A Man in Love

by Martin Walser

  Only in the evenings, after supper, did the count take part in whatever togetherness Frau von Levetzow permitted.

  Goethe told her daughters they had to realize that in the count, they had a paleobotanist famous throughout Europe. Pa-le-o-botanist. Amalie and Bertha snapped at the word like fish after bait. He knew they would.

  The count was happy to participate. He said that the workers in his coal mine had just stumbled upon an upright, carbonized tree trunk. His workers were trained to report such a discovery to him at once. He had the trunk carefully excavated and would soon examine it. Why didn’t this trunk turn into coal and how long ago was that? That’s what interested him. A paleobotanist is a historian interested not in kings and battlefields, but in how plants had been doing all that time.

  Goethe always sat down next to the mother and across from Ulrike. He needed to be able to see Ulrike without having to turn his head. He needed to seek her glance. As soon as their eyes met, he heard only from afar what was being said. Ulrike saw to it that her eyes and his eyes left each other punctually. She displayed a remarkable interest when the count talked about progress in the engineering disciplines.

  He said that since his holdings included a factory or two, he did what he could to promote knowledge of engineering.

  Ulrike asked if she could visit one of his factories, preferably one where spinning or weaving was going on, where women and girls were working, perhaps even at the machines.

  The count was delighted by the prospect of giving her a guided tour of his factories.

  Ulrike pointed to the skirt she was wearing, red with wide green stripes that crossed one another in a checkered pattern. “Scottish,” she said. “Just feel this cloth, it’s heavenly. We could have such sheep, too, and the rest is learnable.”

  The count turned to Goethe and said, “I see that you’re surprised. More than we imagine is always possible. Perhaps it would interest this circle to know that I hear reports from England that Ada Byron, the daughter of the poet, is handed around London as a prodigy. Not just in mathematics, but also in physics. She talks about programmable machines that can be taught numbers that then guide their operation. That is her dream.”

  Ulrike was positively electrified by this bit of news.

  The count promised to keep her informed of everything he learned about Ada Byron, who, by the way, grew up separated from her father.

  Goethe felt like he was sinking into an abyss. On so many pages of his journeyman novel he had celebrated manual labor—spinning, weaving—with all the workaday words no writer had ever used before him. Now he knows no one after him will ever use them, either. He had not suppressed the drive toward mechanization, but his fictional figures fear the approach of machines. They see the wasteland expanding as people flee their valleys because their work has been taken over by machines. His world of work was a museum. Ada Byron is the name of the future! Ulrike and the count, the two dearest people he knew, were the future. Now he felt not the least desire to defend what he had written. He loved Ulrike, he loved the count. He wanted to belong with them and was prepared to betray any of his principles. Life—the two of them were life. He sat there, feeling that way, and that made it possible not to defend what he had written.

  When Goethe and the count were alone, the latter fetched from his room the blowpipe the Swedish chemist Berzelius had given him. He wanted to show Goethe how easy it was to identify titanium in rocks with this device. He knew that finding traces of titanium was Goethe’s favorite topic of conversation this summer. He was all the more surprised when Goethe asked him to show Ulrike how to use it instead of him. The count hesitated at this strange suggestion. Goethe simply shook his head.

  The next day, he was able to tell the count without beating around the bush that he was now entirely preoccupied with Fräulein von Levetzow. None of the diverse interests he used to cultivate had survived. Only his interest for Ulrike von Levetzow remained. He could tell this to the count since he already knew it anyway.

  The count pressed his hand and said, “What interests us invigorates us. And the more it interests us, the more invigorated we are.” Whatever someone was interested in, the important thing was, how much.

  “You talk to me about myself,” said Goethe, “the way I usually talk to others about others.”

  The count laughed and said, “Now I have to tell Your Poetical Princely Highness that you are too good to an industrious engineer who never in his life has been able to rhyme one word with another.”

  That was practically an invitation to tell the count that that could change at any moment. And he could not resist telling him what had happened when he gave Ulrike the “Duet on the Pangs of Love.” It was the copy; he had made sure it was identical to the original. And he recited the entire duet to her. But what was the machine-mad Ulrike’s reaction? In her jolliest tone she had said, “Although She got two lines less than He, She feels herself well expressed.” But she needed to lay claim to the two lines withheld from her. And for the first time in her life, she composed poetry and then read the two lines:

  In a wolfsbane blossom I’ll send him my tears

  To remind him of us in the coming years.

