by Robert Musil
He came to a halt again, this time in a square where he recognized some of the houses and remembered the public controversies and intellectual ferment that had accompanied their construction. He thought of the friends of his youth; they had all been the friends of his youth, whether he knew them personally or only by name, whether they were the same age as he or older, all the rebels who wanted to bring new things and new people into the world, whether here or scattered over all the places he had ever known. Now these houses stood in the late, already fading afternoon light, like kindly aunts in outmoded hats, quite proper and irrelevant and anything but exciting. He was tempted to a little smile. But the people who had left these unassuming relics behind had meanwhile become professors, celebrities, names, recognized participants in the recognized development of progress; they had made it by a more or less direct path from the mist to the petrifact, and for that reason history may report of them someday, in giving its account of the century: “Among those present were…”
35
BANK DIRECTOR LEO FISCHEL AND THE PRINCIPLE OF INSUFFICIENT CAUSE
At this moment Ulrich was interrupted by an acquaintance addressing him out of nowhere. Before leaving home that morning this acquaintance had had the unpleasant surprise of finding in a side pocket of his briefcase a circular from Count Leinsdorf, which he had received some time ago and forgotten to answer because his sound business sense disinclined him from having anything to do with patriotic movements originating in high social circles. “Rotten business,” he doubtless said to himself at the time, though that was not at all what he would have wanted to say publicly; but, as memory will, his had played a dirty trick on him by taking orders from this first, unofficial reaction of his feelings and letting the matter drop, instead of waiting for a considered decision. When he opened the form letter this time, he saw something he had previously overlooked and that now caused him acute embarrassment; it was really only a phrase, two little words that turned up in all sorts of places throughout the text, but these two words had cost the portly man several minutes of indecision as he stood, briefcase in hand, before leaving his house. They were: “the true.”
Bank Director Fischel—for that is what he was called, Director Leo Fischel of the Lloyd Bank, though he was only a manager with the title of director—(Ulrich, though much younger, could regard himself as a friend from earlier days; he had been quite close to Fischel’s daughter, Gerda, the last time he had stayed in the city, though he had called on her only once since his return)—Director Fischel knew Count Leinsdorf as a man who made his money work for him and kept up with modern methods; in fact, running his mind over the account (Count Leinsdorf used Lloyd’s, among other banks, for his dealings on the stock exchange), he recognized Count Leinsdorf for a man of consequence, as they say in business. Therefore Leo Fischel could not understand how he could have been so careless about so important an invitation, in which His Grace appealed to a select circle to take part in a great and communal undertaking. Fischel himself had been included in this circle only because of some very special circumstances, to be gone into later, and all this was the reason he had rushed up to Ulrich the moment he caught sight of him. He had heard that Ulrich had something to do with the affair, was indeed in a “prominent position”—one of those inexplicable but not uncommon rumors that anticipate the facts—and fired off three questions at him like a three-barreled pistol:
“What is really meant by ‘the true patriotism,’ ‘the true progress,’ and ‘the true Austria’?”
Startled out of his mood but continuing its spirit, Ulrich replied in the manner he always fell into in his conversations with Fischel: “The P.I.C.”
“The what?” Director Fischel innocently spelled the letters out after him, this time not suspecting a joke, because such abbreviations, while not so numerous then as they are now, were familiar from cartels and trusts, and radiated confidence. But then he said: “Please, no jokes just now, I’m in a hurry and late for a meeting.”
“The Principle of Insufficient Cause,” Ulrich elucidated. “You are a philosopher yourself and know about the Principle of Sufficient Cause. The only exception we make is in our own individual cases: in our real, I mean our personal, lives, and in our public-historical lives, everything that happens happens for no good or sufficient reason.”
Leo Fischel wavered between disputing this and letting it pass. Director Leo Fischel of the Lloyd Bank loved to philosophize (there still are such people in the practical professions) but he actually was in a hurry, so he said: “You are dodging the issue. I know what progress is, I know what Austria is, and I probably know what it is to love my country too, but I’m not quite sure what true patriotism is, or what the true Austria, or true progress may be, and that’s what I’m asking you.”
“All right. Do you know what an enzyme is? Or a catalyst?”
Leo Fischel only raised a hand defensively.
