Gargoyles

by Thomas Bernhard

  We had sat down on the only bench, installed on the outer wall of the castle. “The parents are perfected in the children,” Prince Saurau said. Then he added, as if peering through the darkness: “There are cities in which I should like to live a long time, for years, decades, and others that I cannot bear for even the shortest time. London,” he said, “is the only city in which I should like to live a lifetime. In London I could have developed in the most useful way. Unlike my son, I would have developed in London. In London I spent the happiest period of my life. Paris I fear. Paris irritates me. London calms me. Paris is nervous, London tranquil. I could have stuck it out in Hamburg for a few years, but in Vienna only for a few hours. But I do not know Stockholm, nor Marseilles, nor Lisbon. Cities that I would surely like. I am fond of Rome. Of Warsaw. But I would want to live a long time, the longest time, only in London. I am a person who was absolutely made for London but has been incarcerated in Hochgobernitz. I have always felt Hochgobernitz to be an absolutely deadly prison to me. That does not mean that I don’t love Hochgobernitz. I don’t love London, you know. I would like to be in London, would like to have spent my life there, but I don’t love it. Hochgobernitz I love and I feel it to be a lifelong prison. Calculating machines, that is all human beings are. We calculate, we virtually always think in figures. We are born into a numerical system and one day are hurled out of it, into the universe, into nothingness. If we talk with a person for a while,” the prince said, “we are alarmed because we become aware that we are talking with a calculating machine. The world is more and more merely a computer. It does us no good if we are indifferent; we are always locked up in everything and can no longer get out.”

  He said: “Because my daughters are like my sisters, my daughters will some day be my sisters. I have always been deceived by everybody. Le silence éternel de ces espaces infinis m’effraye …,” he said. “Everything I do not hold in my hand is taken away from me. If my son sells Hochgobernitz, he is lost.”

  My father said: “But I don’t believe your son will sell Hochgobernitz.”

