by Amos Oz
which may be translated:
Over all hilltops
is rest.
From all these examples Heidegger draws support for the conclusion at which he arrives, apparently, with extreme reluctance: language, by its very nature, is always misleading. And particularly so in those matters which are the foundation of our existence. Hence it is our duty to purify and refine our language, to create a proper language, before we weigh anchor and set sail for unknown worlds, for the secret realms of Time and Being.
Indeed, from the time that the University of Freiburg was purged of Jews and Professor Heidegger was appointed its Rector with the approval of the Nazi authorities (1933), the philosopher did not cease to seek a possible loophole that would allow the crust of deceptive language and conventions of thought fossilized in distorted grammatical structures to be pierced. Tirelessly and assiduously he strove to penetrate to the sphere of mystery, to the depths of the secrets of Being. He attempted to touch the enigma with fingers of Reason, with an ascetic refusal to employ words or forms of speech that had not been tested in its light. But, to his great embarrassment and perplexity, in the middle 'forties the régime in Germany suddenly changed, foreign ideas were carried into Germany on foreign bayonets, and the old philosopher was involved for a time in misunderstandings and unpleasantness.
So a man assails words with all the spiritual power at his command, he struggles to capture in words the existential dread, so he lifts up his eyes to the restful hills, and suddenly the ground changes underneath his feet: the enemy is in retreat, there is famine in Russia, the dog is in the garden, and he himself is suddenly sinking in pork fat.
39
Ernst, the Secretary of the Kibbutz, thought to himself: It may be that we have a real mathematical genius living with us here. But in fact he is not living among us. He takes no part in the general assemblies, he contributes nothing to the committees, he takes no interest in the great questions like the reform of society or the future of the Movement and the State, and even the small questions on which our daily life is built do not concern him. On the other hand, he does mend watches. He helps the backward school children. He takes the flocks to pasture. This is all well and good, but it will lead to no good.
Each detail must be closely examined in turn. Examined under a bright light, to see the tiny blemishes, to see where precisely the trouble starts.
The matter of the watches: no complaint. Excellent workmanship, and a laudable social gesture: even though you all know and none of you can forget for a moment who and what I am, yet I am not proud, success has not gone to my head, bring me your watches and I shall be, for two or three hours each week, your humble servant.
The case of the private lessons is more ambiguous. In some instances the man has worked wonders in setting boys and girls on the right track and instilling in them a deeply rooted respect for law and responsibility and for learning in general. Very good. On the other hand, there is something about him which upsets their calm and peace of mind. He arouses in these young adolescents, especially the girls, all sorts of undesirable reactions and undefined emotional disturbances: they all hide something from the others. So there is something lurking here which goes beyond mere mathematics, physics, geometry. In general, there is something wrong with bachelors in a properly ordered society.
He makes no demands on us. For the time being, at any rate. But, on the other hand, what does he give us? What is his contribution? In what sense can he be considered one of us? What does the community receive from him? What, in fact, keeps him here?
To be sure, mathematical infinity is a respectable subject. But in these times and in this place, what can it give us, what can it offer us?
It needs further reflection.
Perhaps a little consultation.
Now it's time for the news.
40
Ernst had an only son, a shiftless, withdrawn lad named Yotam.
From his childhood on the boy had suffered from weak nerves and short sight. Over and over again nurses and teachers had had to rescue him from the attacks of other children, who enjoyed tormenting and humiliating him in every possible way, both with words and with mischievous pranks. And when the boys left him alone he always fell victim to the sharp-tongued girls, who encircled him with scornful sniggers. Until he surrendered and burst into tears. And then the same girls who loved to reduce him to tears also loved to wipe away his tears with a great show of affection and genuine pity. Yotam was easily comforted, and that was the sign for a new round to begin.
Yotam gaped at the world through thick-lensed spectacles. Half a dozen times a day his weak fingers would let fall and shatter glasses, plates, records, vases, his spectacles, because his grip was feeble.
As if he refused to believe in the substantiality of objects.
Ever since the age of ten Yotam had never for a moment ceased to dream of a great power of domination which would be bestowed on him by virtue of his suffering. This power would force them all to kneel at his feet, to grovel and beg for mercy, pardon, compassion. Then his time would come to demonstrate to them, to the boys and especially to the girls, that he was not vindictive. On the contrary. His love would be given to all. To boys and girls alike. He would show them all a terrible, wonderful kindness, until their hearts filled with shame at everything they had done to him. What joy, what delight: to forgive and pardon day and night to his heart's content.
And so, alone for the whole of his childhood in the remote Galilean kibbutz, Yotam wandered among the white houses and neat gardens, the sheep pens, the cow sheds, the chicken runs, the stores, forgotten corners of the shady orchard, the heaps of hay in the barn, a village without cellars or attics. An emperor of China in shorts, with one leg rolled up higher than the other. Alexander the Great with little owl-like spectacles. A gracious king to all his subjects, in his daydreams he distributed to them all gold, marbles, pearls, caramels, and even key rings by the thousand. And in return he would inhale the savor of their love and excitement which would flow to him when the time came.
