by Peter Weiss
There was nobody awake to whom I could have reported my emancipation from the usual daily chores. I stood on the empty Rue Casimir-Périer like a deserter, harried by the thought that I must turn around, return to those still asleep and wait to find out what was to happen next. But then I gave in once more to the pull that had seized me in the hall; I walked via Rue las Cases, past the brick building of Saint Clotilde, toward the small park where two years earlier my father had met with Wehner, where the sparrows were chirping, the pigeons cooing, just as they always had. In the square in the center of the grounds, under the chestnut trees, César Franck, who had been the organist in the church, sat in front of his marble instrument with his arms crossed, his foot resting on the pedal, listening intently to the angel which, resting on its stomach, stretched awkwardly over the back wall and lay his arms around Franck’s shoulders while whispering into his side whiskers. Now, in the dim light of dawn, the sea had grown calmer, ten men had been swallowed by the ocean, another twelve, perished, hung pinned between the planks and the boards. I walked down Rue Saint-Dominique, the guards at the entrance to the courtyard of the Ministry of Defense directed their gazes toward me. Suddenly afraid that I could provoke suspicion or be arrested, I slowed my pace. Turning into Rue de Solferino, far off in the distance, above the treetops of the Quai d’Orsay, up at the height of Sacré-Cœur, I saw a newspaper boy riding his bike from door to door; at each building he counted out a bundle and carried it inside: Chamberlain to Godesberg, I read on one of the front pages in passing. Rue de Lille marked the end of the gorge of tall, uniform residential buildings; it was followed by the two-story building of the Légion d’Honneur, with its rounded portal, a tricolor on the slanted flagpole above it, and closed shutters on the yellowish-gray, putti-covered façade. Alone or in small groups, pedestrians approached from the boulevard along the riverbank, walking hunched over, hurried; they might have been cleaning ladies, porters, who worked in the ministries where people had worked late into the night, having to empty the stuffed ashtrays and wastepaper baskets, dust off the desks, mop the floors; a restrained silence, a leaden exhaustion lay over the government quarter; these colorless figures, which in the morning mist still had something fluid to them, were familiar to me; they, who were the first inhabitants of the city I encountered, eased my passage into the metropolis, the arrival of these inconspicuous servants provided a familiar background for the impending arrival of the noises; in a moment, their swift and soft steps would be buried under the drumming that the slabs of stone would cause to vibrate on all sides. The actual venture into the unknown began when I had reached the street overlooking the Seine. I followed the railing to the right, suffering an attack of dizziness and delirium. A pole had been torn out of the base of the raft, erected as a mast and fastened with the tow rope, the clapping of the tatters of the sail could be heard and the torque was palpable, the irreparable twisting of the raft due to an overly long, laterally protruding piece of wood. By the second day the refusal to hand over the firearms to the sailors had already proven its purpose. Inebriated, having smashed and drunk a barrel of wine, the crew went after their superiors with axes and knives in a throng around the mast, where the officers held their ground with their pistols. In this burgeoning mutiny, the painter saw the possibility of a great composition arise. But there were still too many people clinging to the planks, their heads hanging down into the water, there was still too much confusion in this mutual onslaught, this struggle for dominance played out on a tiny territory, the antagonism had still not been converted into intimacy, the collective need, the collective horror, had not yet united them. On the ledge of the wall, I opened the street map I had bought the previous evening upon arriving at Gare de Lyon. There would be a lot to do today, decisions would have to be made, important steps for my progression stood before me, yet I had drifted into a haze of multiplicity which made it impossible for me to follow the laws that had previously applied. My every thought was so beleaguered by contradictory impulses, the attempt to gain perspective now seemed so fruitless after this leap from everything solid and binding, that I shelved the question of what was rational and useful and gave myself over to impulses that, without ever revealing their meaning, sought to prevail within me. At this moment, I only knew that I had to continue on through a glut of sediment that had been pressed and woven together so densely that every movement produced as it were a grinding and cracking, and I was not just surrounded by webs of images, tangles of events, it was as if time had also burst, and as if I, by rummaging through its layers, had to crush it between my teeth. But in this condition, which resembled a state of inebriation, of possession, the desire for a form of regulation, of measurement persisted. With satisfaction I realized that behind the boulevard on the opposite bank of the river lay the sculpture-filled Tuileries Gardens, leading up to the elongated façade of the Louvre. It would still be many hours before the museum’s gates would open; it was not intended for those who were ready to pay it