Old Masters (17 page)

we are concerned with our country alone
and that is why we are so stunned each day that we have long come to exist
actually stunned
in a country whose government is mean and dull-witted and hypocritical and mendacious and utterly stupid to boot. Every day, if we think, we are aware of nothing so much as that we are governed by a hypocritical and mendacious and mean government, which moreover is the stupidest government imaginable, Reger said, and we think that we can do nothing about it, that really is the most terrible thing, that we can do nothing about it, that we simply have to watch impotently as this government is getting ever more mendacious and more hypocritical and meaner and baser every day, that we have to watch in a more or less permanent state of dismay as this government is getting progressively worse and progressively more unbearable. But not only the government is mendacious and hypocritical and mean and base, parliament is so too, Reger said, and sometimes it seems to me that parliament is yet a lot more hypocritical and mendacious than the government, and think how mendacious and how mean the judiciary is in this country and the press in this country and eventually culture in this country and eventually everything in this country; nothing but mendaciousness and hypocrisy and meanness and baseness have reigned in this country for decades, Reger said. This country has in fact now reached an absolute low, Reger said, and before long it will have given up its meaning and purpose and its ghost. And everywhere that nauseating twaddle of democracy! You walk out into the street, he remarked, and you constantly have to shut your eyes and ears and even hold your nose pinched in order to be able to survive in this country which has eventually become a positively dangerous state, Reger said. Any day you can scarcely believe your eyes and you can scarcely believe your ears, he said, any day you experience the decline of this ruined country and of this corrupt state and of this stultified people with an ever greater shock. And the people in this country and in this state are doing nothing about it, Reger said, that is what torments someone like me every day. Of course the people see or feel how this state is debasing itself every day and becoming meaner every day, but they are not doing anything about it. The politicians are the murderers, indeed the mass murderers of every country and of every state, Reger said, the politicians have been murdering the countries and the states for centuries and there is no one to stop them. And we Austrians have the most cunning and at the same time most brainless politicians as murderers of our country and state, Reger said. Politicians as state murderers are at the head of our state, politicians as state murderers sit in our parliament, he said, that is the truth. Every chancellor and every minister is a state murderer and hence also a national murderer, Reger said, and when one of them departs another arrives, Reger said, when one murderer departs as chancellor, another chancellor arrives as a murderer, when one minister departs as a state murderer another arrives at once. The people are always a people murdered by politicians, Reger said, but the people do not see it, admittedly they feel that this is how things are but they do not see any of it, that is the tragedy, Reger said. No sooner do we rejoice that one state murderer has gone as chancellor than another arrives, Reger said, it is horrible. The politicians are state murderers and national murderers, and they murder while they are in power, unabashed, and the state judiciary supports their vile and infamous murdering, their vile and infamous abuse. But of course every people and every society deserves the state they have, and they therefore deserve also its murderers as politicians, Reger said. Those mean and dull-witted state abusers and mean and perfidious abusers of democracy, he exclaimed. The politicians dominate the Austrian scene absolutely, Reger then said, the state murderers dominate the Austrian scene absolutely. Political conditions in this country are at present so depressing that one might expect them to give one nothing but sleepless nights, but then all other Austrian conditions are nowadays just as depressing. If by any chance you come into contact with the judiciary you will find that it is nothing but a corrupt and vile and mean judiciary, not to mention the fact that so-called
miscarriages of justice
