Extinction (7 page)

they stopped assimilating anything new, ceased to exert themselves, and shunned any effort at self-improvement. Yet it goes without saying that we should continue to extend our knowledge and strengthen our character as long as we live, and that anyone who fails to do so, who stops working on himself and exploiting his potential to the full, has simply stopped living. They all stopped living at age nineteen, and since then, I am bound to say, they have merely vegetated and become a burden to themselves. Every hundred years the family has produced an extraordinary character like Uncle Georg and then pursued this extraordinary character with hatred and animosity all his life. Looking at these pictures of my family, I am inclined to think that they could have made something of themselves—and perhaps even achieved something great—yet they made nothing of themselves, because they settled for indolence and were content with the daily round, which demanded nothing more of them than the traditional stolidity they were born with. They staked nothing, risked nothing, and chose to take it easy, as they say, when they were still young. They never exploited the potential that they undoubtedly had, that everyone has. And if one of them did exploit this potential, as Uncle Georg did—I do not wish to dwell on my own case—he was punished with incomprehension and disfavor. My sisters stopped in their tracks as soon as they had graduated from high school. They left it with their heads held high, clutching their graduation diplomas, which they regarded as lifelong guarantees of something extraordinary, when all they guaranteed was extraordinary mediocrity. They stopped in their tracks, and now, at about forty, they are still where they were at nineteen. Everything about them is little short of ludicrous, and at their age, of course, not pitiable but pathetic. Father too came to a stop early in life. Having qualified at the forestry school in Wiener Neustadt, he thought he had reached the culmination of his existence and began to ease up. After coming to a halt at twenty-two, he became increasingly rigid, and atrophy set in. And my brother, Johannes, ceased to develop after graduating from the forestry school at Gmunden. Like ninety percent of humanity he believed that, with good final grades on his certificate from the last school he had attended, his life had reached its apogee. This is what most people think. It is enough to drive one up the wall. They collapse in upon themselves, one might say. And anyone
who fails to exert himself is bound to be a disagreeable person whom we can view only with distaste. At first he depresses us, then distresses us, and finally infuriates us. No action we take against him is of any avail. Human beings, it seems, exert themselves only for as long as they can look forward to idiotic diplomas that they can boast about in public. Having gained enough of these idiotic diplomas they take it easy. For the most part their sole aim in life is to obtain diplomas and titles, and when they think they have collected enough of them, they lie back and relax, featherbedded by their diplomas and titles, and appear to have no further ambition in life, no interest in an independent existence or indeed anything but these diplomas and titles, under which mankind has for centuries been in danger of suffocating. They do not strive for independence and self-sufficiency or for the natural development of their personalities; they are utterly obsessed by these diplomas and titles and would gladly give their lives for them if they were conferred unconditionally. This is the depressing truth. They set so little store by life itself that they see only these diplomas and titles, which they proceed to hang on their walls. These diplomas and titles hang on the walls of butchers and philosophers, of scullions, attorneys, and judges, all of whom spend their lives staring at them with greedy eyes, eyes made greedy by their constant staring. When they speak of themselves, they do not say, I am this or that person; they say, I am this or that title, this or that diploma. They associate not with this or that person, but with this or that diploma, this or that title. Taking mankind as a whole, then, we may say that most associations take place not between human beings, but between diplomas or titles. To put it baldly, human beings count for nothing: only titles and diplomas count. One does not meet Mr. Huber at the coffeehouse: one meets the doctorate of that name. One has lunch not with Mr. Maier but with the engineering diploma of that name. Human beings, it seems, have not really arrived until they have ceased to be mere human beings and become holders of engineering diplomas; when they are no longer
merely
Mrs. Müller but the counselor’s wife. And in their offices they engage not Miss So-and-So but her first-class diploma. This addiction to titles and diplomas is of course endemic throughout Europe, but there is no doubt that in Germany, and to an even greater extent in Austria, it has developed a monstrous, grotesque, and quite staggering virulence.
