Old Masters (20 page)

art nouveau flat,
with actually masses of Klimts and Schieles and Gerstls and Kokoschkas hanging on the walls,
all of them pictures my wife valued greatly,
as Reger said on one occasion,
but which always profoundly repelled me.
Every single room in the Regers' Singerstrasse flat had been transformed into a real work of art about the turn of the century
by a famous Slovak artist in wood, I do not really believe that there is another flat in Vienna, where Slovak woodwork art has been applied
with
such skill or with such very high demands of craftsmanship or so totally successfully,
dear Atzbacher. Reger himself, as he keeps saying, does not in the least appreciate the so-called
art nouveau
style, he detests it,
because the whole of the art nouveau style is nothing but kitsch
but, as he kept saying, he enjoyed
the cosiness of the
Singerstrasse
flat
of his wife,
the
réussis
proportions of all the rooms
in it, above all the dimensions of his study, but since, as mentioned before, he had no taste whatever for the so-called
art nouveau
style, he always appreciated only
the comfort of the
Singerstrasse
flat,
which had always been
ideal for the two of us,
but not its furnishings. On my first visit to the Regers' Singerstrasse flat, when Reger received me because his wife had gone to Prague, he conducted me briefly through the whole flat,
this then is where I exist,
he said then,
you see, here in these rooms, which suit me eminently, even though this hideous uncomfortable furniture is not to my taste at all.
All this is my wife's taste, not mine, Reger said then, and when I looked at the paintings on the walls he would say time and again,
ah
yes, this I believe is a
Schiele,
ah
yes, this I believe is a
Klimt,
ah
yes, this I believe is a
Kokoschka. Turn-of-the-century
painting is nothing but kitsch and has no appeal for me,
he said several times,
whereas my wife has always been attracted by it, even if not actually fascinated, but attracted, that is the right expression,
Reger said.
Schiele
perhaps, but not
Klimt; Kokoschka
yes,
Gerstl
no,
these were his observations.
Reputedly
Loos,
reputedly
Hoffmann, he said, when I said surely this table was by Adolf Loos, surely this chair was by Josef Hoffmann. You know, Reger said, I have always been repelled by things which are fashionable at the moment, and Loos and Hoffmann are so fashionable now that
quite naturally I am repelled by them.
And Schiele and Klimt, those kitsch-mongers, are the height of fashion today, which is why Klimt and Schiele basically so repel me. People nowadays listen predominantly to Webern and Schoenberg and Berg and those who ape them, and also to Mahler, that repels me. Anything in fashion has always repelled me. Most probably I also suffer from what I call
art selfishness:
where art is concerned I wish to have everything for myself alone, I want to possess my Schopenhauer for myself, my Pascal, my Novalis and my fervently loved Gogol,
I alone
want to possess these art products, these inspired artistic eccentricities,
I alone
want to possess Michelangelo, Renoir, Goya, he said, I can scarcely bear the thought that someone else, apart from me, possesses and enjoys the products of these geniuses, the very idea is unbearable to me that, apart from me, another person even appreciates Janáček, or Martinů or Schopenhauer or Descartes, I find this almost unbearable,
I want to be the only one, that of course is a dreadful attitude,
Reger said then.
I am a possessive thinker,
Reger said then.
I am a possessive thinker,
Reger said in his flat then.
I should like to think that
Goya
painted only for me, that
Gogol
and
Goethe
wrote only for me,
that
Bach
composed only for me.
As this is a fallacy and moreover a piece of abysmal meanness I am basically always unhappy, I am sure you understand, Reger said then. Even though this is nonsense, Reger said then, when I read a book I still have the feeling and the belief that the book was written for me alone, when I view a picture I have the feeling and the belief that it was painted only for me, or that the composition I hear was composed only for me. Naturally I read myself and listen and view myself into a great error, but I do so with very great enjoyment, Reger said then. Here in this chair, Reger said to me then, pointing to what he called a
hideous Loos chair, which Loos incidentally designed in Brussels and had manufactured in Brussels,
I introduced my wife to the Art of the Fugue thirty years ago. The
hideous Loos chair
still stands in the same spot. And here, on this
hideous Loos settee
—
he had invited me to sit down on this
hideous Loos settee
which stood before a window looking out on to the Singerstrasse — I read Wieland to my wife for a whole year,
Wieland,
that great but underrated figure in German literature,
Wieland
whom
Goethe
winkled out of
Weimar,
with
Schiller
playing a distasteful part in it,
Reger said; after a year my wife was a
Wieland
expert, after a single year!
Reger exclaimed then. And here on this
Loos footstool, which is as uncomfortable as it is hideous,
reputedly this footstool was also designed by
that unbearably
grand-gesture
man Loos,
my wife would sit and between one and two every morning, during sixtysix and sixty-seven, read me the whole of Kant. To start with I had the greatest difficulty in introducing my wife to the world of literature and of philosophy and of music, Reger said then. It is obvious, surely, that literature is not conceivable without philosophy or the other way round, or philosophy without music or literature without music or the other way round, he said, it took years before my wife understood this, Reger said at the Singerstrasse flat then. I had to start from the very beginning with my wife, even though, if only through her origins, she was correspondingly highly educated when I met her.
