Kornel Esti

by Kosztolányi, Deszö

  “Significantly he slept, sternly and importantly, with indescribable dignity and pride. By that I don’t at all mean to imply that when he was awake he lacked any of these desirable qualities. Awake too he was a man of standing. He was likable, but ice cold; fair, but grave. If he appeared anywhere, with his frock coat buttoned to the chin, his freshly tied black cravat, and his trousers with their knifelike crease, smiles froze on faces. Our friends told us that one summer, when he was entertaining some German naturalists and escorting them officially in the Darmstadt woods, the thrushes, tits, and all the songbirds together suddenly stopped their singing, which was out of keeping with the gravity of the situation. His importance grew, however, when he was asleep. At such times he changed into an enigmatic statue of himself. Sleep drew a sort of superficial, improvised death mask over his face. He looked a little like Beethoven.

  “Furthermore he slept refinedly, choicely, in gentlemanly fashion so to speak, aristocratically and chivalrously. For example, he never snored, never dribbled. He could exercise restraint. After all, he was a baron, a nobleman. He would hang his head slightly between his shoulders. He shut his eyes, and it seemed that by cutting off his sense of sight he merely intended to increase his attentiveness, as if in this way he meant only to render homage to science and literature. His face too was transfigured by inner absorption; a sort of church-like piety came over it. Certainly, next moment, the aged head, which the sinews of the neck now supported only laxly, sank lower and lower toward the green baize under the remorseless laws of gravity, and the head drew after itself the chest and then the torso. Many a time I was afraid that his face was going to fall onto the presidential bell, the bronze of which drew it like a magnet, and that his lips would kiss it. I can, however, assure you—that never happened.

  “The amazing thing was this. He slept self-assuredly and masterfully. As soon as his nodding head reached the azimuth, it rose of its own accord, the torso became erect, and so the whole process began again. He was in command of himself. He recognized the territory marked out for him in infinite space in which he could range freely without contravening decorum and etiquette. Even in his sleep he knew that he was doing something illicit, and only conditionally allowed himself this trifling foible of old age, as pleasant and understandable as the taking of snuff. His discipline set a limit just when need arose.

  “Nor did it ever happen that he overslept a lecturer. He would wake up of himself, just a couple of seconds before the end. How did he manage it? I could never make it out. According to my psychiatrist friend Zwetschke, the lecturers themselves must have warned him by speaking more loudly, with greater verve, as they were coming to a close. I didn’t accept that explanation. The delicate final lines of lyric verses, their sweetly allusive dying fall, had just as stimulating an effect on him as the stirring spirit of science and literature, and on all occasions he was alert, on watch in his lookout post, like one who had long been awake, and he would rise to his feet and with enviable knowledge of the subject express thanks in well-rounded sentences, as was his presidential right and duty, for the ‘elevated, thought-provoking, and still entertaining exposition’ or ‘brilliant, high-minded, and yet moving poetry.’

  “Zwetschke observed that he slept according to types of subject. He said that he slept most soundly during philosophical discourses and most superficially during lyric poetry. It was his considered opinion that the president relied on his great experience and adjusted his sleep to match the characteristics of each category. That explanation I couldn’t accept either. I rather inclined to the thesis which several experts have recently upheld, that in the depths of our consciousness we are constantly aware of the passage of time while we sleep, and in particular follow the rotation of the earth by our ancient instincts, and this serves us as a time-measuring mechanism, so that when we really mean to wake up by a certain time we always do, and when we are to leave on a journey and set our alarm clocks for five we wake a few minutes before five. That instinct must have been at work in our president too.

  “It happened—I won’t deny it—that now and then even he made mistakes in this and that, unimportant things. After all, extraordinary spirit and peerless intellect that he was, he was only human. He only made two mistakes. The privy councillor Dr. Max Reindfleisch was reading an excerpt from his historical novel in verse about Friedrich Barbarossa. He had not been reading for ten minutes when the president opened his eyes. This gave rise to a general sensation and consternation. The audience began to whisper. Some stood up to get a better look. He himself was horrified too. The suspicion flashed through his soul that perhaps his dozing had been noticed, and he was a little embarrassed. At that he deceived the audience and perpetrated a devilish trick. He decided to close his eyes again straightaway, and also to open them again several times one after another, indicating thereby that he had been keeping his eyes closed deliberately because that way he could pay better attention. And he shut his eyes. But he didn’t open them again. His eyelids were instantly gummed together by the sweet, warm honey of sleep and his head set off on its usual flight path toward the table and back, and thus he wavered to and fro until Privy Councillor Dr. Max Reindfleisch had finished the informative and learned excerpt from his novel.