Only recently I told Gambetti that Austrians and Germans had no respect for human beings but respected only titles and diplomas, believing that a human being began to exist only when he had obtained a diploma or received a title and that until that point he was not a human being at all. Gambetti thought this a gross exaggeration, but in the course of our future lessons I shall prove to him that it is not, that these conditions prevail not only in German-speaking Europe but seemingly throughout Europe, and that in a frighteningly short time they will prevail throughout the world. But of course this addiction to diplomas and titles is not just a twentieth-century phenomenon: mankind has always suffered from it. Centuries ago human beings, having insufficient respect for themselves, decided to boost their self-esteem by presenting themselves in the form of diplomas and titles. Uncle Georg used to say, Whenever I go to Austria and sit in a train, I have the impression that the compartment is occupied solely by professorships and doctorates, not by human beings, that the streets are teeming not with young people or old people but with counselors. My father, having qualified at the forestry school, had his diploma framed and hung it over his desk like an altarpiece. My brother, Johannes, did the same after qualifying at the forestry school in Gmunden. They felt that their graduation from these undoubtedly necessary but quite ludicrous academies was the high point of their lives. And my sisters were always squawking about their high school without even being asked about it. The whole world suffers from this addiction to diplomas and titles, which makes it impossible to lead a natural life. But the extreme state of affairs that so depresses you in Austria and Germany has certainly not been reached in the Latin countries, said Uncle Georg. And I don’t think this Austro-German condition will ever prevail there. The Latin peoples are not so narrow-minded and never have been. Natural life still flourishes there, but here it has almost died out. In Germany and Austria natural life has not been possible for centuries, having been extinguished by the craving for diplomas and titles. In early childhood I had a good relationship with my brother, Johannes. He is—or rather was—only a year older than I. Until we started school and our sisters were born we were good friends. But while we were at school our ways diverged. At the age of six, I think, each of us set off in the direction that was to determine his whole life, and we went in precisely
opposite directions. While Johannes took more and more to the fields and the woods, I moved with equal determination away from the fields and the woods, with the result that he became more and more bound up with Wolfsegg as I grew farther and farther away from it. In the end he was not just pervaded but dominated by Wolfsegg and, I believe, sucked in and devoured by it, as I was ultimately by the world outside it. Very soon my brother’s favorite words were
grain, pigs, pines
, and
firs
, while mine were
Paris, London, Caucasus, Tolstoy
, and
Ibsen
, and his repeated attempts to fire me with enthusiasm for his favorite words, like my attempts to inspire him with an interest in mine, soon became pointless. Emulating Uncle Georg, I spent most of my time in our libraries, while Johannes was usually to be found in the stables. He would wait in the cowshed for a cow to calve, while I was busy in the library decoding a sentence by Novalis; as he waited impatiently for the calf to be born in the cowshed, I waited with equal impatience for Novalis’s idea to be born in my head. On graduating from high school he bought himself a sailboat; I spent my graduation present on a trip to Anatolia with Uncle Georg. When Uncle Georg still lived at Wolfsegg I spent every spare minute with him, but my brother had scarcely any interest in Uncle Georg; he preferred to be with my father, whom he accompanied to the fields, the woods, and the mines, and to various offices in the neighboring towns. From the beginning I regarded Uncle Georg as my teacher, while Johannes saw Father as his. And unlike my brother, I did not hang around my mother. I detested the way he always clung to her skirts. I never clung to my mother’s skirts, and I always drew my head away when she made to kiss me. He was forever demanding to be kissed by her. At night, when he was asleep, I often left our shared bedroom and went to Uncle Georg to hear one of his stories; he invented hundreds of them to please me. My brother never dared to flout the rules at Wolfsegg, but I was always flouting them. I left the house whenever I wanted—he did not. I ran down to the village whenever I wanted, to observe the people who lived there—he did not. I talked to the villagers whenever I wanted—he did not talk to them unless he was given permission. Finally, when I had my own room I arranged it to suit my own taste; he would never have thought of doing such a thing. His schoolbooks were always clean and his writing like copperplate; my schoolbooks
