The Island of Second Sight

by Albert Vigoleis Thelen

  By inquiring as to the “deeper meaning” of the interior architecture of our classroom, a query obviously predicated on the assumption that profundity is an a priori characteristic of all things German, Hutchinson handed me a cue that set me off on the slippery slope of mystification. This was a fortunate choice of terms. It served me as a pilot. I followed my inspiration of the moment, which now bore connotations of watery depths. It was the same train of thought that had granted me a vision of the snorkel, the self-inflating brassiere for flat-chested ladies, or the self-erasing rubber collar for men with a compulsion for cleanliness.

  “My dear friend,”—this is approximately how I began my confabulation—“you may wish to ascribe it to my inborn sense of modesty that I have hitherto not revealed a certain aspect of my personality. “I am”—and here I bowed to him—“the inventor of the Single-Chair Method, a technique that does not yet bear my name for the simple reason that it has yet to be publicized. No one knows about it. I myself regard it as too premature, too poorly systematized, too loosely conceptualized, and too scantily tested using significantly large samples of unpredictable student reaction to inform the scholarly world of pedagogy of its advantages. For the moment I am limiting myself to small-scale statistical and pedagogical-psychological experiments. You are experiencing the last of these; soon I shall proceed beyond these low-level investigations. Now you, sir, as an open-minded representative of the scholarly world overseas, are particularly welcome as a participant in my experimentation, unencumbered as you are by shoddy and obsolete European models of pedagogy. It was Heaven itself, and not the bookseller on the Borne, that has sent you to me and my naked miniature lecture hall. The book dealer has served merely as the blindly obedient agent of a Providence that is intent upon encouraging the higher development of pedagogical methods inspired by Pestalozzi.”

  The youth listened intently. His green eyes took on the glow that appears in the eyes of children when they approach the shooting gallery at the fair. His interest was all the greater since his synthesizing American mind was taking in my Single-Chair Method as if it were the strains of lovely music. He remained all eyes and ears.

  Now what were the basic principles of this technique? “Listen. Every object, or rather every thing in the world that surrounds us is a world in itself. Speaking solely of the field of linguistics, each new language that a person learns comprises a world in, and of course also of, itself. Today we speak quite generally of a language’s ‘world view’—in your country, too, I would suppose?”

  “Indeed we do, although we have another term…”

  “‘Behavior,’ right? Very good. These two worlds, or to phrase it in Aristotelian fashion, these two categories…” My pupil gave his nodding assent to this lofty gobbledygook—Princeton had not outfitted him with the means to unmask me as an incompetent charlatan. “If allowed to meet, these two categories come into conflict with one another, which unfailingly occurs whenever a pupil confronts a new thing, which is to say, a new world.”

  Hutchinson had a crystal-clear understanding of all of this. I continued:

  “From my many years of experience as a linguist”—still today I am amazed at the cheek with which I uttered such a bare-faced lie to my pupil and to myself, but it just had to be—“I have come to realize that what can best improve the receptivity of a pupil is a progressive sublimation of his environment. In Germany, as a student of Max Scheler, I first arrived at comprehension—insofar as anything was comprehensible in seminars with this philosopher—that the object sphere must be torn forcefully from our circumconscious—not our subconscious, mind you—if we are to arrive at pure perception. In other words, my friend: the less environment there is in a classroom, the smaller will be the coefficient of distraction in the learning process, whereas at the same time we must also acknowledge that the pupils themselves constitute an environment, the so-called meta-environment, which in turn is subject to its own laws. Up to now scholars have avoided this complex state of affairs like a hot potato. And yet we must strive toward a Jaspersian absolutization of anonymity if we are to prevent the universal pedagogical possibilities slumbering within my method from being tossed out of the bath water along with the baby.”

