The World Goes On

by László Krasznahorkai

  So its beginning is shrouded in a thick veil of mist, it could have been even before the era of the crib, who knows how early the occasion may arise for the onset of a sensitivity like this; in any case from then on the completely normal curiosity that develops in a person quite early—perhaps as early as the time when, with undeterrable gaze and nodding head, in order to explore something one first sets out on the floor crawling on all fours like a turtle, quite possibly beginning back then in the development of this particular normal curiosity, that is, the direction it took, and even its speed, had already been fundamentally altered within me. My suitability or propensity for melancholy had decreed a totally different path for this entirely normal curiosity of mine, so that I almost have to say this sensitivity had devoured my entirely normal curiosity by always aiming it at the same point, always directing it toward the same place, toward the world’s essence, as I later called it, although in any case the curiosity, if it could still be called that, always came up against this same melancholy, instead of the world’s essence.

  Of course all of this can be stated in simpler terms, for instance, say, you set out and aim your attention toward this essence of the world, where—as still later I believed—angels and demons dwell together, whereupon at the first gesture, the first stirrings of intention to reach this essence, melancholy instantly seizes the soul . . . yes, one may try to put this in simpler terms, but the thing that needs to be said does not thereby become any simpler.

  I do not know what you will make of this lecturer cast in front of you indulging in a confession here, these things are always awkward, I realize, but esteemed gentlemen, esteemed General—and again I apologize if I address you incorrectly—please excuse me this one time if I make this confession contrary to your and my own ideas of good taste, yet I must divulge this vital information: all my life I have lived and continue to live under the cloud of this particular melancholy, with an uncontrollable impulse to look upon the very axis of the world, which, however, lies perfectly concealed behind this melancholy’s all-consuming fog. This has ruined my entire life, and ravages me to this day, since from the very outset it wasn’t as if I had tried to avoid it, to get rid of it, on the contrary, I practically . . . how shall I say this? I hunted for it, even if it wasn’t a hunt in the classical sense of the strong pursuing the weak, but more like the very weak hunting for the very powerful.

  Yes, the axis of the world, Mr. Director-General, my esteemed audience!

  IV

  If I now assert that melancholy is the most enigmatic of attractions, drawing us toward the unreachable center of things, then you will have the right to smile, for you have already heard so much contradictory stuff from this lecturer: that melancholy is on the one hand the ultimate obstacle to seeing, and on the other, it is that yearned-for place in the afternoon dusk, and who knows what else, all heaped one on top of another.

  I believe by now it should be obvious to you that this lecturer can tell you nothing new about the subject of his lecture.

  Indeed, that was the case already at the time when you telephoned me and asked me to give a talk, announcing meaningfully that you would leave the choice of subject up to me, and adding, feel entirely free, whereupon I thought, great, as long as it’s all the same to everyone, I will choose melancholy; but I never gave a thought to how I would acquit myself, because I kept racking my brains: why me, of all people why me?

  And anyway, really, how could I say anything new when there is nothing new under the sun?

  After all, the melancholy I am talking about—and which, for the sake of order, I will now recapitulate—is familiar to all of us, it can launch an assault upon the life it would wreck from three sources. The first and most inexhaustible source is self-pity, not just the kind about which even the playground aphorism claims “it stinks,” but the kind where you pity yourself without any adequate reason. No one is harming you, you are fine, you sit in silence, alone in a desolate park after the rain, or in a cozy room abroad, before dawn or as darkness falls, and this self-pity ambushes and takes you by the rudest surprise, devouring and inevitable, because this is when you realize, without understanding it, that nothing exists.

  A second source is the shift to a minor scale in music. Wherever and whenever I notice this moment, when in some musical composition the major suddenly shifts to minor, say, an A after a C, that music instantly rends my heart, I take it personally, as if it had happened expressly for me, my face becomes distorted by a grimace, as if by a painful pleasure; in a word, I plunge into melancholy and I sit there, listening, thinking, ah, the beauty—when it was only melancholy.

  But the most lasting and most profound melancholy springs from love.

  However I will say no more on this head now, I don’t think any great surprises would ensue if I expatiated upon that theme.

  And so, with your permission, I will now conclude my lecture.

  V

  I am done, although I can’t tell if this was what you expected of this evening, or if I still appear to be the person you had in mind. I am afraid that I am not.

  Anyway, it hardly matters. We went through with it. I have spoken, you have heard me out, no harm was done.

  Gentlemen, my talk is over.

  Your Highness! Esteemed guests!

  This lecture was about melancholy.

  THE SECOND LECTURE

  I

  I have been here before.

  I recognize the building. Just as last time, this evening there is no one standing at the gate, the chandeliers are still unbearably brilliant, the stairs treacherously slippery.