a visit at the break of dawn, it belonged to the long sleepers, who after a late and generous meal tended to their nightly repose, and were then able to do with their day as they pleased. Yet it didn’t matter that I had to wait; I had stolen this day for myself, I could already see myself walking around in the storeroom, in which one after the other of those works of the imagination, of inventiveness, were hanging, where everything was present in the original colors and forms, everything that I had known until now only from second-hand accounts or dubious reproductions. Be not afraid, one of them cried, I am going to get help for you, you’ll be seeing me soon, and stepped, amid the general ecstasy, out into the sea. Sixty to sixty-five men perished in the tumult, rusk and drinking water were exhausted, only a barrel of wine was left. What became of the woman, Géricault asked himself. Strangely, the authors had not reported anything further about her, though the fact of a single woman’s presence among the men ought to have merited special consideration. He wanted to know whether they had fought over the woman, or whether carnality lost all meaning under the threat of death. He saw himself lying next to her, and he sketched this moment, the two of them surrounded by corpses in the foreground of the raft. The woman was unconscious, he had draped his arm around her, in the other he cradled a naked child, even though there had been no mention of a child on the raft. More and more, the raft became his own world. He clasped the body of the woman, pressed the child against himself, at night, he slept like this, when he awoke, he sensed that his arms were empty, it was a long time before he was able to open his eyes and saw that the ocean had taken from him the woman, the child. As the number of people on the raft became smaller, the painter came closer to the concentration that he needed for the final version of his painting. After the fighting died down, the wish to carry on living for as long as possible underwent a strange transformation. The first people began to cut up the cadavers that were lying around with their knives. Some devoured the raw meat on the spot, others let it dry in the sun, in order to make it more palatable, and those who could not bring themselves to consume this new fare were forced by hunger to do so on the following day. The turbulence was followed by the period of total isolation. In this condition of being torn out of all relations the painter recognized his own situation. He attempted to imagine what it was like, the sinking of teeth into the throat, the leg of a dead human being, and while he drew Ugolino biting into the flesh of his sons, he learned to come to terms with it, as those on the raft had done after letting out a hurried prayer. The naked figures, huddled together on the raft, found themselves in a world deformed by fever and delusion, those still living merged with the dead by consuming them. Drifting about on the plank structure, in cloud-like waters, Géricault felt the penetration of the hand into the slit breast, the grasping of the heart of the person he had hugged goodbye on the previous day. After a week, thirty remained on the raft. The saltwater had driven the skin on their feet and legs to blister and peel, their torsos were covered with contusions and sores. Often they cried and
whimpered, at most twenty of them could still hold themselves upright. In the counting and calculating from one day to the next, in the continual withering away of the heap of castaways, in the depictions of the thirst, the running dry of all that was drinkable, the drooling over urine—which bore various aromas, sometimes sweetish, sometimes acrid, of thinner or thicker consistency, cooled in a small tin container—in the description of sucking up the wine ration through a quill, which prolonged the drinking, in the incessant approach of death, the burning of one hour into the next, the painter too heard the seeping of time into infinity, and from this dripping, ticking, and flowing the painting’s process of creation was set in motion. Without living through those thirteen days and nights of anguish he wouldn’t have been able to find that moment of finality and depict the remaining group in its indivisibility. He was still captivated by individual details, distracted from the conception of completion. There was that little, empty bottle, which had contained rose oil, and which one of them wrested from the other so as to inhale the sweet smell. The painter couldn’t shake the thought of the tiny perfume bottle; it roused memories of long-forgotten experiences. For several weeks he took great pains to not portray the objects themselves but rather the emotions, the dream images evoked by the feel of the objects. He knelt on the floor, on top of the drawing paper, the door locked behind him, completely alone with his secrets; for a few days he didn’t eat or drink a thing, crawled around on the floorboards, surrounded by hallucinations, his mother, whom he had lost at the age of ten, appeared to him, a violent longing to be close to her overcame him, he reached out to feel her features, drew Phaedra, and himself as Hippolytus, whom the sea monster sought to dash against the rocks, and who was then dragged to his death by horses. For him, existence was drifting around on the raft; he pined for the woman who had replaced his mother, the wife of the brother of his mother, he was torn apart by the guilt of having left her, having disavowed the woman who had borne him a