A Man in Love
Page 16
Mich treibt umher ein unbezwinglich Sehnen,
Da bleibt kein Rat als grenzenlose Tränen.
20.
So quellt denn fort und fließet unaufhaltsam,
Doch nie geläng’s, die inn’re Glut zu dämpfen!
Schon rast’s und reißt in meiner Brust gewaltsam,
Wo Tod und Leben grausend sich bekämpfen.
Wohl Kräuter gäb’s, des Körpers Qual zu stillen;
Allein dem Geist fehlt’s am Entschluss und Willen,
17.
So do as I do, in cheerful understanding
Look the moment in the eye! No hesitation!
Meet it head-on, lively, and with good will.
Whether in action, at play, or loving someone.
Where’er you be, be all, and always childlike,
And thus, in fact, you’re all, invincible.”
18.
Easy for you to say, I thought. Some god
Bestowed on you the favor of the moment.
Whoever stands at your fair side, at once
Feels himself the favorite of fate.
I’m daunted by the sign it’s time to leave you—
What have I gained by learning such great wisdom!
19.
Now we’re far apart! So what befits the
Present moment? I don’t know what to say;
It offers much that’s beautiful and good—
But that’s a burden, one I must cast off.
Driven by unconquerable yearning,
The only thing that’s left is endless tears.
20.
So let them rise and flow on without ceasing,
But never will they quench the inner fire
Already roaring, raging in my breast!
Where death and life contend in fearful struggle.
There may be herbs that still the body’s pain;
The spirit lacks decisiveness and will,
21.
Fehlt’s am Begriff: wie sollt’ er sie vermissen?
Er wiederholt ihr Bild zu tausend Malen.
Das zaudert bald, bald wird es weggerissen,
Undeutlich jetzt und jetzt im reinsten Strahlen;
Wie könnte dies geringstem Troste frommen,
Die Ebb’ und Flut, das Gehen wie das Kommen?
22.
Verlasst mich hier, getreue Weggenossen!
Lasst mich allein am Fels, in Moor und Moos;
Nur immer zu! euch ist die Welt erschlossen,
Die Erde weit, der Himmel hehr und groß;
Betrachtet, forscht, die Einzelheiten sammelt,
Naturgeheimnis werde nachgestammelt.
23.
Mir ist das All, ich bin mir selbst verloren,
Der ich noch erst den Göttern Liebling war;
Sie prüften mich, verliehen mir Pandoren,
So reich an Gütern, reicher an Gefahr;
Sie drängten mich zum gabeseligen Munde,
Sie trennen mich—und richten mich zugrunde.
21.
Lacks any sense of how to do without her.
A thousand times it conjures up her image.
Sometimes it wavers, then it’s snatched away.
One time it’s vague, another: radiant, pure.
This ebb and flow, this constant fluctuation,
How could it bring the slightest consolation?
22.
So leave me here, companions on my journey!
Leave me alone on rocks, in moss and moor.
Go on without me! The world stands open, waiting.
The earth’s unbounded, the sky is huge, sublime;
Observe, investigate, collect your samples,
And stammer out the secrets Nature holds.
23.
The universe I’ve lost, I’ve lost myself,
I who was once the favorite of the gods.
They put me to the test, gave me Pandora,
So rich in treasure, richer still in danger;
They urged me toward that mouth so blest, so giving,
They part us now and send me to my ruin.
Chapter Two
Weimar, October 15, 1823
Dear Ulrike,
The elegy has left the house. There are three things you cannot keep to yourself: fire, love, and verses. I’ve played the reserved privy councilor for too long. Now I’ve bribed Stadelmann and told him it was a bribe. The amount rendered him speechless and he started bowing like an acrobat. He suggested Bad Berka. And so the elegy is out into the world. The strength for that feat of strength came from a sudden feeling of faintness that drove me out of the Blue Room in the evening, day before yesterday. Ah, Ulrike, they shouldn’t call rooms by such names anymore. That’s what the salon is called because its walls are blue. And right next door is the Yellow Salon. Yellow as wolfsbane, Ulrike. It was Art-Meyer from Lake Zurich who painted it that color, my Despairer Number One. He renovated the house for me thirty years ago. If you ever climb the slowest, most protracted stairs in the world—namely, the flight of stairs I designed when I knew nothing about you, but which now always remind me of the way you walk, the way you move, so loose-limbed (even when you’re on flat ground you’re moving upward)—these stairs don’t lead you vulgarly into the house from the square outside. No, they don’t begin until you’re already inside, at the entrance into the courtyard—so when you reach the top step with your upward-gliding gait, you will read on the threshold, inlaid into its light wood, the world SALVE. I’m telling you that ahead of time because I know that you never stare vacantly, never look down at the ground, but always upward, toward your goal. Then if you stepped inside, you would be surprised and probably turn down your over-active, ready-for-anything mouth when you see the much too large head of Juno and then all the other busts: Schiller (your favorite), Herder, Winckelmann. But since one of the rooms—the most beautiful—is blue, lavender blue, it would perhaps reconcile you to the artificiality of this dwelling, and the second most beautiful, dearest Ulrike, is yellow, yellow like wolfsbane.
