The Life and Opinions of Zacharias Lichter

by Matei Calinescu

  “In his presence I felt ashamed of anything that might bring me pleasure. His world seemed to have exiled even the most innocent of joys (a sweeping landscape, the scent of a flower, a butterfly’s flickering flight). And not only that: the same shame gripped me with regard to all my sorrows, my pains, my dilemmas, which now seemed grotesquely trivial, worthy only of scorn. Existence was emptied of all charm, of all beauty, no matter how slight; being was reduced to its frightening nakedness. Only one thing retained any meaning: suffering. Not of the moral sort (always prey to self-indulgence) but suffering which penetrates the flesh like a tongue of flame: physical pain, illness . . .”

  After a while G. began to avoid Zacharias Lichter. At the same time, he abandoned his former intransigence (his entire “righteousness complex” had dissipated) and now practiced a sort of constantly compassionate humility. “God”—he used to say—“dwells not only in sorrow and heartbreak but also in the smallest luminous aspects of existence. It is there that we should seek him, in the joy we find in the trembling of grass or in the flight of birds. Existence itself should fill us with deep gratitude, in whatever form it manifests itself. When we grow ashamed of our innocent joys, desires, nostalgia, and even suffering, our souls run the risk of becoming seriously ill, and we should take preventive measures. No matter how much we may believe that on those occasions we draw closer to God, in reality we are as far as possible from the breath of His goodness.”

  Without altering his mode of existence, G. had changed. His silences, as long as ever, had lost their secret power to baffle, suggesting instead an endless patience. His words, still drawling and plaintive, no longer imposed an atmosphere of severity and rigor: instead they emanated an aura of kind and generous emotion. On nights feebly illuminated by dirty bulbs, amid the noise and dense smoke of the taverns he frequented, G. radiated a spirit of reconciliation and even meekness. His states of inebriation were luminous and calm: angels and butterflies drifted by. Butterflies in particular obsessed him at such times—everything centered on them, to the exclusion of all other winged species . . .

  Zacharias Lichter spoke of him with a certain affection, although he had noticed that G. was avoiding him.

  “His discovery—to which I may have contributed myself, unwittingly, as is often the case—is that one can also find one’s path to being through reticence. His condition perfectly illustrates what one might call the dialectics of suavizare, an intermediary form between circus and madness. Circus is subject, from that perspective, to a suave contemplation that both smooths and soothes: the most awkward and grotesque movements of the clowns, when slowed down, assume the nature of ineffably pure drifting flight; accelerated, they begin to resemble those fluttering butterflies G. sometimes seems to see everywhere. The dialectics of suavizare is not based on affirmation and negation, nor does it enter the sterile circuit of identity and opposition, its terms are beyond language, in the vision, the slowing down and the acceleration: everything becomes slower and at the same time faster. Everything floats and flies, emptied of all immanence . . . And then, we begin to love everything, comprehend everything, become reticent before everything; and the place we are within the circus becomes the center of the world’s reticence. Reticence cannot be learned, of course; it is a secret road, a vocation, just as all vocations are secret roads. It is no less true, however, that reticence will finally prove to be a weakness, because its path does not end in madness but merely in beautiful games of deception.”

  Whenever he caught sight of Zacharias Lichter or heard his name mentioned, G. would drill his incredibly shrill voice into someone’s ear, breaking off as usual with a screech on the final syllables: “Poor fellow! I pity him to no end.”

  AGAIN ON “ANALYSIS”

  IN HIS relations with Zacharias Lichter—limited relations, in point of fact, because the prophet did all in his power to avoid him—Doctor S. experimented, with a perfidious discretion, a kind of “maieutics of the known.” In a casual and relaxed manner, he would drop phrases here and there whose secret sense he alone knew, in an attempt to make Zacharias define himself, as it were, of his own accord.