  “What was the second occasion? Oh, yes. The second was even more startling. You need to know that in that cultural organization a lecture would last at least an hour and a half. Professor Dr. Blutholz, privy councillor and well-known philosopher, was lecturing on his favorite topic, a very popular one in Germany, On the First-Order Metaphysical Roots of the Intelligible World and Their Four Metaphysical Determinants; he was warming a little to his excitingly attractive exposition and had been speaking for two whole hours without pause. At that point the president opened his misty eyes. Like a man rising from the deepest metaphysical depths, he didn’t know where he was, didn’t know whether the concluding speech came next, and just looked at the lecturer and the audience like visions in a nightmare. Fortunately, however, Professor Dr. Blutholz announced at that moment that after that brief introduction he would at last move on to his subject proper. That sentence had the effect on the president of the chloroform that merciful anesthetists promptly drip onto the mask of the restlessly moaning patient, strapped down on the operating table, who regains consciousness in the course of the operation. He too instantly subsided, he too ‘moved on to his subject proper’: he slept on, nice and evenly.

  “What did he dream of at such times? On this point opinions differed. The German women, who—as I’ve hinted—are sensitive and romantic, said that in his dreams he obviously saw little roe deer, and ran about in the meadows of his long-past childhood, butterfly net in hand. Zwetschke, who was interested in psychoanalysis at the time, considered it likely that the president was weaving a dream which would advance his sleeping, and as his sole desire was to sleep, according to him the dream could only reflect the fulfilment of that desire in alluring little images: the lecturer would crash down from the rostrum, split his skull, and die horribly, the audience would rush upon one another in blind panic, a war of extermination would break out among them, they would shriek and die, covered in blood, the chandeliers would go out, darkness would enfold it all, the walls of the Germania would collapse, and the president would finally close the session and go home to sleep in his feather bed. In principle I agreed with this interpretation. The only thing that hurt me was that the distinguished psychiatrist had such a role in mind for the president, whom I knew to be one of the gentlest men in the world. I suggested that even in his dream he would refrain from thoughts of murder and violence. I put it to my friend that the president’s interest was not in the closing of the session but its continuation. I rather imagined, therefore, that in his dream the president constantly saw Count Leo Tolstoy visiting his humble Darmstadt society, there to read the three fat volumes of War and Peace from beginning to end, which in the first place would be a great honor to German culture, and second would guarantee the president
of the Germania at least a week of uninterrupted slumber. To this day I feel proud that the excellent Zwetschke accepted my explanation.

  “I repeat, the president was a kindly man, noble, tolerant, and broad-minded. It was because of his broad-mindedness that he slept. What else could he have done? I, a young man of twenty, fit as a fiddle, with nerves of steel, who had listened only for nine months, day after day, to those lectures which he as president must have listened to for fifty-seven years, I went to pieces and developed alarming symptoms. As a result of the nauseating stupidity and eccentric bragging generally called lyric poetry, the dull and insipid nonsense which generally passed for science, that man-pleasing hairsplitting, that hodgepodge of theories generally called politics, one night in my student room I suffered a fit of rage, suddenly began to go crosseyed and shout, and bellowed at the top of my voice for two hours until the faithful Zwetschke hurried to my bedside and administered scopolamine, which—as you will know—is usually used to calm raving lunatics. Imagine what would happen to that respectable president, who truly deserved a better fate, if he had not discovered in early life the sole solution, and his healthy spirit had not taken the stand that it had against injury. It must have been simply his instinct for self-preservation that suggested it to him. By it, however, he saved not only himself but also culture, science, and literature too, saved his nation, and also humanity as it strove toward progress.

