The Sleepwalkers (78 page)
Authors: Hermann Broch
“Splendid,” said I, closing the door and turning once more to my familiar spirits, “splendid, my children, now give each other the kiss of Zion.”
But the two of them stood there with their arms hanging, and did not dare to seize each other or to dance; smiling sheepishly they simply stood there. And finally we sat down and drank tea.
THE SYMPOSIUM OR DIALOGUE ON REDEMPTION
Incapable of communicating himself to others, incapable of breaking out of his isolation, doomed to remain the mere actor of his life, the deputy of his own ego—all that any human being can know of another is a mere symbol, the symbol of an ego that remains beyond our grasp, possessing no more value than that of a symbol; and all that can be told is the symbol of a symbol, a symbol at a second, third,
n
th. remove, asking for representation in the true double sense of the word. Therefore it will raise no difficulty for anyone, and will at least make for brevity, if we imagine that Herr and Frau Esch together with the Major and Herr Huguenau find themselves in a scene on the stage, involved in a performance which no human being can escape: that of play-acting.
At the table in
ESCH’S
summer-house are sitting
FRAU ESCH,
on her right the
MAJOR,
on her left
HUGUENAU,
opposite her
(
with his back to the audience
)
HERR ESCH.
The evening meal is over. On the table are the bread and the wine, the latter of which
HERR ESCH
has procured from a vineyard proprietor who advertises in his paper.
Darkness is beginning to fall. In the background the contours of the mountains can still be discerned. Two candles burn within glass globes to protect them from the breeze: moths flutter round them. The jerky asthmatic pounding of the printing-press can be heard.
ESCH
: May I fill your glass again, Herr Major?
HUGUENAU:
Tip-top wine, no doubt about it … we Alsatians must take a back seat after this when our wine is mentioned. Does the Herr Major know our Alsatian wine?
MAJOR
(
absently
): I don’t think so.
HUGUENAU
: Well, it’s a harmless wine … we Alsatians are altogether harmless … an honest tipple you could call it, all frank and above-board (
he laughs
) and all it does to you is to make you simply and naturally tight … you go to sleep when you’ve had enough, that’s all.
ESCH:
To be drunk is never natural, it’s a poisoned state.
HUGUENAU
: Well, well, I can remember occasions when you were quite willing to take a glass or two over the score … for instance … well, may I mention the Palatine Tavern, Herr Esch? … besides (
he regards
ESCH
attentively
) you don’t strike me as being so free from poison as all that.
MAJOR
: Your attacks on our friend Esch are very regrettable, Herr Huguenau.
ESCH
: Don’t mind him, Herr Major, he’s not in earnest.
HUGUENAU
: Yes, I am in earnest … I always say straight out what I think … our friend Esch is a wolf in sheep’s clothing … yes, I stick to that … and, by your leave, he has his little orgies in private.
ESCH
(
contemptuously
): No wine has ever upset my applecart yet.…
HUGUENAU
: That’s you all over, Herr Esch, trying to keep sober so that you don’t give yourself away.
ESCH
: … now and then I may take a drop too much, yes, and then the world becomes so simple that you would think it was made of nothing but truth … as simple as in a dream … simple and yet brazenly full of false names … the right names for things aren’t to be found.…
HUGUENAU
: You’d better drink consecrated wine, then you’d soon find those names of yours … or the future Socialist State, if that’s what you’re after.
MAJOR
: One shouldn’t blaspheme even in jest … even wine and bread are symbols of the divine.
(HUGUENAU
notices his mistake and reddens.
)
FRAU ESCH
: Oh, Herr Major, it’s always like this when Herr Huguenau and my husband are together … chaff may be a sign of friendship, but sometimes it’s really past endurance, the way he drags in the mud everything that is holy to my poor husband.
HUGUENAU:
Holy! Pure sham! (
He has once more regained his composure and ceremoniously relights his cigar which has gone out.
)
ESCH
(
possessed by his train of thought
): The truth that comes to you in
dreams walks on crutches … (
he strikes on the table
) the whole world goes on crutches … a hobbling monstrosity …
HUGUENAU
(
interested):
An invalid?
