“The fact that until now the resentment of all resentment has chosen the more comfortable road of having does not mean in the least that it may not, once all necessary conditions are met, embark on the road of seeming. Then an Anselmus could transform the entire world, as if at the stroke of a magic wand, into a vast game of words and illusions. The Realm of Stupidity would be wiped from the face of the earth but, alas, only to be replaced by another empire, even more odious, the Realm of Seeming. You, I, and all who exist would cease to be—we would find ourselves struggling for all eternity in a thousand-faced void spawned by the imagination of some Anselmus . . .”
THE MORAL LAW
THE MORAL law—Zacharias Lichter believes—is given to us neither to be respected nor to be infringed, but above all simply to be law: the criterion of criteria, the pure core out of which arise, like emanations, the possibilities of fulfilling or defiling it. Its essence is one with its ideal form. People are not, in practice, “moral” or “immoral.” Before the law we are all immoral in an absolute sense, and the supreme moral act is the consciousness of this state, with endless anguish as its inescapable consequence.
To uphold or deny the law is a purely theoretical option, having nothing to do with life as it flows, irreversibly, through ever-changing words.
Moral law can only be recognized, and that through a perilous mental illumination that may blind the spirit. It can even be understood in its terrifying abstraction, through a kind of grace. But to apply it is impossible.
Impossible because, when applied, the law alienates itself from its essence; because the results of its “application” can only invoke (but not embody) the law, can only empty it of its substance, reducing it to the state of a name that may name anything.
Every law is fierce; the moral law is the fiercest of all: more severe than the gaze of angels; clearer and more frightening in its silent inflexibility; harsher: it does not forgive and does not punish; more inhuman, because it is the source of our freedom to be anywhere except near to it.
As human beings we are condemned to strive to fulfill the law but, alas!, without the right to affirm our submission or nonsubmission to it. Because in either case we would merely falsify it, complying with or rejecting not the law itself, but its phantasm, an illusory shadow.
We are given only a few rules, some more or less autonomous systems of rules. Consciously or not, we choose those pertaining to the game we want to or are able to play.
But the thorny and barren path that leads to the law begins only when the game is denied by the very rigor with which we respect its rules: and this is a modality of irony.
Consciousness of the law implies the destructive work of irony.
Verily, the law reveals itself only to those who, through irony, discover its absence from all systems of rules (whatever their pretenses).
That is all that can be said about the Law.
FROM THE POEMS OF ZACHARIAS LICHTER
CARDINAL POINTS
Fractured gears of Ecstasy
at sunset white pyres at sunrise
at midnight
at midday
over the sun’s eye a chalk lid
from the void’s merry-go-round scream the nameless ill
dwarves with huge heads turn somersaults in dust
cripples blow into old trumpets like angels
but for us time is ever scarcer
more traceless than the arrow of the scream
than the somersaults of dwarves in wind-scattered dust
than the trumpets’ ta-ra-ra
more self-less than each
of our own selves
more sense-less
than the fair with snake-women and ancient clowns
time ever closer to no-time and to no-love
with sun’s eye snuffed out beneath the chalk lid
with monsters who wish to make us laugh
or cry and forget
the fractured gears of Ecstasy
at sunset the white pyres at sunrise
at midnight
and at midday.
EPILOGUE: ZACHARIAS LICHTER AND HIS BIOGRAPHER
“I THOUGHT you loved me”—Zacharias Lichter once said to his would-be biographer, having just learned of his project. “But in fact you only love yourself, for you are writing about yourself, not me. You put yourself in my stead, like the liar and the nonentity you are, for you wish to rediscover in me your own misery and weakness, to ennoble them, to bathe them in the burning, barren atmosphere surrounding my being.
“You are worthless: a worm, a traitor, a criminal. But I do not fear you! For in mocking me, you mock yourself. Spattering me with dirt, you spatter yourself. Denying me, you deny yourself.
“And now, may I ask what moved you to write my biography? Don’t you see that my ‘biography’ is the last thing that could possibly be written? If I knew, at least, that you meant to write a fictional life of Zacharias Lichter, so be it! Or a comedic history, serene, Don-Quixotic, naive, larger than life. Unfortunately, however, you suffer from the malady of serious-mindedness. You carefully avoid all ordinary emotions and find laughter vulgar. I predict that the biography you write will be serious and boring, cold, perhaps awkwardly ironic; something fitting only for yourself. Yet I have no right to prevent you. In fact, as you write about yourself, you may eventually manage to understand some small part of me. Then you will despise yourself, you will disown yourself, and perhaps you will feel in your estranged flesh, now icy and dying, the scorching heat of God’s flame.”
The one who had set about recording the life and opinions of Zacharias Lichter realized he could no longer continue. He felt ashamed. He understood that he had betrayed his hero and in doing so betrayed himself. He understood that for the prophet—though Lichter seemed unaware of this—his book posed an even greater danger than Doctor S.’s monstrous desire to analyze him—that it deprived him of his final chance to free himself from the dreadful prison of signification. And since he loved Zacharias Lichter a terrible sadness, an icy regret settled upon his soul, a sense of having done something irreparable.
Lichter’s face had become almost transparent.
“All that being said”—he resumed in a calmer tone of voice—“and to be consistent, I should also be grateful to you. No matter what you write in your book, the simple fact of its existence obliges me to face my own failure, and even my own death . . .”
Lichter’s biographer wondered inwardly if he should burn his manuscript. As if guessing his thoughts, Lichter addressed him in a voice that seemed to come from great distance: “Once things have reached this point, there is nothing to be done. Your book will exist, even if no one reads it, even if you burn it. Your sin was to write it, my sin to inspire it—and such sins cannot be erased. They can only be acknowledged, in pain and fear. And this acknowledgment will only take place when I become you and you become me, at the moment I set about writing your biography. And although I have not read a thing you’ve written about me, I am sure that what I will write then about you will be identical: word for word. A book in which God’s flame itself, instead of burning, will freeze all things it touches.”
The Life and Opinions of Zacharias Lichter Page 12
