H. Adler - The Wall

If I look back evenhandedly at my career path, as it is called, in the first three or four years since I arrived in the metropolis (and it’s important for me to do so, since I’m working on a study that I plan to call “The Position of the Creative Artist in the Age of the Large-Scale Social Organization That Threatens Culture”), then I haven’t a clue, since the intertwinings of my efforts are confused. The particular reasons for my failure are much less clear to me than the general rule that describes such failure. That rule says: Social institutions run or maintain culture or sustain themselves in a neutral manner when serving the clear purpose of supporting the well-being of the community and nothing that undermines its individual members. Out of this comes the corollary: Should social institutions no longer serve such clear purposes, then they will be utilized for other purposes than those for which they were meant, as these institutions only serve themselves, whereby the well-being of the community is threatened and the development of its individual members is inhibited or even harmed. If things should go this far, then it’s bad for culture, as it is then directed by institutions that are themselves marginalized, depleted, and finally replaced by ideologically run, industrial-sized disasters, the result being that any possible freedom for people to attain their own intellectual feats and works is continually shrunk until it disappears. Unique achievements of value become rare, while sound achievements that link to tradition are devalued and the realization of both is threatened, if not entirely forbidden. That which is produced independently is constrained if it does not come under the yoke of a totalitarian tyranny, having to forsake distribution unless it takes on a plethora of economic and social burdens. This rule tells us of the collapse of art and scholarship which is caught unawares or is no longer desired at all, since everything has attached itself to guiding principles that have been set in place by the powerful and totalitarian realms of overarching institutions. Only that which follows these declarations will be deemed worthy, while only that which is produced through the aid of institutional powers — which today in the West means through the press, the media, or the control of advertising — will be supported or even allowed.

This is the situation in which I ended up. The social ineptness of a person such as myself, who has been kept out of almost all social organizations, rather than just declassed, makes it impossible to gain a foothold. Any foothold is taken away the moment you contact someone, prepare to make the proper approach, and set off but never arrive, nor does your work ever arrive, you being like a letter writer who writes letters to unknown or unauthenticated addresses. This tragedy, of which I’m a part, describes the position of the creative artist of this epoch. I can see, then, how it all connects together and prevents my taking part in society in any possible way, for it is all confirmed in me, which I also observe is what has happened to me in detail, this daily and weekly collapse, while these pinched attempts to escape this entrenched, but also this perpetual and not entirely perceivable, loneliness, I have not yet explained. The less of a person I am because I am not allowed to exist, the more the world is closed to me and cuts itself off behind a wall. If that didn’t exist, if it only had a door and could be walked through, then I myself would be this wall, but the world would also be the wall; put another way, the world and I would be bound together through the wall, and we would come together as a single seamless wall.

As I first appreciated this insolvable conflict, I did something I never thought of doing before in my life. I wrote a story. The shallowness and meaninglessness of most of the letters we write had always pained me, for I think of the letter as a primary symbol of the person who has been excluded from something. And every person is excluded, every person reaches a border, no matter how many different ones may be drawn, some closer for some, for others farther away, or as visible as the Great Wall of China or spreading out into the distance in endless glittering flatlands, often not known or recognized, and yet the root of all human misery, sensed as eternity, the depths, as the source of our behavior and the driving force behind our vices and virtues, the source of all despair and hope. To be human is to have a border, and to want to cross it through letters that will reach beyond to their goal. I worked hard on this story for a long while, polishing it, copying it over, and changing it, though it always remained unfinished and did not please me, as I am not a writer. Nonetheless, though it is also a failed piece, it still means a good deal to me, because it says more about me and my thinking than I have ever managed to express in my scholarly work. Which is why today I have picked it up again and revised it thoroughly once more. Here it is. It’s called:

THE LETTER WRITERS

Letters, for those who do not know, are an ancient invention. You write them, feel unburdened, and write some more. So it was millennia ago, so it remains to this day, no one finding it surprising, all thinking it good. People sit at home, look out the window for a bit, and think of their friends, then look up addresses that are often hidden away, take out envelopes and write down the names, towns, and streets with solemn letters. Then they reach for writing paper and spin away their thoughts.

Meanwhile, outside it has grown colder. Whoever does not have pressing business does not move along the streets, where at this time of year misery most likely awaits. If the letters are finished and sealed, one often strokes them tenderly, protecting them with religious or superstitious measures from the evil eye — from all harm — and from the danger of loss, carrying them out quickly at midday when the cold eases up for a little while. Many people, especially women, carefully wrap the letters in a scarf in order to protect them from the frost. Whoever does not want to pay to send them as registered mail, or does not trust only the large boxes at the post office, walks to the next mailbox, into which the anxiously guarded cargo is carefully slipped. Then the writers turn back home, anxious or relieved, though with an inscrutable mien, to write new letters to the same or other addresses.

Once your own addresses have been exhausted, you call up someone and say that you have some free time and would like to write the friends of their relatives and friends. This way, you get new addresses and are also asked to give freely of your own stock of them. This way you can build a treasure trove of addresses, and a good number of people are known for possessing loads of addresses. No one would admit this openly, for in contrast to the vanity that attaches itself to anyone with money who accumulates valuable things, in this case each is silent about his riches, at best alluding to it only by saying, “I’m busy, I still have many friends to write.”

The advantage of having many addresses is obvious. You do not lose hold of those that you must write to, and it pleases you the more that your collection of addresses grows, providing you with the revitalized prospect of increasing the number of your friends. This explains the popularity of the saying that one finds in many family albums: “The friends of my neighbors are also friends of mine.”

You feel good about your contacts, but no letter writer has ever received an answer back. If you abruptly ask one of them, he will behave like someone resting quietly in a church, but who has been disturbed by the suddenly loud babbling of a child, causing him to whisper excitedly with glazed eyes, “No, I haven’t gotten any answer yet. But that doesn’t matter, as long as there’s still hope. One must be patient and can always wait.” Perhaps he will then add, “It might be that I’ll get a number of letters at once and from a number of friends.”