ON THE GRADUAL FORMULATION OF THOUGHTS WHILE SPEAKING
To R. v. L.*
· · ·
If you want to know something and can’t find it out through meditation, then I advise you, my dear, quick-witted friend, to talk it over with the next acquaintance you happen to meet. It doesn’t have to be a sharp-witted thinker, nor do I mean to imply that you should seek your interlocutor’s counsel: not at all! But rather, to begin with, just tell it to him. I see you’re looking puzzled, and promptly responding that you were taught in childhood not to speak of anything but matters you already fully grasp. But back then you probably directed your curiosity toward others; I want you to speak with the sensible purpose of enlightening yourself, and so, applied differently in different circumstances, both precepts may well be able to subsist side by side. The Frenchman says, l’appétit vient en mangeant,* and this experiential verity still applies if we parody it and say, l’idée vient en parlant.† Often I sit at my desk bent over my law books, and wracking my brain over some twisted disputation, attempt to find the optimal angle from which best to decide the matter. Then I generally stare directly into the light so as to try to illuminate at the brightest point possible the great effort with which my innermost being is gripped. Or else if faced with an algebra problem, I look, sometimes to no avail, for the first equation that expresses the given conditions, and whose subsequent solution can readily be established by simple calculation. But listen, my friend, if I speak of it with my sister, who is seated behind me and busy over her own business, I promptly find the solution that I might never have found in hours upon hours of brooding. It is not as if she literally spelled it out for me; for neither does she know the law books nor has she ever studied Euler or Kästner.‡ Nor is it as if she had led me with insightful questions to the salient point, although this may very well happen often enough. But because I do have some kind of an obscure inkling that harbors a distant relation to that which I am seeking, if only I utter a first bold beginning, as the words tumble out, the mind will, of necessity, strain to find a fitting ending, to prod that muddled inkling into absolute clarity, such that, to my surprise, before I know it the process of cognition is complete. I mix in unarticulated sounds, draw out the conjunctions, add an apposition, even though it may not be necessary, and make use of other speech-stretching rhetorical tricks to gain time enough to hammer out my idea in the workshop of reason. Nothing, meanwhile, is more helpful than a gesture from my sister, as though she wished to interrupt; for my, in any case, already strained mind will only be all the more roused by this external attempt to wrest a train of thought on which it was set, and like a great general, when pressed by changing battlefield conditions, I too will find my intellectual capacity stoked to yet a higher degree of performance. This is how I understand of what use Molière’s chambermaid might be to him; for if, as he maintains, he trusted her judgment as able to inform his own, this would bespeak a modesty I do not believe he possessed. But consider, rather, that, when speaking, we find a strange source of enthusiasm in the human face of the person standing before us; and from a look that signals comprehension of a half-formulated thought we may often draw the expression needed to find the other half. I believe that many a great orator at the moment he opened his mouth did not yet know what he was going to say. But the very conviction that he would derive the necessary inspiration from the situation and the resultant stimulation of his state of mind made him bold enough to trust chance to favor his send-off. I am reminded of Mirabeau’s “thunderbolt” of inspiration with which he made short shrift of the majordomo, who, following the conclusion of the king’s last royal session on June 23, in which the monarch ordered the estates general to disburse, returning to find them still lingering in the council chamber, said majordomo inquired if the king’s order had been received. “Yes,” replied Mirabeau, “we’ve received the king’s order” – I am convinced that in uttering these ordinary opening words, he had not yet conceived of the verbal bayonet thrust with which he concluded: “Yes, indeed,” he repeated, “we heard him” – we can see that he does not yet rightly know what he means to say. “But what empowers you, Sir,” – he went on, and then, suddenly, a rush of heretofore inconceivable concepts rolls off his tongue – “to issue orders to us? We are the representatives of the nation.” – That was just what he needed! “The nation gives orders and receives none.” – and promptly, thereafter, he rose to the pinnacle of presumption: “And let me be perfectly clear, Sir” – and only now does he find the words to express the act of resistance to which his soul stands ready: “You can tell your king that we will not leave our seats, save at the point of a bayonet.” – Whereupon, well pleased with himself, he sank into his chair. – If we try to imagine the majordomo, we cannot picture him on this occasion as anything but altogether at a loss for words, intellectually bankrupt; this, according to a related law of physics, by which, when a body devoid of electrical charge comes in contact with an electrified body, a negative charge is stirred up in it. And just like in the electrified body, in which, due to a reciprocal effect, the electrical charge is subsequently increased, so too, in flooring his opponent did our speaker’s spirit soar to the height of bravado. Perhaps such daring was sparked in the end result by the insolent twitch of the majordomo’s upper lip, or a duplicitous turn of the cuff, which in France can bring about the overthrow of the social order. We read that, as soon as the court official had departed, Mirabeau stood up and suggested: 1) that they immediately declare themselves a National Assembly, and 2) declare themselves invulnerable. For like a Kleistian jar,* having emptied himself, he had once again become neutral, and retreating from his bravado, he suddenly gave vent to a fear of the kings’ authority and a newfound caution. Here we have proof of a remarkable accord between phenomena of the physical and the moral world, which, were one to follow it through, would likewise manifest itself in secondary