Tales of the German Imagination from the Brothers Grimm to Ingeborg Bachmann (Penguin Classics)

by Unknown

  I first climbed down into the Karolina (the filthiest and most cheerless Miss Karolina that I have ever met). The ladder joints are muddy and wet. And down you go, from one length of ladder to the next, the foreman in the lead, and the fellow keeps telling you: it isn’t really dangerous, you just have to make sure to grasp the rungs firmly, and don’t look down at your feet, and don’t get dizzy, and for God’s sake don’t step on the side board, where the whirring cable is just now hoisting up the vats of ore, and where just two weeks ago a careless fool fell down and unfortunately broke his neck.

  There is a bewildering hubbub and hum of activity down below; you are forever bumping against beams and cables hoisting up vats of hammered ore and buckets of water that has seeped out of the rock. Sometimes you also happen upon hollowed-out corridors, called Stollen, in which you can glimpse the growing piles of ore, and where the lonely miner sits all day, laboriously hammering the lumps of ore out of the wall.

  I never did get down to the very bottom, where, as some say, you can already hear the Americans crying, ‘Hurrah, Lafayette!’ on the other side; but between you and me, as far down as I got seemed deep enough for me – what with the unceasing rumble and whirl, the ghastly grind of the machinery, the subterranean drip drip drip, water trickling everywhere, terrestrial vapours rising from the depths and the pit light flickering ever more faintly in the lonely night eternal. It truly was stupefying, harder and harder to breathe, and only with great effort did I hold fast to the slippery rungs of the ladder.

  I did not suffer any so-called panic attack, but, strangely enough, down in those subterranean depths, I suddenly remembered my experience last year, at about this time, of a storm on the North Sea, and right then and there it felt cosy and pleasant to recall the ship tossing to and fro, the trumpeting winds blasting away, and in the midst of it all the sailors kicking up a merry row, and everything bathed in God’s fresh, open air. Yes, air!

  Gasping for air, I climbed the several dozen ladder lengths back up to the surface, and my guide led me through a narrow, very long passageway blasted through the mountain to the Dorothea mine.

  It is airier and fresher here, and the ladders are cleaner but also longer and steeper than those in the Karolina. My spirit grew more buoyant here too, especially as I once again noticed scattered traces of life. For faint glows shifted about in the distance; miners with their pit lights soon emerged to the surface with the greeting, ‘How’re you doin’?’, and, with the same reply from us, they climbed on by; and like a friendly, quiet and at the same time torturously enigmatic memory, they flitted by with their profoundly lucid expressions, the sombrely pious, somewhat pallid faces of these young and old men eerily lit in the shimmer of the pit light, the faces of men who have worked a shift in dark, lonesome mine shafts and now longed for the dear light of day and the eyes of wife and child.

  My cicerone himself was a sterling fellow of pure and simple German nature. With a deep sense of satisfaction, he showed me the very spot where the Duke of Cambridge dined with his entire entourage during his visit to the mine, and where the long wooden dinner table still stands today along with the big silver ore stool on which the Duke sat. This table will stay standing here as an eternal souvenir of the occasion, said the good miner, and with fire in his voice he recalled the many festivities they celebrated back then; how the whole mine shaft was decked out with lanterns, flowers and wreaths; how a mine musician played the zither and sang; and how the dear, delighted, portly Duke drank round after round. And he swore that many miners, he himself in particular, would gladly lay down their lives for the dear portly Duke and the entire House of Hanover.

  I am always greatly stirred to see how this feeling of fidelity expresses itself in such simple syllables. It is such a lovely sentiment! And it is such a truly German sentiment! Other nations may be more nimble and witty and pleasure-loving, but none is so faithful as the faithful German nation. Did I not know that fidelity was as old as the world, I’d say a German heart had invented it. Good old German fidelity – that’s no newfangled flourish. At your courts, oh you German lords, they ought to sing again and again the song of Faithful Eckart and the evil Burgundian, who had his henchmen kill the children of Eckart, whose fidelity to his liege lord did not lag thereafter one iota. You have the most faithful subjects among all nations, and you err if you believe that the sensible old reliable dog might suddenly have gone mad and snapped at your sacred heels.

