Correction: A Novel (30 page)

underlined. This intellectual subject matter must be held fast, until we have mastered it, so Roithamer, “mastered” underlined. Attempts to comprehend Altensam, to understand it, and little by little to comprehend and understand
everything
connected with Altensam, especially everything relating to my father, to keep on trying to find the causes and from these causes arrive at the effects of these causes, nothing can be fully grasped and explained by means of mental and emotional acuity on the one hand, nor by mental and emotional hypocrisy on the other hand, I have to keep reminding myself that it’s all from
my point of view,
not from the
others’ point of view,
always only from my point of view, from the others’ point of view it’s something entirely different, probably the opposite. But the opposite is not
my
task. I’m getting closer to Altensam, but I’m not getting closer to Altensam in order to solve its mystery; for others to explain it
to myself
is why I am getting closer to Altensam, to
my
Altensam, the one that
I
see. While she lived I never asked my mother, never asked her all these unanswered questions, never once asked her a single crucial question, because I never could formulate such a question, I was afraid I might put such a question wrong somehow, and so I never posed it, and so I got no answer. Now the Eferding woman is dead, I can’t ask her, she can’t answer. But would it be any different now, if I could ask her, and she could answer? We don’t ask those we love, just as we don’t ask those we hate, so Roithamer. Actually I’m shocked by everything I’ve just written, what if it was all quite different, I wonder, but I will not correct
now
what I’ve written, I’ll correct it all when the time for such correction has come and then I’ll correct the corrections and correct again the resulting corrections andsoforth, so Roithamer. We’re constantly correcting, and correcting ourselves, most rigorously, because we recognize at every moment that we did it all wrong (wrote it, thought it, made it all wrong), acted all wrong, how we acted all wrong, that everything to this point in time is a falsification, so we correct this falsification, and then we again correct the correction of this falsification and we correct the result of the correction of a correction andsoforth, so Roithamer. But
the ultimate correction
is
one we keep delaying, the kind others have made without ado from one minute to the next, I think, so Roithamer, the kind they
could
make, by the time they no longer thought about it, because they were afraid even to think about it, but then they did correct themselves, like my cousin, like his father, my uncle, like all the others whom we knew, as we thought, whom we knew so thoroughly, yet we didn’t
really
know all these peoples’ characters, because their self-correction took us by
surprise,
otherwise we wouldn’t have been surprised by their
ultimate existential correction, their suicide.
It’s only a thought which keeps turning up, but we don’t take steps to correct ourselves. We sit here for hours on this chair and think about it, we may even be sitting here for days on this same chair, or stand at the window (as for instance in Hoeller’s garret), we may pace the floor in our room, lie on the bed, locked up in Hoeller’s garret or in my room in Altensam, which has always seemed to me my actual correction cell, “correction cell” underlined, but I kept putting off my correction, kept delaying it, though I never gave up the idea of correcting myself, we do it suddenly, quite suddenly we walk out, go away, break off everything, one step off the road, away, gone, so Roithamer, because we’ve lost our mind, so Roithamer, or because we suddenly are everything extreme, so Roithamer. We’re in a state of extreme concentration, we don’t even permit ourselves to change a piece of clothing, we permit ourselves nothing beyond this concentration, but we still don’t do it. We’re always quite close to correcting ourselves, to correcting everything by killing ourselves, but we don’t do it. Ready to correct our entire existence as a bottomless falsification and misrepresentation of our true nature, so Roithamer, but we don’t do it. While this thought keeps sinking in deeper, we’re at its mercy and we yield to it in every respect because we have become totally concentrated on this thought, but we don’t do it. Then we forget this theme, make no corrections, go on existing, until we’re back with this thought, addicted to it, so Roithamer. But one day, from one minute to the next, we’ll do what we have to do, and then there’ll be no difference between us and those who’ve already made their correction, killed themselves. To write to someone, for instance, because we can no longer bear our loneliness, we’ve borne our solitude to the limit, but we can bear it no longer, we write in order to be no longer alone but to be two of us, to my sister for instance, that I’d be glad if she’d come to England,
soon, now, we
write, to the person we love, the one we know most intimately,
I write and telegraph simultaneously, my most intense idea now is that my sister must come to me, from Altensam to England, as quickly as possible, to put an end to this condition of solitude into which I’ve
maneuvered myself, so
Roithamer, she must come if I’m to be saved, I’m thinking, though I don’t write it, but I think she
must
come, to save me, because I’ve exhausted all my means of distracting myself, all my tricks of distracting myself, because I can think only this one thing, that I must come to an end in my room, unless this familiar, beloved person comes, I’ve
no chances left.
For days I wait for an answer, then my sister suddenly sends a telegram, she can’t come, so then I somehow keep going, I don’t put an end to it. It’s back to my work again, total immersion. Suddenly I no longer have any reason to kill myself, to make that correction. The message that my sister isn’t coming because she can’t come is enough to
prevent
me from doing it. But would I have done it? I ask myself, so Roithamer. Instead of committing suicide, people go to work. All their lives long, as long as their existence allows for this constantly recurring process, so Roithamer. The death of my uncle, so Roithamer, surprised even Hoeller, for Hoeller, like myself, had always been of the opinion that a man like my uncle, who kept coming back to the subject of suicide in conversation, because of the very fact that he keeps coming back to it and talks of it almost constantly, will not commit suicide, but he did commit suicide, the atmosphere in Hoeller’s house at the time was totally conditioned by the surprise of my uncle’s suicide, he’d thrown himself down the cheese-factory’s air shaft in Stocket; the whole Hoeller house, even Hoeller’s garret, I think, so Roithamer, this whole simple house with its complicated conditions, or vice versa, complicated house with its simple conditions, so Roithamer, lay as if under the pall of my uncle’s suicide. The moment I set foot in Hoeller’s house, that’s to say, the moment I clapped eyes on the huge black stuffed bird hanging on the wall of the vestibule, it was clear to me that the whole Hoeller house was under the pall of my uncle’s suicide. Then I remembered my last meeting with my uncle from Stocket, so Roithamer, and I asked myself whether there was anything about the man, on that last encounter, that might have given me a hint of his subsequent suicide, observing him first at the forest’s edge, with his rubber boots, short, frayed old jacket, so Roithamer, the hazel walking stick he’d whittled himself, the black hat on his head, and probably, considering his immobility, he’d had a wooden leg for years, also in view of my sudden presence, he was preoccupied with a so-called philosophical subject, I said to myself as I walked toward him, time had fashioned him into a so-called
nature man,
because everything in him and about him was predisposed that way, not a comic figure such as we see very often, everything about him said: I can no longer escape from nature; as I walked toward him, probably he didn’t even notice that I was coming toward him because everything seemed to indicate that he never noticed me, he was so preoccupied with his philosophical subject, that philosophical subject which had to do with nature.

