Keyserling is a writer who defies easy categorisation. There have been occasional attempts to label him as an avant-garde or radical writer, but when forced to categorise him, most literary scholars have traditionally described him as a “literary impressionist.” Members of this literary school, which emerged in the late nineteenth century, were inspired in part by the impressionist movement in art. The all-knowing narrator disappears from their books; instead the story unfolds as a series of fleeting impressions – physical sensations, snatches of dialogue, dreamscapes, inner musings, shifting emotional states, descriptions of the natural world, and brief moments of action. Needless to say, this is all highly subjective. There is in fact no objective reality – we see everything through the lens of the characters’ fragmented perceptions. Keyserling does not go as far down this road as some of the other literary impressionists – he still remains a fairly conventional storyteller in some respects – but he nevertheless discards much of the clunky superstructure (and length) of the realist novel. Everything is distilled. There are only a handful of characters, and not much happens; every scene, the reader feels, is included for a reason. Hermann Hesse, an admirer of Keyserling’s work, recognised just how powerful these terse, economical passages could be, when he wrote, in 1909, that Keyserling “understands how to describe a summer afternoon so that as the bright sunshine turns to twilight one has the sensation of a whole lifetime.”18 The essence of the stories is not found in the plot (which is rudimentary), but rather in the language, which vibrates with tension and energy. Keyserling’s use of dialogue is masterly. The suppressed emotions and internal turmoil that the characters are trying so hard to conceal are revealed involuntarily, as it were, in their speech. This is all portrayed with great subtlety and nuance by Keyserling, who suggests rather than states his themes.
The great German literary critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki, who was probably more responsible than anyone else for Keyserling’s modest revival in the German-speaking world in the last twenty years, got at the essence of what makes Keyserling’s work distinctive when he argued that he was “an unusually sensual writer.”19 Keyserling’s stories overflow with sensory perceptions: almost every passage is infused with shifting patterns of colour and light, with the sound of wind or rain or conversation, with the fragrance of a perfume or the smell of the sea. It is almost too much to take in. And as many critics have noted, as he lost his sight, as he became more and more isolated from the world, his books became even more sensual, even more voluptuous. No longer able to see, or even to leave his apartment, he filled his prose with the sensory riches he could no longer experience firsthand.20
Waves is probably Keyserling’s most famous novel, written in 1911, in the middle of his mature period. Unlike most of his stories, it is not set in a castle or a manor house; instead the action takes place in a small fishing village on the Baltic Sea. An assortment of German aristocrats, including the extended Buttlär family and its dependents, have arrived to spend their summer holiday by the seaside. They represent a sort of cross-section of the German upper classes on the eve of the First World War: an adulterous baron, his jealous wife, an imperious matriarch, a dashing young cavalry lieutenant, a blushing bride, an elderly lady’s companion, a cynical government official, and so on. It reads like the cast of characters from a farce, or an operetta. But for Keyserling, who lived most of his life among such people, these characters are not cardboard cutouts: they are flesh and blood human beings who are, in certain respects, trapped by their own privileged social position. Because of their wealth and education, they have greater freedom than any other social class; but because they are bound to obey a rigid and increasingly archaic code of conduct, they actually have less freedom of action than the middle and lower classes. This dynamic creates a terrible tension. The lives of the aristocrats in Waves are dominated by the need to keep up appearances, to follow elaborate rules of etiquette, to adhere to a strict code of honour. Any deviation from rigid propriety is potentially fatal, especially if the offence involves a violation of conventional sexual morality (and the offender is a woman). Even on holiday, the aristocratic characters in Waves are on guard. As they sit under umbrellas in their beach chairs or promenade down the strand, they are still patrolling the boundaries of their caste.
Any hope of a quiet summer is dashed, though, when the holidaymakers discover that there is a renegade in their midst. Doralice, a beautiful young Countess who has escaped from a loveless marriage by running away with an artist, has rented a farmhouse in the village along with her new (lower class) husband, Hans Grill. Even though the Buttlärs were previously acquainted with Doralice, their first instinct is to refuse to acknowledge her presence. The family matriarch, the Generalin von Palikow, explains the strategy in the simplest of terms to her daughter: “We simply decree, Madame Grill does not exist.” But this is easier said than done, and eventually every member of the Buttlär family, the women as well as the men, is drawn into Doralice’s dangerous orbit.
Most of the aristocratic characters in Waves, it must be understood, are living in a fairly advanced state of decadence. The aristocratic code of behaviour, taken for granted by earlier generations, has begun to break down. The younger generation, in particular, feels increasingly confined, trapped, imprisoned; they worry that they are missing out on life, they are waiting impatiently for something exciting to happen. In the meantime, they are moody, self-absorbed, restless, and easily bored. Although surrounded by comfort and luxury, they search constantly for new diversions and distractions.21 They yearn for happiness, but if they cannot have that they will settle for unhappiness; at least then they would feel something. (And in time they might come to relish their suffering as evidence of their sensitive and refined natures.) Decadent aristocrats of this sort appear not just in Waves, but in all of Keyserling’s stories and novels, which makes him an important if unheralded contributor to the literature of decadence. Keyserling does not embrace decadence as an alternative lifestyle, nor does he view it as a necessary rebellion against materialism and conformity and philistinism, as did so many other writers in this period, but he is nevertheless fascinated by it.22 He understands that exhaustion and ennui and listlessness are defining characteristics of his age (at least among the sort of people that he writes about), and he is eager to describe these symptoms and to offer a diagnosis of the malady (even if the prognosis is grim).