  Like good old German fidelity, the little pit light led us safely and soundly, with hardly a flicker, through the labyrinth of shafts and pits; we climbed up out of the steamy night eternal, and the sunlight was beaming – ‘How’re you doin’?’

  Most of the miners live in Klausthal and in the adjoining little mountain hamlet of Zellerfeld. I visited a fair number of these valiant folk, was welcomed into their modest, cosy lodgings and listened to a few of their songs, which they sang to the sweet accompaniment of the zither, their favourite instrument. I had them tell me old mountain fairy tales and also rattle off their prayers, which they liked to recite in unison before climbing down into the dark pit, and I prayed along with them. An old foreman even proposed I stay with them and become a miner and when, nevertheless, I took my leave, he bid me deliver greetings to his brother who lives not far from Goslar and give many kisses to his dearly beloved niece.

  As static and quiet as the life of these people might appear, it is still a truly animated existence. The trembling ancient crone seated in the cosy nook between the big cupboard and the warm oven, herself as old as the hills, may have already been seated there for a quarter-century, and her thinking and feeling were definitely intertwined with every corner of this oven and every hand-carved notch and crevice of this cupboard. And cupboard and oven are alive, for a human being imbued them with a piece of his soul.

  It is only through such a deeply contemplative life, through such an immediate rapport between man and his surroundings, that the German fairy tale could come into being, for its uniqueness consists in the fact that not only animals and plants, but also seemingly altogether lifeless things have the capacity to speak and act. For only such contemplative, harmless folk, cloistered away in their forest cottages, in that still, secret, cosy corner of these low mountains, could fathom the inner life of such things. To them, these objects have acquired an essential, consequent character, a sweet mingling of whimsical caprice and pure human impulse. And so, in their wondrous yet seemingly self-evident way, do fairy tales portray them: the needles and pins escaping from the tailor’s pincushion only to get lost in the darkness; the drowning blades of straw and lumps of coal determined yet to ford the stream; a bickering shovel and broom that wilfully fling themselves from the landing; the propositioned mirror that naturally reveals the face of the loveliest lady; and even a drop of blood that bursts into speech, dark and fearful words of sympathy and foreboding.

  For the very same reason, our life in childhood is so infinitely full of meaning – childhood, that time when everything is equally important to us, when we hear it all, see it all and take it all in with the same equanimity. It is so unlike adulthood, when we become more intentional, dwelling on the particular, having cashed in the clear gold of contemplation for the paper money of dictionary definitions, gaining in life experience what we lose in the deep lustre of looking.

  Now we are grown-up, noble folk; we keep changing apartments; the maid cleans up daily and rearranges the furniture as she sees fit, those tables and chairs in which we take little interest, since they are new and Hans will in any case pawn them to Isaac tomorrow. Even our clothes remain strange to us, and we hardly know how many buttons are attached to the jacket we are wearing this very minute. We do, after all, change clothes with such frequency that no single garment maintains any lasting connection with our private and public persona. Why, we can hardly still remember what that brown waistcoat looked like, the one that used to draw so much laughter and on whose broad stripes the dear hand of an old flame so sweetly lay!


  The old woman seated between the vintage cupboard and the warm oven had on a flowery skirt of outmoded pattern, the wedding gown of her late beloved mother. Her great-grandson, a blond, twinkly-eyed little boy dressed up as a miner, sat at her feet, counting the flowers on her skirt. She must already have told him many a story of this skirt, many serious, enchanting stories that surely the boy will not soon forget, stories that will waft back into memory when, soon enough, as a grown man, he will have to entertain himself while working alone in the dark night of the Karolina mine; stories which he will perhaps recount when his beloved grandmother is long since dead and he himself, a silver-haired, weary ancient, will sit in the circle of his grandchildren, in the cosy nook between the big cupboard and the warm oven.

  PART TWO

  My Gmunden

  1919

  Peter Altenberg

  You’re already making a long face reading this title.

