Old Masters (14 page)

Jewish hotel, Jews and Hungarians, especially Hungarian Jews,
that is what has made the hotel so agreeable to me over the years, he said, I do not even mind the Persian carpet dealers who pursue their carpet trade at the Ambassador. But don't you also think that gradually it is becoming dangerous to sit at the Ambassador, could not a bomb explode there at any moment, seeing that the hotel is constantly populated by Israeli Jews and by Egyptian Arabs? Good Lord, I wouldn't mind being blown up, so long as it was instantaneous. Spending the morning at the Kunsthistorisches Museum and the afternoon at the Ambassador, and having a good lunch at the Astoria or the Bristol, that is what I appreciate. Naturally I could not lead a life like this from
The Times
alone, he pretended,
The Times
more or less just sends me my pocket money to Austria. But the shares are not doing well, the stock market is a disaster. And life in Austria is getting more expensive every day. On the other hand I have calculated that, provided no so-called
Third World War
breaks out, I can without any problem easily live for another two decades on what I have. That is reassuring, even though it all shrinks from day to day. You are the typical private scholar, Atzbacher, he said to me, indeed you are the quintessence of the private scholar, you are altogether the quintessence of the private
person,
utterly out of step with our time, Reger said. That is what I was thinking again today as I climbed those frightful stairs up to the Bordone Room, that you are
the genuine and typical private person,
probably the only one I know and I know a lot of people who are all private persons but
you are the typical, the genuine one.
The way you can bear working for decades on a single book without publishing the least part of it, I could not do that. I must enjoy the publication of my work at least once a month, he said, this habit is an indispensable need and that is why I am happy with
The Times
for regularly meeting me in this habit and moreover paying me for it. After all, he said, I enjoy writing, those brief works of art which are never longer than two pages, which always means three and a half columns in
The Times,
he said. Have you never considered publishing at least a minor section of your work? he asked; some fragment, it all sounds so excellent, your hints about your work, on the other hand it is also a
supreme joy not to publish, nothing at all,
he said. But some time surely you will want to know what effect your work produces, he said, and you will publish at least part of your work. On the one hand it is magnificent to hold back, as it were, with the work of a lifetime and not to publish it, and on the other it is just as magnificent to publish. I am a congenital publishing person, while you are a congenital non-publishing person. Probably your work and yourself, and hence your work in relation to yourself and you in relation to your work, are condemned to non-publication, because surely you are suffering all the time by working on your subject without publishing your work, that is the truth, I think, you just will not admit it, not even to yourself, that you are suffering from this, as I call it, non-publication compulsion. Myself, I would suffer from not publishing my writing. But of course your writing cannot be compared to my writing. Admittedly I do not know any writer, or at least any writing person, who could, for any length of time, bear
not
to publish what he has written, who would not be curious to know the public's reaction to what he has written, I am always consumed with curiosity, Reger said, even though I always say I am not consumed with curiosity and it does not interest me. I do not care about the opinion of the public, I am in fact consumed by curiosity and I am lying when I say I am not consumed with curiosity when in fact I am consumed with curiosity, I admit it, I am always consumed with curiosity, ceaselessly, he said. I want to know what people are saying about what I have written, he said, I want to know all the time about everyone, even though I keep saying I am not interested in what people are saying, and that it does not interest me, that it leaves me cold, yet I am consumed with curiosity all the time and wait for it with the tensest expectation, he said. I am lying when I say I am not interested in public opinion, I am not interested in my readers, I am lying when I say I do not wish to know what people think about what I have written or that I do not read what is being written about it. I am lying when I say this, lying most shamelessly, he said, because I am ceaselessly consumed with curiosity to know what people are saying about what I have written, I want to know it always and at all times, and I am affected by it, by whatever people are saying about what I have written, that is the truth. Of course I only hear what
The Times
people say about it and what they say is not always only flattering, Reger said, but as far as you are concerned, as a philosophical writer, as it were, surely you should be just as much consumed with curiosity to know what people are saying about your philosophical writings, what they think about them, I just do not understand you not publishing your writings at least in excerpts, if only to discover for once what the public, or, as it were, the competent public, thinks about them, even though at the same time I have to admit that there is no such thing as a competent public, there is no such thing as competence, there never was and there never will be; but does it not depress you to write and write and to think and think and to write down what you think and write it down again, and the whole thing without an echo? he said. You are bound to miss a lot through your obstinate non-publishing, he said, maybe even something crucial. You have been working at your opus for decades now and you say you are writing this work
solely for yourself, that is appalling,
no one writes a work for himself, if someone says he is writing only for himself then that is a lie, but you know just as well as I do that there are no greater or worse liars that those who write, the world, as long as it exists, has not known any greater liars than those who write, none more vain and none more false, Reger said. If you knew what a frightful night I have had again, time and again I had to get up with frightful cramp from my toes upwards through my calves all the way to my thorax, from those diuretic tablets I have to take because of my heart. I find myself in a vicious circle, he said. Every night is a horror to me, whenever I think now I can go to sleep I get those cramps and have to get up and pace up and down my room. All night I have more or less paced up and down and when I have been able to go to sleep I was immediately wakened by those nightmares I mentioned to you. In these nightmares I dream of my wife, it is terrible. I have had these nightmares ever since her death, ceaselessly, I have them every night. Believe me, I always very nearly think that it might have been better if, with my wife's death, I had put an end to things myself. I cannot forgive myself for that cowardice. This continuous and by now pathological self-pity is unbearable to me, but I cannot shake myself out of it, he said. If at least there were a decent concert at the Musikverein, he said, but the winter programme is terrible, they are only doing stale and hackneyed things, forever those Mozart concertos and Brahms concertos and Beethoven concertos which by now get on my nerves, all those Mozart and Brahms and Beethoven cycles have become insufferable. And at the Opera dilettantism is rampant. If the Opera were at least interesting, but at the moment it is totally uninteresting, bad repertoire, bad singers and a miserable orchestra to boot. Think of the Philharmonic a mere two or three years ago, he said, and what are they today,
a
run-of-the-mill-orchestra.
