Peter Altenberg - Telegrams of the Soul

“Good morning, Sir, how’s the world treating you?!” I said to a stranger strolling up the “Upper Semmering Pathway” in a top hat.

“Very well indeed in this lovely mountain terrain; but from where, may I ask, do you know me?”

“I know you like the back of my hand since the day you were born, as I see you’ve donned a top hat here—.”

“I owe that to my position in the world, my good man—.”

“I was immediately struck by that too, that you owe something or other to someone or other—!”

“The ‘most perfect woman’ on earth came to see me today at five P.M. at the café! Miss Mitzi Thumb.”

“Oh, I already discovered that number, two years before you on the Lido, Hotel Excelsior. So don’t flatter yourself in that regard!”

“Discovered, discovered? How did you accomplish such a feat? Wherein did your discovery manifest itself?!”

“Manifest itself?! It manifested itself quite simply in that I saw her in her silk bathing singlet with the red patent leather belt, and was enchanted by her perfection!”

“So that’s what you call discovery!? You kept it to yourself, swallowed your enchantment, deliberately made sure no one else noticed, especially not the lady on account of whom your pitifully cowardly instinct for self-preservation compels you to restrain yourself! You did nothing for this discovered perfection, just turned your head away from such splendor, which could only rock the boat of your paltry relationship! Do you know what it means to discover?!? To discover means to beat the drum for someone so that the whole world absolutely must take notice; it means to go all out for her so that everyone else grows pale, sick and poisoned with envy; to scream, cry and declaim, to disavow, demean, blot out and obliterate all others! That is: an exceptional, singular, complete discovery!”

“Peter, you’re the carnival barker of life! Not everybody is so inclined. It’s a profession like any other. But you have to have the nerve for it. You’ve got it.”

“Discovery means: to make the blind see, the deaf hear, to make the callous feel, and turn the greedy into squanderers! It means: to take the gamble that this goddess you discovered turns her attention to those who without you would never have ‘discovered’ her. It means: to see yourself all too soon abused and abandoned, the sole mark of gratitude that the discovered one will dish out! To suffer the destiny of the discoverer, ignominious as it is, that’s: discovery!”

Is it already the preliminary sign of a persecution complex if I take along on a trip twelve of my special mother-of-pearl shirt buttons, just in case? This premonition of a possible catastrophe concerning my perfectly flawless brand new shirt?! In any case, the brain that does not concern itself under such circumstances with this distressing eventuality is the healthier one, the less irritable, the less upsetable by life’s little ups and downs.

The obsession with “possible unpleasantries in the coming days” is indeed a consequence of persecution complex, weakening our resilience for life. Consequently every truly discerning soul suffers from persecution complex. He is always and in every situation a profound pessimist. Only in this way does he compel himself to elude conceivable perils. He need not dwell on fortuitous events. They happen by themselves. But to smell the pitfalls in every affair, that’s the important thing and that at the same time is what makes you mentally imbalanced!

“To step with the left foot on every sewer grating brings good luck, avoids bad luck. I don’t really believe in it. But what does it cost me to do it?! From that moment on, you’re in the snare of that unlikely trap. For if but once you fail to follow the rule, you will relentlessly trace each and every misfortune that befalls you back to that lapse. That’s why you concentrate with an almost feverish frenzy to make sure to tread on every sewer grating with your left foot. But this, in turn, makes you irritable, nervous, consumed by the fear that you might, nevertheless, if but once, have missed a grating. You put yourself to the test, try intentionally to overstep a grating, and soon enough you’re consumed by a curious disquiet, uncertainty; you reproach yourself, bemoan — the slightest mishap, and there you have the pernicious “logical consequence”! If only I’d stepped on the sewer grating with my left foot!

With every woman of whom you’re sincerely fond you run a billion risks at every hour of losing her for whatever reason. But the man not inclined to persecution complex, that is, the idiot, the nincompoop, doesn’t sense the danger, it does not enter his clear consciousness. He is blessed with the good luck, the healthy disposition to suffer an eventual catastrophe when it comes, but not the imperceptible and, therefore, all the more awful, things leading up to it. Any man not prone to a “persecution complex” in regard to a beloved never for a moment actually truly loved that person!

An old lady once said to me: “I am compelled from year to year to follow the solemn dictates of religion all the more strictly. For the closer I find myself to the final reckoning the more I fear it!”

Religion is a kind of “ideal application” of persecution complex on the human nerves!

I once said to a businessman: “You shouldn’t overextend your business out into the sticks, it’s financially dangerous, risky—.” Whereupon he replied: “But our whole business depends on that. You’ve just got to have the nerves to tough it out—.”

A year later he went bust. I reminded him of our conversation. Then he said to me: “You were right. But if I’d followed your advice I’d have gone bust long before!”

“My dear friend, you really ought not to leave your lovely young wife alone so long in the country—.”

“You’re right; but if I didn’t let her go I’d lose her all the sooner—!”

Persecution complex, in any case, has one advantage, at least you can’t accuse yourself of having been “a dunce.” And in these tough times that’s not something to sneeze at!

Perhaps the intellectual assurance of being able to avoid certain dangers in life provides a greater happiness than the heroism of leaping head-first into life and courting one’s imminent demise! Heroism and persecution complex are the absolute opposites. The one heeds nothing, the other everything! The one sees victories everywhere, the other nothing but defeats. The one is a nincompoop and the other is a wise man! But can the wise man ever really be unhappy and the nincompoop ever really happy?!?

Persecution complex within reason is the capacity to foresee coming misfortune and the capacity by the force of intelligence, wherever possible, to avoid it! The opposite of that is the certainty of stupidity, that is one’s so-called “quiet good fortune!”

*

January 25. The sun is trying to melt the snow. Here and there the snow fades to gray and dissolves, readying the way for spring. In Glognitz, Christmas roses poke through the snow. Everything, every thing else is buried under, silent. With the steel tip of my alpenstock I trace a girl’s name in the frosted glass of a shop window. Who’s name?! What do you care?! My soul is suffering. For four days now I’ve sheltered a little lady bug. It lives on the condensation under a glass. It even spreads its wings. I’ll buy it a bouquet of mimosa, yellow, sweet-scented blossoms with little gray-green leaves. How did it manage to weather the winter until now, to live through all of winter’s perils? I don’t know. The temperature already hit 18 degrees Celsius, without its protector P.A.?! How did I myself manage to endure it all?! I don’t know. I write a girl’s name in the frosted glass of a shop window on the main drag. Who’s name?! What do you care?! My soul is suffering, so it’s still alive, it’s still alive! The little lady-bug under the glass thinks: “Ha, ha, ha, it’s warm here but there’s not much to eat; we’ll just have to wait it out till February; we’re bound to find something then—.” Little creatures always find what they need.