ESCH
: … if there is even one single error in the world, if at any point at all the false passes for true, then … yes, then the whole world is false … then everything becomes unreal … diabolically conjured away.…
HUGUENAU
: Abracadabra, it’s gone.…
MAJOR
(
without paying any attention to
HUGUENAU): NO
, friend Esch, it’s the opposite way about: there need be only one righteous man among a thousand sinners …
HUGUENAU
: … the great magician Esch.…
ESCH
(
rudely):
What do you know about magic? (
shouts at him
) I should think you’re more like a conjurer, a juggler, a knife-thrower.…
HUGUENAU
: Herr Esch, you are in company, remember yourself.
ESCH
(
more calmly
): Magic and juggling are devil’s work, they’re the real evil, they make the confusion still worse …
MAJOR:
Where knowledge fails, that is where evil begins.…
ESCH:
… but first the man must come who will blot out every error and bring order, who will take upon him the sacrificial death, that the world may be redeemed to a new innocence, so that from the dead new life may arise.…
MAJOR:
The one who will take the penance upon him … (
with assurance
) but He has already come: it was He who destroyed false knowledge and drove out the magicians …
ESCH
: … the darkness still remains, and in the darkness the world is collapsing … nailed to the cross and in the hour of final loneliness pierced by the spear.…
HUGUENAU
: Hm, very unpleasant.
MAJOR
: A dreadful darkness was round Him, a half-light of heavy uncertainty, and no one approached Him in His loneliness to help Him … yet He took man’s sin upon Him, He redeemed the world from sin …
ESCH:
… there has been nothing until now but murder and counter-murder, and order will only come when we awaken.…
MAJOR
: We must take the penance upon us, we must be awakened out of our sin …
ESCH
: … nothing is decided yet, we are still in prison and we must wait …
MAJOR
: … we are encompassed by sin, and our light is darkness …
ESCH:
… we are waiting for the Judgment, we still have a respite and can still begin a new life … evil has not yet triumphed …
MAJOR:
… when we are delivered from the darkness, delivered by grace … then evil will vanish as if it had never been …
ESCH:
… like an evil magic, a corrupt magic …
MAJOR
: … evil is always outside the world, outside its frontiers: only the man who steps over the world’s frontiers and steps out of the truth can fall into the abyss of evil.
ESCH:
… we are standing on the edge of the abyss … on the edge of the dark gully …
HUGUENAU
: That’s too deep for us, what, Frau Esch?
(FRAU ESCH
smooths her hair back, then lays a finger on her lips as a sign to
HUGUENAU
to be silent.
)
ESCH:
Many must still die, many must sacrifice themselves, so that room may be made for the son who shall build the house anew … only then will the mists thin away and the new life will come, radiant and innocent.
MAJOR
: The evil we see is only an illusion, it takes many shapes, but it is never really there itself … a symbol of nothingness—only divine grace is real.
HUGUENAU
(
who does not intend to be relegated to the part of a silent listener):
Well, if robbery or child-rape or desertion or embezzlement are only illusions, it’s a very cheerful outlook.
MAJOR
: Evil is non-existent … divine grace has redeemed the world from evil.
ESCH
: The harder the tribulation, the deeper the darkness, the sharper the whizzing knives, the nearer is the kingdom of redemption.
MAJOR:
Only the good is real and true … there is only one sin: not to desire the good, not to desire knowledge, not to have good-will.…
HUGUENAU
(
eagerly):
Yes, Herr Major, that’s right … myself for instance, I’m certainly no angel … (
reflectively
) … there’s this to be said, in that case one couldn’t punish anyone … a deserter, for instance, who had good-will couldn’t be shot simply to make an example of him.
ESCH:
No one stands so high that he dare judge his fellows, and no one is so depraved that his eternal soul can lose its claim to reverence.
HUGUENAU
: Quite right.
MAJOR
: The man who desires evil can desire good at the same time, but the man who does not desire good has made divine grace bankrupt … it is the sign of obstinacy, inertia of feeling.