“It doesn’t contribute anything materially, but it sets processes in motion. You must know from history that there has never been such a thing as the true faith, the true morality, and the true philosophy. But the wars, the viciousness, and the hatreds unleashed in their name have transformed the world in a fruitful way.”
“Some other time!” Fischel implored him, and then tried another tack: cards on the table. “Look, I have to cope with this on the Exchange, and I really would like to know what Count Leinsdorf actually has in mind: just what does he mean by that additional ‘true’ of his?”
“I give you my solemn word,” Ulrich said gravely, “that neither I nor anyone else knows what ‘the true’ anything is, but I can assure you that it is on the point of realization.”
“You’re a cynic!” Director Fischel declared as he dashed off, but after the first step he turned back and amended himself: “Quite recently I was saying to Gerda that you would have made a first-rate diplomat. I hope you’ll come see us again soon.”
36
THANKS TO THE ABOVE-MENTIONED PRINCIPLE THE PARALLEL CAMPAIGN BECOMES A TANGIBLE REALITY BEFORE ANYONE KNOWS WHAT IT IS
Director Leo Fischel of the Lloyd Bank, like all bank directors before the war, believed in progress. As a capable man in his field he knew, of course, that only where one has a thorough knowledge of the facts can one have a conviction on which one would be willing to stake one’s own money. The immense expansion of activities does not allow for such competence outside one’s own field. Accordingly, efficient, hardworking people have no convictions beyond the limits of their own narrow specialties; none, that is, they will not instantly abandon under pressure from the outside. One might go so far as to say that conscientiousness forces them to act differently from the way they think. Director Fischel, for instance, could form no concept at all of true patriotism or the true Austria, but he did have his own opinion of true progress, which was certainly different from Count Leinsdorf’s opinion. Exhausted by stocks and bonds or whatever it was he had to deal with, his only recreation an evening at the opera once a week, he believed in a progress of the whole that must somehow resemble his bank’s progressively increasing profitability. But now that Count Leinsdorf claimed to know better even in this respect, and thus began to put pressure on Leo Fischel’s conscience, Fischel felt that “you can never know, after all” (except, of course, with stocks and bonds), and since one might not know but on the other hand would rather not miss out on anything, he decided to informally sound out his general manager on the matter.
When he did, the general manager had for quite similar reasons already had a talk with the chief executive of the National Bank and knew all about it. For not only the general manager of the Lloyd Bank but, it goes without saying, the chief executive of the National Bank had also received an invitation from Count Leinsdorf. Leo Fischel, who was only a head of department, owed his invitation entirely to his wife’s family connections: she came from the upper reaches of the government/bureaucracy and never forgot it, either in her social relations or in her domestic quarrels with
Leo. He therefore contented himself, as he and his superior talked about the Parallel Campaign, with wagging his head significantly, as if to say “big proposition,” though it might in other circumstances have meant “rotten business”—either way it couldn’t hurt, but on account of his wife Fischel would probably have been happier if it had turned out to be a “rotten business.”
So far, however, von Meier-Ballot, the chief executive who had been consulted by the general manager, had himself formed an excellent impression of the undertaking. When he received Count Leinsdorf’s “suggestion,” he went over to the mirror—naturally, though not for that reason—and there he saw, above the tailcoat and the little gold chain of his order, the composed face of a middle-class government minister, in which the hardness of money was at most barely visible somewhere far back in the eyes. His fingers hung down like flags in a calm, as though they had never in their life had to carry out the hasty movements with which an apprentice bank teller counts his cash. This bureaucratically overbred high financier who had hardly a thing in common any longer with the hungry, roaming wild dogs of the stock-exchange game, saw vague but pleasingly modulated possibilities ahead, an outlook he had an opportunity of confirming that same evening in conversation with the former Ministers of State von Holtzkopf and Baron Wisnieczky at the Industrialists’ Club.
