Pictor's Metamorphoses (19 page)

From that day on, Bird was never seen again. There was still a lot of talk about him; even today, after so many years, it has not yet been silenced; and in an Ostrogothian university town a book about him was published. If in the old days all sorts of legends about him were told, since the time of his disappearance Bird himself has become a legend, and soon there will be no one left who can attest that Bird ever actually existed, that he was once the benevolent spirit of the region, that a high price was put on his head, that he had been shot at. At some time in the future, when still another scholar researches this legend, all this will perhaps be labeled an invention of the popular imagination, accounted for, feature by feature, by the laws of mythmaking. For it cannot be denied that all over the world and in all ages there are beings who are perceived to be extraordinary, charming, and appealing, and whom many honor as benevolent spirits, because they make one think of a more beautiful, a freer, a more winged life than the one we lead. And the same thing always happens: the grandsons deride the good genies of their grandfathers, one day the extraordinary beings are hunted and shot dead, prices are put on their heads or their hides, and not long afterwards their existence turns into a legend, which with the wings of a bird flies ever further away.

No one can predict what forms all this Information about Bird will assume in the future. That Schalaster perished in a terrible manner, most probably a suicide, should be reported for the sake of completeness, but we will not permit ourselves to append any further commentary on this incident.

Nocturnal Games

D
ECADES HAVE PASSED
since I made a consistent practice of recalling my nightly dreams, mentally reproducing them, at times even writing them down; and using the method I learned back then, I would examine them for their meaning, or at least listen to them and track them down until something like a reminder, a sharpening of my instincts, a warning, or encouragement would result, depending on the circumstances, but in all cases a greater intimacy with the realms of dream, a better exchange between the conscious and the unconscious than one, as a rule, possesses. My acquaintance with a few books on the subject and my firsthand experience of undergoing psychoanalysis were more than a mere sensation, they were encounters with forces that were very real.

But just as happens with even the most intensive pursuit of knowledge, the most ingenious and most thrilling course of instruction through men or books, so, too, it happened, as the years passed, with this encounter with the world of dream and the unconscious: life went on, always making new demands and posing new questions; the highly unnerving and sensational nature of that initial encounter lost its novelty and its demand for commitment, the totality of the analytical experience could not go on being cultivated as an end in itself, it was put in its place, to some extent it was forgotten or else superseded by life's new demands, but without ever entirely losing its quiet efficacy and power; just as perhaps in the life of a young man, the first books he reads by Hölderlin, Goethe, Nietzsche, his first experiences with the opposite sex, his first awakening to social or political consciousness must be coordinated with his past body of experience.

*   *   *

S
INCE THAT TIME
I have grown old, but the ability to address myself through dreams and at times gently to be instructed or guided by them has never left me completely; but neither has the dream life ever again regained the pressing urgency and importance it once had for me. Since then, there have been times when I have remembered my dreams, alternating with others in which I have lost all trace of them by morning. Nonetheless, time and again, dreams continue to surprise me—and, to be sure, the dreams of others no less than my own—because of their indefatigability and the inexhaustibility of their creative and playful imagination, because of their simultaneously childlike and ingenious way of combining disparate elements, and because of their often enchanting humor.

As an artist I have also been influenced by a certain intimacy with the dream world and much brooding over the artistic aspects of the art of dreaming (yet another one of the arts which psychoanalysis has not yet properly understood, or dealt with more than in passing). In art I have always enjoyed playfulness; even as a boy and as a young man, I frequently and with great pleasure practiced a kind of surrealistic method of composition, mostly for myself alone; I still do so today—for example, in the early morning hours when I cannot sleep—but of course I don't write down these soap-bubble creations. By playing these games, and by reflecting on the dream's naïve sleights of hand and on surrealistic art's unnaïve ones—the partaking in which and the practice of which gives so much pleasure and requires so little effort—it has also become clear to me why, as a poet, I may have to forgo the practice of this kind of art. I allow myself to do it with a clear conscience only in the private sphere—during the course of my life I have made thousands of surrealistic verses and pronouncements, and still go on doing so, but the kind of artistic ethics and responsibility I have arrived at over the years would no longer allow me to employ this private and irresponsible technique in my serious oeuvre today.