  I recognize a familiar scent here, and once again I have the feeling that just before my arrival an enormous bolt of lightning, herald of a frightful thunderstorm, has struck the place; one can never quite forget this emphatic quality of the atmosphere: acrid, dry, rather sweet, scorching.

  And also . . . I remember all of you as well. I have seen your eyes watching me on that earlier occasion, I have seen you in your seats under the searing brilliance of the chandeliers, all of you attentively leaning forward, staring ahead in this vague scent of lightning, as you wait for the lecture to begin.

  The same thing happened when I was here for the first time. You all sat here exactly the same way and listened to me, taking it all in from exactly the same distance: deeply engrossed, motionless, with a totally inscrutable intensity. And even though quite some time has passed in the interim, what made our first encounter so peculiar hasn’t changed either, since just as I hadn’t known back then who you gentlemen actually were, neither do I know it now, as I stand for the second time on this podium-like structure, from where, as long as I can’t find out what you want of me, then at least I would like to understand why I agreed to come here once again, I, the clueless guest you have so mysteriously elected to invite.

  For now we resume at exactly the same place as the last time. I would never have thought that I would accept your invitation, yet here I am. On the telephone I said, we shall see, please call me some other time, we can discuss the matter then, but of course I was thinking all along, it’s absolutely out of the question, what are these peculiar gentlemen thinking, once was more than enough for me—except this second invitation kept pestering me just as the first one had. You see, once again I kept thinking that surely you must be well aware of what I do, and how little I care for such performances, just as you must be aware that I am far from being an expert on any subject, for there is nothing, nothing whatsoever in my grasp that could be of the slightest interest to others, moreover I swallow the tail-ends of my words, and I talk too fast in a voice that’s too low, almost to the point of rudeness, it’s all babble-babble and mumble-mumble; so what could you want from me, I wondered, full of misgivings. And I had endless questions: What kind of organization was yours that—and I have verified this—doesn’t appear in any registry, not even in a telephone book? And just what was it that led you
to decide upon me of all people, what made you once again choose me, of all people? And why all the mystery about your identity? What was the sense of all this secrecy?

  I could go on but I won’t, this much should be enough to show that everything remains the same as on the first occasion, when I gave a lecture without knowing to whom, while you heard me out and applauded, and then, without a word, somehow simply dispersed throughout the building, as I stepped outside and set out for home, with a detachment of bodyguards behind me, whom I was utterly unable to dissuade from escorting me home—it was in the interest of my own safety, they claimed—in a manifestly professional manner, they kept ten steps to the rear.

  Yes, everything has remained the same, with one exception, namely, this time apparently you are not letting me choose the subject, that is to say, you have asked me to talk about what kind of world I would like to live in.

  Ordinarily what people request or ask makes no difference, my responses instinctively and unfailingly correspond to a request or question that was never made. As a rule, almost every time I begin with an apology about this, but this time I soon realized—in fact immediately after hanging up the telephone—that there would be no need to apologize. I realized that contrary to appearances you did not actually mean to restrict the topic, and I understood that by making a request for this subject—unvoiced by me for such a long time and all the more heartrending for not having been voiced for so long—that did not in the least mean that you wanted to tie my hands regarding the choice of topic, but rather that you were in the truest sense giving me a free hand to decide what I wished to talk about, since your asking me what kind of world I would like had in fact meant to convey that all of you gentlemen here were most concerned about the world—if I heard you correctly, what the world ought to be like.

  I cannot deny that for several days following our telephone conversation I kept brooding about this astoundingly naive, one might say childishly simple, wording of this request embodying your particular interest: did this mean that you, for reasons unknown to me, imagined yourselves to be in a position where you could decide that, very well, the world was like this, but now it would be like that?

  I cannot deny that this possibility had occurred to me, but afterward I quite decisively banished the thought, for in the last analysis I cannot believe that—bearing in mind your austere, unflinching, and almost alarmingly rigorous attention—I now find myself in the company of dreamers, nor do I believe there is the slightest need to elucidate (for you, of all people) how unbearable the idiocy of woolgathering is, given the current state of the world.

  Realizing that I was on the wrong track, I dropped the notion, and gave up trying to decipher the actual meaning of your proposed topic; instead—and in no small degree swayed by the waves created inside me by the unresolved actual content of the topic you requested—I asked myself, what if, contrary to my original intentions, I nonetheless still came here once again? and, staring in front of me with the kind of bemused expression fitting the occasion, I thought all right, if I did come here one more time, what topic could I still talk about?

  Could it be love? I wondered.

  No, then it might as well be death!

