DOBLIN RECALLS HIS SCHOOLDAYS

In this third excerpt from his 1928 foray into autobiography (‘A First Look Back’), Döblin provides both factual and emotionally-charged accounts of his time at school in the heyday of the Wilhelmine Empire. The summoning of his teachers’ ghosts – framed fore and aft by interviews with a supposed Investigation Commission – recalls the Field of the Dead in Döblin’s recently completed verse epic Manas, and prefigures the summoning of Renaissance figures by the mage Twardowski in the third volume of the Amazonas Trilogy, ten years later.

Calling Prussian schooling to account

Interview (1)

Following his first impressions of Berlin and his memories of Stettin, the above-named, when asked about his schooldays gave the following account:

In Stettin, the big Parade Square. We live in Wilhelm Strasse near den Linden. We play on the Town Hall steps, we can look down on the railway. Excursions by steamer and on foot to Gotzlow, a school trip, during which the older pupils made a great impression with their deep voices. Kaiser Wilhelm the First visited Stettin, the ceremonial entry, Bismarck was with him, he wore a cuirassier helmet, shiny, colossal, much too big for him. When the Kaiser dies, school is let out, bells toll, speeches are made in class, it’s a serious matter. And then on the way home I don’t know if I’m supposed to cry, at home I find it all calm, no one pays attention to anything. Finally after the family catastrophe I hold my mother’s hand along den Linden , I’m embarrassed, I think everyone’s looking at us. –

The subject advises further that he has visited his birthplace Stettin on the Oder, seat of a regional government etc., on another later occasion. He wanted to become a doctor at a hospital there, presented himself, was given the brush-off. He said with a smile: The town has once again shown me the cold shoulder. He believes that his nose was found objectionable. On this occasion his view of the town seemed totally altered. He discovered a big villa quarter unknown to him. The Parade Square was unusually boring. The precipitous steps at the Town Hall were quite unhazardous, they were an easy climb. The buildings were low. The town was very empty and colourless. The subject declares, word for word: I ascertained that I was born in this coastal town, but this fact, like the town, I would like to let go at that.

Please provide some data from your schooldays. –

I was taken out of the Friedrich-Wilhelm Realgymnasium in 1988. At that time, ten years old, I was in the Sexta . Aged 13, in 1891, I was again in the Sexta, in Berlin, in the Gymnasium, had a free place. In between I had attended parochial school. So the path from first year to first year can be circuitous. I left the Gymnasium not before contending successfully for my Abitur and carrying away the certificate.

Conduct and Diligence: His conduct was licit (!!), his diligence adequate.

German: His essays had mostly satisfactory content, albeit not always presented with the necessary consideration and adequate care. The examination essay was adequate. Of the literary works and essays discussed in class he developed a sure grasp and always followed the discussion with lively eagerness and very clear understanding. Adequate.

Latin: He manages satisfactorily to translate not too difficult passages into German. He possesses adequate knowledge of the frequently used metres of Horace. He showed adequate confidence in grammar and the use of grammatical rules. The verdict on his efforts in class matches that of his written examination work: adequate.

Greek: He demonstrated lively interest in this subject. He has a good grasp of the most important metres; he has carefully memorised a number of poetical passages. He is confident in grammar and gained adequate preparation for the translation of schoolroom writers. This testifies to adequate exploratory work. Hence the overall verdict in Greek is unequivocally adequate.

French: His knowledge is sufficient to translate easier writings adequately. Although his examination work, which he prepared taking no care, was inadequate, and the oral examination betrayed great weakness in grammar, the overall verdict on his efforts can still be described as adequate.

History and Geography: He knows the epoch-making events of world history. Through careful diligence he has attained extensive knowledge of the spheres of German and Prussian history. He was able to provide satisfactory accounts of connections between events. His knowledge of history therefore deserves an overall verdict of adequate. Likewise in Geography he possesses adequate knowledge.

Mathematics: With great diligence he has repaired gaps from earlier years. He has enough knowledge of the syllabus to solve not too difficult exercises independently. Since at least recently his class contributions and his examination work satisfy the requirements, the overall verdict is: adequate.

Gymnastics: Adequate.

Singing: Good.

In the Year of Our Saviour 1900

I was 23 years old when I left the Gymnasium: thus does the above-described subject from the family in question express himself. When I left school for the last time, I spat on the ground. I attach great importance to this being confirmed and recorded. He says no one in the totally transformed school will remember him. There will of course be different teachers, even the syllabus has completely changed. But if any should think of him as they pass the great school building or even climb the steps, he urges them to look down at the foot of the steps, the lowest sequence of stones, to the right. That’s where he spat his goodbye on the ground.

Here the subject falls silent. He is urged several times to provide more details, to unburden himself. But he has a black look and gives an impression of stubbornness. All we can do, since the subject maintains an obstinate silence and there is here clearly a matter important to his verdict, is to enact a specific ploy. We leave the respondent locked in the examination room. But before doing so, unremarked by the subject, we place a pile of white paper and a pencil on a side table. We place cigarettes and matches on the windowsill. When we return in the evening, we find the subject asleep on the sofa. The light is on. He has evidently been smoking heavily. On the floor by the table lie papers covered in dense script. They are numbered. The first sheet bears the title ‘Ghost Sonata’.

 Allusion to Strindberg’s 1908 play, the theme of which was the unmasking and punishing of the wicked, and summoning of the dead.

GHOST SONATA

This is the X Gymnasium in Berlin. Taking their places at desks alongside one another are the teachers – Professors and Doctors. Almost all are dead. They have come to hear what a former pupil, who was in their company for ten years, has to say about their school. They sit quietly on the benches, they’re not a whit scared of the man who summoned them. They won’t defend themselves. They always knew he would never amount to much. The Summoner moves towards the rostrum. He’s unsure of himself. He wants to sit at a desk, as usual. The teachers nudge one another, a few smile ironically. Then the Summoner pulls himself together, stops for a moment at the front row as if pondering, in fact he’s overcoming an inhibition. Now he stands on the podium, blackboard behind him. There’s a long silence, during which many things sort themselves out within the Summoner. There’s an uncomfortably long pause before he opens his mouth. The teachers below regard him as they would a guilty pupil.

The Summoner begins to name the teachers one by one. He speaks softly, doesn’t look up from the desktop. He’s wearing big glasses with enormously thick rimless lenses, his eyes are behind them. Now and then he removes the glasses; the teachers take fright and look away. He has big grey-blue eyes, deep-set, that gaze into a void. His face is suddenly unfamiliar, metaphysically alien, and yet remarkably penetrating, a map in which you can’t find your way. The teachers are relieved when he picks the glasses up from the desk. He speaks.