These two gentlemen were well-informed, distinguished, and discreet persons in some kind of high positions into which they had been shunted after the brief caretaker government between two political crises in which they had participated had become superfluous. They were men who had spent their lives in the service of the State and the Crown, with no taste for the limelight unless ordered into it by His Majesty himself. They had heard the rumor that the great campaign was to have a subtle barb aimed at Germany. They were still convinced, as they had been before the failure of their mission, that the lamentable manifestations that had even then been making the political life of the Dual Monarchy a focus of infection for Europe were extraordinarily complicated. But just as they had felt duty-bound to regard these problems as solvable when they received the order to solve them, so they would declare that it was not outside the realm of possibility that something might be achieved by the means Count Leinsdorf was suggesting. Specifically, they felt that “a landmark,” “a splendid show of vitality,” “a commanding role on the world stage that would have a bracing effect on the situation here at home,” were goals so well formulated by Count Leinsdorf that one could no more refuse them than refuse a call for every man who desired the Good to step forward.
It is of course possible that von Holtzkopf and Wisnieczky, as men informed and experienced in public affairs, felt some qualms, especially as they might assume that they themselves would be expected to play a part in the further development of this campaign. But it is easy for people who live on the ground floor to be choosy and turn down whatever does not suit them. One whose gondola in life is nine thousand feet up in the air, however, can’t simply step outside, even if one is not in accord with everything going on. And since persons in such high circles really are loyal and—as opposed to the previously mentioned bourgeois dither—do not like to act otherwise than they think, they must in many cases avoid giving too much careful thought to an issue. The banker von Meier-Ballot accordingly found his own favorable impression of the affair confirmed by what the two other gentlemen had to say about it; while he personally and professionally was given to caution, he had heard enough to decide that this was an affair to which he would lend his presence in any case, but without committing himself.
At this time the Parallel Campaign was not yet in existence, and not even Count Leinsdorf had any idea what form it would take. It can be said with certainty that at the moment, the only definite thing that had occurred to him was a list of names.
But even this is a great deal. It meant that even at this stage, without anyone needing to have a clear conception of anything, a network of readiness that covered a great many connections was in place; and one can certainly maintain that this is the proper sequence. For first it was necessary to invent knife and fork, and then mankind learned to eat properly. This was how Count Leinsdorf explained it.
37
BY LAUNCHING THE SLOGAN “YEAR OF AUSTRIA,” A JOURNALIST MAKES A LOT OF TROUBLE FOR COUNT LEINSDORF, WHO ISSUES A FRANTIC CALL FOR ULRICH
Although Count Leinsdorf had sent out invitations in many directions “to start people thinking,” he might not have made headway so quickly had not an influential journalist who had heard that something was in the wind quickly published two long articles in his paper offering as his own ideas everything he had guessed to be in the works. He did not know much—where, indeed, could he have found out?—but no one noticed; indeed, this was just what made it possible for his articles to be so irresistibly effective. He was really the inventor of the idea of the “Year of Austria” that he wrote about in his columns, without himself knowing what he meant by it but writing sentence after sentence in which this phrase combined with others as in a dream and took on new forms and unleashed storms of enthusiasm. Count Leinsdorf was horrified at first, but he was wrong. The phrase “Year of Austria” showed what it means to be a journalistic genius, for it was a triumph of true instinct. It caused vibrations to sound that would have remained dumb at the mention of an “Austrian Century”; the call to bring about such an era would have struck sensible people as impossible to take seriously. Why this is so would be hard to say. Perhaps a certain vagueness, a metaphorical quality that lessens realistic perceptions, lent wings to the feelings of more people than just Count Leinsdorf. For vagueness has an elevating and magnifying power.
It seems that the bona fide, practical realist just doesn’t love reality or take it seriously. As a child he crawls under the table when his parents are out, converting their living room by this simple yet inspired trick into an adventure. As a boy he longs for a watch; as a young man with a gold watch, for a wife to go with it; as a man with watch and wife, for a promotion; and yet, when he has happily achieved this little circle of desires and should be peacefully swinging back and forth in it like a pendulum, his supply of unsatisfied yearnings does not seem to have diminished at all. For if he wants to elevate himself above the daily rut, he resorts to figures of speech. Since to him snow is evidently unpleasant at times, he compares it to a woman’s shimmering bosom, and as soon as he begins to tire of his wife’s breasts, he likens them to shimmering snow. He would be horrified if the beaks of his wife’s nipples actually turned to coral, or their billing and cooing turned out to come from the horny beak of a real dove, but poetically it excites him. He is capable of turning everything into something else—snow to skin, skin to flower petals, petals to sugar, sugar to powder, powder to drifting snow again—as long as he can make it out to be something it is not, which may be taken to prove that he cannot bear to stay in the same place for long, no matter where he may find himself. Most of all, no true Kakanian could, in his soul, bear Kakania for long. To ask of him an “Austrian Century” would be tantamount to asking him to sentence himself and the world to the punishments of hell by an absurdly voluntary effort. An Austrian Year, on the other hand, was quite something else. It meant: Let’s show them, for once, who we could be!—but, so to speak, only until further notice, and for a year at most. One could understand by it whatever one liked, it wasn’t for eternity, and this somehow touched the heart. It stirred to life the deepest love of one’s country.
