by Robert Musil
Diotima’s position at that time was midway between Arnheim and Tuzzi: a seesaw position, metaphorically speaking, one end of which was weighted down too much, the other not enough. Even Ulrich had found her, on his return, with hot towels around her head and stomach; but these female complaints, the intensity of which she sensed to be her body’s protest against the contradictory orders it was receiving from her soul, had also awakened in Diotima that noble resolve that was characteristic of her as soon as she refused to be just like every other woman. It was of course hard to decide, at first, whether it was her soul or her body that was called upon to take action, or whether a change in her attitude toward Arnheim or toward Tuzzi would be the better response; but this was settled with the world’s help, for while her soul with its enigmas eluded her like a fish one tries to hold bare-handed, the suffering seeker was surprised to find plenty of advice in the books of the Zeitgeist, once she had decided to deal with her fate from the physical angle, as represented by her husband. She had not known that our time, which has presumably distanced itself from the concept of passionate love because it is more of a religious than a sexual concept, regards love contemptuously as being too childish to still bother about, devoting all its energies instead to marriage, the bodily operations of which in all their variants it investigates with zestful specificity. There was already at that time a spate of books that discussed the “sexual revolution” with the clean-mindedness of a gym teacher, and whose aim was to help people be happy though married. In these books man or wife were referred to only as “male and female procreators,” and the boredom they were supposed to exorcise by all manner of mental and physical diversions was labeled “the sexual problem.” When Diotima first immersed herself in this literature she furrowed her brow, but it soon smoothed out again; for it was a spur to her ambition to discover that a great new movement of the Zeitgeist was under way, which had so far escaped her notice. Transported, she finally clapped hands to brow in amazement that she who had it in her to set the world a great goal (though it was not yet clear what) had never before realized that even the unnerving discomfitures of marriage could be dealt with by using one’s intellectual resources. This possibility coincided with her inclinations and suddenly opened the prospect of treating her relationship with her husband, which she had so far regarded as something to be endured, as a science and an art.
“Wherever we may roam, there’s no place like home,” Bonadea said, with her characteristic taste for platitudes and quotations. For it came about that Diotima, in the role of guardian angel, soon took on Bonadea as a pupil in these matters, in accordance with the pedagogical principle that one learns best by teaching. This enabled Diotima to go on extracting, from the still undirected and unclear impressions she gained from her new reading, points she could really believe in— guided as she was by the happy secret of “intuition,” that you are sure to hit the bull’s-eye if you talk about anything long enough. At the same time it worked to Bonadea’s advantage that she could bring to the dialogue that response without which the student remains barren soil for even the best teacher: her rich practical experience, doled out with restraint, had served the theoretician Diotima as an anxiously studied source of information ever since she had set out to put her marriage in order with the aid of textbooks.
“Look, I’m sure I’m not nearly as bright as she is,” Bonadea explained, “but often there are things in her books that even I never dreamed of, and that makes her so discouraged sometimes, and then she’ll say things like: This can’t be decided at the council table of the marriage bed, I’m afraid; it would, unfortunately, take an immense amount of trained sexual experience, a lot of real physical practice on living material!”
“But for heaven’s sake,” Ulrich exclaimed, convulsed with laughter at the mere idea of his chaste cousin’s straying into “sexology,” “what on earth is she after?”
Bonadea gathered her memories of the happy conjunction between the scientific interests of the time and unthinking utterance. “It’s a question of how best to develop and manage her sex instinct,” she finally responded, in the spirit of her teacher. “And she stands for the principle that a joyous and harmonious sex life has to be achieved through the most severe self-discipline.”
“So you two are in training? Endurance training, at that? I’m impressed, I must say,” Ulrich exclaimed. “But now will you kindly explain just what it is Diotima is training for?”
“To begin with, she’s training her husband, of course,” Bonadea corrected him.
“The poor devil!” Ulrich could not help thinking. “In that case,” he said, “I’d like to know how she does it. Please don’t turn prudish on me all of a sudden.”
Under this grilling Bonadea did, in fact, feel inhibited by her ambition to shine, like a prize pupil in an exam.
“Her sexual atmosphere is poisoned,” she explained cautiously. “The only way to save it is for her and Tuzzi to make a most careful study of their behavior. There are no general rules for this. Each of them has to observe how the other reacts to life. To be a good observer, a person has to have some insight into sexual life. One has to be able to compare one’s practical experience with the results of theoretical research, Diotima says. Woman today happens to have a new and different attitude to the sex problem; she expects a man not only to act but to act with a real understanding of the feminine!” And for Ulrich’s entertainment or even just to amuse herself, she gaily added: “Just imagine what it must be like for her husband, who hasn’t the faintest inkling of all this new stuff and gets to hear about it mostly at bedtime while they’re undressing—let’s say when Diotima is taking her hair down and fishing for hairpins, with her petticoats tucked between her knees, and then suddenly she starts talking about all that. I tried it out on my husband, and it drove him almost to apoplexy. One thing you must admit: If marriage is to be for a lifetime, at least there’s the advantage that you have the opportunity of getting all the erotic possibilities in it out of your spouse. Which is what Diotima is trying to do with Tuzzi, who happens to be a bit crude!”