If in the meantime his subjects hit him, or the girls made fun of him, or plundered the colored crayons from his pencil case, Yotam was not angry with them because they knew not who he was and what they were doing. And also because Ernst on his next trip would buy him a band-new pencil case with twice as many colors. And Yotam had a secret lizard. Between two large cracked slabs of concrete behind the carpenter's shop lived a lizard and none of them knew about it, so they couldn't get up to any tricks with it. And none of them had a lizard. And they weren't going to have one either, no matter what new pranks they played on him.
Yotam cultivated certain odd habits. For instance, he would hop and skip along the paved paths in a way which those who saw him found amusing. In fact he was avoiding the cracks between the paving stones. Or he would press long and hard with his fingers on his eyelids, because when he pressed his eyeballs he saw a dizzying swirl of flashing lights. Only he did this in class, during lessons, and was made fun of for it.
He was always sniffling, love-lorn, and wretched.
Yet he was always eager to do good deeds.
Two or three years before, Yotam was called up for military service.
He was put behind a counter and taught to serve nicely, cookies, soft drinks, different brands of cigarettes, cellophane packages of peanuts.
Every evening he would assume a gentle, innocent smile and serve sweaty soldiers and strong, healthy girls whose khaki skirts stretched to bursting-point over their hips. He was forced to inhale the cigarette smoke of bossy, fat-bottomed officers, the smell of their breath, their coarse jokes told with sullen good humor, their air of rough, earthy virility.
Yotam stared blankly at them all through his thick bifocal lenses.
He half heard their inanities and obscenities, he saw with his own eyes how they were all dominated and desperately humiliated by a thousand base desires without being aware of them. A weary, blearing dullness covered everything w
ith a coating of putrid decay.
One bright morning Yotam got up, scrubbed his teeth, washed his face and then washed it again, put on his glasses and decided that they were all, every single one of them, in need of urgent salvation. He did not exclude himself.
And so it occurred to him that he must get out of his uniform, go to Jerusalem, take the world by storm, wake everybody up, put a stop once and for all to war, to desires and to bad taste, and bring about peace everlasting.
To this end he began to set aside small sums from the proceeds of the soft drinks and cookies. Every night he distributed these sums to drivers, storekeepers, typists, and kitchen hands who vowed to him that they would surely follow him to Jerusalem, come what might.
So, one fine morning, Ernst's son Yotam absconded from the camp through a small gap in the perimeter fence and started to march on Jerusalem. A quick-tempered rifleman by the name of Eliashar, Moshe and two corporals, Vilnay and Adorno, joined his expedition. There was also a short, stocky, thickset Hungarian girl soldier called Tehia Bamberger, a kitchen hand, a boy from the armory, and two old laborers who were not in the army but made their living by keeping the perimeter weeded.
As they marched they came upon towns and settlements and villages, and wherever they came they sang and delighted the people, especially the children. While the cookies they had brought with them lasted they distributed them free to all the children. When they ran out of cookies they handed out some figs which they had found on a plot of wasteland by the wayside.
Halfway between Lydda and Ramla they were stopped by the military police. The only one to put up any resistance was Private Eliashar, Moshe, who fought with his teeth until he had to be tied up with ropes which in normal circumstances were used for securing loads on trucks. The other travelers all submitted quietly and without remonstrance.
Ernst's son Yotam was sentenced by court-martial to ninety days in the cells. He did away with himself several times in the hope of drawing attention to the terrible problems men failed to grapple with, such as loneliness, war, desires, and bad taste. But each time he was brought firmly back to his senses and the doctors informed him that his efforts were in vain, he must stop faking, he was not mad, he was either pretending or he was an idiot.
Ernst, the Kibbutz Secretary, did not sit idly by. For days on end he traveled from place to place, enlisting the help of influential friends in the party and the Union, old comrades from the glorious 'thirties. His two middle-aged mistresses, Vera and Sara, did not disguise their fury: they maintained in unison that the real culprit was Elisha. And even though they were unable to explain or justify their suspicion, they stopped baking cookies for him. But after a while Ernst succeeded in bring Yotam's case before a higher authority, and since the psychiatrists were now prepared to re-examine the case, Ernst's son Yotam was released from prison and from the army and sent home.
In next to no time the Kibbutz Committee had sent him to a course for youth instructors overseas, in the confident hope that in between lectures he would meet some sensitive girl and get over his trouble. Such cases had cropped up before, and some such solution had always been found.
And indeed Yotam did improve, although he did not change his mind about the need for urgent salvation. And meanwhile he was taught all the various tricks of the trade of a youth instructor, how to win adherents overseas, how to fan enthusiasm and how to channel it into the organized frameworks. He was even taught Spanish. Yotam's self-confidence grew. His acne disappeared. The Hungarian girl soldier Tehia Bamberger suddenly struck him as terribly small, stocky, and thickset.
