Literary Quicksilver
LITERARY QUICKSILVER19 [XIII 471]
Or
A VENTURE [FORSØG] IN THE HIGHER LUNACY20
WITH
LUCIDA INTERVALLA21
I will not sing along in harmony
But grate as a strange dissonance.
OEHLENSCHLÆGER’s Dina22
There is a saying that goes like this: To him whom God gives official position he also gives understanding. It presupposes, therefore, that the person concerned has no understanding beforehand; and since being an author actually is no official position, and furthermore, since authors are by no means always public officials, it is easy to see how unreasonable it would be to require an author to have understanding. I am not speaking only about poets, who, after all, always have had the privilege of being mad;* I speak of authors in general. And to justify even more this lack of understanding, I will cite another proverb that says Quem Deus perdere vult, prius dementat,23 which interpreted is: Him to whom God is going to bring misfortune [XIII 472] he first deprives of sanity. In other words, how could God bring greater misfortune upon anyone than by making him an author? Accordingly, it is quite all right for an author, with or without public office, to have no understanding. And, in any case, it is no concern of the public whether an author has understanding or not if only he is original. As one drives along a country road, especially in certain regions, it not infrequently happens that a ragged urchin suddenly leaps over the hedge from the field into the middle of the road, stands on his head right in front of the horses, rolls his eyes at the travelers, and, without paying any particular attention to the danger of being run over, waves his bare legs in the air. If a driver does not want to run him down, he has to halt and honor him with some coins or with a few raps with the whip, as the case may be, which is somewhat like an author’s position with the public. An author is supposed to be the public’s fool; more is not required. If eventually he wants to acquit himself with distinction, he must—to continue the metaphor—do his best to create the rolling-eye look with which he regards the travelers while standing on his head, an expression so curious, together with so curious a way of waving his legs in the air, that all those who drive and ride and walk along the public highways of literature come to believe that he alone has the proper posture and that it is they themselves who are askew. Then, to get in proper line again, they promptly begin to attack coal bins, knock down windmills and other such things, thereby letting the world know that the author has made an impression on them, that he is original, that he is creating an epoch, that a completely new order of things is beginning with him. —You no doubt are familiar with the name Lucretius,25 a Roman poet who was mad but had his more luminous moments and devoted these very moments to his poem De rerum natura. I will not quarrel with anyone over the extent to which he was justified in doing that and whether he should rather have forged while the iron was hot, that is, written his poetry while he was mad. As far as I am concerned, in order in one way or another to hit it right, I have written both in and out of season, and for the same reason I let my “A Venture [Forsøg] in the Higher Lunacy” stand peacefully along with my lucida intervalla, and I am also positive that it will be hard to distinguish the one from the other.
[XIII 473] Note. Life = a highway is a fairly trite metaphor, but literature = a highway is a completely new metaphor, and whether it pleases or displeases, I take it upon my conscience all the same. The above is perhaps a bit prolix; you will, for example, find it conceivable to imagine both carriage passengers and riders attacking coal bins and knocking down windmills. On that point, allow me to suggest that the closest illustration of the highway of literature is the Old King’s Highway [Gamle Kongevej],26 with its daily traffic, which indicates that in certain ways it is very difficult to distinguish between those who ride in carriages, ride on horses, or walk, whereas it is a small matter to subsume them under a common point of view. For instance, on the Old King’s Highway there is a separate footpath with a sign giving “pedestrians” the exclusive right to use it; but by “pedestrians” is meant not only human beings who walk on two feet but also other living creatures that walk on four, such as cows, bulls, sheep, and pigs, also horses with riders on them, by reason of the fact that although the rider, it is true, is on the horse, the horse is still on foot and consequently belongs among the “pedestrians.” Ultimately, especially when the road is very muddy, this also includes carriages drawn by horses, according to the principle that need breaks all laws, or according to the German usage that also allows both carriages and horses on footpaths.
