Soul of the Age (48 page)

The chestnut wood is in bloom, the cuckoo can still be heard, but the roses are finished. Let's hope we can get together in the fall. Ninon also sends fond regards to Hilde and yourself.

TO THOMAS MANN

Montagnola, May 26, 1949

Like all your friends and acquaintances, we were shocked and deeply saddened on receiving your sad news.
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We old people are accustomed to seeing our friends and companions disappearing, but there is something terrifying about losing somebody who is close to us and belongs to the generation meant to replace us after our departure and then shield us somewhat from the icy silence of eternity. That is hard to accept.

I don't know much about how things stood between you and Klaus. I myself followed his early work closely and sympathetically. Later on I was irritated on your account by certain flaws in his literary efforts, and find it consoling to think that these efforts ultimately culminated in a wonderful, fine, valuable work, the book about André Gide,
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which has won over the hearts of both his friends and yours. That book will survive its author by many years.

We shake hands in heartfelt sympathy with you and your wife, who is very much on our minds.

TO LUISE RINSER
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Bremgarten near Bern, August 1949

Since my wife cannot tolerate the heat, we spent the hottest period in the Engadine, then came here to our friends' for a brief visit; two of my sons live nearby. I received your letter here, pleasant reading apart from the news of Suhrkamp's condition; I had already heard some disquieting reports about that.

This time I didn't meet Thomas Mann.
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I had assumed that his German trip was going to take place later on, so we missed each other. But we have both promised to get together next year. It's always refreshing and comforting to talk to him, since his worldly demeanor and disciplined manner mask the imaginative range and artistic youthfulness of the artist, qualities which are accessible, if one knows how to address them.

I'm glad to hear that you're diligently finishing a new novel.
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As for me, I have abandoned the complexities of the literary trade and have gone back to the beginnings; whatever writing I have done over the last few years has been restricted to the narrowest framework: the attempt to capture a morsel of truth, a mouthful of experience or observation. In the process I have rediscovered things that I had once known, but since forgotten—for example, the illusory nature of all such striving for truth. Well, that's what discoveries are all about.

I'm expecting my younger sister, who will be staying for a few weeks; the elder spent the early part of the summer here.

Farewell, regards to Suhrkamp, and keep chewing away at the novel.

TO ISA, BARONESS VON BERNUS

[
August 18, 1949
]

Thanks for your letter, which reaches me at the house of some friends in the Bern area.

I cannot understand why the experience of Germany since 1933 should make the entire world seem incomprehensible and render the very notion of humanity questionable. All those Germans who endorsed the First World War and supported the war effort with enthusiasm, subsequently helped sabotage the young German Republic, or voted for Hindenburg's election as President, have in effect worked for Hitler and aided his cause. When I hear or read about a crime, I very rarely feel that I wouldn't be capable of something similar or couldn't be seduced into it. Man is neither good nor evil, but has the inner potential for both, and if his consciousness and will are inclined to good, that already means a lot. But even in such a case, man's primeval impulses are all still very much alive under the surface, and could lead him in unexpected directions. It's hardly a coincidence that these absolutely diabolic events occurred in Germany, a country known for its excessively wonderful idealism and verbose intellectuality.

Enough. I didn't want to argue, that's not my style. I'm just making sure your kind greetings don't go unanswered.

TO SIEGFRIED UNSELD

1949/50

I ought to feel embarrassed by your aesthetic question concerning Josef Knecht, since I'm not as fortunate as you, and cannot devote myself to such wonderful, Castalian studies. I have not had an opportunity to reread
The Glass Bead Game
since its appearance seven years ago, and indeed have more work on my plate each day than I can possibly manage.

But I feel that I owe you an answer. The questions readers are constantly asking me about Castalia and Knecht are often shockingly mediocre; yours stands out because it is wonderfully perceptive and precise, and for a moment it even gave me some pause.

I shall have to rely on my memory here, even though I have managed, with the help of my wife, to check out the passages that you are calling into question.

You believe that Josef Knecht's biographer was trying to “portray life through Knecht's perspective, in other words to describe only those things that are visible from the perceptual and experiential vantage point of Knecht himself.” And you think that this perspective has been violated in those passages you mentioned, since they refer to facts, words, or other people's thoughts that Knecht couldn't possibly have known about.

The writing of the book stretched out over eleven years (and what years!). In spite of the concentration and care I put into the work, it may contain such structural flaws. But I have never used the perspective that you think the book is built around. Indeed, in the course of the first three years, my perspective changed somewhat. At first, I merely wanted to make Castalia visible, as a scholarly state, an ideal secular monastery, an idea, or, as my critics think, an idle dream, that has existed and been effective since the age of the Platonic academy, one of the ideals that have served as effectual “guiding images” throughout intellectual history. Then it dawned on me that if I really wanted to show the inner reality of Castalia in a convincing way, I would have to create a dominant character, a spiritual hero, a figure who knows how to endure. Knecht thus became the focus of the story, an exemplary and unique character, not so much because he is an ideal, perfect Castalian, since he is not alone in that regard, but rather because, ultimately, he cannot remain satisfied with Castalia and its perfect isolation.

But the biographer whom I envisioned is an advanced pupil or tutor in Waldzell; out of love for the great renegade, he has begun writing the novel of Knecht's life for a group of Knecht's friends and admirers. This biographer has access to everything that Castalia possesses: the oral and written tradition, the archives, and, of course, his own imagination and powers of empathy. He draws on these sources, and I don't think anything in his account would be improbable in terms of that framework. In the final portion of his biography, he stresses that the individual details and milieu, for which no corroboration can be found in Castalia, constitute the “legend” of the missing Magister Ludi, as it has been handed down among his pupils and in Waldzell lore.

