The Dedalus Book of German Decadence (26 page)

‘Well, then for God’s sake why doesn’t he take up a bohemian existence? He seems to have artistic tendencies.’

Dimitri nodded sadly in my direction. ‘Because he
might
have done everything, he became nothing.’

‘But only because he believed that everything was too late for him.’

‘Yes, but this erroneous idea is necessarily tied in with his destiny. Even if he started work
now
he would only collapse into the most lamentable mediocrity.’

Towards eleven o’clock a fanfare called us down to the vestibule where armchairs were ranged in a semicircle before a curtain. Behind this curtain the rooms had had certain walls removed to form a wide stage.

The play was Oskar Panizza’s
The Council of Love
, performed in a lavish fashion. This had recently been confiscated by the public prosecutor and the author himself had been found guilty of blasphemy on ninety-nine charges and given a jail sentence. When an actor stepped forward and announced the play in a salacious prologue the audience burst forth in loud and demonstrative acclamation.

The author could not have found a more appreciative audience for his work than these overheated drones, drunk with indulgence and lubriciousness and desirous of draining the last tingling drop of this piquant distillation. As soon as the curtain rose, and the dainty cherubs had excelled themselves in blasphemy and lustfulness the hall reverberated with gusts of shrieking laughter and wild bursts of applause. When God, the Virgin Mary and Jesus appeared a tremendous cry of ‘Bravo!’ was heard which rose to a wild tumult when the eternal mysteries were caricatured. The second act, which represented an orgy in the papal palace to the strains of the
Missa solemnis
with puppet-show and a ballet of naked courtesans, whipped up the passions of the spectators to a paroxysm of frenzy. Roaring and screaming they imitated the actors’ performance; chairs were overturned as ladies fled the room. The more devoted members of the audience objected to this interruption and feared that the performance might be terminated: the farce, however, continued unabated. The lascivious titillation remained at its peak; only towards the end, when Syphilis, with mask and make-up, was sent by the devil for the welfare of the human rabble, did a breath of foreboding and horror steal through the exquisite company.

After the curtain had closed over this divine tragedy the wildest bacchanal broke out upstairs, the actors participating.
I heard that Dmitri had suddenly been called away, and would have preferred to run away myself had not the thought of Erich’s demise not held me back. Fortunately I found myself amongst an elegant collection of beautifully bound books and poems by Swinburne, Mallarmé and Hugo von Hofmannsthal. The latter, I learned, was the poet of those lines which Erich had praised before me and Amaryllis some while before.

Each room was filled with diabolical uproar. Beneath the cacophony of the instruments which endlessly blared out dance music there was roaring, screaming and people dancing the can-can. Nobody knew where Erich von Lüttwitz was hiding. Some thought they had seen him during the performance; others claimed that he was lying, totally inebriated, before a picture of Venus. A search for him began, in all the corners, under all the tables, first playfully, but then with mounting horror.

Gradually the house became quieter: the musicians were ordered to stop playing. Small groups gathered, whispering and conferring. Only a few concealed the unbridled thrill they experienced at the prospect of an imminent and terrible surprise, just as the rabble in Rome had anticipated the last fight of the gladiators. Then the rumour spread: Erich Lüttwitz had shot himself at two o’clock before his mirror with two small pistols. ‘Where? Where?’ was the anxious question. ‘Probably in his bedroom, or in the dressing-room.’ ‘Upstairs, then? On the second floor? Someone should go and look.’

Now they were all very sober and abashed. A few of the girls burst into tears and demanded to be taken home. Other figures made their uncertain way surreptitiously to the door. I sat alone, bathed in sweat and unable to move my limbs, watching the scene. I was listless, in the sober knowledge that the drama was now over and nothing could hinder the unknown catastrophe. Whatever the details might be did not concern me; I would rather not know. Envoys, servants and guests came back from the rooms on the second floor. Nothing extraordinary had been found. They searched the whole house meticulously for about an hour. Erich Lüttwitz had disappeared without trace.

It was empty, silent and dark. The guests departed without a word. One of the last, I stepped over into the fog of the streets.