It is already far into autumn, but I still have not been able to decide to leave my beloved country place. Nature still has too much that is fascinating to me for me to tear myself from it so precipitously. I am not aware of autumn’s so frequently mentioned melancholy; I constantly see in nature only the eternally blooming but roguish maiden who throughout the autumn and winter shows herself to us in the oddest clothing merely to tease her adorers. It amuses her to be able to make herself almost unrecognizable to them, over whose sighs and laments over her faded beauty and dull-hued loveliness she secretly gloats, until, tired of this northern masquerade party, she throws off the sallow covering, divests herself of the whole illusory masquerade costume, and, lovely as before, beckons us to her swelling, flower-decorated bosom, to her tender, fond, refreshing embrace, and asks with a smile: “Do you not know me any more? My shape was disguised and my voice counterfeited in the rustling leaves, in the ringing frost, [XIII 474] in the whining wind; but how did it happen that not even the twittering of the birds on the naked branches disclosed me?”
As to my country place, one wing of the house overlooks the garden. It certainly does not have any more charms. But, yes, it does; in the garden there is a pond, and in the pond there are carp. Carp are rarely seen at this time of the year; it is only in the summer that the sun can lure them closer to the surface of the water, where one sees them splashing about animatedly and snapping up the crust of bread thrown out to them. Now, however, they stay down deep at the bottom, and I would almost wager that the pond is still not deep enough for them, for the higher the sun is in the sky, the deeper is its reflection, and I suppose that is what the silly fish go after. Generally, it is a beautiful sight when the sun is reflected in the pond, far more beautiful than in the summer, for then the water is often muddy because the ducks do their swimming exercises there. It is not very nice of the ducks; they could just as well let the carp have the pond in the garden and be satisfied with the pond in the field bordering the garden, which would be so much more reasonable, since the latter pond is both bigger and also completely overgrown with duckweed. Apropos of duckweed, viewed singly it is a lovely little plant, but in a mass it is somewhat disagreeable. Steffens27 makes a similar remark about the so-called lemming, a kind of traveling mouse.* Ultimately, the same is also true of the fair sex: if one considers a single girl at a time, one cannot look enough at such a lovely little lass, with her wise, saucy, affectionate eyes; but a whole school of girls—well, I will not say another word.
The other wing of the house looks out on the farmyard. In the middle of the farmyard there is a manure pile, and on top of the manure pile struts the proud rooster, like an ancient king in parliament, and proclaims by its crowing that it is aware of its exalted position. The hens flock around it; undauntedly they scratch in the manure with their bustling feet, and many a tasty kernel rewards their domestic efforts. Small, nimble gray sparrows mingle with them, not to scratch but [XIII 475] only to snatch away a kernel or two that the hens have taken the trouble to unearth; meanwhile, the hens are too generous and hospitable to chase their little sponging guests away. Here and there a single stem of grass thrusts upward from this rich and wonderful earth, defying the autumn cold with its fresh green color. When I stand at my window and look at all this, I feel more deeply than ever the truth of our philosopher’s statement about nature and its meaning. “It is essentially a part of nature to exist for the other, and this other for which it exists is spirit.”28 Thus this manure pile exists for the chickens, the sparrows, and the grass; but the manure pile, the hens, the sparrows, and the grass in turn exist for spirit—for me. Oh! I feel my significance as spirit! Compared with the immortal Shakespeare, I suppose I am no more than a fly, and compared with his worse inspirations, my best inspirations are to be considered only as a pack of dogs;29 but, in turn, compared with my worst inspirations, the sun in all its brightness is only a half-shilling compared with a hundred-dollar note.* So bow down, proud sun, before our wide-awake glory as you in the past bowed down before the dreaming Joseph!30 Moreover, be assured of our good graces! Look, we personally stretch our big foot out of this open window and allow you to kiss our slipper with your obsequious beams. Fie, you little slobberer! Could you not have first wiped the wet autumn cloud from your mouth? Well, never mind, this time we shall not be ungracious about your dampness.