  For anyone other than S., it would have been difficult if not impossible to apply this procedure, since Lichter put so much passion into any conversation that it soon turned into a monologue, as forceful as a cascade. His interlocutor then had the sensation (purely intellectual, of course) that he could not hear his own words and, given the abstract roar produced by the waterfall of the prophet’s speech, silence imposed itself as the only natural attitude. But Doctor S. struck such terror in Zacharias Lichter that he spontaneously adopted a defensive stance, taking refuge in the horizonless space of simple replies. Thus, without asserting his power through dynamic gestures and encountering no resistance, Doctor S. would gain mastery over the situation, while Licht er, in a state of increasing confusion, would be transformed into a simple subject of psychological investigation, while remaining painfully aware of what was happening to him.

  “Domnule Lichter”—Doctor S. addressed him when they once chanced to meet on the street—“I must confess or, rather, repeat an older confession which, alas, has remained without consequence: it would give me great pleasure to talk with you at greater length, to get to know you better. But I have the impression that you’re avoiding me. You seem to harbor a certain reserve toward me, as if something about me or my conduct displeases you, though I’m not exactly sure what . . .”

  “My reserve”—Lichter answered, drawing back quickly—“if indeed it exists at all, has another source: we are, in fact, fundamentally dissimilar, and I feel it would be impossible for us to communicate in any other way other than the conventional . . .”

  “But this is exactly what attracts me to you! And besides, let me put my cards on the table: in my profession I have met any number of religious maniacs, prophets, paranoid reformers, and schizophrenics who have fallen into mystical contemplation—a multitude of varied cases, but all, in the final analysis, depressingly banal. It’s perfectly normal that I want to know a true mystic at last, and a profound thinker as well, which you are said to be . . .” And a benevolent smile fluttered on the psychiatrist’s thin lips.

  “Are the cases you mention as banal as all that? It seems to me, on the contrary, that madness is the very opposite of banality. No, even more, that when facing the enigmatic reality of madness, the notion of banality empties itself of meaning...”

  “Well, after all,” Doctor S. replied, “any science is, in a sense, a search for the banal. What enters its radar are phenomena of repetition, recurrent series, the ‘ordinary,’ if you like...”

  “But, Doctor”—Lichter interrupted him, stammering humbly—“madness . . . is something else altogether. One must grasp it, not explain it. It is not we who are called to explain it but, rather, it is madness that explains us—and not in the usual sense of the word but in the etymological one. Even unknowingly, we are all simply unfoldings of madness...”

  As he would later report, Lichter felt at that moment an obscure yet powerful urge to rehabilitate madness in the eyes of that dry psychiatrist, who had seemingly ceased being a person and turned into a symbol (of cold sterility, of methodic cruelty, of sadistic lucidity which, in order to analyze, destroys what is unique and breaks it down into its component parts, consigning the fragments torn from the living whole to the mortuary caskets of the known). If he could, he would have sacrificed himself to ennoble the idea of madness, to enfold it, if only for a moment, in the mystery whose carrier he was. A desire gripped him to go mad himself in what would seem the most banal sense. In this way, and only this way, he believed, he could break through the rigid crust of banality in Doctor S.’s eyes. He would bring the doctor face to face—perhaps in awe and terror—with the sacred and paradoxical essence of madness. But at the same time Lichter knew that he was prey to a temptation, that his sacrifice would simply be a self-deception, and Doctor S., far from having a revelation, would be confirmed and strengthe
ned in his convictions. In spite of this, the temptation was growing stronger.

  “And what if I myself”—he said, with a haggard air—“if I were . . . or actually am, truly mad? As a matter of fact, I am mad, mad beyond doubt—and I am amazed that you did not notice it from the start. I am the Messiah—the Savior of all madmen past and future, their embodied hope, their revealed mystery. Look me straight in the eye, Doctor, and stop pretending: you know everything.”