When he spoke, it was only by indirection, he’d always been
my philosopher,
it was on his account that I always came down to Stocket from Altensam, the idea of thinking came to me in my first hesitant, then determined encounters with this man who’d always been my highest authority, my philosopher who had taught me to think, most unobtrusively, at first, but from the first with a decided firmness that endured. I’m no philosopher, he’d always said. He had a preference for old clothes, early rising, and washing in cold water. He placed Novalis above everything. Nature, not yet polluted by human beings, hence his early rising. A minimal breakfast, thick socks his sister had knitted from raw, untreated wool, and one of Novalis’s ideas. Time was to him only a means toward the constant study of time. Must I be with another person? he always answered: no, I need be with no other person. This question and this answer of his do more to explain his character than mine, so Roithamer. We admire a man like my uncle, who killed himself because he
could no longer
endure the unhappiness of mankind,
as he wrote on the slip of paper they found in his coat pocket, dated by him on the day he threw himself down the air shaft of the cheese factory, because he’s ahead of us in having the capacity to commit suicide, not only to talk about committing suicide but to commit suicide in fact, so Roithamer. It’s always those upon whom we’d hung our hopes, so Roithamer, who kill themselves, those whose talent and personality we loved and whose presence was the most pleasing and most familiar to us, so Roithamer. Then: I often woke up in the night and asked myself, how high are the costs of building, actually? what if the costs of building the Cone exceed my means, on the one hand exceeding my financial means, on the other hand exceeding my intellectual means? How often I came unrecognized to Austria and to Altensam and stayed in the Kobernausser forest, in the wooden shack I put up myself on the spot I’d picked out as the site for the Cone, in the precise center of the Kobernausser forest, so Roithamer. And very often I came from England to Altensam, unrecognized, and into the Kobernausser forest and stayed there, at its very center, for days and once even for weeks, totally concentrated on the Cone and then went back just as unrecognized to England, to Cambridge. Several times, “several times” underlined, I started to write a letter to my sister, but I never finished writing those letters because I had to keep the Cone a secret from my sister, of course,
and if I did drop a hint to her, and I had in fact dropped a hint several times, she’d think I was crazy, even my beloved sister thought I was crazy, so Roithamer, which is why I had to keep silent always about the Cone, even toward my sister. The edifice that was to bring me deep gratification but to my sister the highest, the supreme happiness, so Roithamer. Such a letter about the Cone would have been sure to have frightened her. What a lot of ideas go into the making of the Cone, all adding up to the idea of the Cone. He, Roithamer, I can see that now, lived in fear that he might go mad deep inside the Kobernausher forest, on precisely the geometrical centerpoint in the middle of the Kobernausser forest he had himself determined, because he had a bent in that direction, “bent”