  Aha, yet another depiction in his matchless condensed manner of ‘seashores’, ‘evening atmospheres’, ‘water’s eternal newness’, we know all that. No, this time something else! In autumn I was once the last guest left of the summer season. One evening, a middle-aged baron and learned doctor of philosophy introduced himself; his family was native to these parts. He requested the honour of my acquaintance. Of course! He was very cultivated and very well bred. On the eighth day of our incipient acquaintance he said to me one evening in the course of a stroll:

  ‘Why, pray tell, don’t you give up your criminal plans to take my life?!’

  ‘Since I have no such plans, I cannot give them up!’

  ‘I have nothing against you personally, you are merely the operative agent of a higher power to whom both you and I are beholden! Nevertheless, exceptionally, I enjoin you to cease and desist in this plot to bring about my annihilation, socially, and in all other senses!’ From then on I let myself be drawn into this peculiar duel between a healthy spirit (my own) and a sick one in the naive hope of making him realize through logical argument the folly of his delusion. Unfortunately, each acknowledgement that he’d been wrong about me made him all the more unhappy, desperate and above all dogged in his resolve! In his view, I was simply being shrewder, more cunning in my deception. For instance, he bought himself ten Egyptian cigarettes. Upon his emergence from the tobacconist’s, he said: ‘The cigarettes were poisoned on your orders!’ I suggested he save them for me, said I’d smoke them all in front of his eyes from then till nightfall. Whereupon he hissed: ‘Swindler!’

  One evening he said: ‘I hope your supper tastes particularly good this evening!’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it’s your last!’ Whereupon he pulled out a Browning revolver. He walked me home as usual. I switched on the light in my room, after ten minutes switched it off again, remained seated in the dark for a half-hour, then I ventured down the street to see the mayor, Dr Wolfsgruber. The old man lay sick in bed. Upon learning the name of the person in question the mayor passed word through his chambermaid: he’d receive me in his downstairs parlour, but without any lights on. He said to me: ‘You have my profound thanks on behalf of our little town! Don’t go to bed, take the earliest train out – unfortunately we thought he was harmless! Thanks again, and be assured of my prompt attention to all necessary actions that must, alas, be taken, in light of your report!’

  It was, however, the opinion of the dear little town that ‘meshuganeh attract each other!’

  The Magic Egg

  1919

  Mynona*

  Imagine! Just imagine a giant egg, an egg as big as, say, St Peter’s Basilica, the Cathedral of Cologne and Notre Dame all rolled into one. Now imagine this: I – not being lazy by nature – am wandering through the desert – thirst, camel, white skeleton in the brownish yellow sand, an El-selas-kerschüler† dagger in my belt, caravans, oases, jackals, cisterns, desert sheikhs, the whole desert bit – whew!! – when, towering and arching over me, I find this beautiful giant egg. Imagine the sun showering it with rays that bounce and bound off the egg’s own inner light. My first thought: it’s a mirage. Nothing doing! I gently tap it. My acute sensitivity to touch and temperature confirm the egg’s existence. I asked it: ‘Anybody in?’ No answer! Anyone else would have walked on by, it wouldn’t have seemed strange to him or God knows what else. In such cases, however, I never rest until I know exactly what I’m dealing with. So I go walking round the egg – and just at eye level I discover a dark green button the size of a walnut. I press it. The egg sinks mightily down into the ground, till nothing but its tip is still peeking up out of the desert sand. Just imagine the effect this had on me. At the pointed apex of the tip I found the same sort of button. I press – blam! An electric shock: the egg glided suddenly, though smoothly right back up again. Imagine, right there in the middle of the desert I repeated this game a hundred times or more. Imagine it! I was as happy as a child. Finally, however, little by little, I became ever more curious about the deeper significance of this childish game. So I examine the egg again and finally, after an extensive search, I find a fine seam that appears to run vertically through the entire egg. I look back at the button, I touch it without pressing and without thinking, I turn it ever so slightly – it just falls right over; the egg lays itself on its side; the tip on which it had been resting thrusts itself up at me out of the earth like the most appealing portal, a jasper-yellow egg yolk gleams at me invitingly. Just imagine – then a smile, as they say, lit up my otherwise ugly mug. On the egg yolk I read the following inscription:

  Desert wanderer,

  ye who for the first time

  glimpse the egg of eggs

  and – as you can imagine! – take

  a childish delight in it,

  know ye:

  that this egg alone can transform

  the desert into an Eden.