were always dirty, my writing careless and all but illegible. My brother was always punctual at mealtimes, but I had a problem with punctuality. I encouraged him to join in adventures, but he never encouraged me. The adventures usually ended with his getting hurt and crying, for he was always the clumsier of the two of us, often falling into a stream or a pond, tripping over a root, or grazing his face or his legs on bushes. Such things never happened to me. When I asked him whether he could see something or other in the distance, he never could because he was shortsighted, whereas I have always had good vision. I had no trouble learning to ride a bicycle, but it was ages before he could balance on one. He was no match for me at running. If we had to swim across a river he usually found it too much and had to give up. The consequence of all this was that at a very early age he came not so much to hate me as to develop a strong sense of inferiority, from which he continued to suffer and which ultimately turned into a more or less
unbridled hatred
that at times revealed itself quite openly. I could, for instance, run down to the village in three minutes, but it took him five. At school he was the most attentive pupil, and when the teacher called out his name he would jump up at once, whereas I was the most inattentive and usually did not hear my name called out, which naturally led to my being punished. Neither of us had friends during our first year at school, as we were not allowed to bring our classmates home and had to go straight back to Wolfsegg after school. But in later years, when we were allowed to bring friends home, we each had friends who were suited to our temperaments and differed as we did. My brother always slept soundly and was fully rested in the morning, but I suffered from sleeplessness, even as a child. I had the wildest and most exciting dreams—he did not. He took a long time to find a particular location on a map—I did not. I loved maps more than anything. I used to spread them out in front of me and go on long imaginary journeys, visiting the most famous cities and traveling the seas in my dream ships. My brother had quite different interests: he would crouch in the corner of the stable and watch the animals. When the Medrano Circus put up its tent in the village—we were five and six at the time—I went down to watch the circus people whenever I had a chance. I was particularly fond of the trapeze artists. For hours I would sit in a hidden corner, watching in admiration as they rehearsed their exciting
acts. My brother had no interest whatever in the circus. In winter I would watch the curlers on the ice until I was half frozen, longing to join in the game. At first I was strictly forbidden to, but I soon found a way around this prohibition and went down to the village on my own hook, as they say. I went down to the village whenever I could; as soon as I could walk I was fascinated by the village and by the new and quite different people I saw there. My brother did not share my interest and could never be persuaded to accompany me. This would have been a transgression, and at an early age he rejected the idea on principle, not daring to transgress. I thought nothing of calling at all the houses in the village, introducing myself and talking to the occupants. I made friends with them and observed how they spent their day, taking an interest in their work and their recreation. The more people I met on my forays into the village, which is more than two and a half miles long, the better it suited me. Above all I got to know the simple people and saw how they lived and worked and celebrated special occasions. Until my fourth or fifth year I had no idea that there were any other people outside Wolfsegg, but I soon discovered that there were hundreds, thousands, and millions of them. I visited the tradesmen and watched them at their work—the turner, the shoemaker, the butcher, the tailor. I visited poor people and was surprised to find how friendly they were to me, for I had always been led to believe they were intolerant—as my parents always described them—narrow-minded, unapproachable, stubborn, deceitful, and treacherous. But I discovered that they were kinder than we were up at Wolfsegg, that they were kind and approachable, unlike us, that they were cheerful, unlike us. And suddenly it seemed to me that it was
we
, not the village people, who were unapproachable, stubborn, deceitful, and treacherous. My parents had told me that the village was a dangerous place, but I discovered that it was not the least bit dangerous. I thought nothing of going in and out of all the doors and looking through all the windows. My curiosity knew no bounds. My brother never accompanied me on my expeditions. On the contrary, he reported them to my parents.