But about day before yesterday: The host quietly excuses himself. Then they could start whispering again: Marienbad, the aging Werther … Shameful! And now I’m going to lay down the law to the man of the house; that must not happen again. He should write the following down. He promises he will make some lists. List number one: Rules to Avoid Any Possibility of Speculation.
No declining in stages. Attend every musical event. Ottilie and August naturally wanted to present him to the public from the balcony loge. Look here! He’s back again! We’ve captured him! He ought to have appeared, exuding left and right the mood “They have won.” Not even music, the deranger par excellence, can touch me.
In any gathering under the spell of a young man, be the most captivated. Drown the young man in compliments. Take the lead in making compliments. To anything he can say, make sure you think of a response even more brilliant than those of your foot soldiers in silk, Chancellor von Müller, Professor Riemer, Director of Buildings Coudray, and cohorts. It didn’t bother him that those people in there made fun of him after he left. The loving man is invulnerable except toward her whom he loves. He lives beneath a different sky, is only apparently in attendance. When they are talking about Kant and the weather, within him reigns the sacred confusion of love.
The young Nicolovius: a trail that led to de Ror. So I thought I would feel better if I acknowledged the necessity of trains of thought that were not to be avoided. I had to baptize the fellow without a given name, so I baptized him Velocifer. Dearest Ulrike, you would not tell me the first name of the fellow without one. He took you into his confidence and you allowed yourself to be taken and are now in it. Excellency is left to wonder where he fits in. So Velocifer rushes off to Paris to present the French queen with a diamond, gives her the biggest diamond now in existence as a gift. A few days later—you and your sisters had gone out to pick flowers—your mother told me what she had learned about the fellow without a given name from Count Klebelsberg. The word “sell”
was not in his vocabulary. Because every piece is so much more valuable than what he’s asking for it, he calls every sale a gift.
Can you still see his gaze in your mind’s eye? I can. There is nothing I see more clearly than his eyes. Pupils almost black, but encircled by light gray. I’ve only seen such a thing in birds before. And no matter how many loving and beautiful things you can say about birds, their gaze is deemed to be piercing and cold. Now I’m talking about him the way people talk about Napoleon. Not to denigrate the birds, I should have said that one sees that encircling gray only in Saturn, and it is the planet of threats. Without my having asked, your mother told me he was six feet two, and that he was almost constantly on the go between Paris and Vienna. And so it is not saturnine of me to think that he must sometimes stop off in Strasbourg and will know how to find that French boarding school. His Napoleonically short, very thick and dark hair gives him a handsome, military appearance. If it weren’t for his violet frock coat …
Ah, I’ll stop now, dearest Ulrike. His love was ignited by you. He is highly velocitanical. If I had to compete with him, I would not stand the slightest chance of winning. I wouldn’t even be able to wish for it. For your sake. He doesn’t just have a future, he is the future. I extract myself from this hopelessness of mine with a cruel wish: if only one could blind the soul as one can blind the eyes. So that you would be utterly unable to think of him ever again. If you answer me soon (I cannot shake off that delusion), say one more sentence about the last sentence he uttered as he bade you so presumptuously and possessively farewell. In my rooms in the Golden Grape in Marienbad, you quoted him in a very jolly and somehow insouciant way: Il-y-a quelque chose dans l’air. Did he say, Je sais qu’il-y-a … or Je pense qu’il-y-a … or Je sens qu’il-y-a …?” And if I remember your report correctly, he at any rate added, Entre nous il-y-a … Or in the end, Il-y-a quelque chose dans l’air entre nous? Or was the whole thing formulated, Je sens, qu’entre nous il-y-a quelque chose dans l’air? I would be very grateful if you took the trouble to tell me his parting words exactly. I think what you—what we—have to reckon with depends on that. When you let me know that you have been able to read the elegy, I will send you what I had to write you this evening. I cannot remain so negative. Our game of quotations, my favorite game, will help me now.
To the postrevolutionary, boarding-school young lady:
And so it but remains for Your faithful servant to express a modest request. Should Your Highness deign to continue to favor me with Your benevolence and grace, think of me generously in the circle of Your dear dependents and have the goodness to grant me in the near future the privilege and opportunity of diverse communications.
