Soul of the Age (32 page)

I'm looking at all the nice furnishings that you bought for the Zurich apartment; they made the place seem so cozy. I recall how you used to greet me each time I arrived with flowers, pillows, and all kinds of thoughtful gifts. I also remembered the patience and concern you showed constantly, no matter what was going on in my life: during the times I was ill or unproductive, the good and not so good times with Ruth, the time with Ninon. You showed great empathy, kept your faith in me, and demonstrated your love.

I hope we shall often see one another again and continue sharing our joys and sorrows. But before leaving this Zurich home, where I have been your spoiled guest for so long, I felt that I had to convey these feelings to you again.

I'm heading back again to the country with some ideas for new pieces. I have been contemplating a large, wondrous, complex work.
238
I have been toying with the idea for some weeks, but I don't know yet whether I shall ever succeed in completing even a portion of it.

Goodbye, my dears [ … ], and think of me from time to time.

TO GEORG WINTER

September 1932

Somebody sent me a copy of the journal in which you published your review of
The Journey to the East.
I should like to thank you for the piece and also respond to it briefly, since people seldom take authors seriously. I have only had this kind of experience a few times over the course of several decades.

Of all the reviews, yours articulated the central issue from a perspective that shed the most light on the paradoxical (or rather bipolar) meaning of my little book. You say that, as soon as the author attempts to write about the League, he ceases to belong to it.

I cannot fully accept your final conclusion, and not just out of a need for self-preservation. But you have certainly hit the nail on the head, and this sense of having been understood felt so wonderful—authors rarely have this experience—that I decided to write to thank you. Having done so, I should like to say a few words about the justification for my work and my existence.

On the whole you're quite right. It's impossible to think or write about the matters of greatest import. Indeed God prohibits us from doing so. I fully agree with you that we ought not consider literature an arbitrary, superfluous intellectual appendage, but one of the strongest functions of the mind.

So it's basically impermissible to write or even think about sacred matters (in this case the League—that is, the feasibility and significance of human community). One can come up with various interpretations of this taboo and of the intellect's frequent transgressions against it, psychologically, morally, developmentally—e.g., the prohibition against using the Lord's name, which separates the magical stage of mankind from the rational one.

Once you start criticizing me for sinning against that original prohibition, you yourself seem to develop a bad conscience of sorts. You even imply that the mistake, for which you criticize the author, may actually be a fault on the part of the critic. Indeed, by reading books to form a judgment about them and then write reviews, you're sinning against what is most sacred. At heart, you no doubt realize that reverence is the principal intellectual virtue; you also realize that intellectual considerations have inspired both the object of your criticism in the review and your own activities and that both have been undertaken in good faith—and yet you feel that you have to commit the sin of criticism by rejecting certain things and perpetrating the sort of injustice always entailed in summary formulations.

I wouldn't have wanted to see you doing anything differently. But I would be glad to see you admit to yourself—as I myself have done in the light of your review—that your actions and judgments are “basically” unnecessary and sinful, and that this transgression against that age-old prohibition is precisely the sort of sin that the mind must necessarily take upon itself. This sin makes the intellect question not only the League but also its own activities and nature; sends it on endless errands of thought and conscience, back and forth between self-reproach and self-justification; prompts it to write books. This sin is ominous, tragic, irresistible, and it certainly exists, it's fate.

My work, the confession of an aging artist, attempts, as you rightly say, to render that which cannot be rendered and to evoke the ineffable. That is certainly a sin. But can you say in all seriousness that you know of any literary work or philosophy that isn't an attempt to make the impossible possible, to counter taboos responsibly?

There is only a single passage in your review that seems rather weak and questionable to me: you suggest the existence of other problems, which are more feasible and appropriate than mine, that could be tackled by thinkers and artists. I don't believe that authors should ever set off on the adventure of writing without feeling somewhat remorseful and having the courage to experience that feeling; the same holds true for the critic who is assessing the author. I felt assured that you would understand me when I noticed your hint along these lines. So I decided to write you a note. Not because I felt any need to justify myself, but because nowadays one so rarely comes across a feeling of community, of comradeship, or sense of collegiality that one is glad to discover a trace of such things.

TO ERHARD BRUDER

Baden, November 1932

It's a pity one has to hurt the other person where there is a clash of ideas and the truth is at stake. But at least we have learned to take the personal sting out of these attacks and not indulge in them for their own sake.[ … ]

You're quite mistaken about the point at issue. I said that I agree with Ball and not with Finckh; we can discuss the many implications of that point of view at some time or other. I don't think you realize yet just how radically I reject fatherland, patriotism, etc. But there are other differences between Finckh and me; for example, I believe Germany bears a large share of guilt for the outbreak of the war. I'm still disgusted that every German knows all about the tyrannical and shameful Treaty of Versailles, but isn't aware of the shameful ultimatum to Serbia in 1914. The latter is one of the most revolting documents in history, and ought to make every German reflective and ashamed. And there are countless other examples.