– I’ve invited you here, gentlemen, my teachers who all know me. And I thank you for accepting the invitation. I thank especially those who are no longer with us, the so-called Living. I knew in advance you would come. I knew that professional curiosity would help you through the rigours of your long journey. I thought to myself, gentlemen – my teachers – that one shouldn’t speak unilaterally into the world. I want to speak out, but you must be present when I do so. I do not speak in order to unburden my heart. My conversation is to be a settling of accounts with you.

I spent ten years in the school where you taught. From the Sexta up to the Abitur. It was a long time. I leave open the question of whether it was a good time. It was not a good time. A difficult time. If I – permit me to speak frankly, you’ll have your turn – if I may be quite frank, for me it was a decidedly difficult time. –

At this point the Summoner falls silent, drums on the desktop, continues in a low voice.

– You will – this will make no impression on you. In fact it’s my belief that already at the start I make a feeble impression on you, a sentimental one. I recall your history lessons, Professor Kerka. You were a strict but good man. You lectured on Prussian history – that Frederick the Great was made great by his father’s harshness. Nietzsche said something similar: “What a man becomes, he becomes despite everything.” There’s something in that. But I find (here the Summoner hesitates, and swallows and chews) that this was something … by which … you set rather great store.

Professor Schattmann (generally known as Thickhead, a name he liked to apply to others; in a hesitant tone): May I ask: did you make something of yourself? What are you?

S: I’m a doctor, Professor. Apart from that, I write.

Schattmann: So you did in fact go to university.

S: Yes, I did.

Schattmann: Well then, I’ve no idea what you mean by ‘difficult’ and ‘not difficult’. Surely you won’t start whining about us. So what do you want. Some find it easy, others not. That’s always the case. (He sits, he has penetrating eyes. He is a good, honourable man.)

S: That, actually, talking about it, knocking it about between us, is why I’ve invited you here. It’s the question of how difficult it should be made for someone, and how to decide the dose. Life isn’t easy, the school shouldn’t overprotect, as many parents do. My home wasn’t bad. It was small, crowded, we were good to one another. Especially my mother, she was a caring, truly loving mother. I say only the best of her, of all of them. At bottom, however – you grow up by yourself, after all. The school, too, should disregard this. This too the child should experience at school, later life will be no different. But – in one respect surely the school differs from later life, even I know this now: this disregarding occurs in outside life by chance, in school it has to be applied deliberately. In outside life I have the opportunity to withdraw from the general disregard and go in search of something, someone or several people who do not disregard me. But what can I do among all of you. Life isn’t yet there for me – school could surely fill the role! Please don’t misunderstand me, gentlemen, professors, I don’t mean to insult anyone, but I just think: in a certain respect the teacher should be at the service of the pupil. In a quite general and crude sense, not pedagogic: the school should help the pupil.

Schattmann (not looking up): But damn it all, you made something of yourself.

S (very softly): I’m … not … sure.

Schattmann: What’s that supposed to mean?

S (keeps silent).

Schattmann: Doctor, I think you said?

Bräuel (beside him, nods vigorously.)

S (remains silent a long while, then makes a move, clearly an abrupt turning back from something, speaks in an altered fresh tone that at first sounds convincing): So, when I first started at the school, all went well with me. My first teacher in the Sexta was you, Professor Haffner. You had a serious eye problem, they’d had to remove one eye. I was first in your class, remained first up to the Quarta . I have fond memories of you, Professor. I suffered a little tale of woe under your care. You know nothing of it. It’s perhaps not without interest to hear something private from a pupil. You know that in each classroom was a cupboard for storing all kinds of materials. As the first in class I was the key monitor. I wore it on a ribbon around my neck. One day – the key was gone. I’d lost it. The ribbon had somehow come undone. Well, it would have been easy enough to repair the damage. I could have reported it, I could have said something at home. I said nothing. The cupboard was, by good fortune, unlocked. I left it unlocked and made no report. I was in constant fear of something going missing from the cupboard, and I’d be guilty, and on top of that the fact of the lost key would be revealed. It was a tormenting strain, month after month. At home every penny was sacred, I had no way to come by money, the key apparently cost 1.5 Mark. I thought of saving, but months later had still put together only 30 pfennig. At night I dreamt of the key. I often imagined the scene where I would reveal the loss, and many times I made a start: I’d clutch at my throat, where’s the key, the ribbon’s come undone, I had it just now. And the apartment would be searched, and a rock would have rolled from my heart. A dozen times I walked home with the firm intention: today I’ll tell them. I held back until promotion to the next class approached. Then I had to say it, and nothing bad at all resulted. My mother’s only concern was whether it would harm me at school. She went at once to the school, it was afternoon, you were there, Professor. She told me afterwards, you were there and said Yes, it’s true, the cupboard’s unlocked. So the janitor was called, the lock was replaced, and – problem solved. It’s strange how even as a child, I was thirteen at the time, life can be made difficult by thinking, through embarrassment, timidity. There were many oppressive moments that year. I know the fault lay with me. For you perhaps this is of no great interest. It’s only a private experience.

Bräuel (the Mathematician, very eager): No, no, it’s of great interest to us. It confirms what we thought of you. There were many occasions when you should have been more open. Even later you always lacked frankness.

S (not smiling): I know. I have seldom been open. But would it have been of any help to me in your case, Professor? Openness always requires two parties.

Bräuel: No. Never. For openness, one is enough.

S: You’re right. That would be me.

Bräuel: For sure.

S (stares hard at him): I – could not speak out. I could not. And – why did you not make the first move, why did you not loosen my tongue?

Bräuel: Well now, this is better. We’re meant to have some part in it. But it’s not our job to cure character defects.

S (twitches, his shoulders droop, he stands slack): Thank you. (After a pause): So I came to the Quarta. From then on I went downhill. First I was a middling student, then just average, then I wavered between average and poor. I went to school, it was my duty. That’s how I remained to the end, up to the terrors of the Abitur.

Bräuel (broad figure, folds his hands, turns smugly to his neighbours left and right): We’re happy to confirm this. All of us, I think. You were a sad figure.

Buttler (Old Butt [= flounder], an excellent man, Classical philologist): My dear colleague, we should not venture there.

S: No, Professor Buttler, I would ask most cordially that you allow Professor Bräuel to speak. He was just getting wind in his sails. I was a sad figure. This was your opinion too, when some years ago you encountered my friend Kurt, the attorney, on the railway bridge at Halensee. Both of us were long out of school. You recognised him at once. He told you he was an attorney. How surprised you were! You said: “Well I never, so something became of you after all. And you have a practice? So you’re up to that!” Once there was the following incident between him and you, he tells it to this day: He had to come to the blackboard to make a mathematical calculation. He’d prepared well, for he knew how readily you’d give a boy one. But there he stands up front, this time you couldn’t let loose on him, you sat there and watched. The exercise was done correctly, but the boy was nervous and couldn’t write well with chalk. So you could at least criticise his writing. “Poor handwriting is a sign of deficient love of truth.” So he was allowed to return to his seat, the matter was all square. At Halensee you also asked about me in a friendly way. You couldn’t grasp that we were actually alive, that we were capable of existence.