  I fed my pupil this and similar pseudoscientific balderdash with grandiloquence, at certain points stammering and at a loss for the clearest phraseology, as if groping for words to express the ultimately inexpressible. It all made sense to the young man. He was now quite excited; he took quick, deep puffs on his cigarette and nervously flicked the ashes into the cuffs of his neatly tailored trousers. The climax of his feverish enthusiasm—I estimated it at about 102°F—came when he leaped up from the single chair that had lent its name to my system. Caught up in the momentum of my own mischief, about to perceive a kernel of truth amid all my nonsensical blather, and starting to give credence on my own part to the parthenogenic origin of my ecological fantasies, I reared back to deliver the crowning declaration. I summoned the wise Peripatetics from the arcades of the Hellenic Lyceum to our miserable emigrant lodgings on Barceló Street. These mild-mannered strollers from Aristotle’s school of philosophy had excellent reasons, or so I claimed as I myself paced to and fro in front of my pupil, for holding their colloquies—in such sharp contrast to the “lectures” given at today’s universities—while ambling through the public galleries rather than sitting in enclosed spaces where one’s eyes would tend to focus—nay, would tend to remain fixed—on certain objects, causing the mind finally to cloud over and shut down if it had not already been occluded by the environment itself. All of this has implications, I added, for an entirely new approach to Classical Antiquity.

  Hutchinson smoked more and more hectically, like a circus monkey that has snapped up a burning butt.

  Over the decades, I explained, over the anguished decades of my struggle towards knowledge and the ultimate perfection of my inchoate ideas, through years of misunderstanding and even hostility, I had decided to remove gradually all superfluous objects from the space in which I offered instruction, with the same methodical care as a zoologist might exercise as he organizes his experimental station, thereby reducing the hazards of “environmental squeeze,” one classic victim of which, I added incidentally, was my own humble person. I had made a beginning by stripping my lodgings of pictures on the walls and bric-a-brac on the shelf behind the sofa. “Surely you now understand, Mister Hutchinson, why it is that in the monks’ cells—you recall yesterday’s discussion of the origins of the cult of the cloistered life—or in the so-called ‘lodges’ of the desert anachorites during the early phases of the monastic movement, the eyes that search for God must focus solely on naked walls? These sainted, or as good as sainted, men learned how to come into the presence of God, and only of God. The noted Saint Simeon Stylite was the one who, sitting and praying on his famous pillar, rid himself most radically of the environmental encumbrances that we are talking about.”

  Unfamiliar with early Christian literature, the young man told me that he would like to learn more about the fascinating ascetic personages of the Wild East. I promised to fill him in at a later date, but quickly inserted an account of the historical anti-Vigoleis, the pious Roman deacon Arsenius, renowned for his erudition and appointed by Emperor Theodosius as tutor for his son Arcadius. Theodosius was in such awe of this priest, who was reputed to be of saintly character, that the prince was allowed to receive instruction from him only while standing upright. Arcadius, already the recipient of the title Augustus, regarded this decree as a humiliation and sought to eliminate the palace pedagogue. Arsenius escaped princely vengeance by fleeing into the desert. In this story the roles were reversed, I explained, adding that Mister Hutchinson had nothing to fear. I had no intention of doing away with him. “But please, remain seated. Now where were we?”

  “All the pictures,” he said in English.

  “Oh yes, all the pictures had to go…” So then my walls were completely bare. The next things to be jettisoned were th
e drapes, the pipe holders, the bridal wreaths, my diplomas, the cuckoo clocks; and then the chests of drawers, the stands for the flower pots—everything flew out the window. My young friend could surely understand that this process did not occur without instances of controversy. But in order to maintain the integrity of the German spirit I assured him that my enraged erstwhile landlady on Klinkhammer Street in Münster, who sued me for “environmental vandalism and property damage,” was a shameful exception to the rule.

  Here in this room and at this very time, I now explained, I had again taken extreme measures, acting, as it were, as a Simeon/Vigoleis in this century of ours that shows so little inclination to asceticism. Continuing with legendary comparisons I said that at the birth of my radical pedagogical method I had performed a Caesarian section. “In this space, dear Hutchinson, you will be confronting only yourself, your chair, and your teacher. I ask you to convince yourself that your chair and your teacher are the sole remaining necessary props for this system of teaching. It is my hope that in the course of time even these two annoying objects can be sublimated, so that we can eventually attain a Paradisiacal setting for modern linguistic pedagogy—Adam prior to the creation of woman, given over exclusively to monologue.”