Extract from Kurt Martens:
Roman aus der Décadence
Berlin, 1898, pp 247–257.

The dead man lay, alone and naked, on a white table in the large room, amid the oppressive whiteness, the cruel austerity of the operating theatre, which still seemed to tremble with the screams of unending torments.

The midday sun was spread over him like a sheet, awakening the cadaveric lividity of his forehead; it conjured a bright green from his belly, blowing it up like a huge water-bag.

His body resembled the gigantic, iridescent cup of a mysterious flower from the Indian jungle which someone had shyly laid beside the altar of Death.

Magnificent blues and reds grew along his loins, and in the heat the great wound below his navel slowly burst like a red furrow, giving off a dreadful odour.

The doctors entered. Two amiable men in white coats and gold pince-nez, with the duelling scars of the student fraternities.

They went over to the dead man and looked at him, with interest, discussing medical matters.

Out of the white cupboards they took their dissecting instruments, white boxes full of hammers, bone-saws with strong teeth, files, horrible cases full of forceps, little holders full of huge needles which looked like curved vulture’s beaks, eternally screaming for flesh.

They began their horrible task. They resembled hideous torturers; the blood streamed over their hands, and they thrust them even farther into the cold corpse and took out the contents, like white cooks drawing a goose.

The intestines twisted themselves round their arms like yellowish-green snakes, and the faeces dribbled down their coats, a warm, putrid liquid. They slit open the bladder; inside, the urine shimmered like yellow wine. They poured it out into great bowls; it had a pungent, acrid smell, like ammoniac.

But the dead man slept on. Patiently he allowed himself to be tugged this way and that, to be dragged by the hair this way and that; he slept on.

And as the hammer-blows thundered against his head, a dream, one last scrap of love, awoke within him, like a torch shining out into his darkness.

Outside the window a huge, broad sky opened up, filled with little white clouds floating in the light, in the quiet of the afternoon, like little white gods. And the swallows circled high up in the blue, quivering in the warm July sun.

The black blood of death ran over the blue decay of his forehead. In the heat it evaporated to form a ghastly cloud, and the decomposition of death crept over him with its colourful claws. His skin began to disintegrate, his belly turned white, like that of an eel, under the greedy fingers of the doctors, who bathed their arms up to the elbows in the moist flesh.

Decomposition drew the dead man’s mouth apart, he seemed to be smiling, he was dreaming of a happy star, of a fragrant summer’s evening. His liquescent lips quivered, as if at a fleeting kiss.

‘How I love you. I have loved you so much. Shall I tell you how much I love you? The way you walked through the poppy field, a fragrant poppy flame yourself, you had drunk in the whole evening. And your dress, billowing round your ankles, was a wave of fire in the setting sun. But your head was inclined in the light, and your hair was still burning, still ablaze from all my kisses.

So you walked, and kept on turning round to look back at me. And for a long time the lantern in your hand still swayed like a glowing rose in the twilight.

I will see you again tomorrow. Here, below the window of the chapel, here, where the light of the candles falls down, turning your hair into a forest of gold, here, where the narcissi rub their heads against your ankles, tenderly, like delicate kisses.

I will see you again, every evening at the hour of twilight. We will never leave each other. How I love you! Shall I tell you how much I love you?’

And the dead man quivered gently with bliss on his white mortuary table as the metal chisels in the hands of the doctors broke open the bones of his temples.

Georg Heym: ‘Die Sektion’ in
Der Dieb. Ein Novellenbuch,
Rowohlt, Leipzig, 1913.

How can you deny, my dearest, that creatures exist – neither humans, nor plants – strange creatures which spring from the perverse pleasures of absurd ideas?

You know, my gentle darling, that the law is good, as is that which is strictly normal. The great God is good who created these norms, these rules and stipulations. And good is the man who respects these laws, who treads the paths of humility and patience, following faithfully the path of the God of goodness.

But the Prince who hates goodness is of another kind. He shatters the laws and the norms. He creates – and this you must understand –
against nature.