I derived the individual traits of some figures in the book from real people; some of these models have been recognized by perceptive readers, others are still known only to me. Father Jacobus was the figure most readily recognized; he represents my homage to Jacob Burckhardt, whom I dearly loved. I even took the liberty of putting one of Burckhardt's sayings into the mouth of my priest. His resigned realism makes him one of the opponents of the Castalian intellect.

There is only one figure in my story drawn almost entirely from life. That is Carlo Ferromonte. This Carlo Ferromonte, or rather the original on whom he is based, was an extremely dear friend and close relative of mine, a generation younger than I, a musician and musical expert. All of Monteport would have been delighted with him. An organist, choral director, harpsichord player, and passionate collector of the remaining traces of living folk music, he followed the faint trail of that vanishing tradition on his travels, especially in the Balkans. Then my dear Carlo had to serve as a medical orderly in this senseless war, was ultimately stationed at military hospitals in Poland, and ever since the end of the war, he has been missing without a trace.

TO GEORG WERNER

January 16, 1950

Thanks for your letter. Yes, artists can occasionally wield power, at least to the extent of being able to prevent truly powerful people from committing crimes. Romain Rolland was that kind of individual. He came to the aid of many who were doomed and secured their release. I don't think the Russians ever understood or appreciated his utterly Western mentality. He did, however, join the Communist party, since in those days an idealist could still hope that communism would yield a new humanity of some kind. Above all, he was a friend of Gorki's, who thought a lot of him, and Gorki was very powerful indeed. Whenever Rolland heard of somebody with a decent reputation having vanished into the prisons of the Russian Gestapo, he usually managed through Gorki to have the sentence revoked and the person freed. But Gorki's death put an end to that.

I hope your children's magazine is successful, both for yourself and for the cause.

I feel rather depressed as I emerge slowly from the flood of letters I receive every year from mid-December until early January; there's still an unopened heap lying around.

I'm sending you a new piece separately, as printed matter. The Baden experience described therein has affected me very deeply—I was weaker at the time than I had imagined.
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I'm enclosing two small samples of my day-to-day existence, copies of two letters.

TO A STATE COUNSELOR

[
February 1950
]

Life is really too short for such long letters. In the meantime, your wife has resolved the matter that she herself instigated through some utterly incomprehensible niggling about Thomas Mann,
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and has written to me. And since I have sent her a publication and my regards, she ought to realize that I'm no longer angry with her. You have recounted all those fateful blows that befell your wife. Well, most of my close relatives—the relatively few descendants of my Baltic grandfather—lost their homes and possessions, and fourteen perished in the war. And the relatives and friends of my wife are Bukovina Jews. You in Germany, a country where people never stop bewailing their woes, haven't an inkling of what those people had to endure.

As a result of this German compulsion to complain and beg for pity, I—an old man saddled with eye problems—have to read thousands and thousands of letters in which completely unknown people describe in great detail what they and their families have been through. There are several women who believe that they must not only inform me about the food prices in their area but also give detailed descriptions of the illnesses affecting every single family member, their operations, etc. But if one even so much as mentions the fate of the Jews or the guilt of the Germans, their response makes one blush with shame.

You will have to realize that I'm human too and that there are limits to my tolerance. You won't hold this against me.

TO HANS CAROSSA

End of February 1950

Ninon and I enjoyed your letter; we were glad to hear that we can hope for a new book of yours
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in the fall, and perhaps another visit.

Things have been quite hectic here recently; there were always visitors around—pleasant ones, fortunately. But I often considered that a nuisance, since the spring has been my worst season for many years. I begin feeling unwell in January and remain in that condition until the beginning of summer. In the meantime, in spite of gout and dizzy spells, I have had some joyful experiences, and was able to greet the returning flowers and butterflies as fervently as ever.

As regards the joys of old age, I had a good laugh at myself yesterday. A childhood friend of mine published some innocuous reminiscences of Calw during the 1870s and 1880s.
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Just hearing again the names of forgotten people and alleyways was wonderful, and when I heard that a giant pipe, taller than a man, which used to hang above the workshop of a turner,
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and was very old even then, hasn't disappeared, I was as delighted as if my gout had healed or something significant had happened.

I want to let my friends know what I'm doing with myself these days by means of an “Epistolary Mosaic,”
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which I shall also send you. A thank-you and salutation will have to suffice for today.

TO HERBERT SCHULZ

[
April 1950
]

Your informative letter must have crossed my last two publications. They aren't as personal as real letters, but are all I can manage given my condition. They have no doubt told you more about me than I could have said in a letter.

I first became acquainted with psychoanalysis in 1916, when my private life and the pressure of the war had become excessively burdensome. The doctor
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wasn't at all overbearing—he was far too young and too respectful of celebrity for that—but he went about it seriously, and became a very dear friend of mine, even decades afterward when there was no longer any question of our conducting an analysis. I only realized at a very late stage, long after the analysis (primarily Jungian) was over, that, for all his enthusiasm about art, my friend had no real understanding of it. And I gradually realized that none of the psychoanalysts I have encountered, above all Jung, ever regarded art as anything more than an expression of the unconscious; they felt that the neurotic dream of any patient was just as valuable as, and far more interesting than, all of Goethe. It was ultimately this insight that allowed me to extricate myself totally from the climate of analysis. But, on the whole, the treatment had a positive effect on me, as did my reading of some of Freud's main works.