Old Masters (9 page)

what
they had made they had a shock and would have preferred to unmake me. And as they could not put me in their safe they thrust me into that black hole of childhood, from which I could not emerge while they were alive. Parents invariably produce their children in an irresponsible manner, and when they see what they have produced they have a shock, that is why, whenever children are born, we see only shocked parents. To produce a child and, as the hypocritical phrase goes, bring it into the world is nothing other than bringing grave unhappiness into the world and it is this grave unhappiness that always shocks them anew. Nature has ever made fools of parents, he said, and out of these fools it produces unhappy children in dark holes of childhood. Without any embarrassment people say they have had a happy childhood, whereas in fact they had an unhappy one, from which they only escaped by a supreme effort, and for
this
reason they say they had a happy childhood, because they have escaped from the hell of childhood. To have escaped from one's childhood is nothing other than to have escaped from hell, and then people say they had a happy childhood in order to spare their progenitors, their parents, who should not be spared. To say that one has had a happy childhood in order to spare one's parents is nothing but a piece of sociopolitical villainy, he said. We spare our parents instead of charging them, lifelong, with the crime of procreation of humans, he said yesterday. For thirty-five years they oppressed me with any means possible, they tortured me with their frightful methods. I have no need to give my parents the slightest consideration, he said, they do not deserve the slightest consideration. They committed two crimes against me, two most serious crimes, he said, they procreated me and they oppressed me, they committed the crime of procreation against me and the crime of oppression. And they thrust me into the black hole of childhood with the greatest possible parental ruthlessness. As you are aware, I had a sister who died young, he said, who escaped our parents only by her premature death, she had been treated by our parents with the same ruthlessness, they oppressed me and my sister by their trauma of disappointment, my sister did not endure it for long and died suddenly on an April day, totally unexpectedly, in a way that is possible only with juveniles, she was nineteen, she died of a so-called sudden heart attack, you understand, while my mother on the first floor was getting everything ready for my father's birthday party, rushing this way and that to make quite sure no birthday mistake was made, with all kinds of plates and glasses and napkins and small cakes, nearly driving me and my sister out of our minds with her birthday-party preparations which she had been obsessed with from early in the morning, immediately after my father had left the house my mother began her (to us long familiar) birthday-party frenzy with all the hysteria imaginable, and while she was chasing me and my sister up and down the stairs and into the cellar and into the various outbuildings, in and out and back again, ceaselessly anxious not to make a mistake, chasing my sister and me around the entire house, hither and thither, with her birthday-party preparations, I was thinking all the time, I remember this quite clearly, is this now our father's fiftyeighth or is it the fifty-ninth birthday? all the time I ran around the house and around all the rooms thinking: is it the fiftyeighth or is it the fifty-ninth, or is it possibly the sixtieth? which in the end it was not, it was my father's fifty-ninth birthday, Reger said. I had been instructed to open all the windows and let in the fresh air, even then, in my childhood and youth, I hated a draught, but at the command of our mother I had to open all the windows at every other moment and to let in the air, he said, I therefore always had to do something I hated and I hated nothing more than letting fresh air into the house through all the windows, I hated nothing more than the
draught
rushing into the house from all sides, he said, but naturally I could not do anything against the parental commands, I aIways meticulously executed all parental commands, I would never have dared not to execute a parental command, no matter whether it was a maternal or a paternal command, I automatically executed my parental command meticulously, Reger said, because I wished to escape parental punishment and that parental punishment was always dreadful and cruel, I feared parental torture and so I naturally always executed all parental commands meticulously, he said, no matter what the command was, even when in my opinion it was the most nonsensical of commands, it was therefore a matter of course that I opened all the windows on that birthday of my father and let the draught blow into the house. Our mother celebrated all our birthdays, not a single one of our birthdays was not celebrated, I hated those birthday celebrations, as you may imagine, just as I hate any celebrations, I hate anything festive, anything solemn to this day, nothing is more distasteful to me than celebrating or being celebrated, I am a hater of festivities, he said, from childhood I have hated all feasting and celebrating and above all I have hated birthday celebrations, no matter what birthday it was, and most of all I hated a parental birthday being celebrated; how can a person celebrate a birthday, his birthday, I have always wondered, when it is a misfortune to be in this world at all; yes, I always thought if people were to observe a memorial hour on their birthday, a memorial hour
for the monstrous deed their progenitors had committed against them,
