He took the letter, skimmed the beautiful and the terrible pages. He found the passage: on Friday, October 31. Then he read to the end and put the letter on his bed. His heart had begun to hammer again. The soul is an organ. He knew that now. You can die from the soul. His head was spinning with Ulrike’s news. The impassioned jewelry-man wants to sell. Her mother is quite wild about the stones from abroad. This time, Ulrike will ask him if she can tell her friend Goethe his first name. She won’t be coming along to his hotel room. Gems simply don’t interest her, but of course, she doesn’t want to insult the stormy fellow, either. She’ll never be a customer, however. Her mother has seen to that. Perhaps de Ror has forgotten that night in the summer, he must always be so impulsive that he might have. If she goes along with them she has to be back at the boarding school by nine. Her mother wants special permission, but she doesn’t, why should she? Although if she went along and if one passed the midnight deadline a second time with him, it would be interesting to see if he revealed the same first name. If she were allowed to tell Goethe the first name, he would understand at once what she means. In one midnight one way, in the next, another. That would explain everything about the lack of a first name. And if he then marries someone, the first name he gave himself in the first midnight with her would remain. It was all a game. Just like a jewelry dealer, for whom everything is a potential gift. Including the first name. A translator of a thousand poems, and not a single one could even be compared to the Marienbad Elegy. The elegy, Excellency, holds us, protects us, unites us. It lives, and we live with it. Your Ulrike.
So: go along, stay until after midnight, study the new first name to see if it’s perhaps the final one she wants to carry through Europe like a diadem. He sat and sat, his heart beating in his throat. Apparently, he wasn’t supposed to breathe anymore. The agitation of his heart did not allow him to think of anything but the agitation of his heart. To breathe, that was all he asked. But that was difficult enough. The enabling of breath. Walking back and forth was now unimaginable, the window unreachable. He was a piece of butchered meat. Breathing, the most doubtful thing. And yet, this interest in enabling the next breath. Let the trembling in your hands trickle away. There is a trickling through all his veins. It becomes a painful weariness. This weariness prevents any movement. Now you must sit forever and let this painful weariness run through your veins. Your arms were never this heavy before, nor your head, nor you.
When it grew dark, he called Stadelmann and in a completely calm voice asked him to please fetch some beer, Köstritz beer. Dark or light, Stadelmann asked. Both, and a lot. And some hard rolls. The large ones. Put everything there on the table. And no interruptions. Stadelmann nodded.
He would rather have said very, very much instead of a lot, but then he would have betrayed emotion and Stadelmann would have reported that—perhaps only if they asked—and Ottilie and son August would permit themselves to draw conclusions.
This poem cannot be read, it must be walked, celebrated as one celebrates a holiday. But the aphrodisiacal neck! The plump earlobes! The beauty named Ulrike.
Friday, October 31, 1823
And so the day of the execution has been announced and even a physician with high standards can make known the time of death in advance. Goethe had a week’s time to get ready. He could sit and wait, with drooping ears. Waiting—he’d been doing that since his return. He knew as well as he knew anything that nothing could come, nothing from her. He’d known for a long time that knowing something doesn’t help when one is condemned—you could say, doomed—to believe. Believing is pure restlessness, continuously thinking that something is possible and thus continuously being disappointed, destroyed. The same game with hope. For weeks he has hoped she would come. After Karlsbad the family was in Dresden. N-C-O-L-W-N. Then in Strasbourg. Wouldn’t they have to pass through Weimar? No notification. So they didn’t come through Weimar. But he had to hope she would come through Weimar when she returned to boarding school until the note came announcing their arrival in Strasbourg. So they didn’t come through Weimar. But he had hoped every day: surely she would not shun the five steps from the posthouse to him, would come through the open downstairs door, would call, call up to him, he would hear her…. That dotty crow Bettina von Arnim had annoyed him more than once by bursting in unannounced. That is the law above all other laws: annoying people arrive unannounced. For they are a curse. But those you long for never come.