  “You’ll make us all into poets,” said the count.

  Goethe said, “Because everyone is a poet.”

  Frau von Levetzow was happy. The count was an entertainer who fulfilled every wish a mother could have. Evening after evening she could oversee everything. Even when they were sitting outside at tea and a waning moon rose over Mount Dreikreuz, no feelings unacceptable to a mother had a chance to be stirred up since the count explained the waning but rising moon not as mood lighting for lovers but as a fascinating theater of heavenly physics.

  Goethe had the clear, sharp sense that he was part of a production against which he had no defenses. As if requesting the postponement of an execution, he asked to be allowed to go for a walk with Ulrike in the meadow along the Tepl on the other side of the road. In broad daylight. And Frau von Levetzow, who in Marienbad up to a certain moment had been the splendid courtier Madame de Pompadour, made him pay for the walk in the meadow by agreeing to listen to Count Wallenski that evening, who would tell him terrible things about the sufferings of the Polish people, in the hope that the world-famous poet would at once lift his world-renowned voice so that international aid could ease or even end the sufferings of the Poles. The Ulrike-mother had often enjoyed playing this role in Marienbad, arranging a meeting between people from her circle and Goethe. And because of Ulrike, not once had he said no.

  Now during this tightly controlled walk, he had to tell Ulrike that the day was upon them when he would have to exchange the lovely number 73 for the insultingly angular 74. And it was his unpleasant duty to plan the day’s events. If he could spend tomorrow uninterruptedly in her vicinity, then even that coffin nail of a date would perhaps be bearable for an entire day. But she would have to be constantly in sight. His proposal: 7:00 a.m., departure for Elnbogen. Stadelmann and John would be there already, and the family and he would arrive at 9:00. Breakfast would await them at the White Horse, then a long walk along the right bank of the Eger on the newly tunneled path through the cliffs. It was narrow and winding with sharp curves so that not even a Frau von Levetzow could keep all of them in the bondage of observability every instant, but they would never be invisible to her for more than nineteen seconds. Then a tour of the Enchanted Prince, a meteor that had fallen from the heavens—or as the count would say, from the universe—right into the castle well of Elnbogen. Then they would eat and drive back (provided that the Levetzows would be his guests tomorrow, Ulrike would promise to always be in his sight, and third, that the word “birthday” as well as the number that might be associated with that word would never occur).

  “Ah yes,” said Ulrike, clearly imitating, parodying him.

  “Promise?” he asked and held out his hand.

  “Promise,” she said.

  As he released her hand, he said, “When
we go back, you must at once explain to your mother, who is surely watching us, that that handshake served only to seal a promise that will not survive beyond tomorrow.”

  The day went off as planned. Except that on the lunch table up in Elnbogen there was a crystal drinking glass. It was Bertha who presented it to Goethe. The names of the three sisters encircled the glass in a wreath of ivy. Goethe read the names and looked at each one in turn as he read her name. First Bertha. Then Amalie. Then Ulrike. Then he read the date: August 28, 1823. And the place: Elnbogen. Then he looked at the mother and said as cheerfully as he could that all they needed now was a rhyme.

  “Yes,” cried Bertha. “Something to rhyme with Elnbogen.”

  Goethe said, “May devotion be your slogan.”

  “Bravo,” cried Bertha.

  Amalie said, “I’d rather be ruled by a shogun.”

  And Ulrike: “Instead of being shot with a blowgun.”

  And the mother: “I’m speechless.”

  And Ulrike: “At last, something to celebrate!”