Now, these
raisonnements
cannot be enlarged upon here. If once again I am concerning myself with the world of dreams, it is not with intentions, designs, and intellectual goals, but simply because within the last few days I have been stimulated by encounters with several peculiar dreams.

I had the first dream on the night of a day on which I had pains and great fatigue. I was severely depressed, my life worthless; and hindered in my repose by shooting pains in my limbs, I lay down and slept. And in this bad, sullen sleep I dreamed precisely what I in actuality was doing: I dreamed that I was lying in bed, sleeping heavily and badly, but in an unknown place, in a strange room and bed. I went on dreaming that in the strange room I awakened from my sleep; slowly, reluctantly, and fatigued I awakened, and through the veils of tiredness and a feeling of dizziness it took me a long time to become aware of my situation. Slowly my consciousness struggled and spiraled upward, slowly and grudgingly I conceded that I was now awake, unfortunately after a counterfeit, difficult, profitless sleep which had worn me out more than it refreshed me.

And so now (in the dream) I was awake, slowly opened my eyes, slowly raised myself up a little on my arms, which had gone to sleep and lost all sensation; through the strange window I saw gray daylight fall, and suddenly I was jolted, something disquieting went through me, something like anxiety or a bad conscience, and I hastily made a grab for my pocket watch to see what time it was. Sure enough, confound it, it was past ten, almost ten-thirty, and indeed for months now I had been a student or a guest at a Gymnasium, where I was diligently and heroically trying to make good on some old omission, and I wanted to attend the last classes. My God, it was ten-thirty, and I should have been in school at eight o'clock; and even if I could once again present my excuses to the headmaster as I had done just the other day, attributing my failure to the increasing impediments of old age—yes, his understanding was something I could count on—still, I had just missed the morning lecture and was not at all certain that I'd be well enough to attend school in the afternoon; and all the while the class went on, and the possibility of my going to it grew more and more doubtful. And now there suddenly appeared to be some kind of startling explanation for the fact that in these last couple of months since I had reenrolled in the Gymnasium, much to my dismay, I still had not had a single Greek lesson, and in my heavy briefcase, which was often so laborious to carry, I had never been able to find a Greek grammar. Oh, perhaps there was nothing in my noble resolution to make amends for my neglected duties to the world and to school, and to still make something of myself; and perhaps even the headmaster, who had always shown me so much understanding, and who also knew me, to some extent, from reading a few of my books, had for a long time or even from the outset been convinced of the absurdity of my undertaking. In the end, would it not perhaps be better to lay the watch aside, close my eyes again, and spend the entire morning in bed, perhaps the afternoon as well, and thereby admit that I had set out to do something impossible? In any case, there was no longer any point in pulling myself together for the morning, it was already wasted. And scarcely had I thought these thoughts than I awakened in reality, saw a thin ray of light coming from the window, and found myself in my own room and my own bed, knew that breakfast and a lot of mail were waiting for me downstairs, and reluctantly I got up from this sleep and this dream, in no way fortified, rather astonished and somewhat inclined to laugh at myself, because this ingenious dream had put me in front of a mirror and in so doing had made such sparing use of surrealistic artifice.