child. I had a desire to learn as much as possible about him, and in the openness that I brought to this day, the expectation that his life would open up before me emerged. Relentless as the permeation of the hazy air by the heightened light were the mounting sounds, every now and then a car drove down the street along the quay, and behind me, the early trains were rolling into Gare d’Orsay. With its coats of arms, helmets, and crowns, its window arches wrapped in patron saints and gods, its clocks set in wreathes, fruit baskets, and cornucopias, its immense golden letters flanked by harps and anchors, the hulking edifice which I turned toward seemed to want to trump the palace above and its halls of artworks. The footsteps of the people exiting the main entrance, most of them dressed in dark hues, briefcases under their arms, were already being drowned out by a metallic buzz, a whirring singing ascending from the city. Compared with the tumors of the industrial age, the titans and muses, the heroes and angels snuggled in together in the niches and tower gables of the side building of the Louvre still had something reserved, chaste about them, and yet these refinements of feudalism were no more laudable than the mountains of pompous sculptures on this side. There was a greater purity of line to be found in the bridge I was walking toward. Its low walls were smoothly cut, the two halves ascended symmetrically to the sharp central seam, four cast-iron lampposts protruding on each side. But Pont Royal also failed to inspire any harmony within me; it was more as if the air, though already flushed with a glow, had become a viscous, dull paste; I had to wring every step out of myself; seized by shivering, I clung to the railing. Only a few days earlier I had still belonged to an irrevocable order, had performed set tasks, had been connected with the actions of others. Now I found myself in a region in which there was a life whose existence we had forgotten just as completely as we had been ignored here. The battlefields lay behind us, the fighting raged on, but the charges, the retreats, the cries of the wounded, the dying voices of the fallen, none of that counted here, everything here was so different that even we lost sight of ourselves, that we could no longer remember what we had actually been fighting for. From our first steps on French soil we were regarded as ejecta; the demobilized soldiers, the masses of refugees were driven into ringed fences of barbed wire, only a small number, with valid passports, were able to evade internment, and this was a hidden path out of a desert, a field of rubble. The expectation of a greeting, a welcome, a sign of solidarity had evaporated, there was no Popular Front here, only the gendarmerie received us, the only place we belonged was in the police archives; henceforth we were to report to the prefecture daily and hold out to be stamped the scrap of paper that signified our existence. I had always seen my path in front of me, made my decisions, even back then, deep in the underground and surrounded by fascism, I had been able to see a way out; only here, in the capital of openness, of enlightenment, were we forced into blindness. On the first evening in Paris we had been suddenly overwhelmed by our sense of estrangement from one another. With the dissolution of our alliance, our natural sense of belonging together had also evaporated; a powerlessness had befallen us with the realization that our ranks had been broken up, that we had been made useless. Only the question of which party we belonged to, or intended to join, contained the suggestion of a continued permanence. Until now I had found my purpose on the side that I was fighting for; now I was confronted with the realization that this spontaneous community was only possible so long as I was among friends and allies, and that this natural cooperation had to be replaced by a binding commitment. At a point in time when the illegal, conspiratorial work in cadres demanded the strictest confinement, it was necessary to join the organized collective; it was only here that it seemed possible to demonstrate our reliability. Yet such a step had been made more difficult by the decentralization of the Party; I didn’t even know which group, which country I was responsible for. The only task now had to be that of rebuilding and strengthening the Party, and I was ready to follow the directives that I would again be receiving. At the same time though, I was drawn to the park gates behind the bridge, watched over by sphinxes, and an immense thirst for knowledge grew within me. I leaned on the stone railing, barges with bunting of colorful pieces of laundry trailed along beneath me; today, when there was a need for the most precise orientation in external reality, today, while the city was holding its breath, awaiting the decisive moves and blows of the protagonists in the diplomatic spectacle, I wanted to head over to the poplars on the upper bank, to that arsenal of images. The thought of being accepted into the Party coalesced with the desire for limitless discoveries; I could already see myself standing before those painted surfaces, see my encounter with Géricault, Delacroix, Courbet, Millet; I wanted to head into the closed organization, into uncompromising struggle, and at the same time, into the absolute freedom of the imagination. Surmounting Pont Royal, I envisioned the path into the Party and the path to art as something singular, something indivisible; political judgment, relentlessness in the