But back to the manure pile! This manure pile represents literature, for just as the manure pile fertilizes the earth and makes it fruitful, so literature fertilizes and stimulates our immortal spirit. The diligent and careful readers, the indefatigable scholars, the painstaking researchers—the scratching [XIII 476] hens give us a very edifying metaphor for them. But the gray sparrows are the modern esthetic Bel-Esprits who only appropriate the general achievements of the scholarly efforts, and the blades of grass are the writers by trade, for just as the grass strikes roots in the manure, so they stand rooted in the earth of literature and flourish—and it is a delight to see. Finally, the rooster symbolizes that other for whom everything exists—namely, the watching spirit.
How avid the sun is to see its reflection! It sees itself in the clear water, it sees itself in the muddy horse pond, it sees itself anywhere with the same pleasure. And yet—what self-will! Yet it does make one exception of your blue eyes, most beautiful Amanda! It will not reflect itself in them in any way. Do you remember our argument the other day, Amanda, when we stood together out on the lawn in the garden and I told you that there were spots on the sun? You refused to believe it, and what happened then when you were going to look at the sun more closely? Then my pretty Amanda* had to look down and shade her eyes with her hand and counteract the strong light with a little darkness. Can you see that I was right? There are spots on the sun, it is certain; or if its face were as spot-free as your angelic countenance, what would motivate it to avoid your gracious glance? No, you can believe that the sun has a bad conscience on behalf of its beauty; that is why it refuses such an incomparable mirror as Amanda’s eyes and makes shift with the horse pond. —Yes, heavenly Amanda! In loveliness you surpass the sun, for your beauty has no spots. Alas, but in self-will you are just alike. You have forgotten it, I suppose, but I remember very well that the very moment we stood there talking, Pluto came leaping, the big fat mongrel, and placed its front paws on your breast and wagged its tail for you, and I had to watch [XIII 477] you print a kiss on its shaggy forehead while you clasped its long ears, just as if this detestable mutt-mug were a bliss superior to a certain man’s face, which, to be sure, far from belonging to an Adonis, yet shone with the clear flaming brilliance of love, in the dawn of first love, and on whose languishing lips there in any case dwelt more eloquence than in a dog’s drowsy eyes and wagging tail.
“Das Aeuszere ist das Innere, und das Innere ist das Aeuszere” [The outer is the inner, and the inner is the outer], say the Hegelians.33 Who would have thought that the Hegelians were so naive? One has only to compare it with Talleyrand’s34 well-known saying: “L’homme a reçu le language pour cacher ses pensées” [Man has received language in order to conceal his thoughts].
Now I have to laugh, said the German, and then he cried. In that way we are practically all Germans.
Good evening, Madame! You can hardly guess where I have been this evening. —“Heavens, no, I would have a hard time doing that.” —Then I will tell you. I have been to a comedy. —“To a comedy? You? An avowed enemy of the theater, a professed hater of all sham, as you like to call what takes place on the stage?” —Yes, I, and for that very reason. I sought and found on the stage what one looks for in vain in life: actuality, naturalness, the true and perfect harmony between the outer and the inner. There was one scene that I liked very much. The hero of the play vented himself in the most violent expressions; he clenched his fists and stomped his feet on the floor—in short, his whole conduct showed quite clearly that he was angry. His beloved wrung her hands and hid her face in her handkerchief. I suspected at once that she was sad, and [XIII 478] her lines completely confirmed this. Her lover had wrongly suspected her of unfaithfulness. When and where in daily life does one see such a natural outburst of indignation, such a striking indication of pain?—When the play was over, I went to a restaurant, where I met Justus Berner. God knows what ails him; he was so unusually elated this evening. Rejoice with those who weep and weep with those who rejoice35—isn’t that the way the saying goes?—Tomorrow I plan to go to the vaudeville theater; there one sees nothing but pantomime and hears not a word. Yes, I must go there to be reminded that there was a time when men’s external conduct corresponded to the motions within them, and that it was a very long time ago, and that men who lived then are now but dead shadows who cannot talk but have kept only the gestures!—
“Are you soon finished, Mr. Misanthrope? If you do not stop talking in that tone this minute, I will show you that I at least can get angry in earnest, so angry that I am able to drive you out the door with my fire tongs.” —
Excellent, Madame! You really ought to go to the theater!
