Joseph Roth - The Antichrist

‘Yet these rowers loved their lives anyway, just as the captain of the ship did or perhaps even more so. And they rowed with every last bit of strength to avoid a cliff, a rock or a storm, although they would have had nothing to lose if they had guided the boat against a rock or a cliff or into the middle of a storm.

‘There was, kind sir, first of all the overseer’s whip, and then the whip of the will to live, and the whip of the fear of death — three whips.

‘Thus the slaves saved the ship and the lives both of their masters and of themselves. They did it because the ship’s life was their own life.

‘I, too-we, too-love life.’

And I took leave of the miner.

The Master of a Thousand Tongues also sent me to factories, to schools, to all locations where unrest might appear, to report on everything that was new and uneasy by investigating the origin of its unnaturalness.

I thus saw houses made out of glass and steel and chromium metal, not out of brick and stone. And I saw how each type of man built himself the house that fitted his own particular nature. In studying this phenomenon I realized that people change much more rapidly than other creatures.

Since the creation of the world birds have built their nests, spiders their webs, hamsters their holes, foxes their lairs and ants their hills, always in the same fashion. But men lived first in caves, then in huts, later in houses, and now they live in cages. In cages of glass and steel.

‘Let the sun shine in!’ they say. A saying that is as foolish as the sayings of which I have already spoken — Religion is the opium of the people and Education is power.

In a cave, in a hut or in a house one is not imprisoned. But in a cage one is imprisoned. It seems that at about the time that we began to rise up into the air like birds and to feel that we had shaken off the chains that bound us to the earth, we were just then punished with the longing to experience the unhappiness that birds sometimes suffer, namely to live in cages.

In a cave, a hut or a house of stone and brick a man is sheltered, but in a cage he is imprisoned.

The modern man, that is to say the man in whom the Antichrist has begun to work, says: ‘Let the sun shine in!’ — as if he were no longer capable of leaving his house to savour the sun whenever he wished.

Cages are made out of glass and metal bars because imprisoned animals cannot enjoy sun and air whenever they need it.

If man willingly builds himself a cage, he must feel like he is truly a prisoner. And even though he has the key to his modern cage he is still a prisoner.

But who is it that holds him captive and causes him to shut himself up in a cage apparently of his own free will?

The Antichrist holds him prisoner.

The cave, the hut, the house of brick and stone, they provide shelter and protection against storms, lightning and the fiery sun, enemies and dangers of all types. But the new houses of glass and metal are open, even when the doors and windows are closed. They are open and closed at the same time, as only cages can be.

There is no quiet and no solitude in such a house. In these homes, even silent light is noisy.

There, a fish could begin to shriek and a deaf mute to babble. Meanwhile, the man who has been granted the grace of speech — which is the breath of God — must be silent in these houses if he wishes to say something human to his neighbour.

And just as man is distinguished from an animal by the grace of speech he also has the grace of reticence, privacy and modesty. In these thin houses full of light and air there is no silence but, at best, a dumbness; no privacy but withdrawal and suppression; no modesty but, at most, shame.

When one enters such a building made of glass and stupidity and chromium metal there is one dwelling next to another just as one cage is placed next to another in the so-called aviaries of the zoological gardens.

So those people who have to live in such buildings are like animals and, at the same time, like homeless people. They spend the night in the street. And, still worse, the street spends the night with them. So it is as if each individual were spending the night with his neighbour.

The tenderness of two lovers in bed is as visible as the caressing of caged birds.

One could say that the sun, which has been let in, has brought everything into the daylight.

Those men whose job it is to build such houses say that they are practical and healthful. And, besides, people belong together. And, further, nothing human should be alien to people.

To these homebuilders, however, everything human is foreign. Solitude, silence and secrecy are just as critical to us as health, sun and fresh air. It is certainly inherent in our nature that we should live in a community with our own kind. However, we can only endure this community if we can also spend time alone. For this is human nature — we wish to be alone and also together with other people. It is written that it is not good for people to remain alone.

But man, the image of God, possesses one of the divine qualities — the ability to be both alone and with others at the same time. Yes, he has nostalgia for solitude, just as he has nostalgia for Heaven, because he was created in the image, that is to say, according to the characteristics, of God.

He cannot live in a community if he cannot satisfy his nostalgia. He disturbs the community instead of helping it.

It is only in the hour of danger — during times of war, for example — that people can stand the constant company of their own kind; and this is only because death is in the neighbourhood and death makes everyone lonely because it carries everyone off individually, even when it takes thousands in a single moment.

In the houses of which I am speaking, however, the people do not live in the face of imminent death. And they yearn for solitude.

But the designers and builders of these houses say: ‘We have to give the poor shelter, not luxury. And solitude is luxury.’

Yet it is exactly when the houses are intended for the poor that one should remember one of the worst curses of poverty — that the poor man is unable to be alone. And it is better that he should occasionally go hungry than that he should never be able to break his bread alone.

Often he would rather be alone under the wide sky at night than with others under a roof. For, although it is not good for man to live alone, it is equally bad if he is forced to be together with others.

This, however, the architects and constructors of the new houses do not know.

So people today live like birds.

They can fly, and still they live in cages.

I came to one of the regions where oil wells are found. And I wrote from there to the mighty Master of a Thousand Tongues:

Mighty Master of a Thousand Tongues

I am in one of the most interesting of countries, where the famous oil wells are located. It lies at the base of a mountain range, and its activities are centred in a quite remarkable town. Oil has been found here since the mid nineteenth century. The dark wooden derricks rise from an area about fifty square kilometres in size.

They seem to me less cruel and, in a way, less dangerous to the earth’s surface when I compare them with derricks in other countries — countries that bear upon their face that curse of barrenness that is like a counterpart to the fruitfulness that lies within them. Here in this town, the sun is moderate, and there are still forests that yield only reluctantly to the towers and seem to encompass them peacefully rather than flee from them in hostility. The eye can sweep from the covered wells to the green hills.