that I would understand, but surely not a festivity, he said. And our father's birthdays were celebrated with all kinds of revolting pomp, all sorts of people I hated were invariably invited, and there was a lot of eating and drinking, and the most detestable thing of course were the speeches addressed to the person celebrated and the presents given to the person celebrated. Surely there is nothing more false than these birthday celebrations to which people lend themselves, nothing more distasteful than those birthday lies and those birthday hypocrisies, he said. It was in fact on our father's fifty-ninth birthday that my sister died, Reger said. I was standing in a corner on the first floor and, while trying to shield myself against the cold draught of air, was watching my mother rushing about the place with birthday-hysterical rapidity, at one moment transporting a vase from one room to another, at another switching a sugar bowl from one table to another table, one doily this way, another doily another way, a book to one place, another book to another place, a bunch of flowers over here, another over there, when suddenly, coming from downstairs, from the ground floor, I heard a dull thud, Reger said. My mother had stopped, because she too had heard the dull thud from downstairs. My mother stood still on the spot and her face had turned pale, Reger said. Something terrible had happened, that was instantly obvious to me as it was to my mother. I went down from the first floor to the vestibule and found my sister lying dead in the vestibule. Ah yes, Reger said, instant heart failure is an enviable death. If only we ourselves had such an instant heart failure one day, that would be the greatest happiness, he said. We hope for a swift painless death and yet we can drift into prolonged, year-long lingering illness, Reger said yesterday, adding that it was a consolation to him that his wife did not suffer long, not for years as sometimes happens, he said, only a few weeks. But of course there is no consolation for the loss of the one person who, all one's life, has been the closest to you. One method, he said yesterday, while I was now, that is a day later, observing him from the side, with Irrsigler behind him who had for one moment looked into the Sebastiano Room without taking any notice of me, while I was therefore still observing Reger who was still observing Tintoretto's
White-Bearded
Man,
one method, he said, is to turn everything into a caricature. We can only stand a great, important picture if we have turned it into a caricature, or a great man, a so-called important personality, neither can we bear a person as a great man or as an important personality, he said, we have to caricature him. When we observe a picture for any length of time, even the most serious picture, we have to turn it into a caricature in order to bear it, hence we must also turn our parents, our superiors, if we have any, into caricatures, and the whole world into a caricature, he said. Look upon one of Rembrandt's self-portraits for any length of time, no matter which of them, in time it will quite certainly turn into a caricature for you and you will turn away. Look for any length of time at your father's face and it will turn into a caricature for you and you will turn away from him. Read Kant
intently and ever more intently
and you will suddenly be seized by a fit of laughter, he said. Strictly speaking, every original is a forgery in itself, he said. You follow my meaning. Of course there are phenomena in the world, in nature, if you like, which we
cannot
make look ridiculous, but in art
anything
can be made to look
ridiculous,
any person can be made to look ridiculous, can be made into a caricature whenever we like, whenever we feel the need, he said. Provided we are in a position to make something look ridiculous. We are not always in that position, and then we are seized by despair and next by the devil, he said. No matter which work of art, it can be made to look ridiculous, he said, it seems to you great and yet from one moment to the next you make it seem ridiculous, just as a person whom you have to make to look ridiculous because you cannot do otherwise. But then most people
are
ridiculous and most works of art
are
ridiculous, Reger said, and you can save yourself the trouble of making them look ridiculous or caricaturing them. Most people, on the other hand, are incapable of caricaturing, they observe everything to the bitter end with their terrible seriousness, he said, it never even occurs to them to caricature them, he said. You go to an audience of the Pope, he said, and you take the Pope and the audience seriously, moreover for the rest of your life; ridiculous, the history of the papacy is full of nothing but caricatures, he said. Of course, Saint Peter's is great, he said, but it is still ridiculous. Just step into Saint Peter's and free yourself completely of those hundreds and thousands and millions of Catholic lies about history, you do not have to wait long before the whole of Saint Peter's seems ridiculous to you. Go to a private audience and wait for the Pope, even before he arrives he will seem ridiculous to you, and of course he is ridiculous when he enters in his kitschy white pure silk robes. You can look around wherever you like, everything in the Vatican is ridiculous once you have freed yourself of the Catholic lies about history and of the Catholic sentimentality about history, of the Catholic officiousness about world history. Think of it, the Catholic Pope as a shrewd globetrotting puppet, wearing make-up, sitting under his bullet-proof glass dome, surrounded by his make-up-wearing and shrewd super-puppets and under-puppets, how revoltingly ridiculous. Talk to one of our last and still-lamented kings, how ridiculous, talk to one of our blinkered communist leaders, how ridiculous. Go to the New Year's reception of our garrulous Federal President who, with his senile father-of-the-state babbling, makes a hash of everything he talks about, it is ridiculous enough to make you sick. The Capuchin Tomb, the
