Peter Altenberg - Telegrams of the Soul

My young room service waiter said to me: “Jesus, that was swell, what you wrote about that Viennese honey. And the story with that Mr. Wolf and the other guy!”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“You know, the two dudes that dumped that poor thing!”

“No, those are two long-dead, illustrious Viennese composers of Lieder who were cheerful on the surface and yet so very sad in their songs!”

“Aha — so that’s what it’s supposed to mean! To be perfectly honest, Mr. von Altenberg, I prefer my interpretation!”

She said: “Ever since they demolished my dear old ‘Bösendorfer Hall’ (a concert hall in Vienna), I’ve been an unhappy person. I grant you that there are more pressing problems and tragedies in this World War, but for me, the most wretched soul alive, there are, alas — or thank God! — no others. So many heroes fall and I mourn my ‘Bösendorfer Hall.’ Should I, therefore, be ashamed to admit it? It was my all. When I sat there I forgot the world. I forgot the present, the future. Later, at the dinner table, I had no idea what I ate. That will never happen again. I know the other concert halls. But I don’t forget the present in them or the future. Am I ‘musical’!? Who knows! In the Bösendorfer Hall I was. Must one, can one possibly be it everywhere?! They’re definitely ‘geniuses,’ the ones that can be musical everywhere. People like me are terribly attached to just one place. In that one place he revives his spirit, there he thrives, there he comes to be himself! No, more than himself. For my sake alone they couldn’t very well leave the building standing, that’s clear. Just once I lost my cool. Someone said to me: ‘Its acoustics weren’t even particularly good!’ And I thought to myself: ‘If I were a tigress, I’d leap at him and tear out his throat with my claws!’ But unfortunately, I’m no tigress.”

Coquetry is the immense decency of a desirable woman, thereby, for the moment at least, to hold off the disappointments she is bound to bring you.

Man stretches woman’s soul on the Procrustes bed of his own cravings.

There are three idealists: God, mothers and poets! They don’t seek the ideal in completed things — they find it in the incomplete.

Feel Altogether Social-democratic

“Say, coachman, do you know a Tschecherl* still open at this hour?!?”

“I do indeed, Sir, but the clientele’s too low class in that joint.”

“Listen, my good man, for me there are no lower class people and no upper class people, you understand?! Everybody’s equal!”

“Oh they’re equal alright, but the body odor’s different!”

Green grocer: “But we also have fruit for the very fancy folk?!?”

“What kind of people are they, the very fancy folk?!?”

“The very fancy folk are them that buy the very fancy fruit!”

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*A little café

*

Swing

These are your absinthe-ecstasies of life, you girls of the people! Everything gets turned and tumbled topsy-turvy! And on the down wards swing you shriek with terror and excitement! Here you forget that the rent is overdue and that at any moment you could get knocked up and be abandoned! Here you experience your cruise-ship emotions, seasickness for 10 Kreuzer!

And later in the meadows, in the dark distant meadows!

Whistle, fellah, if you spot a cop!

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*Vienna’s famous amusement park

They sat for hours in the Grabenkiosk* on the last day of August, watched fiakers † roll by with foreigners in the passenger seats, automobiles like migrating birds returning from distant trips, ladies on the trottoir gliding by with astonishing self-assurance and others that pattered and pranced about to puff themselves up into something special.

At the Kiosk sat a French woman whom one dared greet only with one’s eyes. And a sweet young thing with her “aunt,” whom one likewise saluted with the eyes alone. And unfamiliar damsels with veiled hats whom one did not greet at all. And a few men who’d already returned from their vacations. All these people felt a little déclassé to have been spotted at the Grabenkiosk in the high season, while the others were still basking in Ostende or Biarritz—.

Notwithstanding all this, the two friends made a few salient observations, gathered a few rare examples of the little species of man for their internal bug collection, pinned them up and arranged them in generalized categories.

At 6 P.M. the red automobile, Mercedes 18–24, came by and drove them off to the Krieau.†† There they found an altogether dust-free country air and quiet. A man in a black suit and snow-white gloves mounted a horse. A fiaker brought a dancer (the Imperial Opera had just opened), a gray automobile drove up, muffled engine, roaring in a baritone, more than 30 horsepower. The little garden was full of yellow flowers that looked like little sunflowers and the rabbits in their cages pricked up their ears at an irregular slant. The two friends smoked Prinzesas and gaped at the mostly empty white tables and benches. In early spring and fall the place gets really hopping. But it was only August 31!

So the two friends drove on to the winter embankment.

Danube, small track, big leather factory, wobbly granite pavement, good enough for the wide-tired truck rolling along at a snail’s pace! But the automobile leapt, galloped, hopped, like a déclassé vehicle on this paved truck road. To the left lay the winter embankment, to the right a raised plateau made of sand and gravel dug out of the Danube studded with young birch trees. From there one had a panoramic view of blue-gray hills, black factory chimneys and the glow of the sunset. In the distance reared the somber dynamite depot, the Laaerberg, the Central Cemetery, the Kahlenberg—. The dark red blaze of the striped sunset surged against the gray molten lead-colored sky and earth. The leather factory reared up like a black beast, and three massive chimneys sent black smoke into the blaze like little spurts of steam that would like to put out giant fires! The slender delicate young birch trees in the Danube landfill trembled in the evening wind and the two friends picked out lovely smooth light brown pebbles as souvenirs of the pleasant evening. Back on the highway waited the red automobile, Mercedes 18–24, which, in fourth gear could rip along like a little road-running Orient Express.

The red blaze against the leaden sky turned raspberry colored, then dark gray-red. The two friends remarked: “Now there’s nothing more to see. The play is over.” So they climbed into the red automobile and said to the chauffeur: “Fourth gear, please—.”

They whizzed back to the Grabenkiosk.

Still seated there was the French lady whom one only dared greet with one’s eyes.

But at this late hour one felt entitled to say “Good evening—.”

And the two gentlemen politely bid her: “Bon soir—.”

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*The Café-pavilion “Am Graben”

†Horse-drawn hacks

††A trotting race track in the Prater

The night won’t pass. Naturally you keep dwelling all the while on each and every one of your thousand unnecessary sins. Nevertheless or precisely for that very reason, the night won’t pass. How foolishly you lived, or rather, failed to live, actually just slid by, dying a little every day. You’ve got no Bismarck-brain, never took yourself in hand, failed to fulfill man’s sole true purpose! A thousand things drove you from yourself, robbed you of your innate, indwelling vitality, drove you away from the best of your self!