Just imagine, last week I heard the
Winterreise
sung by a Leipzig bass, I won't mention his name, it would not actually mean anything to you, after all you are not interested in
theoretical music
at all, you are lucky, he said, that bass was a disaster. Always inevitably
The Crow,
he said, it is insufferable. Such a recital is not worth dressing for, I regretted my clean shirt.
I do not write in The Times about such rubbish,
he said.
Mahler, Mahler,
Mahler,
he said,
that too is enervating.
But the Mahler vogue has passed its peak, thank God, he said, Mahler really is the most overrated composer of the century. Mahler was an excellent conductor, but he is a mediocre composer, like all good conductors, like, for example, Hindemith, and like Klemperer. The Mahler vogue was something awful for me all these years, the whole world was in a positive Mahler delirium, it was unbearable. And did you know that my wife's grave, where I too will be buried, is right next to Mahler's grave? Oh well, at the cemetery it really is a matter of indifference whom one is lying next to, even to lie next to Mahler does not worry me.
Das
Lied
von der Erde
with Kathleen Ferrier, perhaps, Reger said, anything else by Mahler I reject, it is not worth anything, it does not stand up to closer examination. By comparison Webern is truly a genius, not to mention Schoenberg and Berg. No, Mahler was an aberration. Mahler is the typical
art nouveau
fashion composer, needless to say a lot worse than Bruckner, who has quite a few kitschy similarities with Mahler. At this time of year Vienna has nothing to offer to a person with intellectual interests, and unfortunately very little to one with musical interests, he said. But of course the foreigners who come to the city are easily satisfied, they go to the Opera regardless of what is on, even if it is the worst rubbish, and they attend the most ghastly concerts and clap their hands sore and, as you can see, they even stream into the Natural Science Museum and into the Kunsthistorisches Museum. Civilized humanity's hunger for culture is enormous, the perversity reflected by this state of affairs is worldwide. Vienna is a cultural concept, Reger said, even though there has virtually been no culture in Vienna for a long time, and one day there will really be no culture of any kind left in Vienna, but it will nevertheless be a cultural concept even then. Vienna will always be a cultural concept, it will the more stubbornly be a cultural concept the less culture there is in it. And soon there will really be no culture left in this city, he said. These progressively more stupid governments which we have here in Austria will gradually see to it that soon there is no culture of any kind left in Austria, only philistinism, Reger said. The atmosphere here in Austria is getting ever more anti-cultural and everything points to the fact that before very long Austria will be a totally culture-less country. But I shall not live to see that depressing end of the trend,
you
may,
Reger said, you may live to see it, but I won't, I am too old now to live to see the final decline and actual culture-lessness in Austria. The light of culture will be extinguished in Austria, believe me, the dull-wittedness which has been at the helm in this country for so long will before long extinguish the light of Culture. Then it will be dark in Austria, Reger said. But you can say what you like in this respect, no one will listen to you, you will be regarded as a fool. What use is there in my writing in
The Times
what I think of Austria and what, sooner or later hut within the foreseeable future, is happening to Austria? No use, Reger said, not the least. A pity I won't live to see it, I mean the Austrians fumbling about in the dark because their light of culture has gone out. A pity I won't be able to participate, he said. You may wonder why I asked you to come here again today. There is a reason. But I won't tell you the reason until later. I do not know
how
to tell you the reason. I do not know. I think about it all the time and I do not know. I have been here for hours, thinking about it and I do not know. Irrsigler is my witness, Reger said, I have been sitting here on the settee for hours, wondering
how
to tell you
why
I
have asked you to come to the Kunsthistorisches Museum
again today. Later, later,
Reger said,
give me time.
We commit a crime and are unable to report it quite simply without ado, Reger said. Give me time to calm down, he said, I have already told Irrsigler but I cannot tell you yet, he said, it really is disgraceful. By the way, what I said to you yesterday about the so-called
Tempest Sonata
is certainly interesting and I am also certain that what I said to you about that so-called
Tempest Sonata
is correct, but it is probably more interesting to me than it is to you. This is what always happens when we talk about a subject because the subject fascinates us, but it fascinates us more than the person on whom, when all is said and done, we force it with all the frantic ruthlessness we are capable of. I forced these views on the so-called
Tempest Sonata
upon you yesterday, that is a fact. In connection with my lecture on the Art of the Fugue, he said, I found it necessary also to examine the
Tempest Sonata
and yesterday I was feeling in a positively ideal state for it and I made
you the victim of my
musicological
passion,
as indeed I very frequently make you the victim of my musicological passion because I have no other person equally suitable for it. I very often think,
you have come at just the right moment, what would I do without you,
he said. Yesterday I troubled you with the
Tempest Sonata,
who knows what piece of music I may trouble you with the day after tomorrow, he said, there are so many musicological subjects in my head which I am most anxious to elucidate; but I need a listener, a victim as it were, for my compulsive musicological talking, he said, because my continuous talk about musicological topics is certainly
a kind of
musicological
compulsive talk.
Everybody has his own, his