by Suah Bae
Before all that, I had been thinking about writing an essay on Elfriede Jelinek’s Lust. No, actually I’d already written it. Not only that, but I’d even translated it into German and sent it to you.
You proofread it for me; this was the last week of February. When you became interested in Jelinek, who is not dissimilar to myself as a writer, even though her work contains an element of the fantastic you very much enjoyed it, unlike with Kafka’s Dream. While writing the essay, I read an interview with her in a magazine from 2004. There were several key points in her frank radicalism that moved me: that whether a woman is a Nobel Prize winner or whether she works behind a shop counter, the way in which she is judged is identical, i.e. according the market value of her body; and of course, as she gets older, this value suffers a precipitous decline. “Peter Handke and I were both born in Austria, but we are not at all alike. Handke seeks inspiration in our daily lives, whereas by contrast I already know that everything will just turn to ash.” “Life and writing, these two things absolutely do not go hand in hand.”
When I asked him how on earth it had all come about—these wicked lies, his worst joke, these obscenely malicious rumors I’d gotten wind of—Werner, stammering, unburdened himself of the knowledge he had recently acquired. I knew that over ten years ago he had had bypass surgery. But one day he went to the hospital—he hadn’t been feeling well for a couple of days—and the doctors discovered that one of the three bypass tubes was blocked. They then said that they would have to take action in order to open it up; if they did nothing he would suffer a stroke, which would lead shortly afterward to cardiac arrest. That was what lay behind the rumors I’d heard. So, you’re telling me he’s dying? I couldn’t understand, and blankly repeated the question. Someone who, more than anyone else, had always overflowed with a burning lust for literature and life, an incredibly singular individual? Could this alone be the sum of what we are?
The sloping fields around Werner’s hometown Wondreb appeared from behind the woods. The yellow fields, where the hay had all been cut and only the tough lower stems remained, extended to the edge of the horizon, the afternoon sun beat down on our backs, and the shadows stretched their bodies out beneath our feet. The three of us, all women, clothed in black, red, and white, have to slowly make our way across the fields with the sun at our backs, framed against a background of the endless furrows, which rise and fall like waves, the tall cedars, and the sky. We walked slowly, maintaining the spaces between us, our gazes fixed on the middle distance. Ahead, Werner is aiming his camera at us. I was being photographed for Werner’s film, but I didn’t know what part I might be playing. All of this will be nothing more than a rough sketch. It’s a foundation, until I discover the image I want, Werner had explained briefly. In that case, what sort of proto-image do you have in mind? The image of someone’s life, he answered me, images of the soul, which will not be fitted together until directly before death. Images of dreams, and drawn-out weeping, and rain, falling against the background of the black woods. Thoughts of the Wondreb riverbank, a very long time ago. This person, sitting by the river and looking into the water, absolutely cannot forget that they can never again at another point in the future be exactly that person who now, in this very instant, had been looking down at the water, lost in thought; and so at the same time he will forget both self and river, because that self will soon itself become that water. Stream combines with stream to reach the sea, and the strong, rough current swirls in our consciousness, rolling out to all the shores of this world. Such are the images in Faust Sonnengesang, which begins anew from exactly that moment the words “stay like this, time, this is truly beautiful” are spoken, the moment we call this noble “present-now.”
After the funeral was over, Werner asked me if I wanted to take a walk into downtown Munich. A good long walk, he added.
I cannot understand death, I confided to Werner. Now, for the first time in my life, I cannot understand death. A certain person suddenly disappeared. As if artistically erased from life’s canvas without any warning whatsoever. One dazzlingly bright summer morning, I was sitting with them at the breakfast table, under the linden trees by the Bodensee; I added milk to my coffee, and he fetched the paper; then, on turning my head at a certain moment, he is nowhere to be seen. The coffee and newspaper are as they were, but he is gone. Invisibility, and that word, non-being. Birds whose names I didn’t know, hidden from sight within the branches of the linden trees—oh, but I had caught sight of those birds, one other time—uttered low calls at regular intervals, like on any other ordinary day, and the silence was complete, without a single crunching footstep; a physical experience of the ghastly hallucination we call “non-being,” which doesn’t exist in reality. He had withdrawn from the church of his own accord, and did not believe in the soul or afterlife, so it is ironic to search for traces of him in mysterious experiences or the domain of religion. Bearing that in mind, where is he now? Tell me, Werner, where is he? Yesterday, they told me that his body hadn’t been embalmed—and now he has already been dead a week and his casket has been locked forever, and no one can see him anymore, and do you know what this means? Biological extinction of the flesh, no? And if that were the case, I, along with Mozart’s Lacrimosa—people had informed me in advance that the music to be used at the funeral had already been decided on, no doubt someone would set up a way to play the music where the funeral was to take place, someone else would get hold of the record, and food would be served after the ceremony. They just chattered on like this about other things, even though I kept on asking where he was—I cannot think that he will be there forever, in his casket, buried deep within the earth. His flesh, which had confirmed his existence to us and stirred up our affections, would rot away to nothing. And now I am swept away into confusion, like an orphan who has lost its way. Could he be in heaven, as the old songs have it? On my way to Munich, I scrutinized heaven through the airplane window—that is to say, the materially visible atmospheric heavens, a constant blue above the clouds. I want to say that I caught a glimpse of him, but that was only the imagining of my confused mind, and in fact I saw nothing at all, nothing but the sky. Do the dead remain with us? Are they by our side? Do they think of us, in the same way that we think? Do they feel us? Or else, it could be that the concept of absolute nothingness, which had never before gone beyond the abstract, becomes material reality only at this moment. That concept we dimly thought we had understood, which in reality we had not even begun to grasp, the particular circumstances of a life lived at absolute zero, neither flesh, soul, nor mind, that realm of space-time, could be in such a world, such a place, and since there is absolutely no way for us to perceive or be conscious of it even if it can be said to exist, it is in principle no different from that which does not exist, like the already determined future that we absolutely cannot know. Today, we saw his casket. Now, in this instant, we saw that this casket full of flesh was already buried deep in the ground at Haidhausen Cemetery. If it is obvious that the dead flesh lying here will always be him, then why do we grieve like this, here far away? What is to prevent us from simply returning to Haidhausen? But ultimately I cannot be sure whether what is lying inside there is really him, or if it is only a kind of shell and fantasy left behind by him, that at one time was known as him, but is not him anymore. Please tell me, Werner, the meaning of the specific condition known as death. When we are together with death, where do we end up? Where on earth can they be, the dead, the dead we loved?