  The prince said: “He will not sell it, he’ll liquidate it. Horrible,” he said. “In the morning they are all afraid of being spoken to. I too am afraid of being spoken to in the morning, of being spoken to first. We hear each other as we are getting up and washing and dressing, but we are afraid of having to look at one another. Suddenly we speak to one another and are shattered. Shattered for the entire day. In this shattered state we breakfast, discuss matters concerning Hochgobernitz, the business, the people, possibilities for entertainment, proposals for meals. How we can keep warm in winter or cooler in summer. We talk about tiepins, shoe rags, travel plans. The daily routine at Hochgobernitz has always been depressing. My son is afraid of returning into this depression. Is he a revolutionary? I often ask myself. Is he a geneapolitical visionary? He apparently realizes that everything here is exhausted. Drained. From this vantage point,” the prince said, “I can see everything if I make the effort, but I no longer have any desire to make an effort. I have lost the desire for any kind of effort. But on some days, without my even trying, the atmosphere is completely transparent as it could be interpenetrated by all possible qualities, and I enjoy that. Yes, I enjoy that. The great lucidity. But this condition, too, in the nature of things soon terminates in unbearableness. Everything terminates in unbearableness. I cannot bear anything; I am dead. It is quite simple: You can no longer endure things, and so that’s the end. Of everything. The only force that exists, as you well know, is the force of imagination. Everything is imagined. But imagining is strenuous, is fatal. Wednesday afternoon,” the prince said, “I imagine it is Wednesday afternoon, my son is in Hochgobernitz, keeping to his room. We have taken a long walk and are tired and have lain down, each in his own room. On this walk each of us inwardly worked over the subject he is most personally concerned with. No matter what we talked about, no matter what we thought, we do not understand each other. During supper, which the women cooked and served, we return to the topics of our walk. We see that nothing but age separates us. Outside it is a warm summer evening and I propose to my son that we go out again on the walls. Let us use the evening, I say, let us walk. We all go out, including the women. In the yard and then on the walls we all enjoy the combination of setting sun, walls, nature. Then darkness comes and we decide to walk down into the darkness, going as far as the gorge, past the Krainers’. We surrender ourselves to the darkness. We have surrendered ourselves to the darkness as to a science, I say. My son says: A natural science. I say: A political science. The darkness is a political science. We all wish that this summer evening would not end. We are happy. All of us are happy. I don’t understand it. I often have the feeling that I may be dead the moment I leave my body to its own devices.” He went on to speak of the admiration for a person that we generate in ourselves. Suddenly that person can brutally destroy our admiration by suddenly becoming, in our very presence, and simultaneously inside us, the very thing he consistently and in reality is. Ultimately such a discovery destroys everything, the prince said. “The truth is, all we hear in this world is: That is good, that is not good, this man is thus and so, and so on.… How often we hear: He has a keen mind, he hasn’t, he speaks French fluently, he doesn’t, he is materialistic, he isn’t, he is a Communist, he isn’t, he is poetic, he isn’t, he is rich, he isn’t. Disgusting! You know,” the prince said, “in the lower classes of the population only a very small vocabulary appears, when the lower classes of the population talk at all, while in the higher classes the whole vocabulary appears, even when it is not used but repressed. And there is something else that is unbearable,” he said. “The composers of symphonies always have symphonies on their minds, writers always have writing, builders always building, circus dancers always circus dancing—it’s unendurable. All my life I’ve always been afraid, all my life, of suffocating from the stench of the world,” he said. “That poverty is always poverty as wealth is always wealth—that is frightful. And all my life I have been saying: I want to be here or I want to be there and I am unhappy. Why? But it is also foolish to ask this question, it is impermissible. We always talk as if we had long ago discussed everything. And in fact, Doctor, everything has been said. But men go on talking, they talk on and on about their disgust whenever they talk about their destiny. And the philosophers too, Doctor, are always leading us through a museum that we already know inside and out; everything about this museum is familiar to us down to the smallest details. And it is a stinking museum that we are led into by the philosophers as soon as we occupy ourselves with their philosophies. The claim made for all philosophies is that they have opened a window and let air into the museum, fresh air, fresh air, Doctor. But the truth is that since Kant not a single one has succeeded in airing the museum, not a single one, I assure you. Ever since Kant the world has been an unaired world! And science imitates philosophy; it takes well-known bits of madness and arranges it in new patterns. We live by little surprises that we thoughtfully contrive for ourselves—isn’t that pitiable? To think that I can say yes, but that I can also say no to everything. People are always standing on a point at which it is meaningless to be. And nothing practical exists any more, nothing but theory. In music we hear what we feel. Truth is tradition, not the truth. I have never been able,” the prince said, “to amuse myself, never been able to entertain myself. Literalness has always annihilated everything for me. Everything is always annihilated by literalness. And we cannot help being born into literalness. When we open our mouths, we kill a reputation; we simultaneously kill a reputation and kill ourselves. But if we do not open our mouths we are soon crazy, insane, there is nothing left of us. In dialogue, in monologue, we draw everything more and more strenuously out of the darkness and cite it as proof; we exist only in proofs, you know, and then we lose it again in the darkness. But only now and then do we notice the real coarseness of life in dialogue. In dialogue we bring the dead to life and kill the living. We exploit this playacting unt
il nothing is left of us but playacting. When I am in the library,” the prince said, “everybody thinks I am busy with books because I am in the library, or at least busy with atlases, at least with printed paper. But in reality I have not read a book for years and stopped studying atlases, and I stay in the library only to be inside myself. The world is more and more being used up by us; we use up the world more than the world uses us up. My dear Doctor, what I am telling you now is a natural history. The incidents are always different My life is always a different life, just as yours is, just as your son’s is, as my son’s is, and so on.… But if I am asked, though I am not asked, what kind of life my life is, I say: My life. Consistent existences! I say. That will arouse laughter. Contempt. General disapproval. I am constantly afraid of being asked what kind of life my life is, although I know that not a soul will ever ask me what kind of life my life is. This question cannot be put to me. This question is always asked only in order not to have to ask it, you see. Yes,” the prince said, “I am growing more and more aware of causes; more and more I am growing old. And whenever I think, and therefore think of people, at bottom I always feel their weakness as a weakness that presses strongly upon me. There are, for example, periods in which I write no letters. I do not write to my son either. To no one. I conduct no correspondence; I am utterly unable to get in touch with anyone. Then again I write letters, postcards, day and night, continually, and in these letters and cards I say nothing but that I do not want to write either letters or cards and do not want to be in touch with anyone. If I am out in the open,” he said, “I think that it is better not to be out in the open; if I am not in the open, I think I must be in the open. Such thoughts are aging me, are killing me.”