Old Masters (7 page)

and
sentimental painting, and the composers are vying with each other in kitsch and sentimentality; you only need go to the theatre, where nothing is staged nowadays except dangerous kitsch, nothing except sentimentality, and even when there is brutality and savagery on the stage it is still nothing but common kitschy sentimentality. You need only go to an exhibition and all that is shown to you there is extreme kitsch and the most revolting sentimentality. You need only go to the concert halls, and there too you will hear nothing but kitsch and sentimentality. The books today are crammed full of kitsch and sentimentality, that is what made Stifter so fashionable in recent years. Stifter is a master of kitsch, Reger said. On any page of Stifter that you care to pick there is so much kitsch that several generations of poetry-hungry nuns and nurses can be satiated with it, he said. And in actual fact Bruckner too is nothing but sentimental and kitschy, nothing but stupid, monumental orchestrated sickly ear-wax. The young and the very young writers working today mostly write nothing but brainless and mindless kitsch and in their books they develop a positively unbearable bombastic sentimentality, it is therefore easy to understand why Stifter is the height of fashion for them too. Stifter, who introduced brainless and mindless kitsch into great and noble literature and who ended up committing a kitschy suicide, is now the height of fashion, Reger said. It is by no means incomprehensible that just now, when the word
forest
and the word
forest death
have so much come into vogue, and when altogether the
notion of forest
is the most used and the most misused notion of all, Stifter's
Tall Forest
is
being bought in greater numbers than ever before. People today yearn for
nature
more than they have done ever before, and because everyone believes that Stifter has described nature they all run to Stifter. But Stifter has not described nature at all, he has only kitschified it. The whole stupidity of people is revealed in the fact that they are all now making pilgrimages to Stifter, in their hundreds of thousands, kneeling down before every one of his books as if every one of them were an altar. It is in this kind of pseudo-enthusiasm, more than in anything else, that I find humanity distasteful, Reger said, I find it absolutely repulsive. In the end everything eventually becomes a prey to ridicule or at least to triviality, no matter how great and important it may be. Stifter in fact always reminds me of
Heidegger,
of that ridiculous Nazi philistine in plus-fours. Just as Stifter has totally and in the most shameless manner kitschified great literature, so Heidegger, the Black Forest philosopher Heidegger, has kitschified philosophy, Heidegger and Stifter, each one for himself and in his own way, have hopelessly kitschified philosophy and literature. Heidegger, after whom the wartime and postwar generations have been chasing, showering him with revolting and stupid doctoral theses even in his lifetime — I always visualize him sitting on his wooden bench outside his Black Forest house, alongside his wife who, with her perverse knitting enthusiasm, ceaselessly knits winter socks for him from the wool she has herself shorn from their own Heidegger sheep. I cannot visualize Heidegger other than sitting on the bench outside his Black Forest house, alongside his wife, who all her life totally dominated him and who knitted all his socks and crocheted all his caps and baked all his bread and wove all his bedlinen and who even cobbled up his sandals for him. Heidegger was a kitschy brain, Reger said, just as Stifter, but actually a lot more ridiculous than Stifter who in fact was
a tragic figure
unlike Heidegger, who was
always merely comical,
just as
petit-bourgeois
as Stifter, just as disastrously megalomanic, a feeble thinker from the Alpine foothills, as I believe, and just about right for the German philosophical hot-pot. For decades they ravenously spooned up that man Heidegger, more than anybody else, and overloaded their German philological and philosophical stomachs with his stuff. Heidegger had a common face, not a spiritual one, Reger said, he was through and through an unspiritual person, devoid of all fantasy, devoid of all sensibility, a genuine German philosophical ruminant, a ceaselessly gravid German philosophical cow, Reger said, which grazed upon German philosophy and thereupon for decades let its smart little cowpats drop on it. Heidegger, in a manner of speaking, was a philosophical con-man, Reger said, who succeeded in getting a whole generation of German philosophers to stand on their heads. Heidegger is a revolting episode in the history of German philosophy, Reger said yesterday, an episode in which all philosophical Germans participated and
still participate.