Whew, but this city air is stuffy! It is not enough that Cain36 was the first fratricide, no, he was also the first to build a city,37 and consequently from him came the desperate idea to pack people together in huge cities like dead herring in barrels. Cain, Cain, what have you done!38 —But there is the organ grinder.39 Now we shall have music. How magnificent! Every time I look out my window and see the organ grinder coming, I am so happy, happy—I almost feel like joining the ragged boys who follow him from house to house and with pricked ears and wide-open mouths catch the tones of his organ. How heavily the organ hangs upon his shoulders! He almost sinks under its weight—but it does also keep him warm—see how he sets it down and is shivering with cold. He is in the service of sorrow; his furrowed brow and his deep-set eyes tell us that. It is sorrow that has driven him from [XIII 479] home and bids him go around and cheer up the whole world. Yes, so it should be! Life parodies itself and does it with an esthetic thoroughness that puts every Aristophanes to shame. Hey there, you jolly folk! Do you see the organ grinder? Does he not look hungry, frozen, and sad enough to make all of you mad with joy? — —
Master Peder threw runes over the bridge
That Little Helga . . . . .
What is that? Ah! Svend Dyring’s house.40 Apple, apple! Do you see that? There it flies through the air with strong runes deepy engraved in its juice—do you see how blind chance gives the sacred Forsete*41 a good-day and plays shuttlecock with the knight’s love! Ha! That is a gay comedy. The apple travels at devilish speed—now it is falling—look out!—it is falling for sure onto the lap of an old, shriveled crone, Mother Elle,42 up at daybreak, she who forced Thor to his knees at Utgardi-Loke’s—her hate would be cruel enough to bear, but her love—O ye good gods! —How cross the old woman will be—how she will stare before her with a frenzied look—stare at the knight—after him—after him—ha, ha, ha! —Love’s strokes of genius43—no, it fell onto Ragnhild’s lap—aha, so it is a tragedy! It veered about so strangely. —
Gentle love!
Your rapture I do not know . . . . .44
Well, my good organ grinder, that is enough for this time. Look, a whole mark—yes, that is enough to take your hat off for. He understands me perfectly—the hand organ on his shoulders—and off he goes. Farewell, you model for all musicians! You who also know the rare art of stopping at the right time—our dabblers in poetry could learn something from you. But, of course, you are also paid to stop when people are tired of listening to you. The poor devils on Parnassus, no one gives them anything to make them pipe down. No, they had another view of such things in Greece. Orators in Athens45 were paid both to talk and to be silent. What if a fund were [XIII 480] established to support certain indigent writers on the condition that they would not write?