Aristocratic decadence manifests itself not only in the behaviour of the characters in Waves, but also in their physical appearance: Keyserling’s pampered aristocrats are pale and sickly, with overly fine features; they are full of nervous energy but have little stamina; they grow feverish when excited, and suffer fainting fits. It is no coincidence that Hans, the artist from a peasant background, is the only character who possesses much in the way of vitality.23 (Like many writers of his era, Keyserling assumes that peasants are closer to nature, and therefore healthier and less neurotic than the upper classes.) The physical decline among the aristocratic characters is most pronounced in the three Buttlär children, who are so delicate that they blink at bright light and feel dizzy when they gaze at the sea. The son and heir, fifteen-year-old Wedig, is so feeble that his parents will not even allow him to step into the sea; he must be content with salt water baths. The older members of the family, by contrast, are sounder of both mind and body; the descent into decadence is not so pronounced with them. And so, predictably, the Generalin von Palikow, the oldest member of the family, serves throughout the story as the voice of reason. Her criticisms of the younger generation, one suspects, are shared by Keyserling himself. (It cannot have escaped Keyserling’s notice, though, that he himself – blind, crippled, syphilitic, childless, and living in seclusion and genteel poverty – could be viewed as a living incarnation of aristocratic decadence. Indeed, he is almost like something out of Death in Venice, published by Thomas Mann, as chance would have it, just one year after Waves.)
In a Keyserling story, sooner or later, one of the
characters rebels against the rigid code that is supposed to regulate his (or her) behaviour. The tension has become unbearable, they must free themselves. This rebellion, which usually takes the form of an illicit (and sometimes adulterous) love affair, is the motor that drives the plot forward.24 In Waves, Doralice’s dramatic act of rebellion (told in flashback) actually takes place before the beginning of the story, but it is still the catalyst for everything else that happens in the book. By running away from her elderly nobleman husband, Doralice has ripped up the aristocratic social contract; she has done the unthinkable. Her very presence at the seashore is so disruptive that, like a stone tossed into a quiet pond, it creates ripples that spawn additional acts of rebellion (or attempted rebellion) among the other characters. But these rebellions fail, they end in disappointment or outright tragedy, as is pretty much always the case in Keyserling’s stories. The aristocratic code may be increasingly anachronistic and, in the eyes of outsiders, ridiculous, but it is still more powerful than one individual’s desire for freedom.25 What is more, Keyserling (and his readers) may feel that at least some of these rebellions should fail, since they are launched by pampered narcissists who have not thought through the consequences of their actions. For although he is quite clear-eyed about the cruelty inflicted by such a rigid code, Keyserling also sees the advantages of such a system of well-defined norms and expectations.
As any reader of his novels will quickly discover, for Keyserling, the physical setting of his stories is often just as important as the characters or the plot. The extended descriptions of the natural world in Waves – sea and surf, beaches and dunes, woods and meadows, sunsets and moonrises – are not included merely to add atmosphere, or to create a picturesque backdrop; they also convey meaning, they point up Keyserling’s themes.26 Most of the symbolism in Waves revolves around the contrast between land and sea – this is Keyserling’s leitmotif. The sea represents freedom, life, vitality, naturalness, and expansiveness, but also, somewhat paradoxically, danger and death (complete freedom can lead to disaster). Dry land, on the other hand, stands for confinement, artificiality, social rituals, dreariness, and boredom (but also security). The sea is omnipotent and omnipresent and indifferent to humanity, whereas the land is pinched and narrow and entangled with human affairs. The action in the book alternates between exhilarating scenes set at sea, where the characters are swimming or boating and conversation is hardly necessary; and awkward scenes that take place on land, where the characters are trapped in formal social rituals and miscommunication abounds. And then there are the numerous scenes that take place on the beach, where both forces are at work.
The best example of how this dynamic plays out takes place in the very first chapter. Walking on the beach one night, Doralice takes it into her head that she would like Hans to hold her in his arms above the breaking waves, as if he were a hammock, so that she can dangle her fingers in the foam without actually immersing herself in the sea. In other words, she wants to have it both ways: she wants the freedom and excitement of the sea, but at the same time she still desires the safety and predictability of the land. Like many of Keyserling’s characters, she is caught in a dilemma: she does not want what the land represents, but she probably needs it. She likes the idea of being the sort of modern liberated woman who runs away with an artist, but she still yearns for the safe, comfortable existence of a pampered Countess. Later that same evening, she admits to Hans that hovering between land and sea was tiring: she cannot have it both ways after all. Hans, by the way, has a similar problem combining land and sea. Throughout the story, he attempts repeatedly to paint a picture that will include both Doralice and the sea on the same canvas – a sort of synthesis, he explains. Of course he fails; it cannot be done.