  “Yes, his sleep was the very fulfillment of national and human obligation. As he slept objectively, impartially, apolitically and without bias, to left and right equally, toward men as toward women, toward Christians and Jews alike, in brief, as he slept without regard to distinctions of age, sex, or religion, it appeared that he closed his eyes to all human failings, and not only did it ‘appear,’ but it was in fact so. Believe me, that sleep was veritable approval. The sleeper nods, thereby approving everything. I’ll venture to state that at times in the honorable paneled lecture hall of the Germania, even the most forbearing member of the audience wished the lecturer to Hell, wished that he might have a seizure, that cancer of the tongue might render him dumb, distend his revolting mouth—and only one single person showed himself at all times tolerant toward him, the president, who was always asleep. Like outspread angelic wings, his sleep fluttered above millions upon millions of foolishnesses and vanities of the human spirit, above sterile ambition and paltry attention-seeking, the St. Vitus’ dance of envy and meanness, all the nastiness and futility that is public life, science, and literature. Qui tacet consentire videtur.* He that is silent agrees to everything. But is there so true an agreement as sleep? His sleep was a bulwark against vandalism, it was reassurance, the saving of society; it was understanding itself, forgiveness itself.

  “My friends, a sleeper is always understanding and forgiving. A sleeper can never be hostile to us. The moment he goes to sleep he turns his back on the world, and all hatred, all wickedness cease to be as far as he is concerned, as they cease for the dead. The French have a saying, ‘To go away is to die a little.’ That I’ve never believed, because I love traveling, and every time that I get on a train I feel revitalized. To sleep, however, is certainly to die a little, and not a little but a lot, as much as departing life (which, when all’s said and done, is nothing more than awareness of the self), as much as dying completely for a short time. This is precisely why the person who is asleep leaves the field, turns his will—with its sharp, damaging point—inward, and behaves toward us with the indifference of one who began long ago to decay. Who wants a greater benevolence on this earth? I have always insisted on respect for those who are asleep, and will not allow them to be disturbed in my presence. ‘Nothing but good of the sleeper’ has been my slogan. Frankly, I don’t understand why we don’t occasionally celebrate sleepers, why we don’t toss onto their beds at least a flower, why we don’t organize a minor, heartwarming wake after they go off, because we are for a while free of their often burdensome, often dull company, and why, when they wake, we don’t play children’s toy trumpets and so proclaim our daily resurrection. That’s the least they deserve.

  “He would have deserved more, much more. Most of humanity, however, are incorrigible blockheads, full of fussy prejudice and false modesty. After a while even he was attacked. It was mainly the poets who plotted against him, those cantankerous crackpots who pretend to be apostles, but if two get together they flay the hide off a third; the poets, who sing of purity but avoid even the vicinity of the bathroom; the poets, who beg everyone, even beggars, at street-corners for just a little fame, just a little affection, just a little statue, beg mortals for immortality; those light-minded, jealous, wan exhibitionists who will sell their souls for a rhyme or an epithet, set out their innermost secrets for sale, turn to profit the deaths of their fathers, mothers, and children and in later years, in the ‘night of inspiration,’ dig up their graves, open their coffins, and rummage for ‘experiences’ by the dark lantern of vanity like grave robbers after gold teeth and jewels, then confess and snivel, those necrophiles, those fishwives. Forgive me, but I loathe them. There in Darmstadt, in my youth, I came to loathe them. They couldn’t abide that elevated president. And they had reason. They, who in their nauseating verse described themselves, without any basis, as ‘knights of dreams’ and ‘dreamers of dreams,’ envied that noble old man who was a dreamer in the strict sense of the word. They played interminable tasteless, malicious jokes on him. They said that after all those years he was satisfying his need for sleep in front of the biggest audience that he could find, like a hunger artist starving in an officially sealed glass cage in the public view. They said that he never took off his pince-nez during sessions just so as to be able to see the images more clearly in his dreams, because he was so shortsighted that he wouldn’t even be able to see dream images and would wake up out of boredom. They said that since he’d been active in the sphere of public life, that fine proverb ‘Life is a brief dream’ had lost its meaning, because life now seemed a very long dream. I clasped my hands together and begged them for mercy and clemency. I emphasized that even the most outstanding persons have some little shortcoming which we must disregard because of their other qualities. I quoted Horace at them too. Quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus.* To which they replied that that was quite right, but the president didn’t just nod but slept all the time, and was incapable of anything else.

