Soul of the Age (47 page)

And now even you, a close friend of Kafka's, the profound tragedian, are addressing me with that sort of request, and this time I am not just being asked to support an individual or two, but to assist an entire people and also “restore peace”! I'm frightened at the very thought, since I must confess that I cannot believe in the ability of “intellectuals” to unite or in the noble intentions of the “civilized world.” In matters of the intellect, quantity is irrelevant, and it doesn't matter whether ten or a hundred “prominent people” are petitioning the holders of power for some change in policy, since the cause is in any case quite hopeless. If, years ago, you had turned to the new groups in your own country that had terrorist training and had appealed to them to be humane, Godfearing, and nonviolent, you would have heard in no uncertain terms what activists and people under arms think of those ideals.

No, no matter how noble your intentions, I cannot share your view. On the contrary, I believe that all the “intellectual” pseudo-protests, endless petitions, demands, sermons, or even warnings directed by intellectuals at those who control the world are wrong and merely damage and degrade the cause of the intellect, and all such efforts should definitely cease. Dear Max Brod, our realm is certainly “not of this world.” Our role is not to preach or give orders or make demands, but to remain steadfast amid the infernos and the devils and to refuse to put much hope in the effectiveness of our fame or in the impact of large numbers of people like us. In the long term, for sure, we shall certainly prevail, since people will remember some of our work long after the ministers or generals of today have fallen into oblivion. But as for the short term, the here and now, it is we who are the poor fellows, and the world has absolutely no intention of letting us play its game. We poets and thinkers only amount to something because we are human beings who, whatever our faults, have a heart and a head and some fellow feeling for everything natural and organic. The ministers and other political operators base their temporary power, not on the heart and mind, but on the masses, of whom they are the “exponents”! We should avoid the things with which they operate: numbers and quantity. We have to leave this area to them. It's not easy for them either, and that is something we ought not forget: They often find things even more difficult than we do. They don't have a life or mind of their own, and cannot be tranquil or worried, or have a sense of equilibrium, since they are carried along, pushed about, and swept aside by millions of voters. It is not that they are entirely unmoved by the abominations which occur under their very eyes and for which they themselves share some responsibility; they are just at a loss. They have their own ground rules, which provide some cover and can make their responsibility more tolerable. As custodians of the intellectual heritage, servants of the word and of truth itself, we feel as much compassion as horror. But we think our ground rules are more than ground rules, that they are real commandments, real laws, eternal, divine. Our duty is to preserve them, and every compromise and concession we make to those other “ground rules” puts them at risk, even if our intentions are most noble.

I realize that, by stating all of this so bluntly, I may cause superficial observers to conclude that I am by nature one of those artistic dreamers who believe that art bears no relation to politics and that the artist should remain ensconced in his ivory-towered, aesthetic existence, and shouldn't have any contact with harsh realities that would spoil his mood or make him dirty his hands. I know that in this regard I don't have to defend myself in your eyes. Ever since the First World War relentlessly opened my eyes to reality, I have raised my voice often; indeed the sense of responsibility thus awakened in me has consumed a large portion of my life. But I have carefully remained within certain bounds; as an artist and man of letters, I have tried to remind my readers continually of the sacred, basic commandments that we ought to obey as human beings, but I have never tried to influence politics myself, in the style of the hundreds of petitions, protests, and warnings that intellectuals are constantly issuing, with great ceremony, but to no avail; those activities merely damage the reputation of our humanitarian cause. And my position is not about to change.

Although I was not able to grant your wish, as you can see, I have at least tried to make your concern known to others, by publishing your letter and my response.
395

TO A STUDENT
396

[
ca. July 1948
]

Dear Herr Z.,

I am an old, sick man; for the past three years, I have been utterly consumed and exhausted by the tasks of the day, which are fundamentally alien to me—caring for a large number of starving people, having to contend with volumes of daily mail that would defeat the youngest, healthiest person—so I cannot respond adequately.

In your letter, which I find admirably serious-minded, you equate yourself right away with the “poets and thinkers” I mention in my letter to Brod. You are a student, and as a student you have a right to register a solemn protest against any injustice taking place in the world by getting together with your fellow students and organizing meetings and processions, and then, having done your bit, you can quietly resume your studies. But the situation is very different when an old man such as myself, who is considered a poet and thinker and has done more for other people in the course of his life than most of you will ever do, asks himself whether it really makes much sense to take part in pathetic and completely ineffective protests that only serve to devalue the intellectual cause and further undermine whatever weak authority it has. You cannot understand me because you do not have my life and work behind you.

Just conceive for a moment of President Truman, Stalin, the King of Jordan, and the leaders of the Jewish and Arab terror groups reading a protest written by me, Thomas Mann, Einstein, and fifty other well-known intellectuals. Imagine the kind of face that each one of these politicians would make were somebody to remind them that the literary remains of Novalis or a valuable collection of paintings could be destroyed tomorrow. Do you seriously believe that any one of these brokers of world power would spend a single second worrying about such matters?

No, there are many tasks facing the intellect, but one stands out above all others: caring for the truth and making sure that people can see and understand reality. Ninety-nine percent of the population keeps ignoring reality, because it simply cannot tolerate it. What I said in the letter to Brod about the intellect and its opportunities for action forms a part of that reality.

If you want to find other intellectual witnesses, you should at some point read the talk that Paul Valéry gave in 1932 at the Sorbonne in commemoration of Goethe. It would suffice to read the first few sentences of that speech.
397
He describes the present relationship between intellectuals and power more clearly than it has probably ever been enunciated in our time.

That will have to do. I have many other tasks ahead of me today, and if I spent as much time and energy on each of them as on this letter to you, the day would have to last a month.

