Correction: A Novel (21 page)

Everything always for my sister, but against my brothers. These proceedings,
against my brothers, for my sister,
I have made into a personal art.

Instinctively I have always acted against my brothers and for my sister. And now, by realizing my idea of building the Cone, I am proceeding most radically against my brothers and for my sister. The Cone, my proof, “my proof” underlined. I kept telling them I can do what I like with my money.

And because the time has come. The Cone is the logical consequence of (my) nature. But I won’t satisfy the curiosity of the professionals or those who call themselves professionals though they’re not. None of them shall get near my Cone. So far I’ve managed to keep the site fenced off. By deploying my lookouts everywhere, who report anyone they see approaching the site, people are turned away, pushed back, before they have had even a glimpse of the Cone. But there’s no preventing people from coming one day, at a certain point when I have lost all influence over this situation, and from taking possession (mentally) of the Cone, or from thinking they have taken (mental) possession of it, and from exploiting my idea. “Exploiters of ideas”

underlined. At first I kept my idea of building the Cone under scrutiny for a long time, while engaged in my scientific pursuits, I kept mulling over this one idea, scrutinizing it, then I tested it, and then I proceeded to work on its realization. I never asked anybody, one never should ask anybody, when one has this kind of an idea, whether it’s a good idea and whether the idea should be put into practice or not, because the reply is sure to be deadly. I turned to no one, no other head, and started to put my idea into practice without knowing what the realization of my idea means. The question of the meaning of the realization of this idea arises only after the Cone is finished.

