The Dedalus Book of German Decadence

by Ray Furness

  ‘Little Baron, how delightful to see you!’ the regulars would exclaim whenever his bent figure hesitantly approached the table where they were eating. Now the moment was come for them to release the unbearably high tension of their dammed-up sadism into a harmless earth wire, to show off their superiority in front of the tipsy ladies. Purses were opened, crown coins glinted in the light of the ceiling lamp, for all to see. The atmosphere was electrified by the orgasm with which the strong and secure are overcome when confronted with the visible frailty of someone worse off than themselves

  ‘Be a good chap, Little Baron, and do the bird for us.’

  Then Blaugast would grasp his nose with the fingers of his left hand, stick his right arm like a beak through the gap made by his elbow and hop around squawking. It was a feeble, ridiculous sound, a gobbling whine, that gave added spice to many a tipsy customer’s evening glass. It was a screech that flew up and grated against iron bars and other obstacles, dying away in a hoarse cooing that was trampled underfoot by the braying laughter of his audience. That was the ‘Little Baron’s’ speciality. Tolerated by indulgent landlords and prized by wags as a poultry impersonator, he made his twitching way, a pedlar peddling his own degradation, through those realms where boredom was ever ready to pounce, and which he seemed heaven-sent to repel.

  In the night clubs, the private rooms of wine-bars and clipjoints they went even further. The regulars there had recognised the tragic connection which still linked this wreck of a human being to the depraved lust and intemperance of his sex. As the champagne corks popped and modesty lost its way in the prison of drunkenness, the waiter, on the look-out for any service he could render, captured the wandering beggar outside the door of the joint and brought him to his customers. The half-naked women in the arms of their gentlemen amused themselves with the bewildered ‘Little Baron’. It sometimes happened, after he had downed a generous number of free schnapps, that he was engaged, for a fixed sum, to masturbate onto a plate. His groans and his ejaculation produced roars of delight. That was the second speciality which brought Blaugast renown, and which, when he woke up on the following morning, set a barbed-wire fence round even the most shabby of paradises, which caused him sorrow and inescapable torment.

  One evening, under the veranda of a popular brewery, where the sooty acacias of a sand-strewn courtyard tried to create the illusion of rural solitude and back-to-nature freshness, he came across Wanda and her cronies. They were amorous husbands, drapers from the stores of the old town who, in her company, were frittering away the last remains of their respectability on their way to bankruptcy. One of them, in whom the malty strong ale had lit a spark of self-knowledge, grasped Blaugast by the lapel as he tried to make his escape.

  ‘Tell me I’m a swine, Little Baron.’

  Blaugast staggered. The balance, which his ailing legs could only maintain in a steady shuffle, was disturbed by the grasping fist of the draper, and he stumbled against the edge of the table. He squinted up at the bloated face of his assailant from beneath defiantly dishevelled eyebrows.

  ‘Don’t be a coward, say it right out. I’m a swine, aren’t I, Little Baron?’

  Blaugast bit on his tongue. Face to face with Wanda, who was subjecting him to a vengeful scrutiny, a rabid fury at his tormentor rose in his gorge. The one who had grabbed him by the lapel was lounging in his chair, waist-coat undone, baring his crooked fangs, giving off a stench of pickled fish and radish. His contempt for the criticism, which he invited loudmouthed, rendered him invulnerable.

  ‘Leave the fellow alone’, snapped Wanda viciously, squashing her cigarette-end in the pool in her saucer. ‘The old goat’s become rather unsavoury since he’s taken to tossing off what’s left of his brains onto night-club plates.’

  The reference to the shame that was dragging him down into the bottomless depths, came sharp and violent, like a whiplash. A curtain was rent, sheaves of light sparked, and Blaugast saw a bright light.

  ‘Of course you are a swine,’ he said to the drunk, in a turmoil. ‘You’re all a bunch of swine, curs and bitches.’

  A roar of applause greeted his answer. Snorts of laughter erupted from swollen bellies, garbage bubbled up to the surface, sluggish and scalding hot.

  Only Wanda remained sour-faced, furious, indignant. ‘And what are you? A cesspool prince on official business. A man who cleans shoes for whores -’

  Blaugast turned and left. His rebellion against the false powers to which he was in thrall and which befouled his life, was only brief. The gap in the fire which had opened up before him, so that the twisted grimace on the face of existence had become visible through the play of the flames, narrowed to disappear completely. His back hurt and he could hear darkness breathing audibly. A few tables further on a pack of Czech students greeted him with howls of delight and demanded ‘the bird’. Nerves in tatters, shipwrecked and clutching onto a spar, weakened by deprivation and terrified by relentless powers, he obeyed and did as they demanded. The man Wanda had spoken to followed him and penetrated the buzzing in his ears as far as the edge of his soul.

  ‘Cesspool prince!’ came the quavering old mans voice from his swollen lips.

  […]

  Sometimes, in the cool corner of a shopping arcade, he would raise his fixed gaze from the ground and suddenly find himself face to face with photographs advertising a thé dansant or a ladies’ bar with a jazz band, showing women in all sorts of provocative poses. His chin would lose its connection with his upper jaw and his mouth would gape wide.