“Sounds like hard times for your husbands!” Ulrich teased.
Bonadea laughed, and he could tell how glad she would be to occasionally play truant from the oppressive earnestness of her school of love.
But Ulrich’s probing instincts would not let go; he sensed that his greatly changed friend was keeping quiet about something she would much rather have talked about. He professed to be mystified because, from what he had heard, the two husbands involved had so far rather erred in overdoing the “erotic possibilities.”
“Of course, that’s all you ever think!” Bonadea said reproachfully, giving him a long, pointed glance with a little hook at its end that could easily be interpreted as regret for the innocence she had acquired. “You take advantage of a woman’s physiological feeblemindedness yourself!”
“What do I take advantage of? You’ve found a splendid expression for the history of our love!”
Bonadea slapped his face lightly and, nervously, patted her hair in front of the mirror. Glancing at him out of the mirror, she said: “That’s from a book.”
“Of course. A very well known book.”
“But Diotima disputes it. She found something in another book that speaks of’the physiological inferiority of the male.’ The author is a woman. Do you think it really makes much difference?”
“How can I tell, since I’ve no idea what we’re talking about?”
“Well then, listen! Diotima’s starting point is the discovery that she calls ‘a woman’s constant readiness for sex.’ Can you see that?”
“Not in Diotima!”
“Don’t be so crude!” she rebuked him. “It’s a delicate theory, and it’s hard for me to explain it to you so that you don’t draw false conclusions from the fact that I happen to be here alone with you in your house while I’m talking about it. So this theory has it that a woman can be made love to even when she doesn’t feel like it. Now do you
see?”
“I do.”
“Unfortunately, it can’t be denied either. On the other hand, they say that quite often a man can’t make love even when he wants to. Diotima says this has been scientifically established. Do you believe that?”
“It’s been known to happen.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Bonadea said doubtfully. “But Diotima says that if you regard it in the light of science, it’s obvious. For in contrast with a woman’s constant readiness for sex, a man—well, in a word, a man’s manliest part is easily discouraged.” Her face was the color of bronze as she now turned it away from the mirror.
“I never would have guessed it about Tuzzi,” Ulrich said tactfully.
“I don’t think it used to be the case, either,” Bonadea said. “It’s only happening now, as a belated confirmation of the theory, because she lectures him on it day in, day out. She calls it the theory of the ‘fiasco.’ Because the male procreator is so prone to this fiasco, he only feels sexually secure if he doesn’t have to be afraid of a woman’s being in some way or other spiritually superior, and that’s why men hardly ever have the courage to try a relationship with a woman who’s their equal as a human being. At least, they try right away to put them down. Diotima says that the guiding principle of all male love transactions, and especially of male arrogance, is fear. Great men show it—she means Arnheim, of course. Lesser men hide it behind brutal physical aggression and abusing a woman’s soul—I mean you! And she means Tuzzi. That sort of ‘Now or never!’ you men so often use to make us give in is only a kind of overcomp—” She was about to say “compress”; “overcompensation,” Ulrich said, coming to the rescue.
“Right. That’s how you men manage to overcome the impression of your physiological inferiority!”
“What have you two decided to do, then?” Ulrich said meekly.
“We have to make an effort to be nice to men! That’s why I’ve come to see you. We’ll see how you take it.”
“And Diotima?”
“Heavens, what do you care about Diotima? Arnheim’s eyes pop out like a snail’s when she tells him that the most intellectually superior men unfortunately seem to find full satisfaction only with inferior women and fail with women who are their equals, as attested scientifically by the case of Frau von Stein and the Vulpius woman. You see, now I’ve got her name right, but of course I’ve always known she was the noted sex partner of the aging Olympian!”
Ulrich tried to steer the conversation away from himself and back to Tuzzi. Bonadea began to laugh; she was not without sympathy for the sorry predicament of the diplomat, whom she found quite attractive as a man, and felt a certain malicious and conspiratorial glee about his having to suffer under the castigations of the soul. She reported that Diotima was basing her treatment of Tuzzi on the assumption that she must cure him of his fear of her, which had also enabled her to come to terms somewhat with his “sexual brutality.” The great blunder of her life, she admitted, was in achieving an eminence too great for her male marriage partners naive need to feel superior, so she had set about toning it down by hiding her spiritual superiority behind a more suitable erotic coquetry.
Ulrich broke in to ask, with lively interest, what she understood by that.
Bonadea’s glance bored deeply into his face. “She might say to him, for instance, ‘Up to now our life has been spoiled by our competing for status.’ And then she admits to him that the poisonous effect of the male struggle for power dominates all of public life as well….”
“But that’s neither coquettish nor sexy!” Ulrich objected.
“Oh, but it is! You have to remember that a man in the grip of passion will behave toward a woman like an executioner toward his victim. That’s part of his struggle for self-assertion, as it’s now called. On the other hand, you won’t deny that the sex drive is important to a woman too?”
“Certainly not!”