It’s because I got away from Altensam so early in life, and went to Cambridge, because I got away from the actual scene of my thoughts, which has always been, and still is Altensam and its environs, whatever I’m thinking about, having to think about, that I had the opportunity to concern myself with problems and ideas which, had I remained in Altensam and its environs, let’s say within a radius of two or three hundred kilometers, I never could have concerned myself with, I could not have thought the thoughts I could think in Cambridge, I’d never have had the ideas I’ve had in Cambridge. To do one’s thinking on a scene, though actually far away from the actual scene, one’s best thinking by virtue of being at the farthest possible remove from the scene of everything relating to that scene. Everything about Altensam, for instance, is always best considered at the farthest remove from Altensam, not in Altensam itself, everything concerning the Cone, for instance, is best considered in Cambridge. It was not on the Kobernausser forest site itself that I supervised the building of the Cone, but from Hoeller’s garret. We must be removed as far as possible from the scene of our thoughts if we’re to think properly, with the greatest intensity, the greatest clarity, always only at the greatest distance from the scene of our thoughts, in Cambridge my thoughts about Altensam became the clearest possible thoughts about Altensam, conversely in Altensam the clearest possible thoughts about Cambridge. Always the problem of how to get to the farthest point away from the subject I must consider or think through, in order to consider or think through this subject the best possible way. Approaching the subject makes it increasingly impossible to think through the subject we are approaching. We become absorbed in the subject and can no longer think it through, we can’t even grasp it. And so I, wanting basically only to think about, to think thoroughly about my native scene, Altensam, Austria, etcetera, had to go to Cambridge. In that sense my scientific pursuits in Cambridge were always nothing but an opportunity to think hard, in Cambridge, about the scene of greatest interest to me, Altensam and everything connected with Altensam, to go over it in my head. To think a subject through, one has to assume a position at the farthest possible remove from this subject. First, approach the subject as an idea, then, take the most distant position possible from this subject which at first we’d approached as an idea, to enable us to evaluate it and think it through, a process leading logically to its resolution. A thorough, logical analysis of a subject, whichever subject, means the resolution of the subject, an analysis of Altensam, for instance, means the resolution, dissolution, of Altensam andsoforth. But we don’t, we never think with the utmost analytical rigor, because if we did we’d solve, dissolve, everything. In that case I’d never have been able to get the Cone ready, as Hoeller puts it, so Roithamer, “get ready” underlined. Hoeller has made no changes in the garret since I last stayed in it, so Roithamer, and none of the Hoellers was allowed to set foot in the garret, because I asked Hoeller to let no one, not even his own wife and his own children, into the garret in my absence; now that I’ve entered Hoeller’s garret I have the proof that Hoeller hasn’t changed a thing in the garret in my absence, that I’d only imagined that Hoeller had changed something in the garret, so Roithamer, but now I have proof that he changed nothing in the garret, everything in the garret is in the same place where it was when I left the garret, he, Hoeller, enters the garret once or twice a week only to air it, so that there’s absolutely no musty smell in Hoeller’s garret, my thoughtchamber at the Aurach gorge, so Roithamer, “thoughtchamber at the Aurach gorge” underlined. At the very instant I entered Hoeller’s garret for the first time together with Hoeller who wanted to show me his garret because he thought it might be a suitable place for me to think especially about building the Cone, it had always occurred to him, every time he stepped into the garret, to wonder whether his garret wasn’t the most suitable place for me and my purposes, I’d known at that earliest instant that Hoeller’s garret could enable me, as no other retreat so far had enabled me, to get on with my thinking, especially in regard to the Cone, and so I told him immediately, while we still stood in the doorway to the garret, that this was the most suitable place for my purposes and that I wished to rent it,
rent
is what I said to Hoeller, but Hoeller said that I could move into the garret as often and whenever I wanted, stay there whenever and for however long I wanted, he wouldn’t rent it to me, he was of course putting it at my disposal gratis, this offer I immediately accepted and I moved into Hoeller’s garret that same day and was confirmed in my assumption that I could advance in my thinking in Hoeller’s garret, from that point where I had gotten stuck in Cambridge. Here in Hoeller’s garret I’d been able to make my most important calculations, those referring to the statics of the Cone, in a short time. If I’d become blocked in thinking about the Cone at Cambridge, I enjoyed a fresh start in Hoeller’s garret. I lost my fear of having to give up the idea of building the Cone, of realizing it, perfecting it. When it comes to finishing the Cone, I owe everything to Hoeller’s garret, so Roithamer. Suddenly it was possible to “go on living, go on working,” underlined. The problem of everything coming at once, so Roithamer, beginning with early childhood (three years old, four years?) having to cope with myself, with those around me, with the past on the one hand and with future prospects, so Roithamer, and with a constantly rising degree of responsibility, irresponsibility. Because we were born into Altensam, without preparation, as we’re all born unprepared into some environment unknown to us, a world that does its utmost to destroy the newborn, born into it, just as Altensam has always tried to destroy me, the concept Altensam, destruction of my person, of a being at its mercy, defenseless, totally unprotected. Suddenly facing Altensam without knowing what it is, and everything beyond and around Altensam, without knowing what that is. Our parents were not the right teachers for us, our rightful educators as it’s called, but they had no right to educate us, they merely brought us up for their own purposes, always only for their own purposes, with the result that my brothers were always ready to serve their purposes, but I was always against their purposes. By bringing me up for their purposes my parents succeeded in setting me against their purposes, my brothers for their purposes, me against their purposes, education for a purpose, “education for a purpose” underlined. The restlessness of my parents, everything in and about my parents was unrest, but unrest against everything, not