The piano is open and no one is in the room—fine, I sit down in the young lady’s place and fantasize a bit in solitude. Oh, how stupid of me not to have learned to play! In vain do I hear the music of the spheres, in vain do their harmonies echo within me—the damned keys, these foolish, dull, and sluggish wooden sticks or ebony stumps, whatever they are, will not obey me. Well, then, I shall sing the scale; to that I can strum an accompaniment. Do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti—do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti—so these seven basic notes make up the whole musical corps. With this army, seven men strong, all the innumerable maneuvers are executed, but under the names of sonatas, overtures, etc. such a big fuss is made. Hmn! Very strange! The tactic that composers and musicians use is practically the same as that of Tordenskjold,46 who in trying to scare a fortress into surrendering marched the same troops up and down different streets, or that of Hamlet,* who in trying to give the enemy a scare continually propped up the fallen in battle order. Always the same notes, only that the order is now this, now that; now the army draws up in a major, now in a minor; now they dash forward in one tempo, now they march in a second, now they creep in a third. And these perpetual seven basic notes create an aural illusion of an infinite variety of harmonies; the soul is snared in the same illusion, and the mouth falls in line and blabbers about the hosts of notes, about a sea of sound with ceaseless fluctuations. —Ha! A ridiculous delusion, and yet so salutary! A delusion, and yet so enchanting! A frustrating dream, and yet so blissful! — —
When Odysseus47 sailed past the coast of the Sirens, he stopped the ears of his crew with cotton but had himself just [XIII 481] tied securely to the mast, letting the Sirens’ voluptuous notes flow into his open ears, and he sailed on unscathed.
Look at your reflection in this ingenious hero, gentle, romantic youth! Do not be afraid of capsizing in the waters of life or of stranding on the reefs of poetry, even if your ears are listening to spellbinding voices from an invisible world; they will not be able to harm you if you are securely bound with the rope of prose to the mast of actuality!
And you, my sagacious philosopher! You must not become a martyr, either. You must by no means stop your ears with cotton, even if you believe a thousand times that you notice a profusion of melodies; you must not put out your eyes, either, no matter how often you imagine that you are seeing numerous glowing colors, be it in nature or on the artist’s canvas; you must in no way mutilate yourself but merely remember that neither the eye nor the ear is the organ for your study, but that all your wisdom sits in your finger tips. You must make up your mind that you know—or at least can count on your fingers—that there are only seven basic notes, seven basic colors, and probably only seven ideas, thus the wealth of ideas in which some people take great pride is a lot of nonsense. Greece did not have more than seven wise men.
Julius Caesar is supposed to have said that he did not see how an augur or priest could look at another priest without both of them bursting into laughter.49 What a smart man this Caesar must have been! I happen to have a hard time understanding even how two men can look at each other at all and keep from laughing; and what I comprehend least of all is how one author can look at another author without both of them splitting their sides with laughter.
Here I stand washing my hands. This is no symbolic act such as Pilate’s,50 but neither is it an idle statement. It is neither more nor less than a true report about the simple fact that I am [XIII 482] washing my hands. It would never occur to a sensible layman to report such a thing, and if he did, he would be laughed at because it is an all too everyday event. But for me it is quite another matter; I am an author, and what such a public person does is always important, even if it is intrinsically insignificant. The public knows how to invest it with significance all the same. Therefore, I herewith once again inform each and all: I am washing my hands!
I wonder what this wash basin would say if it could speak? I dare say it would tell me its story and among other things try to dupe me into believing that it had descended from that famous golden wash basin that the Egyptian King Amasis51 had recast into a golden image for the purpose of divine worship. Well, if that is so, my good wash basin, then you have not reminded me of King Amasis in vain. That worthy man was a great admirer of the Greeks. I go along with that, and because of my profound respect for them, I transform you by a hefty heave at the floor into a multitude of little pieces of porcelain. Look now, lie there now and listen to what I say; now I shall teach you Greek. Do you know what ostracism52 is? It is like this. The Athenian rabble scratch names on potsherds and thereby drive the leaders, the real Athens, into exile. Do you hear? The