  On such days he would go to the parks on the far side of the Moldau bridge, where the secluded quiet of the paths assured solitary mornings. Only occasionally would the step of a stray passer-by crunch across the gravel. Red-cheeked schoolgirls dashed past, the black-and-white costumes of anaemic governesses shimmered through the leaves. Blaugast stood in the shadow of a bend overhung with luxuriating bushes. Like an animal, whose deranged instincts implanted uncontrollable actions, he lay in wait for his prey. Whenever the bright red of a sunshade, a swirling skirt or a chequered scarf announced the approach of a woman, he would step out of his niche and expose himself. Arms outstretched, pale and infirm, he stood there motionless, barring passage. The horrified woman’s flight, her hysterical fear, her horror at the sight of him gave him relief.

  That was the last pleasure he enjoyed in his collapse, a game from the underworld, which was gradually asserting its power over him. The thorny road of his destiny, the fruit of his passion were lying outspread, were ripe for the end.

  Extracts from Paul Leppin: Blaugast: Ein Roman aus dem alten Prag Langen/Müller, Munich/Vienna, 1984.

  (First published; originally intended for publication

  1933).

  Peter Hille: Herodias. Novellette

  Guilty silence!

  A delicate, alabaster-yellow finger thrusts itself into blue-black locks, an insatiable, knowing gaze pours out.

  Before her hatred rises up the wild, handsome figure of the zealot faun, whom they call the Preacher of the Wilderness.

  Adonis!

  Within her, a rage of Venus finds its own justification.

  The red lamp, stabbing, stabbing, stinging, stinging.

  And the air as oppressive, as hot as the grass-sultry blood in her body.

  ‘If he will make me suffer, me, the Princess, then he must die.’

  ‘O John, John!’

  A bath; precious ointments.

  Intoxicating she was as she rose and went into the bright morning light, and full of desire as she went out of the bright morning light, bending into a dungeon full of the dread of destiny.

  Well, you obstinate man, still the hard, strange words of penitence directed at the Jewess, when before you stands nothing but Roman reason and Greek manners?

  Still the same obsessions under that tangled mane? And I, I want your sighs, your tower of strength, and the quivering of your powerful heart, you man apart, chaste and solitary. I want you to live for me, do you hear? Is that
so hard?

  And she smiles.

  And John, a tall figure ripened to sinewy strength by the desert sun, rising from the fetterstone at the entrance of the daughter of the royal house, speaks in deep, soft, forceful tones, ‘Princess, you know that there is no contempt within me, for love touches me, and in return for your affection, wild and foolish though it be, I would give you the best I can wish: salvation. May my voice, the rough voice that prepares the way of the Lord, claw the frippery and wantonness from you, so that at last your soul may see the light and demand salvation and accept the sign of cleansing from me.

  For I would make you a boundless gift of the highest thing I acknowledge in myself, my prayer, and prostrate myself with it day and night before the throne of God, that your grace might grow!’

  ‘There you go again, preaching your baptism of repentance! Just wait, I’ll send my own preacher, my love, the red preacher – the executioner!

  Until then, my darling, fare thee well.’

  And Samson was avenged of his Delilah.

  An Aphrodite of a landscape rose in fragrance from round the pool and the sun breathed through the foliage, warm and coy, like a bride nestling against a happily beating breast.

  Merrily mocking flowers, odoursome rising sap, ripe blue air!

  Everything received its due – and she? Reduced to wretchedness for such a rough recluse!

  Full of determination, she went in.

  Now she wanted peace – a clean cut! Cut off the member that was irritating her, because of the hostile refusal in the mind of the man to whom it was attached! –

  Puzzled, Herod looked up, Herod, who had not yet sacrificed the Semitic, almost Assyrian splendour of his locks to curt Roman imperiousness.

  What is she doing? And what does she look –

  Then there is a chinking of fine chains, a glimmer, and a shimmer of the folds in the shot silk of the dancing, teasing garment; the arm, like a butterfly brushing the swaying cloth, the delicate arm, whispers, ‘Do me no harm!’

  Folds and limbs in grace, swing and begin to race. And movement blossoms into motion; the drift of a friendly smile … a Medusa turned friendly awhile – And once more menacing darkness clouds the features, which just now shone with such feigned allure … a Medusa’s head, with snakes garlanded, in noble-horrific-petrifying constancy.

  And he awakes as from mesmeric sleep; sighing heavily, completely drained he almost has to pinch himself. And now, intoxicated, the seal of a sumptuous, thoroughly royal kiss is placed on cunning, smouldering, close-drawn patience.

  And trembling almost, he throws open all the gates of generosity, ‘What do you want, Herodias, what do you want for that, that, that marvellous, caressing dance; it has sucked out my soul, what do you want, my daughter?’

  ‘What it is worth, its due reward – the head of John!’

  ‘Then take it!’

  Ill and exhausted, at the end of both desire and affection, Herod turns away and staggers up.