At first I thought that living together would be impossible, but then it was possible after all,
Reger said,
because my wife subordinated herself, naturally,
because that was the prerequisite of our living together, which eventually I was able to describe as an ideal living together. A woman such as my wife only experiences difficulty in learning during the first few years of such a schooling, thereafter she learns ever more easily, Reger said. On this
uncomfortable and hideous Loos footstool my
wife, in a manner of speaking, saw the light of philosophy, Reger said at the Singerstrasse flat then. For years we pursue the wrong road of illuminating a person before, from one moment to the next, we
perceive
the correct one, from then on everything moves very quickly, from then on my wife comprehended everything very quickly, but of course I could have continued to work on her for certainly some years if not decades, Reger said at the Singerstrasse flat then. We take a wife and we do not know why we have taken her, surely not just so she should be a nuisance to us with her everlasting domestic fussing, in what is simply her feminine way, Reger said at the Singerstrasse flat then, surely we take her because we wish to acquaint her with the true value of life, to instruct her on what life can be
if conducted intellectually.
Of course we must not make the mistake of drilling intellectuality into the head of such a woman, as I had attempted initially and was naturally bound to fail, here too it is circumspection that leads to results, Reger said at the Singerstrasse flat then. Anything my wife had loved before we met she stopped loving once I had enlightened her, except for that
art nouveau
hysteria, this so-called
artnouveau,
this repulsive kitsch art, this nauseating
art-nouveau
aberration of taste: there I stood no chance. I did of course succeed in gradually curing her of false, which means worthless, literature and of false and worthless music, Reger said, and I introduced her to
essential sections of world philosophy.
The female head is the most obstinate, Reger said at the Singerstrasse flat then, we believe it to be accessible whereas in fact it is inaccessible. Before I married my wife she went on a lot of nonsensical journeys, Reger said then, which subsequently she no longer did, she simply had, as have most women nowadays, a travel mania, one place today, another tomorrow, that is their slogan yet basically they experience nothing, they see nothing, they bring back with them nothing but an empty purse. After our wedding my wife made no more journeys, Reger said, only
those journeys of the mind,
on which I accompanied her, we travelled through Schopenhauer and through Nietzsche and through Descartes and through Montaigne and through Pascal, and always for several years, Reger said. Here, you see, Reger said at the Singerstrasse flat then while sitting down on a chair, a
hideous
Otto Wagner
chair,
on this
hideous
Otto Wagner
chair
my
wife confessed to me that, although I had instructed her in Schleiermacher for a whole year, she had not understood Schleiermacher. As, however, in the course of that instruction on Schleiermacher I had taken a dislike to Schleiermacher myself so that suddenly I no longer had the slightest interest in Schleiermacher myself, I quite simply took note that she had not understood Schleiermacher and no longer concerned myself with Schleiermacher; in such a situation we must quite simply and quite ruthlessly brush aside, as the saying goes, any philosopher whom our wife fails to understand, as for instance Schleiermacher, and move on. I immediately embarked on an instruction in Herder, this we both found to be a relaxation, Reger said at the Singerstrasse flat then. After the death of my wife I considered moving out of our joint flat, but then I did not move out, quite simply because I am too old for a move. A move would be beyond my strength. Naturally, two rooms would be sufficient, Reger said, but when one can no longer move out of a flat one has to make do with ten or twelve, as in the case of the Singerstrasse flat. Everything in this flat reminds me of my wife, Reger said, no matter where I look, she is always standing here, sitting there, coming towards me from this room or that, it is terrible even though, at the same time, it is heart-rending, it is in fact heart-rending, Reger said. That time, on my first visit to the Singerstrasse flat, while his wife was still alive, he said to me while gazing down on to the Singerstrasse, you know, Atzbacher, there is nothing I fear more than finding myself suddenly left by my wife and alone, the most frightful thing that could happen to me would be her dying and leaving me alone. But my wife is in good health and will survive me by many years, Reger said then. When we love a person as tenderly as I do my wife we cannot imagine their death, we cannot even bear the thought of it, Reger said then. When I was at the Singerstrasse flat for the second time it was to collect an old volume of Spinoza which he had obtained for me at a more favourable price than normal, that is not through an official bookshop but
through an illegal dealer,
and as soon as I stepped into the Singerstrasse flat he made me sit down in the nearest chair, also a
hideous Loos chair,
and disappeared into his library, from where shortly afterwards he reappeared with a volume of Novalis maxims. I shall now read you Novalis maxims for an hour, he said to me, and, while I had to remain seated on the
hideous Loos chair,
he remained standing and for an actual hour read Novalis maxims to me. I have loved Novalis from the start, he said, when he had closed the book with the Novalis maxims after an hour, and I still love him today. Novalis is the poet whom I have loved all my life always in the same way and always with the same intensity, more than any other. As time went on the lot of them, more or less, invariably, got on my nerves, profoundly disappointed me, revealed themselves as nonsensical or as pointless or, just as often, ultimately insignificant and useless, but there was none of this in the case of Novalis. I never believed I could love a poet who was at the same time a philosopher, but I love Novalis, I have always loved him and at all times and I shall love him in the future too with the same sincerity with which I have always loved him, Reger said then. All philosophers age with time, not so Novalis, Reger said then. But it is surely strange that my wife never even had a liking for Novalis, not even a
liking,
whereas I have always
totally
loved Novalis. There were a great many things I was able to convince my wife about, in time, but not about Novalis, although Novalis is the one author she would have gained from most, he said. At first she refused to go to the Kunsthistorisches Museum with me, Reger now said, she resisted, so to speak, tooth and nail, but eventually she came here with me after all, with the same regularity as myself, and I am convinced that, if she had survived me instead of me surviving her, as is the case now, she would have come to the Kunsthistorisches Museum on her own again, without me, just as I am doing now, alone, without her. Reger again looked at the
White-Bearded