Bräuel (leans calmly back): I believe you’ve developed better out there than at school.

S: At school I had no understanding of Mathematics, and that holds even today.

Bräuel (glances lazily about, gives the Summoner a friendly nod): Out there you come across not so many clear minds. This is not unknown to us. In school we pay attention to logic and precision.

Buttler: But please, Mister Summoner, Doctor, please do continue! We really are very interested in your personal impressions and experiences. It’s like on the stage: it’s nice for once to watch the play from backstage. Let’s talk about it. The story of the key in the Sexta was already most instructive. Oh, one must be careful with childish souls! But I always say: where’s the time, where’s the time! Correcting exercises, conferences, and one has one’s own interests. And then the lesson plan, the syllabus – a pain.

S: You’re very kind, Professor. You’re as good as ever. Just now my little boat was – about to capsize. Private experiences and impressions. When I listen to our mathematical colleague, something occurs to me. An anxiety dream. I have those, like many people. So, I’m dreaming, Professor Buttler, I must be dreaming, I’m as old as I really am, thirty, forty, forty-five, and then for some reason, I don’t know why, I must come here, to the school, and sit with the boys in class. I must sit beside them on the narrow bench. I know I’ve actually completed the Abitur, even completed university, I’m a doctor. But – I sit there, unhappy, I can’t understand what this is, they hand me old books, from time to time I stand up so I can say I’ve already done the exam, and I’ve already been to university! But I have to sit down again, it’s no use.

Bräuel: Not hard to explain. You’re not yet finished. You have more to learn. There’s something you must put right.

S (eyes lighting up): Wonderful, Professor! That you know this.

Other teachers (a confusion of voices): Nonsense! Demonology!

Bräuel (turning to them): The murderer returning to the scene of his crime. In my home town they tell other tales as well.

Other teachers (there’s a rustling, a buzz of talk): Demonology. No doubt you know best, dear colleague.

S: I dream about school as others dream about an accident! During the war many were traumatised by shocks, grenade explosions, falling bombs. In their dreams this situation kept recurring, made them anxious. Why? They weren’t murderers. In dreams the person seeks to nail the situation that startled him. It’s a reaction of the soul. It’s traumatised because it was unable at the time to defend itself, because it was ambushed, surprised too violently, too suddenly. Now it conjures the situation up as a dream, tackles it anew, and gradually gains strength from it. The shock heals, a balance is restored between inner strength and external jolt. Just as a boxer learns to harden his stomach muscles against a dangerous blow. That – that’s why I dream about school. You think I should mug up on the lessons? No, I have to overcome the whole school, this accident, the grenade explosion. It has been overcome. The dream does not recur. But it goes further. The result does not satisfy me. On my own behalf, and on behalf of others. I must now nail you, really and directly, gentlemen. We are on the same level. Your faces should be turned towards me. Now the question comes of the originator, the culprit, the one responsible for this grenade explosion!

Schattmann: Sir, Doctor, you know me, and you said you have no bad memories of me. Now gather your wits and think a single thought all the way through, a significant one. You speak with emotion, in a passion. Is this the place. Are we men? Express yourself as you wish, or don’t express yourself, you can praise, you can rage, you can blame, you can go to your mother. Regrettably, I have no interest in your dreams. You learned something from us. You mastered the syllabus. To do so you had to undertake all kinds of tasks, and you did so. We are not a kindergarten. You stand on your own two feet. Now put an end to this business. You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs, damn it.

PE teacher: He was always a weakling, a slacker.

History teacher: Be objective, that’s Prussianism, Doctor.

S (will not be interrupted): But it so happens I have come to know the boundaries of this objectivity. The point is: how is one brought to objectivity, and whose objectivity? Whether I want this objectivity, or not? Whether it is alien to me, or comfortable. You say: achieve, achieve. I ask, I have always asked, even at school, without clearly knowing it: achieve for whom, what are these achievements for?

Schattmann (hard): That’s not for you to ask. It’s beyond your competence, and was beyond your competence as a pupil. Those who are older and wiser have thought it out for you. Your task was to achieve, and develop yourself according to the requirements. What you think as you do so doesn’t matter.

S (savagely): Wrong! Achieve, even if I go to the dogs in the process! No one needs to think for me, or you thought against me or you thought wrongly. I never entered into your calculations. I want to unmask your wisdom. You wanted to make me, this “I”, into your thing, hide and hair. To a thing. That’s it. Bearer of your objectivity. But that was barbarism, it was not education. I was handed over to you for an education, not sold to you.

Schattmann: Unclear statements. Piffle. Really, you need to go back to school.

S: Your whole system never listened to us. It was proud that it never listened. And so you never noticed what was happening. You never wanted to hear the word “I”. I too don’t give a damn for the “I”. But there was one “I” that spoke to you. Just one. The state! What called itself “the state”. And not just “I” but at once demanding “We” in the royal plural. We, that was the Hohenzollerns, the Hohenzollern state, to which I was to surrender my “I”. Given there was such an enormous “I” there that swallowed everything, swallowed the school, swallowed the pupils and wanted to make everything one single cause – I don’t say “no”, I merely ask, and I have a natural right to ask, this I stress to you, gentlemen: who was this “I”, what did this “I” want? I can look it in the face. I can size it up. And as concerns me: what did this “I” want with me? Tell me, Professor Schattmann, you who never posed this question!

Schattmann (angrily): Yes, sir. I did this. I am a civil servant. You seem not to know the state. I served it.

S: But I have never served it. Not I! Even today I serve no state. No one can persuade me to it. Hölderlin, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche were already there under my school bench. They were my “I”! Already in the third year I was thinking and writing.[x] You volunteered for this service to the state; nobody asked me or the other pupils. We were kids, pupils, commodities. You never even considered it needful to ask. We were mere nothings. – It’s bitter for me to have to speak so. It’s hard for me to speak expressly against you, Professor Schattmann. I’d like to bite off my tongue for having to do this.

Schattmann: You’re shouting, sir. You are more our pupil than you want to admit. But I’d like to interrupt this unilaterally excited discussion for a moment to ask you: what story is being told here. Information was brought to me: inside the school, in the school building, the entrance staircase, you spat on the floor. Intentionally. What the devil was that about?

S (lowers his eyes).