  The historic era we are living in, I explained in concluding this private tutorial, was no longer tolerant of the ambulatory method of teaching and learning. This was particularly true of thickly populated areas where tramways and subways effectively deprived peripatetic candidates of the necessary ascetic environment.

  The American, accustomed to traffic accidents in his home country, agreed that this was a perilous state of affairs.

  And finally: taking notes on your knee, a technique enforced by my method—the youth became quite skilled at this, like a born aphorist—was by no means to be regarded as such an inconvenience as it might at first appear. It was, after all, the pupil’s own knee that would serve as the writing surface. With this sophistical capstone I closed the final overarching vault of my Single-Chair Method.

  The American, who is now doubtless well past 39, slapped his thigh with glee and gave me a round of unphilosophical applause. Then he jumped up and began a long harangue, forgetting that our peripatetic lingua franca was supposed to be German. He would immediately have to send a report on my method to a professional journal in the States. He would broadcast my name in the American scholarly community, and I myself would have to cross the ocean and introduce my method at American colleges.

  “Just a moment, my friend! Your perceptiveness reflects your overall receptivity to the general precepts of our Western culture. But we must not inhibit the growth of our pedagogical seedlings by premature publication. We are not insured against the hailstones of stupidity. My method still has certain points of weakness: its cranial fontanelle hasn’t yet closed. What is more, I myself intend to write a monograph on the Single-Chair Method. It will be published by a university press in Münster with a foreword by Rudolf Pannwitz, who has already declared himself in favor of my system. Afterwards, my friend, you will be at complete liberty to report to the world concerning your meetings with me and my chair.”

  Our hour-long tutorial had stretched into two or three hours, and we were both at full speed. The young man donned his fur coat with panache and returned to the Hotel Príncipe, and then he came back regularly for more lessons, each time likewise with panache. He learned with extreme rapidity. Our conversations dealt with increasingly wide-ranging and complex subjects; no topic was too intimidating for us—which is of course what doing philosophy is all about. Yet as if we had made a tacit agreement, the pedagogical system that gave rise to these successful colloquies never again came up for discussion. We were like lovers who keep their secret to themselves, like conspirators, like mystagogues who do not need so much as a twinkling of the eye to keep the magic alive.

  To lend some kind of purpose to our free-wheeling digressions, we decided that we should select a text, on the principle that the student could best reach his goal by a process of reading and interpretation. I suggested Schopenhauer’s “Aphorisms on Wisdom,” for one thing aiming to show the American that there were German philosophers who wrote in a style that was readily accessible, if not fully comprehensible, to anyone. In addition, Schopenhauer’s subjects touched on ultimate truths, which meant that we would not be setting limits to our peripatetic urges. I recommended the pocket-sized Reclam volume, in case Hutchinson was not prepared to purchase all of Schopenhauer in the Grand Duke Wilhelm Ernst Edition.

  With this practical suggestion, my attempt at educating the future student of Jaspers and Heidegger came to an end. George Brewis Hutchinson never again found his way to the Street of the General. Our single chair occupied its space in a more orphaned condition than ever before. Likewise orphaned was Vigoleis’ wallet, and this was a cause of concern to both of us. What had happened? Had my promising pupil burst a vein in his lung? Had he engaged in less intellectual pursuits and received a fatal stab wound at the hands of a femme fatale? In common erotic matters the fellow was not choosy, but he was still insufficiently familiar with the customs of a country where a beautiful lady’s stocking could conceal a dagger. Had his father’s bank cut off his allowance overnight? We pondered these questions intensely, but my pupil remained among the missing.

  This is what had taken place: from our apartment to the bookstore was but a stone’s throw, hardly a three-minute walk across the Apuntadores and past Doña Angelita’s little shop where Hutchinson liked to stop, buy a little something, and admire the pretty clerk. Still glowing from our intellectual ruminations, still walking on air from our tutorial, the youth entered the bookstore and ordered Schopenhauer in the thin-paper Insel Edition, bound in leather. This was, incidentally, the largest order ever placed at that establishment. The owners beamed, and inquired whether their customer was satisfied with his teacher.