  They drove over the Hammer River and back to Karlsbad, singing as they went. Even before they alighted from the coach, they could see a crowd in front of the Golden Ostrich. A brass band struck up a tune. Cheers, cheers that seemed they would never end. Frau von Levetzow quickly disappeared into the crowd with her daughters. Almost instinctively, Goethe had reached for Ulrike and managed to grasp her left hand; his hand came away holding a lavender silk glove. He put it into his pocket at once. He could not run after them. He must not even show that he wanted to. He had to stay where he was. And suddenly—it was an unmistakable feeling—suddenly it pleased him to stay. His arms and hands lifted themselves into the air. Since he simply could not remain silent, he cried out words, sentences into the friendly noise of animated band music and cheers. He felt swept up, carried along, and himself shouted “Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah.” And that spurred on the crowd. The band intoned a tune they all knew. It played only the opening bars and then the melody was taken up by five natural horns played by tanned twenty-year-old angels, and what they were playing so silky soft and heartfelt was “Spied a lad a little rose.” People fell silent. The five horns celebrated the song and the setting sun did the rest. Everyone was crying, including Goethe. He didn’t try to hide it. With his lace-bordered handkerchief he wiped the tears from his eyes. More than once. And the people wept with him, including the men. Because words came to him in reaction to everything, a word came to him now: popularity. He felt popular. For the first time in his life. Popular. And the feeling filled him to the point of invulnerability. At this moment he knew that everything would turn out. “Bertha, Amalie, Ulrike,” he said—he shouted. But the brass band saw to it that besides itself, anything audible was no longer necessary. The band leader had given the downbeat and the band set off in the direction of the spa, playing the newest march from Vienna. People stepped aside. What a great man that band leader is, thought Goethe. He leaves the square with a jolly march where just a moment ago he had brought people to tears. That’s music for you, he thought. He avoided shaking his head.

  Two waiters from the inn ushered Goethe the short distance to the front steps. At the door Goethe turned once more, cordially accepted a last chorus of hearty cheers, and went inside.

  In his room he asked himself, couldn’t one live from such popularity? By now, this talking to himself had become a routine, an interrogation of everything that happened to see whether or not it could make his longing for Ulrike more bearable. What had happened out there on the square in front of the Golden Ostrich: he wanted to—needed to—experience it with Ulrike. Only then could he be completely absorbed by such a friendly storm. Without Ulrike it was a play without a heroine.

  He pulled out the lavender silk glove that had ended up in his hand. He was not about to return it. To ensure that, he wrote—inscribed—on the back of the glove

  Karlsbad, on August 28, 1823

  Only then did he notice a wrapped package on his table. He unwrapped a pale red bow from her simple, white Lotte-dress. And a card on which was written

  Like her beloved predecessor, it would please the successor to be present at your birthday with a pale red bow. Ulrike.

  That’s right, Lotte gave Werther the bow on his birthday, the pale red one. Ah, Ulrike! How can he express to her now that Lotte didn’t exist. That he was Lotte, just as he was Werther. That it was a love story with himself. The story of an illness. Ulrike, you are so much above everything that ever was and could have been. Ulrike. He kissed the bow. Then he emptied out a box lined in black velvet that contained buckles, brooches, and stickpins and carefully laid in it the glove and the bow. This box could be locked with a tiny key, and he did so. But where to put the key so he wouldn’t lose it and would immediately know where to find it when needed? That was a new tribulation: that he put things he especially wanted to keep safe in such a safe place that he could no longer find them, or it took a long time to do so. He called Stadelmann and assigned him to go up into town at once and fetch from Count Taufkirchen’s shop the thinnest gold chain they had. It had to go round his neck twice and then hang down on his chest. It was just the sort of assignment Stadelmann loved. Two hours later the little gold key was hanging from Goethe’s neck by the thinnest of gold chains.

  The next morning the crystal glass with the names in an oval of ivy and the date and place stood on the breakfast table. “Ah yes,” he said to Frau von Levetzow, “thank you for letting me spend that painful day with you and for not mentioning it. Let us call it the Day of the Open Secret. Thanks, many thanks for this glass.”

  “It is meant to bear witness that we were there with you,” said Frau von Levetzow, “and you with us. Ivy is for remembrance. We don’t want to be forgotten.”

  In a quiet voice Goethe said, “Nor do I,” and gave her what he hoped was a combative look and would have looked at her longer, if Ulrike had not said, “Nor do I.”

  So he looked at Ulrike.

  Once again, Frau von Levetzow had arranged the program for the day. A young English aristocrat needed to speak to Goethe about Verona, where England had pushed through the decision that Europe would not support the Greeks’ struggle against Turkish occupation. He wanted Goethe and Walter Scott to address a petition to the king.

  Because he was aware of the way Ulrike was looking at him, he agreed. “This evening, after dinner. Although I know, Ulrike, how useless such gestures are.”

  Ulrike said, “The English are the most modern nation and have the most old-fashioned government.”

  “I’m sure she got that from Count Sternberg,” said Amalie.

  “Bad luck, tattletale,” said Ulrike in here sweetest voice, “Herr Privy Councilor was present when the count said it.”

  Their mother forbade any more arguing. “We’ll see one another again at five, for the farewell concert in Saxony Hall.”