Headmaster:[xi] I would like to request clarification. This matter has only now come to my attention, and in the absence of satisfactory information I would prefer to abstain from any further comment.

S: I will say that I did this. I would only ask that you dispense with an explanation. I foresee that the moment will soon arrive. Then you’ll understand.

Schattmann (harshly, shouting): There’s nothing to understand!

S (just as loud): We are no longer at school, Professor. You will show patience until I come to speak of it. I shall answer when it suits me. Why are you grumbling? You have no power to slip away. You’re dead. You are no longer my teachers, my superiors. At last I have outlived you. The world rolls on over you. Here you are, you will not move! We shall speak more about “I” and objectivity. And what sort of objectivity did you practise? Professor Bräuel, did you ever reflect on your Mathematics instruction? There sits an “I”, a poo0r uninterested “I”, and you start up with greater or lesser scorn, over-estimating yourself, over-estimating your subject – oh, you were all of you Popes – you start up, hammering away at the “I”, theorem after theorem, proof after proof, formula after formula. What were you drilling into this “I” unknown to you, uninteresting to you and yet alive: so many foreign bodies? To me they were foreign bodies. And for every foreign body a new aversion. You weren’t a bad man, but your understanding of the human was exactly as much as a mathematician, as a pensionable civil servant is duty-bound to understand. A ridiculous thing overall, Mathematics at school. For most of no value, a diverting thought-game, a torment, because lacking any conception, any purpose, any connection with a life. This kind of abstraction should be forbidden, or shunted off to the Academies. Only this kind of Mathematics, actually, the Mathematics of today. Earlier it was a tremendous subject, the secrets of number, a religion. And how does a school day progress, an objective school day, in general? Now I have this lesson, and after the break it’s another, all the same to me, and so the hours slip away, and at home there’s homework deep into the evening – but one lesson is History, there’s talk of Thermopylae and the Wars of Liberation[xii] and we read about Tell and the wicked Gessler. “Yes, there’s a limit to the despot’s power” and “It is from Heaven we draw down our rights,”[xiii] mendacious words to arouse our enthusiasm. (The Summoner controls himself, the corners of his mouth twitch.) I don’t give a fig for Wars of Liberation, for talk of foreign domination. What does that have to do with me. A soldier in red trousers goes down the street, has a bayonet, well now, that’s aggravating. But foreign domination at home! Serfdom is no better when practised by a fellow countryman. Frenchmen in the school! There, I’ve said it. That’s what you were. That’s why I had just as little enthusiasm for your History lessons as for the other subjects.

The Unspeakable[xiv] (stands. The Summoner does not name him): That’s quite true. You were a rebel. A recusant. The school failed with you.

S (trembles when he sees the Unspeakable): Now I’d really like to see that there are such things as exorcism, spells, sorcery. I had a patient who told me once that in his hand he had special rays, short rays, as soon as he says the spell, everything shatters to pieces. To think you still live. Though you are long dead, to think you are here still.

The Unspeakable: I’m one of your teachers. I know you hate me. It’s a perfect delight for me to see a bad pupil again. He wants to flaunt himself. A leading role. It’s a failure.

S: When I issued the invitations I wasn’t thinking of him. I’d never have completed the incantation. That’s a life-shortener. I won’t look at him.

The Unspeakable: You must have thought we’d let you speak out, with a “Thank you very much.”

S (turns decisively to the window): Professor Konrad[xv], I see you, I’m glad to see you again. We had you for German in the upper classes. We read some Goethe, but Schiller above all, you know, the long philosophical poems. It’s curious, Schiller seems to have written those poems expressly for school. I never heard later of anyone ever reading them. The Classics above all, gentlemen, the great storehouse, it’s bad, sinks away from the people or fails to stir the people and at last remains like a rock – lying there in the school. Marvellous invention, German education. I shouldn’t like to be a Classic. You used to read the poems out to us, Professor. You stood in front of the podium, one arm stretched behind you, your clothes were too loose. You were rather tall, jauntily slender. You always held your head bent back. You spoke of the True, the Good, the Beautiful. When you said it, it was authentic, not just sounding words. It was moving to watch you. When you recited a poem, Professor, believe me, this I retained, this attitude is imprinted in me. When I think of Schiller, and Idealism around 1800, I think of Professor Konrad, and then – Schiller is true. Schiller can rejoice, Professor. He was well served by you. If you see him up there, don’t be afraid to talk to him, tell him what you’ve been hearing here.

S (falls silent suddenly, gazes at the podium. He has noticed a sheen run over Professor Konrad as if he is streaming with blood. S continues): Later on one occasion, in the Prima , we sang together in a big choir, outside near the Kroll opera house. The rehearsals were in Steglitzer Strasse. It was Berlioz’ Damnation of Faust. It gave me enormous pleasure to see you there. It did me colossal good to have you sing along, two rows to the right of me, you the teacher, I the pupil. All at once I was ten times more ready to believe everything you said, and do the work you set. Once, to my even greater joy, I was present when you apologised to the conductor for having missed the previous rehearsal. You acted just like anyone else did and was obliged to do, of course with the refinement that you bore within you. I observed, quickly left the hall with the crowd. I was happy. I was still happy next day, and my benevolence extended to the entire school.

(General calm, a pause. The Summoner looks up again): And what a pleasure your Greek was, Professor Buttler. I’m not quite sure, I think you died soon after I left school. Once you fell down on the podium, you were a little old man, spoke so drolly from the corner of your mouth, like a pipe-smoker. Ah, such things we still know, others are forgotten. You had a good feeling for everyone. Sometimes you tried to be strict, but you never succeeded. Your warmth always showed through. Your lesson was always a kind of a break for us, we misbehaved, did work for other subjects, read books we’d brought along. Such fun when we had to recite what we’d learned by heart from Homer or Sophocles. We presented ourselves, the reciting started, with a prompter of course, you stood at the side, then it couldn’t go on, you said reluctantly, “All right, that’s enough”. Some of us said the same lines three or four times, and earned your praise.

Buttler (smiling): I know. (His neighbours stare.) Now my sins are revealed.

S: The Professor doesn’t feel ashamed.

Buttler: No, not at all. I’ve grown accustomed to it, in Heaven.

S: Yes, we sometimes wondered if you hadn’t noticed something. When we threw spitballs or stuck little notes to the back of your gown, you scolded but never made a big deal of it. You knew us. In April and May many never came from break to your class, sometimes half the class went missing. You would ask: “Excuse me, but where are the others?” Unanimous response: “Spring Festival, Professor.” Then you’d send someone down to fetch them, they came very slowly and with beaming innocent faces told of the wonderful air, the beautiful weather. And then they sat down quietly. You see, Professor, this could never have been mentioned at a staff conference, you’d have had no way to defend it. But I assure you in the face of that learned conference: those were beneficial and pedagogically wonderful moments. Even when once you went down in person to fetch the truants back, and – stayed down there yourself. And then you said: “But we’d better make a start”, and they came meekly up the stairs.

