H. Adler - Panorama

Josef wants to calm Frau Director down, but she feels there is no need, Josef is just too inexperienced as yet, for she also wants to be patient with Irwin, but it will likely all pass, fomenting youth, as she always says, yet one can now do something about it through psychoanalysis, it all being normal as long as it’s properly handled and the complexes are sublimated. Josef should think about the sound of the word, how it reminds one of “sublime,” which sounds like a flower, indeed a bit of a stretch, but with a certain poetic quality. Today everything can be controlled, or it’s simply abnormal, the border never precisely drawn. Certainly the Director would be less complicated if psychoanalysis had existed and had been so widely accepted twenty years ago, though doctors back then were very old-fashioned, while the advances made now are fantastic, people should make greater use of them rather than being taken up by material inventions, such as the airplane, the radio, the many advancements in medicine, most likely there soon being something one can take for cancer without needing an operation, just as they now have insulin for diabetes, Frau Director’s own father having died miserably from diabetes. The advances these days are really enormous, if the League of Nations could achieve agreement on disarmament, then eternal peace could now begin, enlightenment having at last prevailed. But there are dark powers, powers that exist in sleep and in dreams, which cannot be controlled by psychoanalysis or education, even though everything evil could be avoided if Freud’s teaching were followed, for analysis should be employed in the schools, children needing to be examined as early as the first grade, pedagogy really a branch of medicine, she always says, an enormous revolution in the philosophy about and solutions to social problems at the ready when one recognizes that everything can be attributed to complexes and repression. How Spinoza could philosophize today if he knew all this, for the good person is he who can see through all his complexes and master them.

Perhaps the world will be a little less romantic, but it’s more important that it’s healthy. If the world changed to such an extent, then Frau Director would send her boys to a free school, but that’s still out of the question, the corrupting influences are too many, which is why Frau Director wants her boys to have little to do with their friends. Irwin does indeed take dance lessons in order to develop some social manners, he liking this kind of music, while Frau Director patiently accepts that Josef doesn’t dance, otherwise she would ask him to go with Irwin. Good society, however, is unfortunately dying off, Frau Director needing to make an effort to maintain a small circle of prominent people, but in the arts there are many suspect imaginations, for though Frau Director has a feel for what’s modern, and the house is full of bold experiments, they are abstract works devoid of any romanticism, though the feeling within them is indeed genuine. Yet Frau Director is in her heart of hearts still somewhat unmodern, and it’s hard to go against your nature, though her husband is completely unmodern, it not mattering if you show him a nude photo or the Venus of Portici, but when it comes to modern portraits like those painted by Kokoschka, he immediately yells take it away, it’s hideous, he has no idea about what art is, Frau Director having taken a course on modern art with Professor Bäumel, a brilliant mind, she having wanted to bring Irwin along, but he came once and never went again, the fine things of life closed off to him, realism the only style he can handle, just like the Director, though the latter used to have a feel, a wisp of poetry, as did everyone before 1914, while Irwin is ice-cold, killing any and all enthusiasm.

This is a concern for Frau Director, and she wants Josef to make sure to take Irwin to a museum now and then, perhaps marble statues something that will move him, the coldness of the stone and the graceful warmth of the body, the combination of the spiritual and the sensual worlds, and perhaps this would allow Irwin to work through his sexual desires toward something more noble, which would then help him to sublimate the flush of puberty within the aesthetic. Frau Director had already tried this with the last tutor, but he was an overrefined bundle of nerves who needed to go into analysis himself, Josef needing to hear a bit about him before the children say anything, for he was a poet, very gifted, a good writer who had soul and a fine sense for nature, able to be swept away by a beautiful panorama, he possessing a tender, erotic air about him, almost French, though poets surprisingly are often not very good teachers, they are too egocentric, and so the boys didn’t like him, Irwin especially having real problems until things eventually fell apart, the tutor feeling that his poetic honor had been insulted, which was of course ridiculous, but then he was suddenly gone, the Director having to reach deep into his pocket, as you can’t simply let such a little heap of unhappiness simply go vis-à-vis de rien .

Neither randy Irwin, who can be downright fresh, nor Robert, who is enough of a handful on his own, causes more worry for Frau Director than does Lutz, her real concern, for he is just like his mother, a tender blossom, sensitive and dreamy, but unprepared for raw reality, with no understanding of the workings of the everyday world, truly without a care, yet in the wrong way. If only he were a girl, then his romantic inclinations would be fine, for he takes in so much that would be really useful if he studied medicine, a psychiatrist being half a poet in some ways, yet Lutz’s interests have nothing to do with poetry but instead are completely romantic and can easily go astray. He wants continual adventure, as if life, as it is, is not a big enough adventure, he able to observe a wasp for an hour, or a common housefly will send him into paroxysms about what tender wings it has, how sensibly such a tiny animal is constructed, which makes the Director think that Lutz could perhaps be an agriculturist, though as a mother I don’t want to hear anything about it, for if it doesn’t involve climbing a career ladder, at least it doesn’t have to mean descending one in return. Farming is not for such an overly excitable boy, no matter how noble a large estate or even a normal farm can be, for Lutz is not cut out for it, and such a career would break him.

Josef begs to differ, saying there is still time for Lutz to decide what he wants to do, and what the boy really wants is a microscope, which would seem a worthwhile desire in regard to medicine. Frau Director remains unmoved in her stand against it, a good microscope is expensive, and because of the current economic crisis it’s hardly affordable, and Josef should make no mistake, it’s still a naïve childish wish, for today Lutz wants a microscope, while tomorrow he’ll abandon it out of boredom, his head full with the idea of getting a telescope. No, the boys must be raised with a sense of consequence, and not just have their every whim catered to, that weakens character and is a continual mistake in the way children are raised these days. Yes, if Irwin also wanted a microscope she could imagine that he would know what he would need it for, it even perhaps doing him some good, while if only to put an end to it all she had asked him if he wanted a microscope, to which he just laughed and asked what he’d even do with such a contraption, though a motorbike, well, that would please Irwin indeed, he’d speed around like a devil and break every bone in his body, while one could indeed give a motorbike to Lutz when he is bigger, if only to loosen him up a bit, for in short, Lutz requires a strong hand, Irwin a more delicate touch. To this Josef tries to raise some doubt in the hope of changing her mind, but Frau Director is firm in her view, there being no way to change how she intends to raise her boys, for while she is grateful for suggestions the basic questions are already decided, she wishing to remind Josef of his own words about not being ready to judge the boys. He begs her pardon in response, he didn’t mean to be so forward, and meanwhile he will think about how he can be of help to Lutz, but it will not be easy to do so. In the meantime, Frau Director says that she attributes Josef’s critical remarks to his youthful temperament, though she values real fire and doesn’t like a waffler, since, as she always says, Josef is indeed far removed from true philosophy by virtue of his age, Frau Director also considers the tutor’s upbringing, Josef still being half a child even at twenty-two, and he should enjoy his youthful years, as the years go by quickly.