He is evil, he is wicked. And wicked is the man who follows him, for he is a child of Satan.

It is evil – evil in the extreme – to interfere with the eternal laws, to tear them with impious hand from their everlasting foundation.

The evil one may do this, for Satan helps him, Satan, who is a powerful Lord: he creates according to his own proud destiny. He may do such things as shatter the laws, reverse the natural order and stand it on its head. But let him beware: it is deception and blind illusion that he creates. It rears up, and grows into the skies, but ultimately it collapses and buries in its fall the arrogant knave who conceived it.

*        *        *        *

His Excellency Jakob ten Briken, doctor of medicine, professor and Privy Councillor created the strange girl –
against nature.
He created her, he alone, even if the thought belonged to another. And this creature, whom they christened and called
Mandra Gora
, grew up and lived like a normal human being. What she touched, turned to gold and where she gazed, all senses laughed in exultation. But whomsoever her poisoned breath defiled, his senses screamed in pain, and from the ground on which her dainty feet had trod there sprang the pale flowers of death. One man struck her dead, the man who first thought her into existence: Frank Braun, the man who stood apart from life.

It was not for you, my blonde little sister, that I wrote this book. Your eyes are blue and good, and know nothing of sin. Your days are like the heavy blossoms of blue wistaria, dropping gently upon a soft carpet: thus my gentle footsteps quietly pass through the sun-dappled arbour of your tender days. It was not for you, my blonde child, the lovely sister of my dream-still days, that I wrote this book.

But for you I wrote it, for the wild, sinful sister of my torrid nights. When darkness falls, when the cruel sea devours the lovely radiance of the sun, a quick, poisonous shaft twitches across the waves. This is the first, quick laughter of sin, darting at the timid day’s fear of death. And sin rears up above the silent waters, ever higher, and exults in flaming, ochre, crimson, deep violet colours. And sin breathes through the depth of night, spewing her venomous breath through all the land.

You would feel happy in her hot breath. Your eyes widen, and your young breasts rise in insolence. Your nostrils tremble, your clammy hands spread wide. The decent veils of gentle mornings fall, and the serpent rears from the stygian womb of night. Then, sister, your wild soul rears, rejoicing in vileness, replete with poisons. And from torment and blood, from kisses and degradation, your soul exults and shrieks – through all the heavens and all the hells.

Sister of my sins: I wrote this book for you.

[…]

The Princess was asking the Professor about his latest experiments. Would she be able to come again and look at the remarkable frogs, the amphibians and the pretty monkeys? Of course she could come. She should also look at the new breed of roses, at his villa in Mehlemer, also the new arbour of camelias which the gardener was planting.

But the Princess found the frogs and monkeys far more interesting than roses and camelias. And so he began to tell her about his experiments in transferring genes, and with artificial insemination. He told her that he had just made a pretty little frog with two heads, and another with fourteen eyes on its back. He explained how he cut the genes out of a tadpole and transferred them to another individual. And how the cells merrily developed in the new body and subsequently spawned forth heads and tails, eyes and legs. He told her about his experiments with monkeys, told her that he had two long-tailed monkeys whose virginal mother, who was now suckling them, had never seen a male.

She found this particularly interesting. She wanted to know all the details, and desired to know everything that he did; he had to translate the terms in Latin and Greek into basic German. And the Professor revelled in indecent expressions and gestures. Saliva dripped from the corners of his mouth and dribbled over his heavy, pendulous bottom lip. He enjoyed this game, this babbling coprolalia, savouring lubriciously the sound of indecent expressions. And then, when he had arrived at a particularly repulsive word he threw in ‘Your Highness’, and enjoyed the prurient tingle of the contrast.

But she hung upon his every work, flushed, excited, almost trembling, and drew through every pore this brothel-like atmosphere which cloaked itself in the rarefied aura of scientific discourse.

‘Do you only fertilize monkeys, Professor?’ she asked breathlessly. ‘No’, he replied, ‘rats and guinea pigs as well. Would you like to be present, Your Highness, when I  …’ He lowered his voice, and almost spoke in a whisper.