He had practiced thinking of her absence as a form of presence, practiced experiencing it that way. He had freed this way of thinking from everything that could be considered paradoxical about it. As the absent one, she was present in every second. The result was that every second of the present was weakened. Everything he had done or taken part in during the weeks since his return, had been done or taken part in for show, so to speak. He had always acted in the consciousness that Ulrike was not there, that she would actually have to be there, that only if she were there would the things he did be what they only seemed to be at present. It was all a substitute that only drew attention to what it was replacing: Ulrike. Negative presence, to be precise.
On October 31, a Friday, he was awakened by the sharp little cries he had apparently been emitting in his sleep. He lay there. As soon as he woke up, he had closed his eyes again. In Marienbad he had sprung out of bed every morning, done his exercises—even sung. He admitted to himself that he was idealizing Marienbad. But what else could he do? If you have no present you must idealize the past. Or, how about cursing it? Not yet. At any rate, it does one good not to have to open one’s eyes. When he had opened his eyes for a moment he had felt the pain of having to see things. Close your eyes and at once, the warm feeling of not having to see anything. Even his old familiar bedroom did not belong to him but to the world of visibility. Worst was the idea of having to see people. He knew he must combat the temptation to stay in bed. It was not the first time he had had this experience. It was so simple: if he knew when he would next see Ulrike, there would be no necessity to stay in bed and no pain at the visibility of the world. Yet he got up. Without any prospect of Ulrike. Quite the contrary. October 31. It will go down in his history. He doesn’t yet know how.
He called Stadelmann to help him into his day. How had Schiller—unsurpassed in elegant formulations of the ordinary—put it? “The human being is made of common stuff, and gives the name of wet-nurse to his habits.”
He had intentionally neglected to keep this day free of visitors and business. Sir Wylmsen was coming to tea, the captain of the regiment of Scottish dragoons who had fought so valiantly at Waterloo; Chancellor von Müller had heralded him as a combination of Heracles and Antinous. Naturally, the chancellor did not know that Ulrike’s father, Friedrich Wilhelm von Levetzow, had been killed in that battle, on a beautiful day in June, as Frau von Levetzow had said in a sepulchral voice. And that was exactly eight short years ago. The program for the evening was a quartet by Prince Louis Ferdinand. In attendance would be Mr. Sterling, who had been in Weimar once before, in May, with greetings from his friend Lord Byron. And Ottilie was over the moon, had immediately become the eighteen-year-old’s lover and couldn’t stop telling everyone about it. For her sake and, so to speak, to excuse her, Goethe had called Mr. Sterling “the demonic youth” in May. That the twenty-eight-year-old Ottilie ran after an eighteen-year-old could have made her look more kindly on differences in age, but not a chance. No one ever understands anyone but him- (or her-) self.
As, ready to face the day, he entered the study where John was waiting for him, he realized he could not answer a single letter, dictate a single syllable today. At this moment, he couldn’t imagine ever again walking up and down in his practiced posture, thinking and dictating. As unobtrusively as possible, he told his secretary that nothing was happening today. Those were his exact words and they made the tone of his voice, so bent on sounding unobtrusive, rather miss the mark. And John didn’t even try to hide his surprise. Instead of bowing politely and wish
ing his master a pleasant day, he stubbornly refused to budge, thus expressing—if only for a brief moment—his opinion of this event, a critical opinion. Goethe could feel his entire history with John. At first Goethe’s secretary (and his father had been Goethe’s secretary before him), since Kräuter was on the scene, John was increasingly demoted to the role of scribe. He made his master aware of that whenever he saw an opportunity to do so. And he had just seen one. When John turned back at the door for a final bow, Goethe waved to him more amiably than he had in a long time. But it was high time for him to be alone. In the meantime, Herr de Ror had certainly arrived in Strasbourg, probably already on the previous day. He was likely strolling with Ulrike through the streets Goethe knew so well. Might Ulrike not have suggested an excursion to Sesenheim? Goethe had once talked to her about kissing, but only to give her a quick survey of his most important kisses and really prove to her that she was the greatest kisser of all kissers. It was no exaggeration, not at all. He hadn’t lectured; it was less a lecture than ever before. He had taken her along on a train of thought that she alone had awakened in him, namely: how kissing happens depends much less on the mouths than—almost completely—on the persons doing the kissing. Ulrike had not just agreed, she had enthusiastically gone him one better: if the souls are not kissing each other, the mouths are dead. Ah, Ulrike, he had said or sighed, but in either case he had once again celebrated the degree of their agreement. In so many conversations and situations, that was always his role: to celebrate the agreement they had once again discovered.