ESCH
: It’s not a matter of good or bad works.…
HUGUENAU
: I beg your pardon, Herr Major, but that doesn’t seem quite to fit the case … once I lost six hundred marks in Reutlingen through a man going bankrupt, a tidy sum of money, and why? because the man was mad, he had religious mania, of course I wasn’t to know that … and right enough, he was acquitted and stuck in a lunatic asylum. But my money was gone.
ESCH:
What do you want to infer from that?
HUGUENAU:
Why, there you have a good man, and yet he did evil works
… (grinning
) and if you were to do me in, Herr Esch, you would be acquitted on the plea of religious mania, but if I were to do you in I would lose my head … what do you say to that, Herr Esch, with your sham piety? Hm? (
He glances at the
MAJOR,
seeking approval.
)
MAJOR:
The madman is like the dreamer; his truth is a false truth … he curses his own child … nobody can be the mouthpiece of God without suffering for it … he is singled out.…
ESCH:
He lives in a false reality … we are all still living in a false reality … by rights we should all be madmen, mad in our loneliness.
HUGUENAU
: Yes, but I’ll be shot and he won’t! I beg your pardon, Herr Major, but that’s just where he shows his hypocrisy … (
becoming heated
), ah, merde, la sainte religion et les curés à faire des courbettes auprès de la guillotine, ah, merde, alors.… I’m an enlightened man, but that’s a bit too much for me!
MAJOR
: Come, come, Herr Huguenau, this Moselle seems to be dangerous to a man of your temperament
(HUGUENAU
makes an apologetic gesture
) … to take the penance and the chastisement voluntarily upon us, as we have had to take the war, because we have sinned … that isn’t hypocrisy.
ESCH
(
absently):
Yes, to take men’s sins upon you … in the final hour of loneliness.…
The printing-machine stops: the pounding falls silent; the chirping of the crickets can be heard. A wind stirs the leaves of the fruit-trees. Round the moon a few white irradiated clouds can be seen. In the sudden silence the conversation falls away and ceases.
FRAU ESCH:
How good the silence is.
ESCH:
Sometimes it seems as if the world were only one huge dreadful
machine that never stops … the war and everything … it runs by laws that we don’t understand … impudent self-assured laws, engineers’ laws … every man must do what is prescribed for him, without turning his head to right or left … every man is a machine that one can only see from outside, a hostile machine … oh, the machine is the root of evil and the Evil One is the machine. Their order is the void that must come … before Time can begin again.…
MAJOR
: Not evil, a symbol of evil.…
ESCH
: Yes, a symbol.
HUGUENAU
(
listening complacently to the sounds from the printing-shop):
Lindner is putting in fresh paper now.
ESCH
(
in sudden fear):
Oh, God, is there no possibility of one human being reaching another? is there no fellowship, is there no understanding? Must every man be nothing but an evil machine to his fellows?
MAJOR
(
lays his hand comfortingly on
ESCH’S
arm):
But, Esch …
ESCH
: Oh, God, who is there that doesn’t think evilly of me?
MAJOR:
Anyone who knows you, my son … only knowledge can overcome estrangement.
ESCH
(
his hands covering his face):
God, let it be by Thee that I am known.
MAJOR
: Only to him who has knowledge will knowledge be given, only he who sows love will reap it.
ESCH
(
his hands still clasped before his face):
Since I acknowledge Thee, oh, God, Thou wilt not be angry with me any more, for I am Thy beloved son, rescued by Thee from orphanhood.… He who submits himself to death has found love … only he who flings himself into a dreadful intensification of estrangement and death … will find unity and understanding.
MAJOR:
And the divine grace will descend on him and take away his fear, the fear that he is wandering on the earth without meaning or purpose, and must go to the grave unenlightened and helpless and without meaning or purpose.…
ESCH:
So knowledge will grow to love, and love to knowledge, and every soul that is chosen as the vessel of grace will be inviolable; uplifted by love to join the communion of souls, where each is inviolable and alone and yet united in knowledge—the highest law of knowledge not to wound a living creature: if I have known Thee, God, then I shall live eternally in Thee.
MAJOR:
Let mask fall after mask until your heart
And face are open to the eternal breath.…
ESCH:
I will become an empty vessel drained
Of all desire and solace, I will take
The chastisement upon me, plunge myself
In nothingness and die, but oh, the fear
Is terrible!