have been piling up on an alarming scale over the past few years, hardly a week passes without some long-closed proceedings being reopened because of
serious procedural errors
or of so-called
original decisions being quashed,
a very high percentage of the judgements typical of this perfidious judiciary, passed by the Austrian judiciary in recent years were so-called
political
mistrials, Reger said. We are faced in Austria today not only with an utterly rotten and
demoniacal
state but also with an utterly rotten and
demoniacal
judiciary, Reger said. The Austrian judiciary has had no credibility for many years now, it
operates in a despicable political manner, not independently,
as it should. To speak of an independent judiciary in Austria is to mock truth to its face, Reger said. Justice in Austria today is political justice, not independent justice. Today's Austrian judiciary has in fact become political and a public danger, Reger said, I know what I am talking about, he said. Justice today makes common cause with politics, Reger said, you only need to take a closer look some day at this Catholic National Socialist judiciary and study it with an open mind, Reger said. Austria today is, not only in Europe but worldwide,
the
country with the most so-called
miscarriages of justice,
that is what is so disastrous. You need only come into contact with the judiciary, and myself, as you know, have very often come into contact with the judiciary, and you will find that the Austrian judiciary is a dangerous Catholic National Socialist human grinding mill, kept in operation not by justice, as one would expect, but by injustice, and in which the most chaotic conditions prevail; there is no judiciary in Europe that is more chaotic than the Austrian, none that is more corrupt, none that is more of a public danger or more perfidious, Reger said, it is not the accidents of stupidity but the deliberate intentions of political baseness that govern the Catholic National Socialist Austrian judiciary today, Reger said. If you are taken to court in Austria you are at the mercy of a through and through chaotic Catholic National Socialist judiciary which turns the truth and facts upside down, Reger said. Austrian justice is not just arbitrariness but a perfidious machine for grinding human beings, Reger said, a machine in which justice is crushed between the absurd millstones of injustice. And as for culture in this country, all it does is turn our stomachs. As far as so-called
old art is
concerned, it is stale and washed out and sold out and has long forfeited any claim to our attention, you know that as well as I do, and as far as so-called contemporary art is concerned, it is
not worth a rap,
as the saying goes. Austrian contemporary art is so cheap it does not even deserve our blushes, Reger said. For decades now Austrian artists have produced nothing but kitschy rubbish, which indeed, if I had my way, would end up on the rubbish heap. The painters paint rubbish, the composers compose rubbish, the writers write rubbish, he said. The greatest rubbish is produced by the Austrian sculptors, Reger said. The Austrian sculptors produce the greatest rubbish and earn recognition for it, Reger said, that is typical of this stupid age. Today's Austrian composers are altogether only
petit-bourgeois
tone idiots whose concert-hall rubbish stinks to high heaven. And the Austrian writers have altogether nothing to say and cannot even write down that nothing they have to say. None of these present-day Austrian writers can write, they fill their pockets with a revoltingly sentimental epigone literature, Reger said, wherever they write they only write rubbish, they write Styrian and Salzburgian and Carinthian and Burgenlandish and Lower Austrian and Upper Austrian and Tyrolian and Vorarlbergian rubbish and they shovel that rubbish shamelessly and fame-hungrily between the covers of their books, Reger said. They sit in Viennese municipal flats or on Carinthian converted deserted smallholdings or in Styrian backyards, writing rubbish, that epigone, stinking, mindless and brainless Austrian writers' rubbish, Reger said, in
which the pathetic stupidity of these people stinks to high heaven,
Reger said. Their books are nothing but the rubbish of two or even three generations who never learned how to write because they never learned how to think, all these writers write totally brainless and shamphilosophical and sham-homeland epigone rubbish, Reger said. All these books by these more or less nauseatingly state-opportunist writers are
nothing but cribbed books,
Reger said,
every line in them is stolen, every word is pilfered.