He will become earth, Werner answered me, and although his voice was gloomy, unlike mine it was neither fevered nor confused. Take a look around at nature. Right now I am thinking of my hometown, by the Wondreb River in Obersalzberg. From childhood I grew up facing the fact that time is a coursing river, whose violence sweeps all things away. All the kinds of existence known to us, which seem to reveal themselves in this world, soon enough are unavoidably dragged away into the rough whirlpool and there ended. And when that happens, other existences app
ear following on behind them. But even these don’t exist for very long. Before long, they too disappear in the strong current of the river. In the river, tall willows and red cedars, whole copses of white birch, are calmly carried along. Look up to the ends of the twigs of their highest branches. They stand alone, reaching toward the dim, forever far-off sky. Turn your gaze to that sky. Jörg will become earth. And in that way he returns as a part of this great cycle, this infinite whole of us. At some time in the future, we will follow him down that road. That is what people call nature, or else spirit or soul. It is quite clear that Jörg will come back to us again, as one of the numberless existences immersed in that whole. Flowers do not bloom of themselves, wind does not blow of its own strength. Within this singular nature, there has to be someone. Air freighted with rough sadness and sunlight that will touch our faces at a future moment as if brushing past by chance, gentle wind and woods and trees, all their colors in a breathtaking mix, raindrops and dew, birdsong heard suddenly in the woods, and this creation’s sorrowful accent, the sun blazing up and sinking down like torchlight and November frost sitting on the branches in the early morning, the dark earth that individually and privately touches our bare feet, a river of black raindrops flowing down the glass window; Jörg will come back to us in such things. And in such things he will speak to us. And so, I’ve said it already, but you mustn’t suffer and torment yourself just because you couldn’t see him lying there at his moment of death. If you had, you would have been disturbed by a premonition of him being able to be restored to life. I also feel his absence, and am almost crazed with grief over the loss, but all the same I believe that, in some form or other, some way or other, he will come to find us again. That belief is what sustains me.
No, that was nothing more than the words he offered last year. I shook my head. It is the myth of death, constructed because death is so utterly unknowable for us. Because it is too poetic and literary. Because it is such a beautiful consolation that it pains the heart. Because it is a case that will apply to all living beings indiscriminately, because ultimately it resembles that general, vague feeling of awe produced by the imagination of the living, which in the past I had obtained from things like art and music. It seems like the mysticism of the soul, which is made up of humanity’s dreams and hallucinations, but in fact as no more than individuals, each of us becomes extinct within the whole, and all it does is to beautify the fate of any organism, which is to infiltrate nature’s cells like a nutriment. Compromise or consolation were absolutely not his way, Werner, as you know, and so I dislike them too. It would still be good to feel that individual’s existence, even if only for one last time. I want to physically sense it in reality. And if it were possible, if only for one more day, or only for another moment, I would want to turn back time. I want to walk into that time. Not the universal time of this world, I mean a sort of time that hasn’t been stolen from the unconscious, time separated from an artificial world, the time of the past, which has a place in the future. Back to that time when his death was forever to lie there ahead of us, when he was suffering, when he realized he was ill, to that surreal moment in which death began to be revealed between us, forever lying in wait. If not that, if only we can at least now clearly recognize where he, the human called Jörg Trebs, is, it will be enough. That question did not leave my mind all through this week of despair, which has been the longest and gloomiest of my life. Standing at the snow-covered window I didn’t know where I ought to go. To Bielefeld, where he had lived? To the hospital where he had breathed his last? To the temporary depository where his flesh was being held? To Haidhausen Cemetery where he was to be buried? Or else to Berlin, where it seemed his figure would appear at every street corner? If not any of these, then must I right now stay quietly in this place where I was put, and can I do nothing here but wait until the time when I will end up facing it? If there is no answer to this question, then this is the evidence that death is nothing more than a frightening violence, a cruel and one-sided terror which sums up life. Death is only destruction and an evil that hates us, death ruthlessly hunts us down like rabbits and, unlike what people fervently desire, gives us not so much as a drop of dew or a gust of wind as compensation, only the cold certainty that actually the dead are nowhere. The only thing we encounter after a person’s death is the sharp snowstorm lashing our cheeks. Please tell me, Werner, what is death? Is it really nothing more than the one occurrence in this world that is impossible to call off? Is it only that? We, who breathed, sang, loved, read books, are we no more than that? People say that not a single happening is meaningless in this world. But where is there anything more meaningless than ourselves, we who stand in front of death? I want to know. I really want to understand how to endure this absurd absence, the most difficult thing in life.