for
everything, the way they’d move from one bedroom to another every week, for instance, use a different room as a dining room every week, constantly change their preferences, now they’d opt for one thing and then again for quite another, now for one set of characters and then for the opposite kind of characters, for one kind of landscape, for the opposite kind of landscape, in reality they lived in a constant state of unrest because they were incapable of deciding in favor of a definite person, a definite landscape, anything definite for the long run, because they always believed they had to think, have, reject, attract, everything at the same time, so they were basically the unhappiest people imaginable. They’d punish us constantly, thinking it was a way to draw us closer to them, but they always repelled me with their strategy of punishment, parents taking possession of their children by means of punishments, so Roithamer, “taking possession of their children” underlined. How my father always referred to the
tragedy,
my mother always to the
drama of their shared life.
Weeks of silence between them, not a word spoken, openly parading their shutting each other out, weeks at a time of never opening the one (father’s) being to the other (mother’s), and the chaotic conditions that always reigned at Altensam because of this situation between my parents. They made children together, but were basically quite unsuited to having children and never really wanted children, my father only wanted heirs, not children, not descendants, just heirs. I remember my parents only as old people, “old people” underlined, who couldn’t stand each other and who could stand their children even less, miserable to have brought into the world these basically alien, strange creatures, to have them on their conscience, to be guilty of the crime of giving life, actually more than once, though without knowing toward whom, with respect to whom, they were guilty. Misfortune comes overnight, my father always said, so Roithamer, “overnight” underlined. My mother lived in a state of chronic anxiety, with frequent fainting spells that came on the heels of my fainting spells or vice versa. We children weren’t allowed to ask questions, so that our parents wouldn’t have to find answers. We were kept, as they say, on a tight rein. If the world only knew on how tight and short a rein we were kept throughout our childhood, the stinginess and meanness with which we were kept, like cattle in a farmyard, that’s how we children were kept in Altensam. We were always forced to do things, something was always demanded of us against our will, but even if it was something we wanted to do, it was demanded of us at a time when we didn’t want to do it. We were ordered to read, for instance, what we didn’t want to read, listen to what we didn’t want to hear, visit people we didn’t want to visit, wear clothes we didn’t want to wear, eat food we didn’t want to eat. My brothers, and my sister too, always gave in but I never gave in, they had to punish me to make me give in, I never gave in of my own free will. We had to live by strict rules in Altensam, rules made long ago for other people, for all those generations who’d lived in Altensam before us, rules not made for us at all, but we never had a chance to make and live by our own rules, nor by new rules made for us, so we constantly and on every occasion and non-occasion had to obey rules never made for us, rules that were decades behind their time, as everything in Altensam has from the start been behind its time. Because I understood this early in life I found myself in a situation which was constantly life-threatening to me, because I would not submit to those outdated rules and did not submit except under duress, even though the others always submitted, my siblings have always been submissive creatures, but I balked at everything. To my parents, everything about me and inside me had been disturbing, all my life, so I wanted quite early in life to live apart from my parents, and from my siblings as well, because they sided with my parents, which always made life easier for them, and it also made them turn out differently from me. I’m not a submissive man even today, rather I am more and ever more contrary, refractory, a quarrelsome character actually, in many ways more unyielding than necessary, all because of my years of desperation as a child, my long years of living in Altensam as a prison, Altensam always did feel like a childhood dungeon to me, it was never anything else, my good days at Altensam can be counted on the fingers of one hand, I had to spend my entire childhood in the Altensam dungeon like an inmate doing time for no comprehensible reason, for a crime he can’t remember committing, a judicial error probably. There I was, in solitary, in almost uninterrupted darkness, and speaking with my father was no different from being interrogated by a magistrate after an arrest. I was threatened with ever harsher punishments though my life was already enough of a harsh punishment. When I asked what I had done to be kept in this punitive fashion in solitary confinement at Altensam, I received no answer. Possibly I was kept in prison, in my parents’ dungeon, Altensam, to atone for their crime, for which I was, after all, so far doing a twelve to thirteen year stretch. The only witnesses to my innocence would of course have been my parents, but then my parents were also my prosecutors, they had conceived and born me directly into that dungeon, “conceived and born me” underlined. When, in unflagging despair, we have to regard our parents as nothing but our prison wardens in this vast, terrible dungeon, which is what I must call my parents’ house, father as the warden of his dungeon, his house, his property, my parental home, parental property, i.e., Altensam.

When we can never hope for a review of our case, because such a review is out of the question, for every reason in the world. We can dream of escape but we can never escape because, once escaped from our parental dungeon, we’d perish in no time. Then we’re released, they say prematurely released,