  Eyes sparkling with icy curiosity, Doctor S. had carefully watched Lichter, who seemed to have slipped into a state of euphoria; yet at the same time, Lichter was overcome by the strange (and unsettling) feeling that rather than vexing the psychiatrist, he had merely been fulfilling indirectly, even systematically, all his expectations. It was as if these expectations, though not explicitly, had the secret power to induce in him gestures, attitudes and thought processes increasingly incompatible with his deepest nature. And Lichter felt that everything was being taken from him, that the doctor’s analytical expectations were dissecting, one by one, all his thoughts, all his gestures, appropriating them and leaving him empty.

  “That is not possible”—Doctor S. smiled amiably—“although, after all . . . Obviously, anything is possible. If so, you would be a madman aware of his own madness, something not infrequent in superior individuals. Well then—since we are already playing the game—let’s take advantage of your lucidity: how does it manifest itself, in more precise terms, this madness you maintain you suffer from?”

  “I hear God’s flame, I see it, I feel it burning. From its midst a voice sometimes speaks to me: ‘You are a whirligig’—it cries, and I start spinning and whistling until I fall down in a daze; ‘You are a horse’—and I begin tramping and neighing; ‘You are a stone’—and I freeze where I am . . . My madness can assume all the forms of existing madness: that is why I proclaim myself the Messiah of madmen . . .”

  Doctor S. was listening to Lichter with sustained attention, piercing him with his gaze. He was not incognizant of the fact that Lichter was saying, at random, whatever passed through his mind, that for the time being he was pretending—that did not surprise him at all; for there are lunatics who try—and Zacharias Lichter knew this himself—to hide their madness, often with naive cunning. They become actors of a sort, playing the role of other madmen or even of normal people. But even from this game, from the type of mental associations on which it relies, from details of its particulars, a fine diagnostician can deduce to which category the madman in fact belongs.

  “Interesting”—Doctor S. muttered—“extremely interesting...”

  Lichter had an immediate sense of acute danger. Whatever he did, whatever he said (whether he was sincere or played some arbitrary character invented ad hoc), he became a sign within a system of signs whose code belonged only to the doctor; and this irreversible codification of his sentient being so alienated him from himself that all he was mimicking ended up appearing to him more real than it actually was.

  Without saying goodbye, face darkened and gaze misty, Zacharias Lichter bolted into a disorderly run. Still, not even that was apt to surprise the doctor, who continued on his way, engrossed in thought. This flight—Lichter later realized—was for the psychiatrist yet one more sign. Lichter could not conjecture its meaning but felt, somehow, impoverished, left with a curious sense of lack, an inner void.

  THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE MASK

  “IN THE crucial moments of our rapport with others we should be wearing masks,” Zacharias Lichter was telling his friends, “for only the mask can express the true dialectics of the spirit with all its inner tensions. Physiognomy has significance only on the psychological plane; the mask places its wearer, unaware as he may be, within the ontological sphere.

  “The mask’s paradox comes from the fact that it shows, it indicates, but at the same time it conceals. At times it indicates the very thing it conceals, revealing its essence, incorporated however, in one or another of its grotesque archetypes. At other times, this rapport can be inverted: the essence is hidden, ushered into the ‘category of the secret.’ In both cases, however, the mask—by negating the pseudocomplexity of the psychological—constitutes the first means of voluntarily accessing the spiritual. By what the mask shows or hides, the wearer defends himself, with the aid of the enigmatic, against the danger of alienation. He offers himself to endless deciphering, mocking at the same time all such attempts . . .

  “Society, whose cohesion is based on the very alienation of the individuals who constitute it, has in time instituted false values in whose name not only the mask but the very idea of the mask has been depreciated and minimized to such an extent that the mask, with rare exceptions, is exiled even from the theater. Yet the spirit manages to create, by the most unlikely means, the masks it needs to defend itself. Thus some great poets have turned words themselves into masks.