face of the enemy, the power of the imagination, all of this came together to form a unity. As I passed the sphinxes, the last line of defense was broken. Here and there in the grounds with the crisscrossing gravel paths someone was walking their dog on a leash. Egyptians and Assyrians, Druids and Gauls, Romans and Goths had been hauled in, beaten into stone, cast in ore, to honor the princes on their warhorses; everywhere guards and rulers loomed, waving their swords and lances, and poets, philosophers, and artists swiveled on their pedestals, passing me along through their arms. No sooner had I leaned back on a bench than silver-gray women appeared before me like ghosts, in long robes, and chased me away with outstretched hands. I had time to ask myself what this actually was, this city, where did it draw its essence, its strength, with which it continuously exerted its influence upon me. It had always been my wish to come to this city, and now that I was here, scarcely tolerated, among the lowest of the low, the task was to not allow it to force me onto my knees. Faced with its buildings and streets, I had to assert myself, in this powerful conglomeration which received its life
from all those people who lived within it or had done, I had to look for relationships that could give my consciousness something to hold on to. The architecture and avenues drew the wanderer into their expansiveness, and the light, reflecting off the water and the sandy yellow hues of the walls of the buildings, did its bit to transport them to a realm of levity and devotion. Looking through the central arch of the gate in the forecourt of the Louvre, in honor of the victory at Austerlitz and made of rose marble, the obelisk on Place de la Concorde and the large memorial to the Napoleonic armies at the end of the Champs-Élysées formed a straight line. This perspective, fringed by the gentle green of the rows of trees, drew the gaze into a flight to infinity, running from the symbol of one military triumph to the other, containing all the efforts at attaining absolute power, its format—accommodating the breadth of troops on the march and opening a vista onto unruly masses—was intended to lift our emotions and allow us to perceive imperialism, transformed into grand proportions, as a form of beauty. Considering how tearing down the old districts was supposed to hamper the building of barricades, create a clear field of fire, I saw Paris under the spell of its rulers, saw at all strategic points the mountains of wealth towering over the closed-off quarters of the tradespeople, the petite bourgeoisie, and the workers. But it wasn’t this pattern that gave the city its appearance; the sense of being here, of the presence of all these buildings was instead evoked by the knowledge of the events that, all around, coming from below, had been set in motion again and again, the movements of outrage, of insurgency, which brought their own violence, their own power to fruition. Every building bore a more palpable trace of such actions than of the obligations that had been issued by the dynasties, and if to the nameless masses, who in the alleys had stacked up the stones into barricades, I added those who had entered into the life of the city with their artworks, then I was immediately thrust into a hot and bubbling mêlée that left me gasping for air. Almost all the people who had contributed to shaping my thought had resided here; the fact that their gazes had examined the scenes I was now seeing, that they had crossed this street, placed demands upon me for a moment that were scarcely bearable, but then it encouraged me, for none of these people had managed to transcend their beginnings in an instant either, and it was the ones who were most dear to me who had left behind evidence of their efforts and hardships. Amid the rumble of the traffic, in the chaos of the crowds who were rushing off to tend to their affairs, I approached from Place Vendôme, where I had seen how the column began to list, how it fell and burst. Even if it had also erected itself again like in a film in rewind, encoiled by its copper reliefs packed with nobles, breastplates, army flags, and fasces, which slot together to form a screw thread around the dense masonry of the base, with the spiral staircase inside; the fact that this column bearing Caesar in his laurel crown on the cupola had once been toppled, was still reason enough to leave the lavishly decorated square with confidence. Once, the tall steps to the entrance of the Nationalgalerie in Berlin had sought to hinder our access to art; insignificant and worthless, we had scaled the steps up to the acropolis, which wanted to open itself only to the select few; before the entrance to the Louvre, however, we had only to advance across a threshold, and while the German troops were moving into formation on the Czechoslovakian border, Poland and Hungary were making their own demands for territorial gains, and in Hotel Dreesen on the Rhine preparations were being made for the arrival of the British delegation, the doors were flung open, and I charged in, in the stream of pilgrims, into the enfilade of the halls, bent down inquisitively to the sullen old men sitting on velvet seats with their peaked caps, saw incomparable sights with every step, left and right, gave them just enough time to ring out before continuing straight on, up and down the steps, until I finally ended up in front of the enormous, blackish-brown canvas, which at first conveyed the impression of a sudden extinction and death.