  The American, too, was beaming. Satisfied? Why, he was at a loss for words to express his gratitude for having referred him to such a unique pedagogue. There was surely no more fitting referral on the whole island, or in the whole world! This Single-Chair Method was the wave of the future. Hamilton, Jacotots, Berlitz, Toussaint-Langenscheidt, Gaspey-Otto-Sauer—clumsy amateurs, all of them! The modest abode on General Barceló would in future times carry a plaque that said, VIGOLEIS TAUGHT HERE.

  Apparently it took a while before the three booksellers suspected a fly in the ointment. Then they must have burst out in gales of laughter, which the American completely failed to understand until they explained everything down to the last detail. This inventor of a pioneering new method of language instruction was a highly imaginative writer of verses, a failure at everything he undertook, not to say a clever con man. As for his teaching method, it was named with his typical wittiness after the single piece of furniture that Don Vigo owned, because he was living in very dire straits. Things would get even worse for him if he didn’t soon declare loyalty to the Führer. Happily, though, there were still ways and means to remind a German living in foreign climes of his patriotic duty. We’re all familiar with this now-broken record, one that is getting glued back together again as Vigoleis writes down these words.

  According to reports, the American broke down in tears. First of all, because his dream had been shattered, and also because he no doubt felt sorry for me. He had indeed taken a strong liking to me. His character was soft and as yet unspoiled by his encounter with Europe, and thus my joke affected him all the more bitterly. In the midst of his tearful anger and impotence, he showed them his father’s checkbook, explaining that he was a millionaire. Just a single word from me, and he could have furnished my entire apartment, easily ten times the value of the single-chair classroom. But now this! “What a shame!” He could never look me in the face again, I had betrayed his confidence, I had exploited his thirst for knowledge and, worse still, his ignorance. He felt just generally ashamed, of himself and of me. His world was collapsing…

  Let us put it more calml
y: the only thing that was collapsing was our borrowed chair.

  Thus far the report from one of the three German bookstore gentlemen.

  I do not know what later became of this duped hero of my recollections. In any case he left the island immediately in disgust. Did he remember his teacher on the General’s Street, holding forth as he paced back and forth in front of him? Did he later sit at the feet of Jaspers and Heidegger, those two luminaries of decidedly non-improvised existentialism, and listen raptly as they held forth on “the being-at-hand and being-on-hand of our state of being thrown into the world”? Without any doubt, my private seminar was more digestible. On the other hand, our chair had collapsed under my disciple, just as if it were the three-legged one from the House of Sureda.

  “Few people write,” says Schopenhauer in his treatise on writing and good style, “in the way an architect builds, by sketching out a preliminary plan and thinking through every detail. Most writers go about their work as if playing dominoes. In this game, one piece fits another partly by intention, partly by chance. And that is how their sentences and their context follow one upon another. They hardly ever know what the finished product will look like, or what it will all mean. Many of them honestly don’t know, and they write the way coral polyps construct their colonies, by adding sentence to sentence and clause to clause, according to some inscrutable divine design…”

  The coral polyp that constructed our insular destiny, setting storey upon blooming storey in such a way that we often wondered what it all meant—this metaphorical animal finally located a table to add to our chair. That is to say, it caused me to locate one, and I paid for it with money that I amassed by my fraudulent career as a Führer, working now more crassly and angrily than ever as a result of the triumph of that other Führer. It was a remarkable table, and not only because of its origins. It served as a writing surface for the poet Marsman, who later became my great literary friend, and also for other notables of Dutch literature, all of whom wrote immortal words on it. It was used by the imperial-democratic Count Harry Kessler for part of his memoirs, and by the transhistorical Count Hermann Keyserling for a postcard sent to his wife, who was being held hostage by Goebbels inside his own “School of Wisdom.”