Buttler: I too loved May, you see, even in the little school yard.

S: Grey on grey the other lessons painted themselves, with you we burst into colour, warmth, fun, the world, and with that we too could bloom. You told us about yourself, and what sort of man your teacher Boeckh[xvi] had been. We drank it down like milk.

Mocking voice: Andante con moto.

Another: What do you think of this elegy? First the sugar, the whip comes later.

Another: He’s spending all his time on the premise, he’s afraid to come to the consequent.

Squawking voice: What’s all this drivel? Where were we with objectivity? Don’t plead feelings as an excuse.

S: You have already heard the consequent. Bureaucrats, civil servants in the school wanted to recruit me, make me their stooge. I declined to be their stooge. I rejected their idol-worship.

Schattmann: That’s funny.

S: For me it was idol-worship. You were its agents, paid functionaries, nothing more, I saw through it. Not I alone. There were others in the school. They didn’t make it as obvious as I did. Often I kept my head down, engaged in mimicry, but you saw through me. I was and remained “opposition”. Without doing a thing I attracted from left and right your dislike, even your repugnance and hatred. “Nasty piece of work, bad element,” the PE teacher often called me. You gentlemen had no need to guard your tongues: God had given to you a mouth and a bad mood; to us, ears and the motto: keep quiet! It seems I had something within me that aggravated you. You noticed that I and others too had more than ears. Contravening the divine order. It transmitted itself from one class to the next. Like a wanted poster.

Mocking voice: You should have been expelled.

S: They’d have had to expel more than you would have liked. You had already retracted my fee-free status in the Tertia or Sekunda , I wasn’t worthy, I was a bad pupil. You practised your benevolence on me in other ways. On my Middle School Certificate[xvii] you assigned a general conduct grade that made the certificate almost worthless. And then once I was sitting in the Sekunda,[xviii] almost 20 years old – one is no longer a child then, and I was still weighing down a school bench, endlessly, twice I had to repeat a class, Mathematics wouldn’t let me through, – there in the Sekunda I was reading Schopenhauer, had the book under my bench. Suddenly there was an inspection. They found The World as Will and Representation, the Inspector said sternly and with contempt: “You would do better to occupy yourself with other matters.” But I didn’t. I was already writing all sorts of things that I concede you don’t learn in Mathematics.

Bräuel (smiles condescendingly).

S: You think that was nothing? It was another thinking power of which clearly you still have no conception. Around the same time I was sitting there once, whispering, clearly in the wrong, with my neighbour. Then you, Professor Rudner,[xix] stood up on your podium, came calmly down the aisle, to me: “”You said something?” and gave me a loud smack in the face. And I – the rage is still in me – I did not hit back. Those were the methods of objectivity. And finally, to wrap this up, you’ll be content now, gentlemen – I come to the spitting event.

(S. chews again, bites his lips, but he is not pale. He gazes blackly into the room from lowered brows. An unease seizes the teachers, they press back from the benches but, remarkably, stream towards the front.)

Schattmann: Out with it. Speak, damn it. Tell us what happened.

S: My blood is cold. You can learn from me. It was the Abitur. Naturally I took the orals as well, there was nothing special about it, I wasn’t a good pupil. The School Counsellor[xx] came, the “Royal Commissar”. I know his name still. We were all in formal dress. We wait in a classroom. But the exam doesn’t begin and doesn’t begin. The pre-conference with the Counsellor lasts a very long time. Then we’re let in. And at once I was called up. The teachers were sitting at a table. In the middle seat was the School Counsellor. He was no better and no worse than the others sitting there. They’d told him about me. Probably he’d have let my achievements pass, they wouldn’t have put him in a rage. He waved a familiar flag over me. It was shameful, unprecedented what I had to listen to. I was shouted at like a rogue, like the stupidest boy. Assailed. On account of my conduct. That I hadn’t deserved to be admitted to the exam. The expression “moral immaturity” occurred a few times. This fellow, the School Counsellor, who’d never met me before, dared to say this. He knew, this lad knew, he had to stay silent. I kept asking myself as I stood there: but what was it I’d done? But once again I was being assailed, and quite openly, by the alienation, the dislike that I already knew. He had to unleash his rage on me, had to give me a moral box on the ears, because he’d heard I was not of his state-concessioned kind. I had no need to master myself. I trembled physically. I was afraid of failing, of having to stay here longer. Then – I passed. When the School Counsellor read out the results it was with a hope and a stern warning to me to pull myself together out there and take to heart what the school had taught me. No, I did not take it to heart. I have never done so. I went down the stairs, and spat on the ground. There you have my answer. Even today I take a detour to avoid the school. Even today it disgusts me, this Bastille.

The Unspeakable: Thank God they weren’t all like you.

S: Who said that?

The Unspeakable: You know who. Stop playing games. You’re a writer, that makes you a hypocrite, but on us it has no effect.

S: Come up here. Gather round.

The Unspeakable: See him emerge from his little shell when he hears my voice. Here his bombast has no effect. Blusterer. Agitator. Let me through at him. He must look me in the eye.

S (steps down from the podium): The time of trembling is over. No more standing in silence. Of us two, one is living, the other dead.

The Unspeakable: You’re the one who’s dead.

Others (laughing): That’s right!

S (roaring): Silence in the ranks! All of you. You shades, mere ghosts, air, I can blow you away. Scraps of paper, fly’s legs, dirt. If I hadn’t summoned you, conjured you up, where would you be. You know why you keep silent when I ask: where do you all dwell? You dwell nowhere. You are present only in me, and in the many, many others whom you taught, no, drilled and tormented. Out of all of these I have summoned you here. God knows you haven’t changed, you still have all your limbs. And you, Unspeakable, you were my teacher, you tiger-soul, you monster. You others, don’t stand in line with that thing. Though you are shades like him, do not keep together with him. I do not call him by name, his poison must not be kept intact by naming him. The system ruins its functionaries. The system engenders evildoers, or favours them. Just as in the military it favoured slave-drivers and soldier suicides. There is the evildoer.

The Unspeakable: Yes, it’s me. And there’s the rebel.

S: Yes I was. But you won’t wash it clean, Professor.

The Unspeakable: No need to keep on about it, I know it all already.

S: No doubt you found me tasty, for breakfast or on those mornings when the gall was flowing.

The Unspeakable: Yes, you served that purpose too.