P.S. I’m a pedant, I know. But I would feel very neglectful if I did not tell you what occurs to me when I think about that fellow, now no longer without a first name. This past June, not long before departing for blessed Bohemia, my gracious sovereign summoned me, the expert on rocks, to have a look at some diamonds. Monsieur Soret, court tutor for the prince and a natural scientist to whom I am deeply attached for his anti-Newtonian views, had invited to Weimar a chemist, physicist, and engineer from his native city of Geneva. With the duke, myself, Chancellor von Müller, and Director of Buildings Coudray in attendance, this man opened a mahogany case and before our eyes, the most magnificent diamonds of every size and shape lay arranged on dark velvet. We were asked to examine them and choose some, and if we recommended it, our most gracious lord would buy them. The rather reserved Genevan gave us time. Each of us recommended two or three pieces we found attractive. Then the Genevan told us that none of the diamonds was genuine. He had produced them all himself and proceeded to point out imperfections he had in the meantime learned how to correct. Since the stones cost less than half as much as they would if they were real, our gracious lord bought the whole lot. The Genevan promised to return with even better-made pieces soon. I had to tell you this story, didn’t I? It could have a bearing on the brilliant future of our diamond-bestower, couldn’t it? In any event, I tell it not for his sake, but for yours. Good night.
Perhaps I WON’T send these letters, something I cannot imagine at the moment. In any case, I could send them to you only as long as you are in Strasbourg. I live from the knowledge that you will read what I write. However, if you do not read them—to take the most impossible case—or read them only after I die and because some people here monitor and perhaps record how I conduct my life, if you then read what I did on a certain day or evening on which I wrote you a letter consisting of nothing but loneliness or abandonment (this is how it feels, if you will), then please do not believe what you read about me, believe my letter. Once more, good night. By the way, yesterday, an announcement printed on a most festive piece of paper: my friend Knebel, five years older than I, is getting married, married again. He is wedding a woman forty-three years younger than himself. I shall congratulate him, of course, I certainly will. I’m seething with congratulations and envy.
Weimar, October 16, 1823
Dear Ulrike,
Again and again, the moments when I was not good enough recur. I consider myself lucky that I can still amend what I neglected to do. Do you recall this: You look handsome. That’s what you said. It brought me up short, and you added, “Today!” So it was a joke. By TODAY you meant to say, Don’t act so comically surprised, as if you didn’t know how often you look good; I’ll take it down a notch and say TODAY: fear not, just today. I, however, heard the sentence the wrong way. My answer should have been (and I’m writing now only to let you know the response I neglected to make), So do you! That’s what I should have shouted out in the same high spirits. So do you! So do you! So do you! I should have told you that in my head, I’m constantly addressing you. Should have told you how exhausting it is to constantly have to suppress what constantly wants to get out. Constantly, I could—ah yes—rejoice. Dearest Ulrike, the lack of objectivity with which you talk about yourself now and then is impressive and grotesque. Let me summarize what you remarked in forty-nine summer days about your appearance: ears too big, hair too thin, color of eyes ambiguous, crooked nose, mouth too small. Now, what I observed and studied for forty-nine summer days. Ears: two petals of the most precious flower. Mouth: constantly in the service of an inexhaustible vivacity, it can never be too big or too small since it is never self-conscious, but is the embodiment of the most magically tender, entwining power. You should thank your nose for not wanting to be a ruler. But your hair, my dear, is completely independent of you. It doesn’t need you, but you need this hair, for in its gentle fall it covers the head of a girl who broadcasts judgments that have the permanence of constellations. Your eyes—ah, Ulrike, you already know from me that your eyes are pure conquest. What makes you irresistible, dearest Ulrike, is your gaze. No one can withstand it. Like the sea, your eyes always have the color of the sky, but unlike the sea, they have in addition the powerful color of your inner sky. Enough! I hear you saying. A little bit less wouldn’t have hurt your credibility, you say, because you like to rein in my natural lack of restraint. Good night, my lovely little intruder. Please take a seat wherever you like. Ah, you would like to dance. Alone? Aha, for me! I could not wish for anything better. You came into the world a dancer, fully formed by nature. Your every gesture succeeds. Your limbs dangle and swing with equal daring and precision. Your neck takes your head for a walk from one shoulder to the other and your hands suddenly discover themselves above your head. The music cannot hold still any longer. A beautiful white bird is directing a feathered orchestra with his wings. And you stride as if wading through a sweet swamp. And now you strut as if no piece of this earth were fit to be touched by your resounding little feet. You are a serious parodist of every possible movement of beasts and men. You fall and climb, but climb higher than you fall. Effortlessly you arrive at the top of the invisible stairs, which resound in their turn. Then you make of your little feet tender drumsticks that vibrate on something one cannot see, but that begins to ring under
your vibrations. The orchestra of birds—mostly strings—sinks down in high, sighing tones that end in the highest height. Their wings are folded, but the conductor and all the other birds remain where they are. The avian conductor turns to you and says, We don’t want to go home. That is answered enthusiastically by an audience one has not noticed before. No one wants to go home anymore. An enormous chorus, a hundred voices, begins to sing a single sentence: No one wants to go home anymore. Then the custodian extinguishes the lights and shouts merrily into the hall, Tomorrow is another day! Good night, dear Ulrike. It would be quite a disappointment if I had to assume that you definitely would never read what I am writing to you and you alone.