  “As for me,”—Zacharias Lichter explained—“I have managed to turn my own face into a mask. Undoubtedly I was helped by what everyone considers my loathsome, monstrous ugliness. Because—have you noticed?—in the first place, a mask needs to be ugly—or so social conventions teach us . . . But what is ugliness? The pain that we fear is ugly; the laughter we fear is ugly, the truth we fear is ugly. Well, I am all these. And that is why my face is not simply a mask, but the mask of masks.”

  ON HASTE

  HASTE seems to Zacharias Lichter among the most pernicious modalities of sin: he who hurries intellectualizes the world, dries up all that is living, and ushers in devastation and death.

  Put most simply, haste is the desire to reach a goal more quickly. It is, in other words, a paroxystic form of the consciousness of time but also a revolt against time: since it is in theory infinite, it tends to abolish time. It is under these conditions that the dialogue between the man in a hurry and his goal occurs. Due to the effect of preventive resentment,* the goal appears to the man in a hurry as small and negligible; on the other hand, through his haste, he invests it with singular importance, thus deluding himself twice. This situation engenders a dialectics of falsification. In the name of a goal located somewhere in the abstract future, the man in a hurry suspends the present, the real, and the concrete, leaving them prey to the permeable force of an empty past that ultimately is nothing but the inversion, equally abstract, of the future.

  In its essence, haste is a game (in the mathematical sense) of abstractions; an algebra of the unreal superimposed upon the extant; a summing up of the world in purely temporal equations . . .

  On a human plane, haste reverses the natural relation between path and goal. It is by now a commonplace to say that the path towards a goal is more precious than the goal itself, the latter appearing, in the end, merely as an occasion for structuring this experience in subsequent representations. An attained goal—no matter of what kind—has no other value than the one presented by the path taken towards it; in this sense, the man in a hurry never attains his goals because he neglects the very paths that lead to them. The man in haste wanders through an endless desert for all eternity. Under his gaze everything turns to sand: thus, in his mad haste, lacking any landmarks, he actually runs in place.

  To be in a hurry—Zacharias Lichter maintains—means either to hate the world or fail to love it—which comes to the same thing.

  He who hurries hastens to die.

  He who dies brings death to the world.

  That is why haste is such a great sin . . .

  * Zacharias Lichter distinguishes between resentment per se (which appears when a desire is condemned to remain unfulfilled, excellently illustrated in the classic fable of the fox and the grapes) and preventive resentment, which manifests itself when the fulfillment of a desire is possible but not certain. On the path desire takes towards satisfaction (assuming that the latter is neither simple nor immediate), in case of actual failure preventive resentment, which is a form of caution, opens the way for resentment per se. When the goal is difficult to attain, preventive resentment may be
come strong enough to turn into resentment per se long before failure becomes certain. All those who habitually fail suffer from a hypertrophy of preventive resentment, an attribute, in most cases, of more cerebral natures.

  FROM THE POEMS OF ZACHARIAS LICHTER

  In time, we die.

  We hasten to die.

  In night, we darken.

  And we darken the world.

  Thirst is the only light.

  There nothing is spoken.

  The word is sipped in silence.

  In rain.

  In God.

  ON ILLNESS

  IN SPITE of his robust constitution, Zacharias Lichter is sometimes taken ill. Harsh winters in particular, with bouts of bitter, extreme cold, test his health severely, no matter how hardened he has become by his life as a beggar (stuffing old newspapers under his shirt proved futile). Trembling with fever, eyes burning, barely able to drag his feet along, exhausted by the throbbing, painful burden of his own body, Lichter bore his illness with him as he wandered the freezing streets, whipped by cutting winds. “Home” would have been an even more dangerous place to be. He might have frozen stiff in his run-down, unheated garage, where snow whirled almost as strongly inside as out during blizzards. Besides, walking warmed him, and in the end that painful, almost inhuman effort, extended for one more moment and then another, assured him that he had not yet reached the limits of his endurance. And thus, without changing his regular habits, the prophet recovered miraculously, his erstwhile wavering steps regained their strength, and his bent figure emanated once more an air of strange energy, abstract yet responsive.