To this day Heidegger has still not been entirely exposed for what he is; true, the Heidegger cow has become thinner but the Heidegger cow is still being milked. Heidegger in his worn plus-fours in front of that lie of a log cabin at Todtnauberg is all I have left as an unmasking photograph, the philosophical philistine with his crocheted black Black Forest cap on his head, under which, when all is said and done, nothing but German feeble-mindedness is warmed up over and over again, Reger said. By the time we are old we have undergone a great many murderous fashions, all those murderous fashions in art and in philosophy and in consumer goods. Heidegger is a good example of how nothing is left of a fashion in philosophy which at one time had gripped the whole of Germany, nothing left but a number of ridiculous photographs and a number of even more ridiculous writings. Heidegger was a philosophical market crier who only brought stolen goods to the market, everything of Heidegger's is second-hand, he was and is the prototype of the
re
-thinker, who lacked everything, but truly everything, for independent thinking. Heidegger's method consisted in the most unscrupulous turning of other people's great ideas into small ideas of his own, that is a fact. Heidegger has so reduced everything great that it has become
Germancompatible,
you understand:
German-compatible,
Reger said. Heidegger is the
petit
bourgeois
of German philosophy, the man who has placed on German philosophy his kitschy nightcap, that kitschy black night-cap which Heidegger always wore, on all occasions. Heidegger is the carpet-slipper and night-cap philosopher of the Germans, nothing else. I don't know why, Reger said yesterday, whenever I think of Stifter I also think of Heidegger and the other way about. Surely it is no accident, Reger said, that Heidegger just as Stifter has always been popular, and is still popular, mainly with those tense women, and just as those fussy do-gooding nuns and those fussy do-gooding nurses devour Stifter as their favourite dish, in a manner of speaking, so they also devour Heidegger. Heidegger to this day is the favourite philosopher of German womanhood. Heidegger is
the women's philosopher,
the specially suitable luncheon philosopher straight from the scholars' frying pan. When you come to a
petit-bourgeois
or even an aristocratic
-petit-bourgeois
party, you are very often served Heidegger even before the hors-d'oeuvre, you have not even taken off your overcoat and already you are being offered a piece of Heidegger, you have not even sat down and already the lady of the house has brought Heidegger in with the sherry on a silver salver. Heidegger is invariably a well-cooked German philosophy which may be served anywhere and at any time, Reger said, in any household. I do not know of any philosopher today who has been more degraded, Reger said. Anyway, Heidegger is finished as far as philosophy is concerned, whereas ten years ago he was still the great thinker, he now, as it were, only haunts pseudo-intellectual households and pseudo-intellectual parties, adding an artificial mendaciousness to their entirely natural one. Like Stifter, Heidegger is a tasteless and readily digestible reader's pudding for the mediocre German mind. Heidegger has no more to do with intellect than Stifter has with poetry, believe me, and as far as philosophy and poetry are concerned, the two of them are worth nothing, although I still value Stifter more highly than Heidegger, who has always repelled me, because everything about Heidegger has always been repulsive to me, not only the night-cap on his head and his homespun winter long-johns above the stove which he himself had lit at Todtnauberg, not only his Black Forest walking stick which he himself had whittled, in fact his entire hand-whittled Black Forest philosophy, everything about that tragicomical man has always been repulsive to me, has always profoundly repulsed me whenever I even thought of it; I only had to know a single line of Heidegger to feel repulsed, let alone when reading Heidegger, Reger said; I have always thought of Heidegger as a charlatan who merely utilized everything around him and who, during that utilization, sunned himself on his bench at Todtnauberg. When I think that even super-intelligent people have been taken in by Heidegger and that even one of my best women friends wrote a dissertation about Heidegger, and moreover wrote that dissertation
quite seriously,
I feel sick to this day, Reger said. His
nothing is without reason
is
the most ludicrous thing ever, Reger said. But the Germans are impressed by posturing, Reger said, the Germans have an
interest in posturing,