underlined. Like his sister, he inclined to sudden madness, from sudden overstrain of his whole being, he feared that from overstraining his head he’d suddenly go mad. He’d decided at once on the size of the Cone and on the character of the interior, but he could no longer recall the exact point in time, to pinpoint that moment now, after so many years, “after so many years”

underlined, he found impossible. We must remember the onlookers who note our moment of weakness, mental weakness, in so enormous an effort, and use it to kill us, so Roithamer. We must never let up in intensity. Time is realization, idea, despair, and vice versa, so Roithamer. But I mustn’t act exclusively in accordance with my plan and a dead geometry, so Roithamer.

It’s all right to hesitate, but never out of even the slightest weakness.

Everything is equally important, whether it’s the idea (as a whole) or its smallest constituent. Actually always the simultaneous contemplation of the idea, I must contemplate everything at the same time and train myself in this simultaneity of contemplation in such a way that I come to see everything ever more clearly, nothing less sharply focused than anything else, so that the edifice exists (in my head) and then I must move it out of my head onto the geometric point. The question is, will I achieve my aim in my own way by talking, or not, or will it turn out to be only resignation as a fact, so Roithamer. Resignation, weakness, emptiness, the failure to make it real. It’s all a matter of schooling oneself, a school in which I am both the teacher and the pupil, and in the intensity between the two there’s one’s logical consistency, there’s the Cone. My lucidity peaks at night, an exceptional condition of my head, so Roithamer, then in the morning the Cone falls apart in my head. Always assuming that my idea of the Cone corresponds precisely to my sister’s needs, her character, her nature.

Novalis: the Cone is not what she is at this point, it is rather everything about her, corresponding to her eyes and ears, her hearing, feeling, intelligence, alertness, attention. Corresponding. It is the fact itself which dumbfounds and benumbs, not the rest of it, so Roithamer. And so I’ve never talked with a soul in Altensam (including father) about the Cone, though they all know that I’m building the Cone, they’ve all heard of it. Such a building changes the man who is building it, by the ways in which he speeds the work along and completes it. I used to be open to everything before I had the idea (of building the Cone), but now I’m nothing but the victim of the man who is building the Cone. If my head had
known,
so Roithamer. It seems that one’s head keeps being draw irresistibly to the most impossible problems, every time, to prove itself, so ‘ Roithamer. If we don’t, every time, involve ourselves in the most problematic undertakings, we’re lost, there’s nothing left, so Roithamer. What then follows is the catastrophe of breakdown, whatever our idea was about deserts us when we sleepwalkers awaken in the middle of what we were doing, so Roithamer.