For decades these people have written nothing; but mindless literature written only out of a craving for admiration and likewise only published out of a craving for admiration, Reger said. They type their abysmal stupidity into their machines and for that abysmal insipid stupidity they collect all kinds of prizes, Reger said. Why, even Stifter was a great figure, Reger said, if I compare Stifter to all those Austrian dimwits who write today. Sham philosophy and sham homeland, at present greatly in vogue, is what the rubbish of those people is all about, Reger said, people incapable of a single idea of their own. The proper place for these people's books is not the bookshops but straight away the rubbish heap, Reger said. Just as the proper place for all present-day Austrian art is the rubbish heap. For what else is given at the Opera but rubbish, what else at the
Musikverein
but rubbish, and what else are the products of those brutal common proletarian men of violence with their chisels, who with positively overbearing impertinence call themselves sculptors, but marble and granite rubbish! It is frightful, for half a century nothing but this depressing mediocrity, Reger said. If Austria at least were a madhouse, but it is an infirmary, he said. The old have nothing to say, Reger said, but the young have even less to say, that is today's state of affairs. And of course all these art-producing people are too well off, he said. All these people are stuffed full of scholarships and of prizes and every other moment there is an honorary doctorate here and an honorary doctorate there and a pin of honour here and a pin of honour there and every other moment they sit next to one minister and shortly afterwards next to another and today they are with the Federal Chancellor and tomorrow with the Speaker of Parliament and today they sit in the socialist trade union hall and tomorrow in the Catholic working man's educational centre and let themselves be fêted and kept. These present artists are not only so mendacious in their so-called works, they are just as mendacious in their lives, Reger said. Mendacious work continually alternates for them with mendacious living, what they write is lies and what they live is lies, Reger said. And then these writers go on so-called
reading tours,
travelling in one way and another through the whole of Germany and through the whole of Austria and through the whole of Switzerland and they do not miss out even the most dull-witted backwoods dump for reading their rubbish and getting themselves fêted and they allow their pockets to be stuffed full of marks and of schillings and of francs, Reger said. There is nothing more distasteful than a so-called
poet's reading,
Reger said, there is hardly anything I detest more, but none of these people see anything wrong in reading their rubbish everywhere. Not a single person is basically interested in what these people have scavenged on their literary marauding expeditions, but they read it all the same, they get up on the stage and read it and they bow to every half-witted town councillor and to every dull-witted village mayor and to every jackanapes of a professor of German, Reger said. They read their rubbish from Flensburg down to Bolzano and let themselves be kept in the most brazen manner. There is nothing more intolerable for me than a so-called poet's reading, Reger said, it is repulsive to sit down and read one's own rubbish, because that is all those people do read — just rubbish. While they are still fairly young you can stretch a point, but once they are older, once they are in their fifties and beyond, it is just nauseating. But it is mainly these older writers, Reger said, who read everywhere and who climb up on every platform and who sit down at every table in order to present their poetic rubbish or their dull-witted senile prose, Reger said. Even if their dentures can no longer retain any of their mendacious words in their oral cavity, they still mount the platform of never mind what municipal hall and read their charlatanist nonsense, Reger said. A singer singing songs is insufferable enough, but a writer reciting his own products is a lot more insufferable still, Reger said. A writer stepping on to a public platform in order to read his opportunist rubbish, even if it is in Saint Paul's Church in Frankfurt, is a pitiful fairground ham, Reger said. Germany and Austria are swarming with such opportunist fairground hams, Reger said. Oh yes, he said, the logical conclusion would invariably be total despair
about everything.
But I am resisting this total despair
about everything,
Reger said. I am now eighty-two and I am resisting this total despair
about everything
tooth and nail, Reger said. In this world and in
this age, he said, where anything is possible nothing will soon be possible. Irrsigler appeared and Reger nodded to him as if to say, you are better off than I am, and Irrsigler turned and disappeared again. Reger was supporting himself on his stick locked between his knees when he said: just reflect, Atzbacher, what it means to have the ambition to compose the longestplaying symphony in the history of music. No one else would have conceived such a nonsensical idea except Mahler. Some people say Mahler was the last great Austrian composer, that is ridiculous. A man who, in full control of his mind, has fifty strings fiddling away only to outdo Wagner is ridiculous. Austrian music reached its absolute low with Mahler, Reger said. Purest kitsch, generating mass hysteria, just as Klimt, he said. Schiele is the more important painter. Nowadays even a poor Klimt kitsch painting costs several million pounds, Reger said, that is distasteful. Schiele is not kitsch, but of course Schiele is not a really great painter either. In this century there have been several Austrian painters of Schiele's quality, but, with the exception of Kokoschka, not a single really important one, a really great one, as it were. On the other hand, we have to admit that we cannot know what really great painting is. After all, here at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, we have instances of so-called great painting by the hundred, Reger said, but as time goes on they no longer seem to us to be great, no longer so important, because we have studied them too thoroughly. Anything we study thoroughly loses value for us, Reger said. We should therefore avoid studying anything