The first time he had done so, Ulrike had said, “Agreement is more than harmony.”
And he had replied, “Harmony is terrible, the graveyard of feeling.”
“Whereas agreement,” she had said, “is the moment when two people, armed only with instinct and battling their way through a labyrinth of distractions, suddenly discover that they have undistractably found each other.”
“Ulrike,” he had said, “Ulrike.”
And she: “Excellency, I think it is kind of you not to notice that I’m imitating you. But I confess it’s fun.”
And now in Sesenheim, with Herr de Ror. And all at once he knew the first name of that gentleman. Juan—Juan de Ror. Of course. Don Juan de Ror. And in the next midnight he will give up the “Juan” and reveal his ultimate first name to Ulrike. Adam de Ror. As such he will sue for her hand through his patron, Privy Councilor and Austrian Finance Minister Count Franz von Klebelsberg-Thumburg, who in any case will soon become Ulrike’s stepfather. Of course. Amalie von Levetzow would have said yes long since had she not wanted to see her three daughters provided for first. Ulrike de Ror, that was a brilliant match. And then Amalie and Bertha in turn, which means that in two or three years there can be the liberating wedding so that Amalie von Levetzow at last has a marriage that isn’t a slog through the Prussian aristocracy but replete with brilliant Austro-Hungarian color. Perhaps the terrific Ulrike—that nineteen-year-old poppet—also a highly qualified calculating machine for something called the future. If she doesn’t want to waste away as a boarding-school virgin, she has to get out into so-called life. And that’s where the Oriental non-Oriental Señor Velocifer comes in, straight from Paris-Vienna in person, master of the hardest brilliance in the world. You were accused of poetic frenzy; in the case of Herr de Ror it must be love. It is absolutely foreordained that the earlobe prominences should be furnished with two garnet fireworks yearned for by all the earlobes in the world. Take her, Señor de Ror, take what has belonged to you before it was ever born. Everything in the cosmos has a purpose, and that has become so evident beyond all subjectivity in those earlobes that we must not surrender ourselves to grief, especially not personal grief. She has exchanged the past for the future. One can understand that. All that is sown today and reaped immediately. Unable to deliver any sort of future except for a widow’s pension, he must congratulate Ulrike, mustn’t he? Madame de Ror, je vous félicite cordialement.
If only he hadn’t been so healthy! Why was he so healthy now! Why wasn’t he rolling on the floor and screaming from pain in his gallbladder and kidneys. Since her fall, the duchess couldn’t take a single step without shooting pains. A pain please, sharp as knife, so he could roll on the floor and scream and they’d have to close all the windows and doors in the neighborhood and muffle his screams with rugs and the neighbors would have to move out because they couldn’t stand his screaming any longer. So that then he would be alone in the world, screaming. Only he and his screaming left. This screaming that he now feels and must not let out because his pain doesn’t come from gallstones or kidney stones but from his soul. Because the soul is an organ, too. It hurts. Nothing but hurt. He was standing in the middle of the room. Suddenly he felt that the floor was hot and getting hotter. He lifted a foot and immediately had to lift the other one and then the first one again. The floor was a red-hot plane. The burning on his soles was more and more unbearable. He had to hop faster and faster from one foot to the other. And wherever he hopped, the floor of the whole room was red-hot, the same everywhere. He was long since out of breath from hopping. Perhaps in his initial panic he had begun hopping too fast from one foot to the other. He had to moderate the pace. Maybe his feet were getting a bit used to the red-hot floor. But there was no way he could stop. It occurred to him that it was a dance. A dance on a red-hot dance-floor. Either the floor would stop glowing or soon enough, he would fall down and burn to death. So he simply ran out, over, and down to his bedroom. Which saved him. Once again. He wept. That helped. He would lie down and stay put.
