. But for now, and let's hope forever, I feel relieved to have a friend and supporter like you, even if I never need to ask for help. The depression you noticed is largely a reaction against my feverish work habits since last May. I have harnessed that smoldering intensity and manic energy in a short, expressionistic piece, which is full of fantasy. I can show it to you sometime. From October on, I shall be helping to edit a new review in Germany, aimed at young people;
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I don't have much faith in it, but we had to make an effort. Financially, I don't stand to gain anything, but since I haven't put any money in it, I cannot lose anything either.

TO HIS SISTER ADELE

October 15, 1919

I got your kind letter yesterday. There was one from Marulla the day before yesterday. I like to sit alone on the grass in the morning sun. I have chosen a sheltered spot by the wall of the small church at Agra, so I can spend an hour here without freezing; I'm gazing at Italy across a stretch of sea and a flat promontory. I come here along woodland paths, which often remind me of Calw, even though there are no pine trees in this region, only a few beeches, and the ground is strewn with chestnuts rather than pinecones.

I shall have to accept eventually that I was never destined to experience home and country, wife and children, etc., as anything other than parables and images, and was never meant to tarry there. Someday even the pain of separation and the more serious torments I had to endure during my wife's illness will seem remote, insignificant, and tranquil, just the way Calw, Basel, and Gaienhofen now appear in the picture album of my life.

We shall have to find out soon whether anybody is willing to assume the role of guardian for my wife and children, since that is beyond me. Then we shall see what happens. It would naturally be easier for me if one or two of the children went to live in Germany, but I cannot decide that now. I don't know whether Mia's brothers and sisters will offer their help or show hostility, since there is going to be a divorce;
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in any case, I have decided that I'm never going to see Mia again under any circumstances. Terrible things await us, since Mia will start clamoring to have the children back the moment she starts feeling better, and we shall probably have to say no. I feel sorry for her, but she and I no longer belong together, and it was she who rejected me, not the reverse. It's true that this was not the only reason why my marriage failed: I was never a good husband and father, and eventually I arrived at a crossroads where I had to make a decision: I turned my back on bourgeois life, which I had always regarded merely as a mask, and focused instead on the task which I regard as my fate and the very meaning of my life. I shall be venturing onto difficult terrain, but my state of mind will be lighter and freer than heretofore; I never was happy or carefree during the long years of my marriage.

I was delighted to receive the card with Finckh. He is a good fellow, and probably not all that satisfied now with his war poems about the Lord, who always happens to side with the most powerful cannons. I have no faith in his God, and never believed in his cannons, but those were external differences.

TO HELENE WELTI

Montagnola, November 7, 1919

Many thanks for your wonderfully kind letter! I couldn't agree with you more, since I never expected you to be enamored of my painting and of recent artistic style in general! So I'm pleased that you are courageous enough to want to go along with it, even if only a bit of the way. And now to the question you raised: why is nature stylized this way rather than that? I don't consider the question mysterious, although I do find it hard to articulate my ideas on the subject. I believe that the stylistic shifts in art are intimately related to the flux in other areas of life, such as in fashion. There is a dark, unconscious instinct underlying those fluctuations, and like the changing fashions in clothes each season, the most recent art acts as a very fine, sensitive barometer of the nervous impulse of our age. I don't believe anybody is obliged to participate in all these changes and fluctuations, or praise them to the heavens, and I for my part refuse to do so. Nevertheless, it seems clear to me that there is a deeper meaning behind all of this and, should the Expressionist tide sweep across Europe from Barcelona to Moscow, then we cannot simply attribute the phenomenon to a strange “coincidence” or to the whims of a few individuals. The entire younger generation has decided that it doesn't like “Impressionism,” a word which they pronounce in a hostile manner; I don't share their sudden antipathy and still feel exceedingly fond of Corot and Renoir. But I find their reaction understandable. Impressionism allowed one area of painting to develop fully; the delicacy and subtlety of that art ushered in a sophisticated form of high culture, and young people suddenly began to rebel against it. It was too one-sided for them; they wanted to hear new sounds, having grown tired of a style that wouldn't allow them to convey their own needs and feelings. Of course, none of this impairs the quality of any good work produced by the previous generation; one ought not take the revolutionary antics of a portion of the younger generation too seriously, except in one respect: they have a deep need to find new ways of expressing worries and emotions that are indeed new.

By the way, I feel a certain kinship with Kreidolf.
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My watercolors are a sort of poem or dream; the “reality” which they convey is but a distant memory, and subject to the vagaries of one's needs and feelings. Kreidolf does much the same thing. But, of course, I never forget that he is a master of the art of drawing, and also has the gentle, highly trained hands of a consummate craftsman, and I realize that by comparison I'm just a dilettante.

So I'm not tempted to laugh or get angry at you, as you half feared! On the contrary, I'm glad that you at least like my way of combining colors. But I think you will find my new literary works much more accessible (with a few hitches again) than the little pictures.

You have sensed the essence in both cases: you don't necessarily appreciate or condone the means of expression, but you sense that my work is the serious product of a certain inner necessity.

You ask about my wife, who is in the Clinic for Nervous and Emotionally Disturbed Patients in Kilchberg near Zurich. Her sisters want to have her transferred to Meilen, where they think she will be a little better off. I haven't heard anything directly from her, and have no intention of reestablishing contact myself, but am sure she would be very happy to hear from you. Please don't pay any attention if she starts asking for money or the like.