P.S. More next time about du and Sie. Forgive me, Ulrike. I cannot go to bed. Ever since I met you, there’s nothing harder than falling asleep. Always the vain wish never to have to sleep anymore. Am I a child again? Why don’t little children want to go to sleep, Ulrike? Why do we have to entice them out of their insatiable, brilliant wakefulness with all kinds of stories and songs? Now I know the answer. In every second they receive a thousand pieces of information. For them, the world is one great attraction they follow with their senses, and then they feed on that receptivity their whole lives long. And then they’re supposed to go to sleep, sleep that is merely silent and colorless. No! they cry, and struggle desperately against having to go to sleep, but are defeated at last by the practiced stratagems of adults. Am I a child? Please answer that question tomorrow. I wanted to at least suggest why falling asleep and sleeping are now so unacceptable. Now I hear myself uttering the little screams that first happened to me after the appearance of the fellow without a given name. It’s really something to be alone some night and then hear these short little screams emerge from oneself. If I often say, That’s really something, and then am unable to say what it is, it’s because I’m trying to avoid betraying a larger feeling with smaller words. My head is a battlefield where I am defeated day and night. The fact that I allow myself to survive under all circumstances is the reason for my defeat, once and for all. The reason for every defeat is irremediable dependency. Now it’s becoming more serious, Ulrike. And if I had not earlier switched from Sie to du like a hussar, it would be impossible to recite such serious things to you. You are less dependent on me than I am on you. If you were as dependent on me as I am on you, you would borrow two bedsheets from two of your boarding-school classmates, knot them to your own sheet, and fasten them to the transom of your window—you mentioned more than once that you would never want to have a profession that tended to the theoretical. You would only consider something practical. You said your hands would need something to do—so you would make the sheets you have tied together at their diagonal corners into a sort of cloth rope (or cloth sausage), then use it to let yourself down, and then, to the envious well-wishes of your comrades, you would take to your heels. You have enough cash to get you to Weimar. And why not descend from the conveyance here at the posthouse and come over to Frauenplan square, less than a five-minute walk, and throw some pebbles at my window and I—sitting here sleepless, waiting for nothing but those pebbles—would be at the window in a flash, see you down there, be down in the blink of an eye, embrace you, kiss you, and lead you up to be with me forever. Dearest Ulrike, why doesn’t that happen, exactly that? A banner runs incessantly through my head bearing the words, At any moment she can be on the way from Strasbourg to Dresden. There are reasons aplenty to suddenly need to be with your family. And from Strasbourg to Dresden, one passes quite near Weimar and even, if one isn’t watching carefully, through Weimar. You can even change horses here, have a layover of at least an hour. If she were to set foot in Weimar, freshen up at the posthouse, and then continue on without wanting to see … It’s unimaginable. I don’t even need to think about it. But what if she was traveling from Strasbourg to Dresden for some family emergency and was capable of doing just that? What follows is not a reproach, but simply states a law of nature, a societally approved, thousand-year-old principle: you are less dependent on me than I am on you. When you read this letter—very soon, I hope—then recall when and how often and how long you thought of me from the evening of October 16th until, let’s say, three o’clock in the morning on October 17th. The nature of your thinking of me is unimportant. It could have occurred to you that you quietly pointed out to me in the Grand Salon during Dr. Rehbein’s engagement party that out of nervousness, I always roll up my handkerchief and then grasp that roll (or sausage) with my left hand and then pull it out with my right hand and then pull it back with my left hand, but never so far that it leaves the right hand completely. What am I trying to say? It would help me to hear how often I occur to you and what goes on inside of you when I occur to you. It really is three o’clock in the morning again. I’m going to lie down, leave the light burning by my desk, stare at the ceiling, and think of you. Tomorrow I’m going to make a list of all the things that can be dangerous for me, both inside my head and in my immediate vicinity. A list of what I should avoid. Good night, dearest.