At first glance, Doralice would appear to be an iteration of one of the most familiar (and misogynistic) characters in literature: the femme fatale, the alluring temptress who leads men to their doom. And there is no denying that Doralice, without necessarily intending it, wreaks havoc in the lives of nearly all the men who come into contact with her. At one point in the story she even comes to the painful recognition that others might view her as some sort of monster. But is this how Keyserling wants us to view her? Far from being a monster, Keyserling’s sympathetic depiction of her plight makes it easy to view Doralice as the victim of a patriarchal social order that has nearly destroyed her. A feminist interpretation of the novel is not only plausible, but for some readers it may be the only way of thinking about the story that makes any sense. It is hard not to notice, for example, that all of the men in Doralice’s life try to control her, try to transform her into their ideal wife or lover. Her first husband, the elderly Count, praises his young bride constantly for attributes that she does not yet possess but that he wishes her to acquire. In other words, he pretends that she already is what he wants her to become. Doralice rebels against this training (as she calls it) by running away with Hans Grill, the artist who has been hired to paint her portrait. But even though he is a bohemian artist, a free thinker who spouts radical political slogans, Hans is just as determined as the old Count to control Doralice. Instead of a remote castle, Hans offers Doralice a cosy house in the suburbs of Munich, where she will while away her mornings until he returns at midday from his studio in the city. (Hans, the bohemian artist, has rather bourgeois aspirations when it comes to his future domestic life.) When she asks plaintively what she will be doing all morning while he is away, he can only reply that she will be “imposing her character on the household.” By running away with Hans, then, Doralice has merely substituted one controlling man for another, and one prison for another. And the same pattern repeats itself with all of the men that she encounters in the book. It turns out that Doralice, and indeed all of the female characters in Waves, are trapped in ways that the men are not, and Keyserling’s recognition of this fact is one of the reasons why his work is still of interest today.
If Doralice is the most important character in the book, the most poignant one is probably Privy Counsellor Knospelius, a high-ranking government official who has rented a cottage in the village close to the other holidaymakers. Witty and cynical and eccentric, he serves as an audience for the other characters, and as a commentator for the reader. He is also pretty obviously a stand-in for the author. Both Keyserling, the author, and Knospelius, the character, are lonely, middle-aged bachelors (who have long surnames beginning with the letter K); both men are physically deformed in some way (the Privy Counsellor is a hunchback); and both men are insiders who observe the behaviour of the aristocracy with the fascinated detachment of outsiders. Knospelius, who suffers from insomnia, tries to distract himself by taking walks on the beach at dawn, going out on the boats with the local fishermen, planning elaborate entertainments, and by spying on the doings of his neighbours. No longer possessing much of a life force of his own, he draws his energy from the people around him.27 One can only hope that Keyserling had a higher opinion of his role as a writer and observer than this rather grim portrait of the Privy Counsellor might suggest.
Waves was first published in 1911, just three years before the outbreak of the First World War. This gives the book a power for us that it did not have for its very first readers. Keyserling certainly realised that the social world that he described so vividly in his book was probably doomed – that is in fact one of his themes – but he could not be sure of the time or manner of its destruction. We on, the other hand, know that these people are doomed, and that the catastrophe is imminent. This gives the story a poignancy, or a morbid fascination, that it originally lacked. We are viewing a whole way of life just moments before its extinction. The noble titles, the snobbery, the social rituals, the finely-honed sense of honour – very little of this will count for anything in just a few short years.
As chance would have it, Keyserling died in late September 1918, just a few weeks before Germany’s defeat and the end of the war, and just a few weeks before the revolution that swept away the old politi
cal and social order in Germany. If Keyserling had lived to witness them, these events would probably have grieved him, but they would not have surprised him. Had he written his own death, then, Keyserling could not have timed it better, breathing his last just moments before the world in which he had lived his life disappeared forever.
Notes
1 Thomas Mann, “Zum Tode Eduard Keyserlings” (1918), in Rede und Antwort: Gesammelte Abhandlungen und kleine Aufsätze (Berlin: S. Fischer, 1922), pp. 258-263.
2 The literary critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki went so far as to argue that Keyserling was incapable of any sort of social analysis. Remarks by Marcel Reich-Ranicki, Literarisches Quartett, Episode 53, ZDF Television Network, 6 February 1998.
3 Thomas Homscheid, Eduard von Keyserling: Leben und Werk (Norder-stedt: Books on Demand, 2009), pp. 28-29.
4 Homscheid, Eduard von Keyserling, pp. 17-26.
5 Michael Schwidtal and Henning von Wistinghausen, “Aus Eduard von Keyserlings Dorpater Studentenjahren,” in Baltisches Welterlebnis: die kulturgeschichtliche Bedeutung von Alexander, Eduard und Hermann Graf Keyserling. Beiträge eines internationalen Symposiums in Tartu vom 19. bis 21. September 2003, pp. 165-166.
6 Fritz Martini, “Eduard von Keyserling,” in Neue Deutsche Biographie, Vol. XI (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1977), p. 564.
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