Immerse yourself in life. If you find that you cannot stand the thought of things I said that have shocked you, then forget about them. Your tasks in life are probably different from mine. You have to be alert to other aspects of life, and nobody demands of you what Max Brod or you yourself ask of me. Then you will leave the futile protests up to those who have the right to engage in them, young people without any responsibilities yet, and you will follow your conscience in your true sphere of influence.

TO HORST KLIEMANN

[
1948
]

I should have thanked you long ago for your essay about my ties to Munich,
398
but I couldn't do so in a few words. And even today I don't have the time and energy to write the kind of letter that would be necessary. Your essay is fine, friendly in tone, but there is one big omission. It describes a few of my friendships there. But there isn't a word about what Munich increasingly came to represent for us foreigners—i.e., non-Nazi Germans. It was the bastion of the “Pan-Germans.” We didn't take them very seriously at the time, but nonetheless hated them bitterly. It was the bastion of an arrogant intelligentsia, which was well versed in every conceivable subject, with the exception of politics, knew everything better always, mocked all things; Stefan George also turned us against that group. And it was also the bastion of the entire reactionary clique, the place where Landauer was killed and Hitler got his education, the city of Hitlerism par excellence. I have no doubt that a good number of former Nazi luminaries are back in business again at the university and elsewhere.

Thomas Mann has said enough in
Faustus
about this wonderful, hospitable city, to which we owe half of Hitler; he knew the city better than I. So it is really strange to see you describe my relationship to Munich as innocuous and peaceful.

I have now said the most important thing. You meant well, and I bear you no grudge, but I felt I had to correct that perception.

TO ELISABETH FELLER

February 7, 1949

I don't have sufficient energy for a letter, and shan't manage to hear the
St. Matthew Passion
either—unless it's broadcast on the radio, in which case I shall certainly listen. This reminds me of something in early childhood. The only work of Bach's I knew was the
St. Matthew Passion,
which I had heard once or twice, as well as many rehearsals. I heard a man who knew a lot about music saying that he preferred the
St. John Passion,
but when my uncle began rehearsing the
St. John
with his little choir in Calw, I was extremely disappointed, because it sounded less dramatic than the
St. Matthew.
Then there was a time, much later, when I too far preferred the
St. John.
Today I like both equally, and that preference is unlikely to change.

I'm sending you what I could find by way of privately printed works and bibliophile editions. These pieces aren't sold; they're printed in editions of two hundred to eight hundred, and virtually all of the copies are given away as presents. But the desperate hunger in Germany (the currency reform hasn't improved matters in intellectual and artistic circles), which has become more severe in many places, is such that I occasionally let collectors have some copies. I still need to come up with between 500 and 700 francs a month to prevent the people dependent on me from going hungry, and that is very difficult to do. If you would like to give me 100 or 120 francs for the prints, you would certainly be helping out.

TO EDMUND NATTER

[
February 22, 1949
]

I read your recent letter with pleasure, and my wife also enjoyed it. Your sister and her husband have been our guests here for a year; they're leaving for France tomorrow, on a trial basis. I used to know wine lovers like your friends in the Rhineland; they can be found wherever wine is grown, especially in France and on the Rhine. As for me, over the years I have turned from heavier to lighter wines, and have discovered that “small” and by no means renowned wines can have their own distinctive qualities. By the way, I have never particularly liked Rhenish wines and tend to favor certain Mosels; here in Switzerland I prefer the Fendant wines of Vaud and Wallis. Goodbye, somebody is calling. More anon!

TO OTTO BASLER

April 1949

Thanks for your pleasant letter. I find Thomas Mann's expression of sympathy and comradeship rather moving. He once said in the course of a conversation with us: “In the intellectual sphere there is no such thing as unhappy love,” and that certainly applies to the relationship between the two of us. I have occasionally discovered to my great surprise that several contemporaries knew of my writings and loved them; the two most surprising such names were André Gide, who wrote me a note many years ago, and Franz Kafka. Many years after Kafka's death, Brod told me that his friend Kafka had read all my work and greatly liked it. I, in turn, had similar feelings of sympathy and admiration for them.

I don't read any newspapers, so I have no idea what the Zurich newspaper said about Mann's attitude toward communism. But I would be surprised if his ideas on that score were different from mine. From the very outset I have rejected both communism and fascism—with the distinction that I consider communism a necessary experiment, whereas fascism merely seems a useless attempt at regression. But unless communism sets itself the task of bringing about an equitable distribution of wealth and property rather than a “dictatorship of the proletariat,” it constitutes a regression vis-à-vis Marx, and if a small clique of party bosses continue to profit from it rather than the people as a whole, there is no point discussing it any further.

I'm sure Th. Mann has very similar ideas in that regard.

One further thing: Kindly give my best regards to Mann, and let him know I have finally managed to place the wonderful lecture on Mann by my friend Dr. Amstein. It will be appearing in the May issue of the
Neue Schweizer Rundschau,
probably alongside a little prose piece of mine.

TO OTHMAR SCHOECK

[
May 1949
]

Your letter was like a visit from a friend. I had wanted to hear you talk about your trip to Swabia, and my hopes were more than fulfilled, since I had imagined your experience there more or less as you describe it, the way you scoured the once cheerful countryside with the Mörike poems in your suitcase, hoping to find traces of the old magic. And you did find that; how wonderful to have received such a fraternal welcome from the kind spirits of Swabia.
399

We have visitors here at the moment from Swabia, my sister Adele and her husband. The three of us look quite ancient, I'm the youngest at seventy-two, but I enjoy hearing Swabian again occasionally and talking about the people and places of our childhood. I rarely get that kind of opportunity. My days are full, and I seldom feel sufficiently comfortable and free from pain to wish to engage in much conversation.