S: You want to brand me as a rebel. But I have never been one. I am not a born insurgent. It’s just that I’ve always lived in a world that is not the same as yours. I have and had my sense of duty, my rigour, my objectivity. It coexists with yours. I knew why my apparent slackness and apathy, directed only at you, annoyed you so. Behind Hölderlin, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche you sniffed something bad, dangerous. You said “rebellion” and “moral immaturity”, but that was your “No” to my world.

Bräuel: Is that supposed to be a defence? It’s a basis for the accusation.

S: Nothing is a basis for that! Not for this one whose name I shall not speak. Your devilry, sir, in the Sekunda I have almost entirely forgotten. From that time I have only the image, the statue, the podium and the man on it with the stabbing eyes. Finally I made it out, escaped your clutches. Then once you came after me.

The Unspeakable: As a substitute teacher, in the Prima.[xxi]

S: See how you remember.

The Unspeakable: Yes, I remember. It’s fun going after a rascal, an insurgent.

S: You know me, gentlemen, and consider me an enemy of this person. But recently, for the first time, I spoke with someone else who was at school with me, a calm man in a respectable position. We discussed our schooldays. And look here: he came out without any prompting from me with the name of this unspeakable fellow! He said: If I ask myself whether there are evil people, evil by nature, cruel, I have to think of this fellow. Can never forget him. – In the Prima, when the Headmaster was ill, it went like this. He whose name I shall not speak knows it, but I’ll tell you just the same. He came into the classroom, settled himself on the podium, and at first all went well. I had the misfortune to be sitting directly in front of him, in the first row. During the lesson I sat quietly, but my hands were active, I fiddled with my pencil. I wasn’t nervous otherwise, the sight of him meant nothing to me, for who was he? I’d put him behind me – the substitute. But he knew better. You can make use of a substitution, even. Suddenly he’d had enough of my hands. I was 22 years old, what was his problem with my hands. So I kept them still. But as the lesson progressed they began fiddling again, picked up the pen, put it down. Then suddenly he said: “I already told you once, you should keep your hands still. Go and sit in the back row.” I: “Maybe my hands are a little twitchy. I’m not doing it on purpose. And therefore I shall not go and sit in the back row.” He: “You will gather your things and move to the back row.” I: “This is my place. The Headmaster assigned it to me.”

(The Summoner is not chewing and grinding now. He stands beside the podium. He is quite beside himself, his face is twisted in rage, his arm is raised.)

S: He stood up and said: “You must obey. I am directing to that place.”

The Unspeakable: That’s what happened. You tried openly to kick against the pricks. But you couldn’t put it past me.

S: I did not gather my things. I remained standing. A remarkable sense of freedom was suddenly in me. I had no clear consciousness of what was happening or should be happening. But at such moments one does things that are very true, very pregnant, symbolic. Then – the bell rang for break. He picked up his books, went to the door, said: “Tomorrow you will sit in the place I have assigned you.” I made no reply. My schoolmates spoke of it during the break. I maintained that I would not take the seat of punishment. How could the man come to the point of assigning me to the seat of punishment because of unruly fingers, I’m in the senior class, 22 years old. They all agreed with me.

The Unspeakable: That I can believe. Readily believe. You knew how to stir them up.

S: Next day – I succumbed. He stood in the doorway, didn’t enter the classroom, called my name: So, you’re still not seated in your place. – This is my place. – You must gather your things and sit at the back. – I shall complain to the Headmaster. – Yes, you can. Now you will sit in your place. – I remained silent for a moment. Twenty things at once passed through my mind. I was quite calm. I shan’t ruin my Abitur. It was just like at the Abitur itself. But not a day longer in this Bastille. I shall not stay a moment longer than necessary. I folded. For the moment. My time will come. I picked up my briefcase. And sat at the back. As I stood at the back with my briefcase, before sitting down, you heard something else from me. I don’t think you ever heard anything so clearly in all your time at the school. You’ll recall what it was. I said: From the earlier class I know you’ve taken a dislike to me, and that, that alone, is the reason for this punishment seat. I sat there for just the one lesson, the Headmaster returned, I resumed my own seat. The headmaster at once informed himself of the situation, heard the general tone of disapproval, made some notes, and that was that. But it seems this incident brought upon me the “moral immaturity” at the Abitur.

The Unspeakable: I hope so.

S (struggles with himself, sets one foot down from the podium): That’s enough. Gentlemen, my teachers: just listen to it. You cannot endorse this.

(The shades throng about him, are very close. All that can be heard is isolated fragments: You didn’t fit in with school discipline. There’s a gasping, a slurping among the shades. Step by step they approach. The Summoner recognises them.)

S: If you want me as your enemy, then I am. Attention! Careful! High voltage!

(The Summoner has leapt from the podium to the front row of benches. He holds his bare hands out against the shades. They snuffle at him. They have stretched thin. He rages, lashes out around him, at which they hiss more greedily and flow ever closer towards him. Finally the Summoner stands in a thin loose cloud of mist, from which comes a rustling. He himself is smoking, smouldering. Three snake-bodies come lapping out of the smoke, snap around. Suddenly the smoke parts, red hot. The Summoner stands amid flames on the podium, laughing. He is holding his glasses and – laughs and laughs!)

S (laughing): The beaks! My teachers! I’m quarrelling with them! I’m having a conversation with them. Let goods and kindred go![xxii] Eternal peace to the departed! (The shades, the mist are gathered by the two windows. Glass shatters under the heat. At once the teachers are outside.)

S: Out! Pack of rascals, out! Motheaten bunch. Look here, a teacher’s podium, the high court of judgement, my classroom. This is where I learned. Who here is still alive? Who or what? (The benches smoulder, blaze, the teacher’s desk first of all.) Who is still alive? There was a king in Thule, he fell down from his stool.[xxiii] Godspeed to the virtuous. Farewell, gentlemen, I too shall disappear, wish you all bon appétit. (He goes through the burning door. Outside is pitch-black night, utterly silent. He goes down the steps through the hiss of burning; down in the entrance hall he burns a piece out of the floor.) Where once spittle lay does not need always to be spittle. Even spittle is mortal. That was in our days of joy, and now is a time of bliss. We are not for letters tied with blue ribbon and locks of hair. Away with harm, into the dustbin. Now when I spit it’s from pharyngitis. Receive now my blessing one and all, revered pillars, revered staircase, revered teachers senior and junior, rest in peace. We write 1928, we have a new Parliament and still no money, these are our troubles, our only troubles. Farewell, wink wink, Chaos has you, Chaos shall always have you, it’s very nice in Chaos. And now the letter is addressed, stamped, sealed and posted. But better get going. They could have me for material damage. Quick, must pass my One-year …

Döblin attended the Köllnisches Gymnasium from 1891 (when he was 13) until gaining his Abitur in 1900.