And so Count Leinsdorf had an undreamed-of success. After all, his original idea had also come to him as such a figure of speech, but a number of names had occurred to him as well, and his moral nature aspired to something beyond such intangibles. He had a well-defined concept of the way the imagination of the common people or, as he now put it to a faithful journalist, the imagination of the public, must be directed to a goal that was clear, sound, reasonable, and in harmony with the true aims of mankind and their own country. This journalist, spurred on by his colleag
ue’s success, wrote all this down immediately, and as he had the advantage of having it from “an authentic source,” it was part of the technique of his profession to draw attention to this by attributing his information in large type to “influential circles.” This was precisely what Count Leinsdorf had expected of him, for His Grace attached great importance to being no ideologue but an experienced practical statesman, and he wanted a fine line drawn between a “Year of Austria” as the brainchild of a clever member of the press and the circumspection of responsible circles. To this end he borrowed the technique of someone he would not normally have liked to regard as a model—Bismarck—to let newsmen serve as the mouthpiece for his actual intentions so as to be able to acknowledge or disavow them as circumstances might dictate.
But while Count Leinsdorf acted with such shrewdness, he overlooked something. For it was not only a man like himself who saw the Truth we so much need; innumerable other people saw themselves as possessing it as well. It may be defined as a calcification of the previously described state of mind, in which one still makes metaphors. Sooner or later even the desire for these metaphors disappears, and many of the people who still retain a supply of definitively unfulfilled dreams create for themselves a point at which they stare in secret, as though it marks the beginning of a world that life still owes them. In almost no time after he had sent out his statement to the press, His Grace had intimations that all those who have no money harbor inside them an unpleasant crank. This opinionated man-within-the-man goes with him to the office every morning and has absolutely no way to air his protest against the way things are done in the world; so instead he keeps his eyes glued to a lifelong secret point of his own that everyone else refuses to see, although it is obviously the source of all the misery in a world that will not recognize its savior. Such fixed points, where the center of a person’s equilibrium coincides with the world’s center of equilibrium, may be, for instance, a spittoon that can be shut with a simple latch; or the abolition of open salt cellars in restaurants, the kind people poke their knives into, so as to stop at one stroke the spread of that scourge of mankind, tuberculosis; or the adoption of Oehl’s system of shorthand, so effective a time-saver it can solve the problems of society once and for all; or conversion to a natural mode of living that would halt the present random destruction of the environment; not to mention a metaphysical theory of the motions of celestial bodies, simplification of the administrative apparatus, and a reform of sex life. In the right circumstances a man can help himself by writing a book about his point, or a pamphlet, or at least a letter to the editor, thereby putting his protest on the historical record, which is marvelously comforting even if nobody ever reads it. Usually, however, it can be counted on to attract the attention of a few readers who assure the author that he is a new Copernicus, whereupon they introduce themselves as unrecognized Newtons. This custom of picking the points out of each other’s fur is widespread and a great comfort, but it is without lasting effect because the participants soon fall to quarreling and find themselves isolated again. However, it can also happen that a small circle of admirers gathers around one prophet or another, and with united energy accuses heaven of being remiss in not sufficiently supporting its anointed son. And if a ray of hope should suddenly fall from on high upon such little piles of points, as it did when Count Leinsdorf issued a public statement that a “Year of Austria”—if it should materialize, which was still not yet settled—would in any case have to be in accord with the true aims of existence, they receive it like saints vouchsafed a divine vision.