He found it good that he had made a program for today once he had to follow it.
When nothing interested him anymore, he still listened as if interested in what someone was telling him. The Scottish captain went him one better, saying he hadn’t come to Weimar because of Goethe, but because of Madame Szymanowska. He had just been in Saint Petersburg, thinking Madame Szymanowska would perform there. Then they told him she was at present in Weimar, so off to Weimar he goes. But to be in Weimar without attempting to see Goethe—Excellency had to admit that that would not be a sin, but a mistake. He couldn’t refrain from quoting Fouché, Napoleon’s minister of police, who had quipped that it wasn’t a crime for Napoleon to have the Duke of Enghien abducted and shot, but only a mistake. This line been passed around these circles for years, and Goethe showed that he was familiar with it and found it to be most pleasantly appropriate on this occasion. And in order to say something his visitor could take home with him, he confessed that it made him happy to be the second choice. One could never practice that too earnestly, he said. It was the sort of exercise that is all the more admirable for being condemned to failure. The captain filed that away as a piece of wisdom from an old man and said they would see each other again at Madame Szymanowska’s recital. As he was not listening to the Scottish captain but thinking about Ulrike’s father, killed at Waterloo, Goethe avoided twirling his right thumb around his left one. Apparently, he had twiddled his thumbs while Count Taufkirchen was spoiling that last evening with his gossip. Ulrike had told him so on their walk to Diana’s Hut. On their walk to Diana’s Hut, Ulrike, whose father had been killed on a beautiful day in June during the Battle of Waterloo, had recited Werther’s mourning for the walnut trees. And that was never to be repeated? Never again? Ah well. On the redoubt in Strasbourg, that’s where my heart grew sore. Hark! Did I hear an alphorn playing?
Before the recital, there had to be tea with Ottilie. She’d ask for that for her birthday; just the two of them, he and she. She was overexcited, more giddy than usual. Her birthday, her recital; she had invited guests. August was already amusing himself in Berlin. Berlin was never mentioned without adding that one could amuse oneself there. But she had brought along Goethe’s grandson Walther. Wolfgang had a cold and Goethe could not receive people with colds, not even grandsons. Walther had a notebook with drawings that one could color in, and he’d brought his colored pencils, too. Goethe loved his grandsons b
ut had an aversion to playing the loving grandfather. He had the feeling that his grandsons saw things the same way. Ottilie wanted to negotiate a peace treaty. For too long they’d been circling each other like two strangers or adversaries. Goethe nodded. It didn’t interest him. He knew what he needed to say and how he needed to say it: he had returned. He was where he belonged! He never intended anything else! He wasn’t responsible for the rumors spread by all the Carolines in the world! He was sorry if some gesture of his had unsettled the family! That was never his intention! So she should please forgive him anything that could be associated with the name of a family who would never be mentioned here again! Done. He hadn’t even told a lie. It had been a pleasure to recite this text. Since it had been a pleasure, the text was a kind of truth. Let anyone who likes call it a lie. He always preferred to tell other people what they wanted to hear.
As he rose and made for the door, Ottilie said she was sorry to have to mention his demeanor to him, but he had appointed her to keep track of the impression he made. She paused.
He said, “And so?”
“The forced way you straighten up makes an unpleasant impression,” she said. “People can tell you don’t want to admit that your torso, as well as your head and neck, would rather tilt forward a little bit. And you struggle against that. Too obviously, in my opinion. Forgive me.”
A Man in Love Page 18