Eventually Yotam was sent out to Argentina as an instructor. He lived in a commune along with several other young envoys from Israel, and took part in heated discussions which lasted into the early hours. After some months his eyes were opened and he saw the dazzling splendor of the wealthy villas on the outskirts, he saw stunning women, he saw life. And so he joined his maternal aunt, who had settled in Argentina and now exported canned beef all over the world in partnership with her daughter and two other elderly Russian émigrés.
But while Yotam was making progress toward a complete recovery and finding his niche in life, Ernst fell ill with a painful and incurable blood disease.
His gray eyes grew even grayer.
His mind was no longer exercised by Pomeranz's relations with kibbutz society. On the other hand, it sometimes happened in the evenings that the mathematical concept of infinity and the resultant paradoxes aroused his curiosity.
His eyebrow which was perpetually raised in astonishment—how could his interlocutor sink to such depths—now lowered itself to a level with its partner. His expression conveyed something resembling the rest of the hilltops to which Goethe's poem perhaps alluded.
41
He called on Pomeranz, too, occasionally, after the ten o'clock news. He sat with him and listened, and even put one or two questions.
Despite his illness, Ernst was still calm and composed; he showed no sign of alarm. He sat with his host and devoted himself to examining words and expressions, comparing them, weighing them, holding them up to the light, leaving them to soak for twenty-four hours, seeing what and checking how far.
The night which enfolded Ernst and his host, the early summer night which here in Galilee betrays a suffocating, simian quality, did not distract him from the even course he had followed all his life. Even the subject of which he was now trying to learn the rudiments did not lead him astray. He would return to his room before midnight, one of the women—sometimes both of them—would make him a glass of tea, hand him his pills, make up his bed, and in the meantime Ernst would type out a kind of résumé of what he had seen and heard, a kind of logbook or journal. He maintained his balanced style almost to the end, and subjected each word to an almost physical scrutiny before allowing it to take its place on the page. If there are one or two points, particularly in the final entries, where he seems to have lost his equilibrium somewhat, we must remember that he was seriously ill at the time, and was at the mercy of agonizing pain and bitter humiliation. And perhaps also apprehension.
First observation: If one reflects carefully on such concepts as gravity, inertia, or natural law, one simple conclusion emerges at once: the sciences employ metaphors and similes. A scientist would be thoroughly taken aback were his attention drawn to the literal meaning of such phrases as "the earth's pull" or "the attraction of opposites." We are confronted by a choice: either-or.
Second observation: Mass. Energy. Electricity. Magnetic fields. On the other hand: Time. Space. Motion. And again: Will. Suffering. If all these have a "meeting-point" or "junction"—it is music. Without arriving at any conclusion we can report: from this there emerges a highly tempting hypothesis.
Third observation: Let us suppose for the moment that music is energy in a primary, more authentic form, and that it existed before all things and will outlive them all. Music, according to this line of reasoning, is meta-energy. And yet: it is interchangeable with mathematics. From here it is possible to arrive at "thoughts like radar beams." The possibility of trapping the will and suffering in a web of figures, on the supposition that what can be caught in notes can also be caught in numbers. Moreover, the system of reciprocal relations between the dimensions of time, space, and thought—and between these and energy, motion, and rhythm—all these have already been caught in music. If you possess the vital formula you will be able to translate everything into mathematics. Into formal quantitative relationships.
Fourth observation: We have before us, then, a musical scale. Time and will, electricity and image, space, magnetism, suffering, gravity, from now on they are all susceptible of being apprehended synoptically, all part of the same system, key, various modulations, rhythm. Transfiguration of time and matter. Resonant conjunction of the subjective and objective. Let us call this whole system "mathemusics."
Fifth observation: The mathematical theorem which "operates" great galaxies and tiny particles alike, as well as th
e elements of life, is a theorem which can be grasped and expressed in music. The paradox of mathematical infinity is not "solved" but actually disappears: in the musical system it is no longer a paradox, it is no longer in conflict with the fundamental logical forms. One possible practical implication is, for example, the conquest of gravity through the power of music. The dissolution of matter. Even the eradication of bearishness through the dance, to quote his own words. Music, therefore, is melodic mathematics, and whoever has the key is able (in principle) to transform matter into energy, energy into suffering, suffering into time, time into will, will into space, everything into everything else in any order whatever, as everything truly is before the mind breaks it down into different elements, some of which are completely distinct from the others. Music abolishes the distinction and once again everything becomes possible, provided you can master the universal music or—again to use words which are not my own—provided you can hear the song of the stars in their orbits and can reproduce it.
On the subject of magic et cetera Elisha is not prepared to waste a single word, and I am glad. Death is the bitterest modulation of all. Nothing more. Nothing less. A simple change of key. Sixth and last observation: I, Ernst Cohen, being of sound mind, hereby acknowledge the uncertainty of my five previous observations. I admit the possibility that they were written under the pressure of illness, pain, and fear. That they were all written not of my own free will but at the instigation of my present condition which has made me clutch at straws. That everything is a delusion which exists for a time only because the whole world, including the scientific world, is in desperate need of salvation, and therefore is prepared to accept for the time being any clever prophet, any novel formula because of its novelty, until some even more novel formula makes its appearance.