Pseudonym. Actual name was Zellmer.

The artistic Crown Prince clashed with his militaristic father, eventually making an escape attempt in 1730, for which he was brutally punished.

Döblin’s free rendering of Pindar’s aphorism, quoted frequently by Nietzsche: “Become that which you are.”

i.e. the French teacher Hoffman

i.e. Maths teacher Dr Meder, largely responsible for Döblin’s first failed attempt at the Abitur.

i.e. Heidemann, form teacher of the first year.

i.e. Pappenheim, teacher of Latin and Greek.

Kurt Neimann (1877-1944 in Theresienstadt): fellow pupil of Döblin’s up to 1899. Lawyer with musical talent.

[x] 1893-94. The archive contains only fragments of writings before Döblin’s first published story (1896).

[xi] Dr Meusel.

[xii] 1813-14, against Napoleon.

[xiii] Approximate quotes from Schller’s play William Tell.

[xiv] Gustav Weldig, Döblin’s form master in the 7^th year of Gymnasium. Döblin’s classmate Moritz Goldstein called him “the only one of our teachers to whom I would ascribe a thoroughly bad, malicious character.”

[xv] Dr Rudolf.

[xvi] August Boeckh (1785-1867): classical philologist, founder of classical studies; professor in Berlin  from 1811.

[xvii] Known as the ‘Einjährigenzeugnis’ as it qualified for a reduced one-year military service.

[xviii] Lower Sekunda Easter 1896, Upper Easter 1897.

[xix] Holländer, Greek teacher in the Sekunda.

[xx] One Herr Vogel, the “Royal Provincial Counsellor for Schools”, according to the certificate.

[xxi] The 1899 yearbook notes that Weldig (the Unspeakable) took classes on behalf of headmaster Dr Meusel.

[xxii] From Luther’s hymn ‘A Mighty Fortress is our God’.

[xxiii] Parody of a poem by Goethe later incorporated in Faust (2759-82).

Interview (2):

Adding water to lye

The Investigation Commission visited and spoke with the above-named / described on two subsequent occasions. Once on the morning following his unexpected incarceration. There we found him taciturn, sullen. Of course we did not bring the conversation around to the previous day’s topics. But we were not uninterested to note that –staring at the table with his head in his hands – he failed to ask even once what had become of his papers. We therefore avoided bothering him, or provoking him to raise questions against us.

Exactly one week later we convened again to continue the observation. We invited him to visit one of us, Dr P. the zoologist, who wrote to him that he had an unusually fine French cognac which he would like to sample in his company. He turned up, expansive again, and the conversation took many strange and weird turns, as sometimes happened with him. He began with the burlesque assertion that it was actually he who was investigating the Investigation Commission! There were four of us at Dr P.’s party. He had no prior acquaintance with us, had submitted to all our measurements and questions, never even asked why, what for, and now suddenly evinced a somewhat unpleasant interest in us. Our member R. suggested he was pulling our legs, perhaps hoping thereby to render unsafe the entirety of the above evidence. To us others he seemed good-humoured and in his own way benevolent towards us, even affectionate. We make no further report on this somewhat awkward part of the conversation / interview. He then began to whistle, and came straight out with it: “You stole my papers.” R. at once returned them to him. Of course we had made copies. “Tell me, what did you actually want with them?” Whereupon Dr P. claimed (truthfully) to be a zoologist, and then (cheekily): he’s interested in domestication phenomena, such as those the subject, for example, exhibited at school, and is at present experimenting how birds of passage, migratory birds, behave in artificially lowered temperatures and fields of magnetic force of different strengths. Anyone else might naturally have taken this response the wrong way. But he was delighted, the methodology interested him, and he wanted to know what Dr P. had learned from reading his papers.

But then he interrupted himself and launched at once into the topic of Slow Motion. The subject asked us one after the other about Slow Motion. Our guest then lectured us: Slow Motion is a very clever, philosophical and instructive thing, but is, on the other hand, a deception. And all reports, even his, are a kind of Slow Motion device. They pull together facts at random or stretch them out and extend them and by doing so there emerges not just a temporally shortened or lengthened image, but a false one. He argued: “Take the ocean. Go to the North Sea, how it storms, hurls waves. Take a dozen barrels down, fill them with water, and drag them back to dry land. Now you have some sea water. Now the shortening goes further. Bring the barrels to a chemical laboratory and start to vaporise the liquid masses or confine them in a vacuum chamber. You’ll end up with a little bowlful of yellow-brown sludge. So that – is the sea. Add a few gallons of distilled water, and it will be chemically identical to the water you started with. But is the little bowl with the yellow gravy the sea? A myriad things are missing. The wind, the waves, the storm over them, foam, colours, seaweed, snails, fish in the water, the seagulls and sailing boats – I cannot dispense with these.” And that was why we should have left his papers undisturbed; there was not that much to the report. When we expressed doubts, he refused to concede. Although the report was true, he said, it gave a totally false impression. It was false from A to Z – though it was true. What was missing was the ten years, which meant ten times spring, ten times summer, autumn, winter, and then ten times three hundred walks to school and back, ten years of growing up, ten years of domestic existence. In other words, it was a laboratory extract, and if you were to pour those barrels of water on it, it still would not be the sea. What was written there was a boiled-down caustic solution.

Our Dr P. commented, incautiously, that it was an uncommonly astringent solution. Such an incautious remark – we tried at once to signal to our colleague. But our guest had already shrunk back. “You think so?” he asked, chewing on his left index finger. He at once sank visibly into the same train of thought as his report. The anger that his report breathes was made flesh in his strongly twitching facial muscles. He pushed his cognac glass aside, and sipped slowly from his glass of Fachinger mineral water. But Dr P. could not be brought to his senses. It was precisely this remarkable gesture that interested him, and again he fired away. This colleague of ours is a dangerous companion on such expeditions, he has in his blood too much of butterfly-pinning, we cannot use him in tricky matters. He would not let go: Your schooldays are already twenty-five years in the past, you work, have a practice, there’s been the war, you have a family, God knows what experiences you’ve had. Has there as yet been no abreaction?

The subject: No pretty words! Abreaction. I initiate a reaction with the substance, then there’s an abreaction. If I have poison in my stomach, they put a tube down and wash it out. A cute notion. Just right for the better class of girls’ school. But it could be that acid burns leave scars. Can they be washed out? By “abreact” do you mean “forget”? Or stop making a big thing of it?

– No, certainly not. I was referring only your agitation. You are still, or seem still to be so caught up in it. Everything you say or write about it envelopes us in such a gloomy suffering feeling. We don’t really know what you’re plunging into. Maybe it’s not school at all you actually mean, that you’re actually talking about.