  But content, indeed intensely happy, ignoring her stepfather’s moroseness, indifferent now to it, Herodias hurries off with the rhythm of the dance still in her step, so to speak, one of the Horae on an errand of vengeance, a Pandora pleased with her gracefully destructive mission.

  And she hurries to him herself.

  He does not look at her, he kneels down and prays.

  She stands there for a while then goes out – embarrassed. Almost all pleasure in her triumph has gone, so little effect it has had.

  Great, noble, alone between himself and the Almighty, John remains buttoned up in happy contemplation since no longer distracted from himself by his office of the voice crying in the wilderness of the royal city, no longer directed towards this petty, alien earth, which keeps opening up in its course; thus he remains, strong, robust, too much a man and full of the simplicity of solitude for piety as such, thus he remains until the evening darkens and the red preacher quietly beckons.

  And it turned doubly red.

  Warm with pity, the early evening curved down like the cheek of a dreaming angel.

  And now there is blood on their love, blood on their nights. She does not groan with remorse. But she feels so unsatisfied, restless, strange, so transformed into desolation. Such a soulless life, so faustinian, so anointed with fear, of such Ovidian sultriness. She has to anaesthetise herself, draw up her ruler’s pride around her, something which before, in voluptuous evil, though actually virginal innocence, she did not need to do.

  She finds herself at bottom so petty, so petty, so sick and timid.

  But then again, it is as if something from the past, something deep and great, the blood that was spilt that night, were raising her up from afar, at the same time ennobling her.

  And when she is old and grey and counts on death, something fearful and soft comes into her thoughts, as if she is to meet again the strange man who rejected her.

  To meet again?

  Peter Hille: ‘Herodias. Novellette’ first published in

  Moderner Musen-Almanach, E. Albert, Munich, 1893.

  Stanislaus Przybyszewski: Androgyne

  It was late at night when he returned.

  He sat down at the writing desk and stared without thinking at the magnificent bouquet, tied with a broad red ribbon.

  At one end was inscribed, in golden letters, a mystical, woman’s name.

  Nothing more.

  And again he felt the long, lilac-soft frisson which overwhelmed him when he had received this bouquet on the podium.

  They had thrown flowers at him, and bouquets had rained down at his feet – but this one, with the red ribbon and the mystical name: who could have sent it?

  He did not know.

  It was as though a small warm hand had touched his, no, not touched, had caressed it lasciviously, had kissed it with hot fingers …

  And she, whose name had so confused him …

  Perhaps she had kissed the flowers before receiving them, had pressed her face into the soft flowery nest before arranging them as a bouquet, had pressed the rich floral tribute to her heart and rolled, naked and panting with passion, across the flowery bed …

  And the flowers still exhaled the perfume of her body and trembled still with the furtive, hot whispers of her desire …

  She must have loved him, had known him for many, many days and, shuddering, had considered long before daring to send him these flowers … He knew it, he was certain of it … He was certain that she loved him, for only girls who are in love could send such flowers.

  He closed his eyes and listened.

  He saw enormous, magical roses, black, bloodthirsty, white, on long stems, roses that swayed back and forth. They bent down, lower and lower, then reared proudly upwards, tempting and laughing, exulting in their glory.

  He saw tuberose plants, white as Bethlehem stars, with fine delicate stems with bluish veins … He saw ancient trees of white and red azaleas, heavily weighted with a mass of white, downy blossom, lovely to see, as lovely as the ball gowns on the wondrous maiden-figures of noble ladies long since dead … he saw orchids on lips, hot and gaping, lustful, poisonous lips, and lilies with wombs wide and waiting for chaste delights, saw narcissi and begonias and camelias: a tidal wave of intoxicating, poisonous colour and drunken, sucking perfume overwhelmed him …

  The gentle, May-like scent of lilac poured forth within him, mixing with the still, child-like serenade of shepherds’ pipes in the warm nights of Spring, the shrill purple of the roses roared like a lustful howl of triumph … the lilies embraced his heart with their chaste arms … orchids sucked lubriciously at him with their red tongues … the tuberoses danced around him with a white, cold gleam … the drunken scent of acacia blossoms poured their aphrodisiac poison into him, impregnated with the lightning-hot storms of summer; and all these perfumes, cool and soft as the eyes of girls ignorant of their sexuality, hot and lustful as the arms of raving courtesans, poisonous and screaming as the gaze of a trampled otter; all this poured itself into
him, soaked through him, saturated him: he was intoxicated, weakened … he felt unable to move his limbs, unable to distinguish one impression from another; he saw no colours, sensed no odours, everything was one.

  In the depths a wide, open stubble field arose within him, barren, sad, heavy as the groaning of bells in the Maundy Thursday dusk, in the distance was gleaming the glittering edge of a distant lake, bedded in the sleep-heavy heat of midday, here and there the slim stem of a mullein rose up as though it had broken through the earth’s searing crust and was threatening the heavens with a triumphant fist; here and there a few stunted juniper bushes were growing, twisted into strange shapes as though they were sick with the poisons of corpses which once manured the earth; and here and there in the stretches of sand there dreamed the blue calyces of chicory, longing for the sunset when they might close their blossoms and drink in, shuddering, the graveyard magic of the lonely heath …