A few days later, I had scarcely let this dream—so realistic, so unpoetic, so unlike a fable—subside and had almost forgotten it, when another dream addressed itself to me, but this one was poetic and amusing, and not one of my own. Rather, it came from a woman I do not know, one of my readers who lived in some small town in northern Germany. She had had the dream some twelve years before, but had never forgotten it, and only now had it occurred to her to communicate it to me. I now quote the letter itself verbatim:

“No bigger than Tom Thumb, I was on a gardener's hat you were wearing. You were planting shrubs, and I knew that you were mixing earth with water and kneading the two together. I could not see this, the broad brim of the hat prevented my seeing. Before my eyes lay a wonderful terraced landscape. When you stooped down, I ran, somewhat anxiously, as if on an unsteady chain bridge, toward the back of your hat, so as not to slip off. And from time to time I had to take shelter under the bow on one side of the hatband, when one of your hands reached up menacingly to secure the hat on your head. I thought it was great fun that you hadn't the slightest inkling of my presence. My joy increased when the glorious song of a bird began to sound. In the dark foliage of a tree I saw the Firebird glowing and said softly to myself: ‘If only H. Hesse knew that it is the Firebird singing! He's thinking, it is Papageno.' In some way I took comfort from it all: the landscape, my dwarf existence on the huge hat, the song of the bird, your working in the garden, and even your being mistaken about the Firebird.”

Now, this really was quite a lovely dream, and also an amusing one. And because it was not one of my own I felt no impulse to understand and interpret it. I took nothing but pleasure in it, but later on I still thought, God alone knows whether or not it was Papageno!

As if this stranger's dream—which, from my standpoint, was so much prettier and more harmless than my own—had aroused my own capacity to dream or made it ambitious, immediately afterward I myself dreamed up a dream; to be sure, this one was not really beautiful or clever, but it was truly fantastic.

I was in the midst of a number of people on one of the upper floors of a large house, and I knew it was a theater in which
Steppenwolf
was to be performed; someone had adapted it as a play or an opera. Obviously, it was the premiere performance, to which I had been invited; and the proceedings on stage were familiar to me, but I could neither see nor hear them at all; I sat in a kind of niche, as if I were in the choir loft of a church, hidden behind the organ. There were quite a few of these niches up there; like so many trellises, they seemed to surround the actual auditorium, and now and then I would get up and go looking for a seat from which one could see the stage; but no such place could be found, we were sitting around rather like people who arrive too late and only know that behind the closed doors the performance goes on. But I knew the upcoming scenes were those on which the adaptors and producers had spared no expense on music, sets, or lighting, creating something which with loathing I term “grand theatrics,” something I would have liked to prevent. I began to feel uneasy. Then Dr. Korrodi came up to me smiling and said: “You can rest easy, no need to worry about an empty house.” I said: “That may be so, but all this theatrical to-do simply ruins the third act for me.”

There was no further discussion. Gradually it dawned on me that this curious piece of architecture, which one could not see over and which separated the actual theater from me, was an organ, and again I got going, trying to find my way around it in the hope of discovering a way into the auditorium. I did not succeed, but on the other side of this organ construction, which reminded me a great deal of a library, I came upon a piece of equipment, a machine, an apparatus, that to some extent resembled a bicycle; at least it had two large wheels of equal size, and above them was something like a saddle. And all at once it was clear to me: if you sat up there in the saddle and got the wheels turning, then, through some kind of tube, you could see as well as hear what was going on onstage.

This was a solution, and it made me feel better. But the dream offered nothing further in the way of resolution or satisfaction; it was content to have invented this ingenious machine, and it was happy to leave me standing in front of it. For, to reach the rather high saddle, placed well up above the wheels, certainly did not seem an easy thing to do, except for young people who, moreover, were cyclists. And the saddle was never empty; whenever I got ready to start climbing into it, there was always somebody there ahead of me. And so I stood and stared at the saddle and the wondrous tube, through whose narrow shaft one could see as well as hear what was going on in the theater, where all the while the third act was being ruined by the experts. I was neither upset nor sad, really, but it seemed to me that some kind of hoax or deception had been perpetrated, and although the dramatization of
Steppenwolf
throughout was not to my liking, I would have given something to have succeeded in getting into the theater itself, or at least up into the saddle above the wonder-working tube. Nothing, however, came of it.