  Anna Paulina Milder: his friend Zelter had praised her wonderful voice. All Berlin is at her feet, just as Vienna was earlier. And because one thing always leads to another, that bubbly Lili Parthey—who takes Frau Milder as her model—has brought with her to Bohemia Frau Milder’s wish to be permitted to sing for Goethe and has delivered it to the right address: Count Klebelsberg. He is bringing her over from Marienbad to Karlsbad. An unalloyed treat, not open to the general public, a farewell concert dedicated to Goethe.

  Saxony Hall was sectioned off with folding screens to create an intimate space for forty or fifty guests. They sat in a semicircle around the artist and her accompanist. Ulrike sat on the far end of the semicircle as if she had known that Goethe, who had to sit in the middle, would be able to look at her almost without turning his head. That gave the event a purpose.

  He knew a brief speech was expected of him after the concert. When something was dedicated to him, a speech was required. Even before he could really listen to it, he heard that this was a voice that stopped at nothing. At first, he sought some keyword for his little speech. Then he saw Ulrik
e, sitting straight and almost leaning forward a bit, saw her in the spell of that voice. She had left her hair freer than ever before. A dark blue dress with glistening black stripes. Her neck and head emerged from a large, black roll collar. Repeatedly he had to look away from her, had to look up at the artist singing in her penetrating voice, but he sensed that he heard more when he looked at Ulrike than when he watched the singer singing.

  He began his little speech with the sage sentences that could be expected of him on such occasions. He said that Count Klebelsberg had told him how much this artist exceeded all expectations once one had seen and heard her for oneself. Count Klebelsberg had said it, and now he, Goethe, was repeating it. Eleven years ago, he had sat in this very hall and heard Beethoven play his first, great piano sonata. It was absolute music. Beethoven was a grateful admirer of Anna Milder because for him and for the world, she had become the model of his Leonore in Fidelio, and that fact makes us into an illustrious company, the privileged auditors of an absolute art. When Anna Milder performed for Napoleon in Schönbrunn, the only thing he could say was, Voilà une voix.

  There were several knowing laughs, and he turned toward them and said, “An emperor can be terse, but the likes of us can’t escape verbosity.”

  Why does reality always outstrip our expectations? He was thinking about that as he spoke. Then suddenly he sensed that he was talking without being present, and without a transition he freed himself from his routine. He knew, he confessed, that on such occasions, people expected reflections of this kind from him, simply because one can’t be overwhelmed every time, but can be clever every other time. And all of a sudden, he experienced the same thing he had just experienced when he experienced Ulrike as an auditor. And now he allowed that experience to be his prompter. He counted on reality—even when it seemed almost scandalous—to be the only thing worth talking about. So, during this concert, his gaze had rested for a while on Fräulein von Levetzow, and then he had looked away again, as was proper, and looked up to this lovely and gifted artist. Then the surprising thing: when he looked back at Fräulein von Levetzow, he heard the music more purely—so to speak—than when he watched it being produced. For as an auditor, Fräulein von Levetzow gave the impression—in case the eyes of other auditors, or even all other eyes were upon her—that she was moved to listen exactly as one was supposed to listen. Surely without intending to, she had become the model listener. She did not distract a single bit from our great artist, but rather drew one toward her and her art. He could not and would not separate the effect of that voice from Ulrike’s exemplary listening. The fact of her exemplary listening was the effect of the music, which through her listening became its real effect for him. Nothing can be more direct than that which, thanks to the power and glory and daring of such a voice, becomes visible through such a listener. He had always been against losing himself in impressions and events. He had felt that Schubert sung by Klebelsberg had an effect that wasn’t justified by its cause. This time, the voice took possession of you without the music dissolving you into helpless surrender to its tones. Without losing yourself. And that came from this auditor, who was by no means lost, but a model of self-possession and even full of curiosity. Frau Milder has awakened in a nineteen-year-old a continent of feeling, a continent unexplored by her. And he ventured to prophesy that when this auditor comes to know the yearning (expressed here in song) in the nonmusical world, where yearning exercises its real power with the text, “You cannot live there where you are and you will not reach where you yearn to be,” then she will flee to this continent of music in order to demonstrate to so-called reality its downfall in beauty. That was what he had experienced: as long as the yearning is in this music, it cannot destroy us. We do not simply withstand it, we celebrate it. For a few moments, we are indestructible. Reality has no chance against beauty.