Athenian rabble drive Athens into exile. And I, what do I do? I strew Attic salt53 on both Athens and its rabble. I can easily salt—would that I might have a misfortune if I did not have both fists full of genuine Attic salt. Yes, by the three-headed hound of hell! And it amazingly comes at the right moment for me, because Athens is like a leech whose dead treasures have occupied my best energies! That is why I sprinkle salt on this leech, and then it ejects the blood again—my blood—and so everyone gets his own. The Athenian rabble can easily scratch names on potsherds, for they have Athenian citizenship; ergo, they scratch. Moreover, one can turn the proposition about and say: they scratch; ergo, they have citizenship. I, too, am a citizen; I am a citizen of the world, a cosmopolite; ergo, I establish a universal ostracism and drive [XIII 483] the whole world into exile by scratching its name on this broken piece of my wash basin. Believe me, it will be a joke when I wake up tomorrow morning and look around and discover the whole world is gone. Where in the world has the world gone? I will say to myself. Away! I myself, in fact, have driven it into exile. Poor world! In a way, I am sorry for it. It will not shut its eyes all night, busy with packing and moving. The whole Atlantic Ocean will be filled up with bedstraw, and, just as in the days of Noah’s flood the wet inundated the dry, so now the dry will inundate the wet. “You get your just deserts,” the solid element will say to the fluid. “You humiliated me in sainted Noah’s day.” —“But vengeance is mine,”54 objects fire. “It is I who shall burn up the earth.” “Yes, where it is shallow!” says the air, “but we shall see whether you are the fellow to burn up the ocean.” Very likely this is the kind of small talk the elements will carry on together. Yes, it will be an awful hullabaloo; but it will not help. Everything will happen only for the world’s own good, and as soon as I perceive that it is behaving itself fairly well, I shall promptly call it back again. The fair sex will benefit especially from this exile; it will learn to appreciate me more, for a woman told me that I look splendid from a distance. —Is there anyone at all I would like to keep? No, it would be unjust if I used the occasion to discriminate among people. —Sh! I hope no one hears or sees me—if I am found out, will I not surely be considered crazy? After all, it will not mean much more than belonging to the minority in the committee appointed by our Lord. Am I not allowed to belong to the minority? Am I not allowed to be—crazy, preferably alone? Does not Jean Paul say that in solitude every man is an “eccentric” [Sonderling]?
But careful! A mortal being is actually staggering up the dark stairway. Trip, trip, trip, trip—. I wonder who is out so late in the evening? Well, it is not important! Just so Nicodemus55 has not been eavesdropping on the stairs. For safety’s sake I will drop a few sensible remarks so no one [XIII 484] smells a rat, for example, that the earth is round.56 But I say! The wash basin — — —
Ah, is it you, Albert? How are things out there on our round earth?
“Well enough, Monsoor, as Arv57 says, but things are in a bad way in here. Someone has smashed the wash basin.”
Yes, one does what one can. The destructive tendency of our day leads to such things, I tell you.
“Yes, I think I understand what you mean; you are of the same opinion as my wife.”
What does she think?
“She believes that when maidservants start breaking things, it doesn’t stop with one plate or one glass. Bad luck seldom comes singly, she says. But come, let us pick up the pieces. I don’t want to step on them and get them in my cork soles.”
Oh, it isn’t worth the trouble. Sit here on the sofa and you will be safe enough from the pieces.
“Speaking bluntly, no, thank you! I must leave at once; it is not at all cozy here with you this evening—besides it is very late. Bah, my watch has stopped.”
My watch has stopped—now that is a hackneyed phrase, Albert. How do you suppose it is going to go with us at the judgment seat of esthetics when we have to account for every useless word we have spoken?58 Couldn’t you easily have thought of another way to say it, for example: My watch has accepted the Copernican system?
“What in the world is the matter with you? God forgive me, but I believe you are not all there. Good night, and do get well.”
Thank you, Albert; the same to you! — —
So he left. Well, it is probably high time the world comes out and gets to look around a bit; finally, it gets too boring to have to stay home all the time this way. Consequently, next day—à bas tout le monde [down with the whole world]! —But wait, I first have to consider whether the world is in fact good enough to be sent into exile this way. In Athens, only worthy [XIII 485] men were exiled this way; ostracism became obsolete because eventually it came to be practiced against a good-for-nothing.59 When all is said and done, the world is not much better than this good-for-nothing; therefore, I think I shall spare it and let it stay where it is.