  At first I was sitting on the bed, near the telephone, then on a chair by the window, mulling it over, still not looking out the window (asking: love?), but then staring straight ahead (asking: death?), still wearing that bemused sort of expression suitable for the occasion.

  It would be best—and here I stood up—to talk about revolt, about what makes an existing situation so intolerable.

  I sat back down on the bed and thereafter my decision remained unchanged, so that this is what I will talk about tonight.

  But before I begin I have a request to make.

  When I entered this auditorium I noticed that the gentleman over there . . .locked the door behind me.

  I do not like to lecture in a locked auditorium.

  So I ask for your understanding . . .

  And now, let us begin!

  Honorable audience, most esteemed gentlemen! The question is the following: what can be said on the subject of revolt?

  To begin with, please listen to a story.

  II

  In the summer of Nineteen ninety-two I was at the Zoologischer Garten station, a hub of the Berlin subway system, waiting for a train from the direction of Kreuzberg. The place for the front end of the arriving train, the spot where the arriving train was to pull up to, was—here as at all other such platforms—marked by the placement of a giant mirror installed on an aluminum pole, along with a variety of signal lights: this was the point where each train driver had to pull up with his train, while during a red light no train could move past this point. Thus far and not a jot farther, announced the mirror and the signal light attached below it, establishing the rule of orderly traffic upon a train’s arrival, but this did not mean that the platform itself ended there; no, the platform itself ran past this signal and came to an end about a meter and a half beyond it. Thus a twice forbidden zone existed between the mirror and the actual end of the platform, from where the train and its driver were prohibited in the previously described manner, while the waiting passengers, among whom I too now stood, were doubly excluded in a most absolute sense, for even though the clear-cut and sensible traffic rules did not refer to us, and we were unaffected by the regular alternation of arrivals at the red light and departures upon the green, for us there was a transverse yellow line on the pavement at the foot of the mirror, as well as the prohibitory text in small letters on a sign on the back wall, and finally, as the internal mirroring of this line and this sign, a flawlessly functioning instinct that accepted this prohibition once and for all and thus shut us out twice over at the very least.

  This was in August. I was waiting for a train from the direction of Kreuzberg, but the train was a bit late. I was observing the crowd of carefree passengers around me, and at first noticed only a certain tension in these so-called carefree passengers. I recognized the cause when I—probably the last in this tensely carefree crowd to notice—at long last, I too did notice that in the space demarcated by the yellow line, the space prohibited by the sign on the wall, there was somebody now standing in that forbidden zone.

  An old clochard stood there on the platform urinating upon the rails, half turning his back to us, and somewhat hunched over, as one pained by this urination and these rails.

  The particular instinct that prohibits setting foot in just this area doesn’t only prohibit setting foot in it, but erases it from consciousness as it were—so that now when this consciousness suddenly became aware that an entire zone existed between the mirror and the end of the platform, it immediately announced: if some pedestrian were to claim that such a zone was surely superfluous from the viewpoint of traffic technology and utterly senseless from the viewpoint of traffic safety, it—that is, this consciousness—would protest most resolutely and reply that this was all a mistake; the perpetuation and maintenance of such areas has a significance with most far-reaching consequences. Any forbidden zone of this sort, such as ours here at Zoologischer Garten, not only explicitly communicates its unavoidable randomness, but offers exemplary proof that the regulations of our human world (including the simplest ones) are not just unfathomable but unchallengeable. These regulations, continued our consciousness, even the least significant ones, are impossible to separate from their invisible corpus; laws such as these—even the mildest ones—become visible solely when they are violated, and can be apprehended in operation only through a certain element of scandal, that is, via the introduction of a certain degree of danger; and to introduce danger into the process while they are operating is equivalent to deciding to launch an attack—no matter how mild—against ourselves, meaning the urination had to stop, this awareness commanded, the clochard had to go, the scandal must be nipped in the bud, and the regulation lifted out of the corpus into the light of day�
�in this case the prohibition to enter an area a meter and a half wide—it must sink back into that corpus, and the whole system must go on functioning truly invisibly, as far as I am concerned, and here the consciousness pointed at itself.

  This was, therefore, more or less the substance of the prevailing mood in the ranks of the assembled passengers on this early afternoon in August, and I thought that this would be about all for this early afternoon, that is to say, when the urination stopped this forbidden zone together with the clochard would, as far as our consciousness was concerned, slowly sink back and get lost in the workaday obscurity; except at this moment on the other side, on the platform across from ours, designated for train traffic running in the opposite direction—that is for those members of the public traveling toward Kreuzberg—two policemen suddenly appeared, and with this the entire early afternoon in August, as usually happens the world over whenever the police show up, altered radically, at a single stroke.