It’s no good suffering and struggling in vain to try and understand death, Werner said. To do so is useless, since death is beyond human comprehension. Just accept the things we can do, and turn your gaze toward nature and the universe. And so now be done with your sadness, keep the good memories alive within you, don’t be too hard on yourself, and eventually accept the parting calmly. This is the way it will be. Since that is the way of nature, and you are a part of nature.
But that is not the way I am. Once more I shook my head firmly. A life passes, you know, Werner, a life passes, and only after and through this another life comes; if that is the way of nature then I can find peace in nature no longer. These words, “a life passes,” are far weightier and more meaningful than the salvation of the entire universe and all religious truths combined. They describe a pain and destruction more oppressive than the end of the world. It means being sunk in a pit of immeasurable loss and inexhaustible sadness. Right here in this pit, the tragedy of our flesh and the utter despair of the individual twists and writhes. Great, absolute Nature only grasps us as a single unit of mother nature’s ecology, merely a part within the whole, no different from plants that are born for the sake of putting down roots in the air. Not only do I not love nature, from now on I will do everything in my power to make it suffer; if I can only manage it I will willingly call down curses upon it. Now before long spring will come to call, buds will sprout from every branch and the air will be damp with humidity, deep-colored trees will exhibit their abundant flesh, but I will no longer accept this as a blessing or be moved by it. The sun’s rays glance dazzlingly off the glass window in front of my desk, but even though the world of before—the kind of world which had made me think of myself as strong and independent—presents exactly the same vista as it always has as it unfolds outside the window (how I used to love that view in the past, what self-confidence I felt from being a part of it), there will be no happiness for me anymore, caught in the cycle of this world’s merciless metabolism. In the future, I will compose no songs to the spring of hideously gruesome death, not one more word. A life passes, and were all kinds of young, beautiful, fresh, sweet joy to burst onto the scene, parading themselves as soon as the grave was stamped down, as if they had been waiting in the wings, I would still send no praises to the lips of fragrant spring. My first thought would probably be that those lips had fattened themselves by sucking the flesh from something’s bones. Do you hear, Werner, I was sitting at my desk just like I always do when one day I saw hell open up before me, people told me that Jörg had died, that from now on he would simply not be, what is this non-being, where does this thing called non-being come from, and why on earth does non-being have to be. I have question after question. If we will soon be nothing more than non-being, then why are we here now? Now, the majestic, gaudy deathscape spreads out before my desk until the end of time. That view oppresses my whole world. And monsters that have slithered their slick bodies out from it will become the singular coffee-drinking existence that I have practiced. Only they will speak to me, and it seems that until the final moment all I can do is prick up my ears to catch what they say, and write.
Werner’s answer: Don’t hurry to find a sol
ution right now, words won’t clarify anything at this point. Now is the time for sadness and suffering, nothing else, time that is surely both significant and absolutely necessary. I will comfort you, and then you will be a comfort for me; that’s how this time will pass, albeit slowly. He appeared in my film, so we could encounter him there sometime, if we wanted. Another time, if we wanted to, we could read about him, whenever we liked. But whether that means his existence or its opposite—that’s an answer that will come to you slowly, neither from me nor from others, no, only from yourself. But it seems the harshest time for us is now. Every morning I cannot but be woken by the sound of a thorny whip flogging my heart. However, even in the saddest moments, don’t forget this: what did Jörg most hope for you? He didn’t hope that you would collapse. He must have hoped you would get by somehow and not suffer too much, and that you would keep on writing. And so, it’s the same for me, but if you do that you’ll be okay. Shed tears, bawl out your grief. Heaven’s angels are no longer for us, but I will listen to your tears and you can listen to mine. But as well as tears, do as he hoped you would. If you do, now and then you will feel that he is with you. No one can rob you of his image and all that you felt for him, as long as these are kept in your heart. They will remain intact as yours and yours alone. So don’t fall prey to a gradually strengthening negativity and skepticism, questioning whether that time was really and truly there, whether we truly experienced that place, whether you truly met him. Believe in him. Believe in his memory and his existence. Realistically, this is the best we can hope for, who have lost in Jörg Trebs a unique and supremely brilliant mentor.