– What is it then, actually?

– I don’t know. But I was intrigued by your story from the Sexta, the business with the key. Isn’t it a little bit peculiar, don’t you think so yourself? Being so tongue-tied? What actually are you keeping silent about?

At this point the subject’s face is quite relaxed. He puts down the glass of water in his hand, and lifts his arm in a formal gesture, smiling a very strange smile: I am most grateful to you, sir, for what you have said. Now matters are on the right track. I have the poet’s gift – of keeping silent! Born with it. You will seldom hear me utter the word “poet”, but now you force me to say it. Before the singing there is always a silence. In me the silence lasted a long time, a dreadfully long time. Everything I said was askew, and wrong. Twisted. It was not “I”.

But at school I gradually became “I”. It is not given to people of my type to be friendly and nice in the normal way. We become so later, by detours. I was unable to speak because I could not accept superficial actions and feeble speech. I already knew another kind, with a different syntax and grammar. And how I later grew into this object, no, grew from its soil. The names that others gave to things I rejected, I was already on other natural, familiar terms with things. Just you try to prattle on then! I learned to do so later, and do you know how? When I began to realise that this easy prattle and these interests bore a closer and more extensive relation to the great matter in which I found myself so deeply and blindly rooted and which came from me as silence. And so I learned human speech through the back door, as it were. And now you know why I kept silent, and what it was, this silence. But: whoever sings must take his chances with the blows that silence and false speaking bring his way, Mister Zoologist. Anyway, I always knew this. In some respects the school experience was general experience, in others it was personal to me. I had to pay, pay doubled.

The subject takes a sip from his glass: For entire long years I never thought of these things, and when at last I did speak of them, with vehemence, you thought – even if I contradicted you – here with this fellow we have a complex, this is an aspect of his analysis. Well then. Fine. Whatever. That’s how it stands with me, and because, I suppose, I can do nothing against your theory, I would ask your kind favour in allowing me to make an observation. This would also be in the interest of similar types you will encounter, and will perhaps help to clarify your concept of Art. My reminiscences angered me as one who had been mistreated. This I can get over quite well. Conscious remembering of an event with unquenchable anger: that’s a natural thing, a healthy thing and also useful. But I must present you with a more exact concept of the “power of silence” of which I spoke and which actually provoked the mistreatment and also overcame it. I remember from my very early childhood that I would often not go out to play but was content to sit around at home. At nine and ten years old I preferred to read rather than play on roundabouts, and was never sulky about it, and no one rebuffed me. Pay attention to that last point! It was more comfortable to my way of being and totally fine with me. Without any tangible thought I was already as a small child occupied with myself, entertained by something that worked away calmly and benevolently in a kind of half-dark. You have the ready-made template: memories of the mother’s breast, the maternal uterus, splashing about in delight and amniotic fluid. Blessed, oh blessed to be an embryo. You should have everything that brings you enjoyment. All I want is my own joy. How, for example, does it happen that one holds fast to old blessed memories while another still plays on roundabouts? It must be something to do with the individual. It occurs to me, and I have made observations, that people are born different and grow up different. Even in the same milieu. One grows up bigger, another smaller, you can measure it directly. One takes more after the father, the other more after the mother, and the third maybe more after the grandfather. I’ve even heard that there’s a theory of heredity. This all sounds embarrassingly banal, but even learned men shouldn’t be afraid of it.

Now, there are two ways to hold an umbrella in the rain: the correct way, by the handle, and the wrong way, by the ferrule. If you hold it the wrong way, by the ferrule, you will stay dry for a while, until it overflows. Therefore it is recommended to hold the umbrella by the handle, as any superior umbrella establishment will be sure to tell you at the time of purchase. So much for theory. Now I – hold the umbrella at once by the handle. And I can say from my own observations, anyway without repulsing the mother’s breast: there is the fact of a natural disposition. And the lived experience of such a disposition. That disposition being something like an eye, a finger, or the spleen, something compact, solid, that has a function. Such a thing fills one with pleasure, happiness, satisfaction, repletion. In a funny way it reveals its existence a long while before its “accomplishments”, through such feelings. In some circumstances you are like a Raphael even in the absence of arms, of pictures. Such a feeling, such repletion I already had very strongly, very early – it was like an air bubble inside me. And so I had no real inclination to play roundabouts. Maybe I wouldn’t have had the ability, but that never upset or disappointed me. All it did really was legitimise me. I never really wanted to, and because I didn’t want to, the roundabout of course never turned. Good, so you will hold this thought: here was a disposition, a power. Not an inferiority, how ridiculous, and not the overcoming of an inferiority, more a pride, but not even that. Anyway, let’s leave it there. –

The interlude was over. And there was no disturbance later when our disturber of the peace, Dr P., who comes from Baden, interjected that where he came from in southern Germany, the teachers had more to fear from the pupils than the other way around. The subject at once objected: Let no one come at him with southern Germany and set southern Germany against his northern Germany. He has no high regard for southern stolidity and so-called freedom. He was a Prussian. And he laughed: Here he is defending his school against southern Germany! All sorts of water is missing from his dehydrated report. Thus, apart from the four times ten seasons, for example, there are friendships, comradeships with one or another, in the upper classes enthusiasm for Wagner and for Hugo Wolf, and then finding our way back to Haydn and Mozart. And then, acquaintance with Dostoyevsky, his Raskalnikov. In the Tertia, encounters with Heinrich von Kleist, The Prince of Homburg, and especially the fragment of Guiskard and the Penthesilea. Long months immersed in the reading of Schopenhauer, Hölderlin’s poems year after year in my breast pocket. In the Prima or even earlier, the encounter with Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morality, which I read breathless and trembling. I wasn’t so keen on Zarathustra, it struck me as overblown, artificial prophecy, and an impure genre as well, a mixture of art and philosophy, pseudo-art anyway, apart from a couple of genuine bits. It’s philosophical Wagnerism. –

000

Something one should never do, because of the violent exothermic reaction.

Possibly the Biology teacher Dehnicke.

Parodic quote from the 1837 opera ‘Tsar and Carpenter’ (‘Blessed oh blessed to be still a child.’)

Döblin later distanced himself from Wagner. He refers elsewhere to the “fascination of the Wagnerian artist with the grandiosity of the new image of the world, which is the image of a battle.”

Composer and critic (1860-1903) on the threshold of the modern.

The fragment of Kleist’s tragedy Robert Guiskard, Duke of Normandy written 1802-03, was first performed in Berlin in 1901.

Döblin (as ‘LInke Poot’) devotes several paragraphs to Penthesilea in his political essay On Cannibalism. https://brooklynrail.org/2019/03/fiction/On-Cannibalism .