  “I struggled desperately. The rising flood, however, soon threatened to cover everything. Sometimes the poets’ anger would appear publicly in a humorous publication or in a hostile article. They hated him. What was the reason? Well, probably their pompous-mawkish outlook. The very ones who deliberately lived their lives on a dunghill just so a few colorful toadstools should grow there could not endure that purity, that mighty, peerless quality of leadership, that irreproachable genius. While he was peacefully asleep in the presidential chair they saw all kinds of nightmares—without reason, naturally, because their view was always distorted, their judgment always clouded. They thought of the helmsman of a ship, overcome by sleep at the wheel while the ship ran onto an iceberg. They thought of the railwayman snoring beside the switch box while behind his back the skeleton grinned as it directed the train to thunder to its fate on the wrong track. What false perceptions, what lame comparisons. The ship and the train must of course be taken care of. They are physical entities. Harm could result if they collided with others. But I ask you, what harm could come to science and literature? I ask you, whom or what did that harmless, honorable president injure by sleeping, worn out by his manifold activities? I ask you, wasn’t he rather beneficial to everything and everybody? I think I’m right.

  “It has been my experience, at least, that in public life peace and harmony can be maintained only if we let things take their course and don’t interfere with the eternal laws of life. These don’t depend on our wishes, so we can do virtually nothing to alter them. The president’s high-minded sleep, overarching opposition, gave expression to this. All the disorder on
this earth has arisen from the desire of some to create order, all the filth from the fact that some have swept up. Make no mistake, the real curse in this world is planning, and true happiness the lack of it, the spontaneous, the capricious. I’ll give you an example. I was the first to arrive here. For a few minutes I was all alone in the private room of the Torpedo. In came Berta, the bakery girl. I bought a császárzsemle* from her and kissed her on the lips. A second before I had no idea that I would do that. Nor had she. So it was beautiful. Nobody had planned that kiss. If kisses are planned they turn into marriage and duties, become sour and insipid. Wars and revolutions too are planned, and that’s why they’re so dreadfully hideous and vile. A stabbing in the street, the murder of a wife or husband, the massacre of a whole family, is much more humane. Planning kills literature too—the formation of cliques, the guild system, in-house criticism which writes ‘a few warm lines’ about the in-house sacred cow. Whereas the writer that scribbles his never-to-be-published verses on an iron table by the washroom in the coffeehouse is always a saint. Examples show that those who have dragged mankind into misfortune, blood, and filth have been those who were enthusiastic about public affairs, took their mission seriously, burned the midnight oil passionately and respectably, whereas the benefactors of humanity have been those who minded their own business, shunned responsibility, took no interest, and slept. The trouble’s not that the world has been guided with too little wisdom. The trouble is that it has been guided at all.

  “Don’t be surprised, my friends, at hearing such profound philosophizing from me on this occasion, because I’m much happier with frivolous talk. I learned it from the man from whom I’ve learnt more than from anyone else in my life, my loved and respected mentor and preceptor, but he never taught me anything, merely slept all the time. He was wisdom itself. Those piffling, snotty, unkempt poets, who spoke of him so disparagingly, had no idea how wise he was. What had he not seen, what did he not know! He’d seen tendencies appear and disappear without trace. He’d seen the greatest writers in Germany become the least overnight and new poets suddenly go out of fashion—for no apparent reason, in just a few minutes, while they were shaving at home, not suspecting a thing. He’d welcomed geniuses who later rotted on straw in stables, and he’d condemned and officially denounced the false doctrines of charlatans in the cultural association under his direction, then a couple of years later endorsed those doctrines in the cultural association under his direction, and consequently later even taught them at the university. He knew that everything was hopelessly relative, and that there was no reliable means of assessment. He also knew that people generally disagreed through conflicts of interest, protested solemnly against things, but then generally solemnly retracted, made peace, and that the deadly enemies of yesteryear walked arm-in-arm in the corridors of the Germania and sat whispering on velvet couches in alcoves. Once he’d discovered that, nothing surprised him again. He had a wonderful knowledge of people and life, which would always sort itself out somehow, one should just not worry about it. What else can anyone so wise do but sleep? Put your hands on your hearts and tell me, can there be a better place for sleeping than in public, on the presidential dais, on which, like a bier, candles flicker, and there is a comfortable, imposing, presidential armchair? I tell you, he did indeed sleep out of wisdom, patience, insight, mature, manly contemplation, and therefore relied on the capricious and unexpected, and permitted the ship or train of science and literature to speed freely ahead.