effects. But let me leave my simile and return to the matter at hand. Lafontaine likewise gives a remarkable example of the gradual completion of a thought from a pressed beginning in his fable “Animals Sick with the Plague,” in which the fox is compelled to offer the lion an apology without knowing what to say. You are surely familiar with this fable. The plague is ravaging the animal kingdom, the lion calls together the mighty ones to reveal to them that if heaven is to be appeased one of their number will have to be sacrificed. There are many sinners among them, the death of the greatest of these will have to save the others from their demise. He bids them therefore to candidly confess their offenses. The lion, for his part, admits, in the pangs of hunger, to having polished off a lamb or two; even dispatched the sheepdog if he came too close; and that, indeed, at greedy moments, he had chanced to consume the shepherd. If no other creature perpetrated greater offenses, he was prepared to die. “Sire,” says the fox, wishing to deflect the storm from himself, “you are too magnanimous. Your noble zeal takes you too far. What is it to throttle a lamb? Or a dog, that ignoble beast? And quant au berger,” * he continues, for this is the thrust of his remark: “on peut dire,” † – although he does not yet know what – “qu’il méritoit tout mal,” ‡ he hazards; and herein finds himself in a fix; “étant” § a poor choice of words, which, however, buys him time: “de ces gens là,” # – and only now does he find the thought that saves his skin: “qui sur les animaux se font un chimérique empire.” ** – And now he proves the donkey the blood-thirstiest of beasts (who eats up every green in sight) and so the most suitable sacrifice, whereupon all leap on him and tear him apart. – Such a discourse is indeed a true thinking-out-loud. The series of ideas and their designations proceed side by side, and the emotional connotations for the one and the other are congruent. Language is as such no shackle, no brake-shoe, as it were, on the wheel of the intellect, but rather a second, parallel wheel whirling on the same axle. It is something else altogether when the intellect is done thinking through a thought before bursting into speech. For then it is obliged to dwell on the mere expression of
that thought, and far from stimulating the intellect, this has no other effect than to let the steam out of excitement. Therefore, if an idea is expressed in a muddled manner it does not at all necessarily follow that the thinking that engendered it was muddled; but it could rather well be that those ideas expressed in the most twisted fashion were thought through most clearly. We often find in a gathering in which lively conversation fosters a fertile intellectual atmosphere that individuals who ordinarily hold back, because of their poor grasp of language, suddenly catch fire, and with a jerking gesture, hold forth, expounding some enigmatic gem. Indeed, once they’ve attracted everyone’s attention, they seem to suggest with embarrassed gestures that they themselves don’t rightly know what they wished to say. It is altogether likely that these ordinarily tongue-tied people thought up something very apt and very clear. But the sudden gearshift involved in the passage of their intellect from the state of thought to that of expression subdued the very burst of mental agitation needed both to grasp the idea and to bring it forth. In such cases, a facility with language is all the more indispensable, so that we may as quickly as possible follow up the idea that we thought, but could not immediately express, with a fitting formulation. And in any case, of two individuals able to think with equal clarity, the one who can speak more quickly than the other will have an advantage, since he can, as it were, send more reinforcements out into the battlefield of discourse. In the examination of lively and educated intellects, we can often see how essential a certain excitement of the mind is, if only to permit the re-evocation of ideas that we have already formulated, especially when, without any introduction, such individuals are made to answer questions like: What is the state? Or: What is property? Or questions of that sort. Had these young people attended a gathering at which a discussion of state or property were already well underway, they would no doubt, through a comparison, abstraction and summation of these concepts, have no trouble finding the definitions. But when the mind has had absolutely no priming, we see our young scholars get stuck, and only a foolish examiner would conclude from this that they do not know the answer. For it is not we who know, but rather a certain state of mind in us that knows. Only ordinary intellects, young people who yesterday memorized the meaning of the political concept of state and will already have forgotten it tomorrow, will have the answer at hand. There is perhaps no worse occasion than a school examination to put one’s best foot forward. And it is precisely because the experience is already so unpleasant and so injurious to our sensitivities, so irritating to the one being examined to be perennially on display, when such a learned horse trader tests us on our knowledge, be it five or six of us, so as to buy or dismiss us. It is so difficult to play a human intellect and tease out its true tone, for the heartstrings are so easily brought out of tune by unskilled hands that even the most seasoned judge of character, the most able practitioner of the midwifery of the mind, as Kant puts it, could, on account of his unfamiliarity with his young charge, do unwitting damage. What generally helps such young people, even the most ignorant, garner a good grade, by the way, is the fact that when the exam is conducted in public the examiners themselves are too ill at ease to allow for a fair assessment. For not only do they frequently feel the indecency of these entire proceedings – one would already be ashamed to demand that someone empty out his purse in front of us, let alone his soul! – but the examiners themselves must also undergo a perilous appraisal of their own intellectual capacity, and they may often thank their lucky stars to emerge from the exam without having laid themselves bare in a manner more shameful perhaps than that suffered by the young lads from the university whom they just examined.
Selected Prose of Heinrich Von Kleist Page 23