  Eia!

  All you need to do is solve the mystery of the egg!

  Accursed reader, have you forgotten the seam? This seam likewise ran vertically across the bulging egg yolk portal. But it had no button on it. I knocked and it sounded as it does when, with your ears held shut, you tap with your fingertip on your knuckles. I take another close look at the circular border between yolk and shell, and just imagine: to the right of the crack, the fissure, I spot an opening maybe the size of my finger; and I proceed to stick my finger in carefully. But just imagine, I couldn’t get it out again. What would you have done? Appealed to the nearest police station? No way, better keep Europe out of this! And besides, what gentleman would ever leave his finger in the lurch. Since I couldn’t get my finger out again, I pushed inward with all the might of my hand – and you guessed it, the yolk allowed itself to be rolled back, I got my finger free and peered into the pit of the egg. But since I can’t rightly decipher anything, I give that egg yolk a mighty shove upwards and – just imagine – I climbed into the egg. I had the feeling I was walking on yellow snow. And once my eyes had grown accustomed to the dim twilight, I suddenly spotted a wide and splendid staircase with alabaster steps winding its way upwards. So I climb up to a kind of scenic plateau and feast my eyes on the spectacle inside the egg. Over here lies the portal, there the peak, beneath me yellow snow, above me glittering through the seam the aforementioned desert sun. Just imagine my situation! All in all, however, I discovered nothing else really out of the ordinary, except maybe for the tip of the egg where something seemed to be lurking. From the plateau on which I stood there was another flight of stairs set in the opposite direction leading downwards, onto which I strode, descending to the tip. And all around me that eternal egg shell vaulting! That eternal yellow snow or whatever it was. And when I finally reach the tip and am standing there, that very moment the facing portal rolls back shut, can you imagine! I scream. I can only offer you this piece of advice: never scream inside an egg! It makes such a rolling, thunderous racket, you can’t stand it. And not only did the portal roll shut, but I notice that the egg is setting itself upright again, and the very s
ame staircase I just trod has become a steep ladder, on the uppermost rung of which I am perched. And suddenly, just imagine, I feel the desert egg hurtling back downwards to the centre of the earth. And yet the lighting remains a lovely pale crepuscular, for look: the egg-shell keeps on emanating a phosphorescent glow. And then finally the strangest thing of all happened: the egg spoke to me – that is, its phosphorescence flickered so articulately that I instinctively understood. Just imagine, the egg claimed that the rejuvenation of the entire desert depended on its annihilation. An egg with a sense of humour! I couldn’t keep from smiling. Then the egg atmospherically communicated the well-known thesis: ‘The desert is growing!’ And had I noticed that the egg could climb and sink? What about it! I replied. Then it told me to climb down the ladder to the lower portal, open it and dispose of a tiny, albeit repulsive, obstacle; I would then receive further instructions – see them, that is. My only thought meanwhile was: how do I make tracks out of this uncanny egg? Or am I doomed to disappear in the pit under the egg! But with cheerful, phosphorescent glee, the egg encouraged me to climb on down, and I felt as if I had been carried on soft wings, rather than that I had actually gone under my own steam. But that portal offered some resistance. Consider if you will that it did after all lie several hundred metres below the surface of the earth, and that I could not know what sort of hell would break loose if I were to roll the egg yolk down there back up again. But as I wavered, the egg flickered phosphorescent encouragement. Finally I found the little opening again with my finger and shoved the thing up again. But the moment I managed to clear the way, a storm wind burst forth, picked me up in its wake and slammed me up against the tip of the egg so hard I almost suffocated, and before I knew what had happened to me, the tip flipped up like a lid and I found myself lying in the desert sand again.