“Good. But a happy sexual relationship demands an equal give-and-take. To get a really rapturous response from the love partner, the partner must be respected as an equal and not just as a willless extension of oneself,” she went on, caught up in her mentor’s mode of expression like someone sliding helplessly and anxiously across a polished surface, carried along by his own momentum. “If no other human relationship is able to endure unremitting pressure and counter-pressure, how much less can a sexual—”
“Oho!” Ulrich disagreed.
Bonadea pressed his arm, and her eye glittered like a falling star. “Hold your tongue!” she cried. “None of you have any firsthand experience of the feminine psyche! And if you want me to go on telling you about your cousin…” But her energy was spent, and her eyes now had the glitter of a tigress’s as she watches fresh meat being carried past her cage. “No, I can’t listen to any more of this myself!” she cried.
“Does she really talk like that?” Ulrich asked. “Did she actually say these things?”
“But it’s all I hear every day, nothing but sexual practice, successful embraces, key principles of eroticism, glands, secretions, repressed urges, erotic training, and regulation of the sex drive! Apparently everyone has the sexuality he deserves, at least that’s what your cousin claims, but do I deserve to be so overloaded with it?”
Her gaze firmly held his.
“I don’t think so,” Ulrich said slowly.
“After all, couldn’t one just as easily say that my strong capacity for experiencing represents a physiological superiority?” Bonadea asked with a gaily suggestive burst of laughter.
There was no more discussion. When, some considerable time later, Ulrich became aware of a certain resistance in himself, living daylight was spraying through the chinks in the curtains, and if one glanced in that direction the darkened room resembled the sepulcher of an emotion that had shriveled past the point of recognition. Bonadea lay there with her eyes closed, giving no sign of life. The feeling she now had of her body was not unlike that of a child whose defiance had been broken by a whipping. Every inch of that body, which was both completely satiated and battered, cried out for the tenderness of moral forgiveness. From whom? Certainly not from the man in whose bed she lay and whom she had implored to kill her, because her lust could not be appeased by any repetition or intensification. She kept her eyes shut to avoid having to see him. She tried thinking: “I’m in his bed.” This—and “I’ll never let myself be driven out of it again!”—was what she had been shouting inwardly just a short time before; now it merely expressed a situation she could not get out of without having to go through an embarrassing performance, which was still ahead of her. Bonadea slowly and indolently picked up her thoughts where she had dropped them.
She thought of Diotima. Gradually, words came to mind, then whole sentences and fragments of sentences, but mainly only a sense of satisfaction at being where she was while words as incomprehensible and hard to remember as hormones, lymphatic glands, chromosomes, zygotes, and inner secretions thundered past her ear in a cascade of talk. For her mentors chastity recognized no boundaries as soon as they were effaced by the glare of scientific illumination. Diotima was capable of saying to her listeners: “One’s sex life is not a craft that is to be learned; it should always be the highest art we may acquire in life!” while feeling as little unscientific emotion as when in her zeal she spoke of a “point of reference” or “a central point.” Her disciple now recalled these expressions exactly. Critical analysis of the embrace, clarification of the physical elements, erogenous zones, the way to highest fulfillment for the woman, men who have themselves well under control and are considerate of their partner…Just an hour ago Bonadea, who normally admired these scientific, intellectual, and highly refined terms, had felt grossly deceived by them. To her surprise she had just now realized with returning consciousness that this jargon was meaningful not only for science but for the emotions too, when the flames were already licking out from the unsupervised emotional side. At that point she hated Diotima. “Talking that way about such th
ings, it’s enough to kill your appetite!” she had thought, feeling horribly vindictive toward Diotima, who evidently, with four men of her own, begrudged Bonadea anything at all and was deliberately hoodwinking her in this fashion. Indeed, Bonadea had actually considered the enlightenment with whose help sexual science cleans up the occult ways of the sexual process as a plot of Diotima’s. Now she could not understand that any more than she could understand her passionate longing for Ulrich. She tried to remember the moments in which all her thoughts and feelings had gone wild; it was as incomprehensible as if a man bleeding to death were to try to think back on the impatience that had led him to tear off his protective bandages. Bonadea thought of Count Leinsdorf, who had called marriage a high office and had compared Diotima’s books on the subject with a manual for organizing official procedures. She thought of Arnheim, who was a multimillionaire and who had called the revival of marital fidelity, based on the idea of the body, a true necessity of the times. And she thought of all the other famous men she had recently met, without even remembering whether they had short legs or long ones, were fat or lean, for all she saw in them was the radiance of their celebrity rounded out by a vague physical mass, much as the delicate frame of a young roast pigeon is given substance by a solid mass of herb stuffing. Sunk in these memories, Bonadea vowed that she would never again let herself be prey to one of those sudden hurricanes that mix up above and below, and she swore this to herself so fervently that she could already see herself—if only she could hold firmly enough to her resolve—in fantasy and without physical particulars, as the mistress of the finest of all her great friend’s admirers, hers for the choosing. But since for the present there was no getting around the fact that she was still lying in Ulrich’s bed with very little on, reluctant to open her eyes, this rich sense of eager contrition, instead of developing further into a comfort to her, turned into a wretched state of exasperation.