Whenever I bring up any such charges against Germany, and thus also against myself, I have to listen to the following: Beg your pardon, but what about the Serbs, Russians, etc., who are every bit as guilty as we are. They always lied or managed to deceive us. Why can't you criticize
them
and not be constantly attacking your own people? I still have to listen day after day to that ridiculous old question, which I have always answered in the same way, well over a thousand times by now. I'm not trying to ascertain the enemies' guilt, but rather our own, since I have no cause to feel ashamed of French sins, but I certainly am ashamed of German ones. What I despise above all else is the talent Germans have for forgetting their own sins, and simply lying about them. It's always the same old story. People say: Well, you were living abroad and weren't starving like us. I respond: You can have no idea what I went through from 1914 to the present. I lost my fatherland, had a shared burden of responsibility for the war, and felt that my own people no longer understood me. And like you, I lost all my savings and income twice, first because of the war and then because of the inflation, etc.[ … ] What concerns me now is not so much Germany, or any individual country or people, or the bourgeoisie and Bolsheviks, but endangered humanity as a whole. People are always telling me that such thoughts are a luxury reserved for peacetime. A German needs to support his people through thick and thin, has to go along with its decisions, condone its lies, cowardly acts, and the intoxicated warmongering from 1914 to 1916. I cannot accept those arguments. I know where I stand, and realize that these attitudes have put me out on a limb, but I have no intention of changing my mind; my attitude has been dictated by fate. I exposed myself a lot in my books and essays, partly because of the moral repercussions of the position I had adopted toward my people and fatherland, and even though this openness on my part has been gleefully exploited by some people, I am nevertheless prepared to sacrifice everything. I shall not retreat, not even a single step.

There is a contemporary whose experience resembles mine, even though he hails from a very different background: Romain Rolland.

I have no difficulty understanding your fixation on potatoes. I'm like that too, although my obsession is a little different. Whenever I catch sight of a newspaper, or hear a demagogue—sometimes just reading the word “Germany” is enough—all the wartime despair floods back.

You know what I mean. At the moment I'm at the spa in Baden for a cure and can seldom allow myself the luxury of writing such long letters.

TO OTTO HARTMANN
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November 24, 1932

[ … ] I'm not at all interested in what the critics have to say. I recall them saying more or less the following about
The Journey to the East:
This is certainly not art, although it has some value as a biological function. Its symbols are genuine, but quite pathological. Since it is neither comprehensible nor universal, it lacks the hallmarks of genuine art. I suppose that is well meant, but a similar insistence on universality elevated Theodor Körner into a German classic, whereas Hölderlin was entirely forgotten.[ … ] There isn't much going on in literary criticism, and I haven't paid much attention to it for years. I got to know it during the war. In more than thirty years I have rarely learned anything useful from reviews. Literary journalism has reached a sad pass. But quite apart from this public criticism by professional critics, one often gets to hear very informative criticism in private circles. Readers can be either receptive or hostile, but their judgments are often very lively, an acute consequence no doubt of that “biological function.”

The opinions I value most are those of my fellow writers, but one seldom gets to hear them. In the case of my other artistic friends, I am most interested in the opinions of Schoeck, the musician. I was delighted to learn that the writer Kafka, whom I greatly admire, loved my books.
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But readers supply the most honest criticism. And there too, the thing we least want to hear is the most effective. I have never forgotten a little incident which occurred about fifteen years ago. A rather idolizing reader quoted a short poem of mine, which he had read years ago in a literary review. He didn't have a copy, but had learned it by heart, except for one line, which had unfortunately slipped his mind. Would I be so kind as to send him that line? I checked it, and was quite taken aback. The line he had been vainly trying to memorize was the weakest in the poem. For years, I had considered the poem one of my better ones, but had subsequently relegated it to second or third best precisely because of that botched passage. As penance, I had to copy out that dead passage for the reader. But I was happy and a little proud to hear the verdict of a girl of about thirteen, who had been asked to read a piece of mine to her mother: “One of the wonderful things about H. is that there is always a comma or a period when one is running out of breath.”

Goodbye and greetings to you and your wife

TO HIS SON HEINER

[
January 1933
]

[ … ] The tax situation in Berlin could have ruined me. They were insisting that my entire income, except for the Swiss earnings, be taxed in Berlin, at very high rates (since the officials in Berlin first have to approve every penny I earn and then issue a permit for transfer abroad). They also threatened that I would have to pay back several years' worth of taxes retroactively. So I have had virtually no income at all for a number of years. They have softened their attitude and postponed the decision for months, but this affair has been eating up a lot of my time. Of course, they may well issue a new emergency decree in Germany tomorrow that will once again render all of this null and void, but for now I can breathe easily.

You're right that we are powerless in the face of institutions as powerful as the state. But I think you're wrong to conclude that we ought to defend ourselves by jettisoning “all scruples.” Dear Heiner, we absolutely cannot do that. There is no point complaining about the unscrupulousness of other people if we're going to behave just as unscrupulously ourselves. If we have any claim to nobility, it is because we have certain scruples; we don't think that everything is permissible, we refuse to go along with the heinous killings and other repulsive activities taking place. Therein lies the source of all culture and of every spiritual stirring in life, which is fundamentally quite bestial, also the source of art, religion, indeed all genuine intellectual values. You people weren't the first to come up with the reaction: “To hell with all that crap.” Throughout history certain people have responded in a similar vein. One can interpret that kind of response as a rebellion by weak and uneducated people against a cruel and overpowering adversary, but we ought not condone or approve it in any way. You may learn from Els's household what happens when people believe in something, are affectionate and good, and transmit those values to their children.

We had a cheerful Christmas; it was actually my first Christmas at home in twelve years. I received a lot of presents, as did Ninon, but it was all a bit too much for me. The milieu was excessively bourgeois and got a bit on my nerves. Of course, I was the one who decided to come to terms with this milieu by remarrying and accepting the Bodmers' offer of the house. I don't regret the decision and am very glad Ninon has her security and a “decent” household, but nevertheless I'm just a guest, and feel strange there.[ … ]

Your father

TO HERMANN HUBACHER

[
January 1933
]