Hofburg,
what revolting ridiculousness. Go to the Maltese Church and look at those Maltese Knights in their black Maltese robes and their white pseudo-aristocratic numskulls glistening under the church lamps, and you will feel nothing except its ridiculousness. Go to a lecture by the Catholic cardinal, attend an inauguration at the university, how ridiculous. Wherever we look today in this country, we look into a sump of ridiculousness, Reger said. Every morning we blush at so much ridiculousness, my dear Atzbacher, that is the truth. Go to the presentation of a prize, Atzbacher, how ridiculous; ridiculous figures; the more bombastically they act the more ridiculous they are, he said, nothing but caricature, he said, simply everything. You call a good man your friend, and the next thing you know he lets himself be made an honorary professor and from then on calls himself professor and has
Professor
printed on his notepaper and his wife suddenly turns up at her butcher's as
Frau
Professor so
she does not have to queue as long as the others who are not married to professors. How ridiculous, he said. Golden staircases, golden chairs, golden settees in the
Hofburg,
he said, and nothing but pseudodemocratic idiots on them, how ridiculous. You walk down Kärntnerstrasse and everything seems to you ridiculous, all the people are just ridiculous, nothing else. You walk right across Vienna, this way and that, and all Vienna seems suddenly ridiculous to you, all the people coming towards you are ridiculous people, everything that comes towards you is ridiculous, you live in an utterly ridiculous and in reality debased world. You suddenly have to turn the whole world into a caricature. You have the strength to turn the world into a caricature, he said, the supreme strength of the spirit which is necessary for it, this one strength for survival, he said. We only control what we ultimately find ridiculous, only if we find the world and life upon it ridiculous can we get any further, there is no other, no better, method, he said. We cannot endure a state of admiration for long, and we perish if we do not break it off in time, he said. I have all my life been far from being an admirer, admiration is alien to me, as there are no miracles admiration has always been alien to me and nothing repels me more than observing people in the act of admiration, people infected with some admiration. You enter a church and the people there admire, you enter a museum and the people admire. You go to a concert and the people admire, that is distasteful. Real intellect does not know admiration: it acknowledges, it respects, it esteems, that is all, he said. People enter every church and every museum as though with a rucksack full of admiration, and for that reason they always have that revolting stooping way of walking which they all have in churches and in museums, he said. I have never yet seen a person enter a church or a museum entirely normally, and the most distasteful thing is to watch those people in Knossos or in Agrigento, when they have arrived at the destination of their admiration journey, because the journeys these people undertake are nothing but admiration journeys, he said. Admiration makes a person blind, Reger said yesterday, it makes the admirers dull-witted. Most people, once they have got into admiration never get out of admiration again, and that makes them dull-witted. Most people are dull-witted all their lives solely because they keep admiring. There is nothing to admire, Reger said yesterday, nothing, nothing at all. But because people find respect and esteem too difficult for them they admire, that comes cheaper for them, Reger said. Admiration is easier than respect, admiration is the characteristic of the dimwit, Reger said. Only a dimwit admires, the intelligent person does not admire but respects, esteems, understands, that is it. But respect and esteem and understanding require a mind, and a mind is what people do not have, without a mind and in fact totally mindlessly they travel to the pyramids and to the Sicilian columns and to the Persian temples and sprinkle themselves and their dull-wittedness with admiration, he said. The state of admiration is a state of feeble-mindedness, Reger said yesterday, nearly all of them live in this state of feeblemindedness. And in that state of feeble-mindedness they all enter the Kunsthistorisches Museum, he said. The people are weighed down by their admiration, they do not have the courage to deposit their admiration in the cloakroom along with their overcoats. So they drag themselves, laboriously crammed full of admiration, through all these rooms, Reger said, so much so it turns your stomach. Admiration, however, is not just the characteristic of the so-called uneducated, quite the opposite, it is also to a quite frightful, yes, literally a frightening degree, a characteristic of the so-called educated, which is a lot more revolting still. The uneducated person admires because quite simply he is too stupid not to admire; the educated person, however, is actually perverse, Reger said. The admiration of the so-called uneducated is entirely natural, the admiration of the so-called educated, on the other hand, is a positively perverse perverseness, Reger said. Take Beethoven, the permanently depressive, the state artist, the total state composer: the people admire him, but basically Beethoven is an utterly repulsive phenomenon, everything about Beethoven is more or less comical, a comical helplessness is what we continually hear when we are listening to Beethoven: the rancour, the titanic, the marching-tune dull-wittedness even in his chamber music. When we hear Beethoven's music we hear more noise than music, the state-dulled march of the notes, Reger said. I listen to Beethoven for a time, for instance to the