that is one of their most striking characteristics. And as for the Austrians, they are a lot worse still in all these respects. I have seen a series of photographs which a supremely talented woman photographer made of Heidegger, who in all of them looked like a retired bloated staff officer, Reger said; in these photographs Heidegger is just climbing out of bed, or Heidegger is climbing into bed, or Heidegger is sleeping, or waking up, putting on his underpants, pulling on his socks, taking a nip of grapejuice, stepping out of his log cabin and looking towards the horizon, whittling away at his stick, putting on his cap, taking off his cap, holding his cap in his hands, opening out his legs, raising his head, lowering his head, putting his right hand in his wife's left hand while his wife is putting her left hand in his right hand, walking in front of his house, walking at the back of his house, walking towards his house, walking away from his house, reading, eating, spooning his soup, cutting a slice of bread (baked by himself), opening a book (written by himself), closing a book (written by himself), bending down, straightening up, and so on, Reger said. Enough to make you throw up. If even the Wagnerians are more than flesh and blood can bear, what about the Heideggerians, Reger said. But of course Heidegger cannot be compared to Wagner, who really was a genius, a man to whom the
concept of genius
really applies more than to anyone else, whereas Heidegger has always only been a small philosophical rear-rank man. Heidegger, that much is clear, was the most pampered German philosopher of the century, and simultaneously the most insignificant. The people who made pilgrimages to Heidegger were mainly those who confused philosophy with culinary science, who regarded philosophy as something fried and roasted and cooked, which is entirely in line with German taste. Heidegger used to hold court at Todtnauberg and at all times would allow himself to be admired on his philosophical Black Forest plinth like a sacred cow. Even a famous and much-feared North German publisher of periodicals kneeled before him devotionally and open-mouthed, as though, in a manner of speaking, he was expecting the host of the spirit from Heidegger sitting there under the setting sun on his bench before his house. All these people made their pilgrimages to Todtnauberg to see Heidegger and made themselves look ridiculous, Reger said. They made their pilgrimages, as it were, into the philosophical Black Forest, to the sacred Mount Heidegger and knelt down before their idol. That their idol was a total spiritual wash-out — that they could not know with their dull-wittedness. They did not even suspect it, Reger said. Nevertheless the Heidegger episode is revealing as an example of the German cult of philosophers. They invariably cling to the false ones, Reger said, to those who suit them best, to the stupid and the suspect ones. But the most terrible thing is that I am related to both of them, to Stifter on my mother's side and to Heidegger on my father's side, that is positively grotesque, Reger said yesterday. I am even related to Bruckner, even though in a very round-about way, as the saying goes, but related nonetheless. Needless to say, I am not so stupid as to feel ashamed of these connections, that would be the most stupid thing of all, Reger said, even though I am not necessarily as delighted about these connections as my parents always were or as my family always was. Most of my ancestors, no matter from what Upper Austrian, or generally Austrian or German
line,
were merchants, industrialists like my father, peasants of course at an earlier time, more often from Bohemia than from anywhere else, not so much from the Alps, more from the Alpine foothills, and there was also a massive Jewish contribution. Among my ancestors there was even an archbishop and a double murderer. No way, I have always told myself, will I investigate my origins in any greater detail, who knows what even more frightful horrors I might unearth, and I confess that that frightens me. People are unearthing their ancestors and rummage and rummage in their pile of ancestors until they have rummaged it all over and they finish up even more dissatisfied and doubly dismayed and desperate, he said. I have never been a so-called ancestor rummager, I lack the necessary disposition for that, but even a person like me does incidentally come across the strangest specimens of ancestors, this is something no one escapes, no matter how much he resists that so-called exhumation of ancestors, he keeps on digging. All in all I have come from an
exceedingly interesting mixture, a cross-section, as it were, o f everything that I am. To
know less than I do know would have been better in this respect, but age inevitably brings a lot to the light of day, uninvited, he said. The one I like best is the joiner's apprentice who in eighteen forty-eight learned to read and write at Cattaro and in a letter proudly informed his parents in Linz of the fact, he said. This joiner's apprentice, on my mother's side, was stationed as a gunner at the fortress of Cattaro, present-day Kotor, and I still possess that letter which he, at eighteen it is said, radiant with joy, wrote from Cattaro to his parents in Linz, and on which there is a note from the official imperial post office to the effect that its