H. Adler - Panorama

Since arriving in Wirschenowitz Josef has not had a shave, and since there is time he goes to the barber, who is a real character, and who also starts right in talking about the railroad. It’s fine with him that they want to build it here, for it’s good for him, namely because all the laborers do him the honor of bringing their business to him, and so they should always build, for then the area does better, and if they put in a main line here, then large factories will follow, and one day when there is peace, but not the Conqueror, then he will have left something useful behind, for that’s the way things go, the thugs establish order, then they are done in, the poor people suffering a bit as a result, though they also learn something and get back on their feet again. Josef suggests that the people might also wish for something a bit better than that and not just to remain poor. But the barber thinks the people never learn any better, they always have to be pushed around somewhat, they need that, and thus the Conqueror is a pike in the fishpond which the slower fish let swim around and snap at them so that they work harder, then someone fishes out the pike with a hook and lays him out on dry land so that he dies, he having fulfilled his purpose. Josef cautiously disagrees with this, since he’s not certain whom the barber is friends with, though it doesn’t seem to be dangerous, for next the barber says that he wishes the Devil would haul off the pike, no one would despair at that, since he’s so wild, though people shouldn’t complain so much but instead train him like a beast in a circus in order that he does something worthwhile before the Americans arrive to fish him out. Such talk makes Josef uncomfortable, but he smiles and says it’s certainly not that easy to train a pike, because when you let a beast free you never know what can happen. But the barber replies that the people go about it all wrong, for the fish don’t complain about the pike because he is better than them, instead they complain because he can bite and keeps them on the move, all of them afraid of him and having to ward him off, but to get him to do what his prey wants him to do they who must flee should all treat him as their redeemer, though the barber admits that the Conqueror would have to no longer be a pike in a pond but rather a washtub, and best of all would be to see him cooked in a pan and served up with a little dill sauce.

Josef is happy when he finishes with the barber and heads back to camp, where Simon tells him what a wonderful man he met, a Dr. Siegler from the barracks straight across, and since he told him about Josef they should both go over and meet the doctor. Simon is so excited that he asks if they can’t go straightaway, there being at least an hour before they have to think about dinner, and so Josef agrees. Dr. Siegler is friendly, and is one of the oldest men in the camp, certainly over forty-five, and a doctor who had a good practice in Saaz, though the events of 1938 forced him from the home where his father and grandfather had been doctors, he having lost both his house and his practice, his possessions seized, while for some months he has worked here in Wirschenowitz, which he’s happy about, as he had no idea how he was going to be able to take care of his sick wife. In Dr. Siegler’s eyes the world is going to pieces, such that the only thing that can be sensibly described is what we each experience alone, all people today becoming more and more enslaved because there is nothing to prevent it from happening. Josef wants to know what could prevent it, and Siegler says it’s the strength of the unmediated life, which is a strength that develops within, much as ancient mystics taught, but this strength can unfold only when technological capability is not turned into an instrument of power by the politicians, which indeed is the case today, technology seeing to it that the life force is reduced and eventually annihilated, as it drains away life, replacing it and transforming it into a mechanical process, in the course of which humanity is subjected to slavery. Siegler doesn’t believe this process can be stopped, not even through revolution, only a complete cataclysm could do so, though that would also mean the destruction of all achievements of culture and civilization, and should this fate come to pass all that a human being is currently capable of is to produce the courage and tragic desire for his own demise, in order that at least a heroic end is achieved. This also means that whoever pursues truth will at least be gratified when he sees with open eyes where he stands and that he is falling into an abyss that he can no longer avoid, but this plunge at least grants him at the very last moment of time the sense of something eternal.

Simon says that you might as well commit suicide then, but Siegler smiles at this, saying that’s too easy, for as Grabbe says at the end of a tragedy, we do not fall out of the world once we are already in it, and so life in a certain sense is an eternal process from whose clutches not even suicide frees us, which Grabbe’s hero knew. The views of philosophers from Heraclitus to Nietzsche aside, we indeed learn from fate, if only in the sense that we learn that life continues on despite its dissolution, and that in truth man cannot cut himself off from it, but instead must immerse himself, meaning that he may indeed be a victim, but he is also a witness, and through that each can — whether through his own disposition or caprice — find a certain freedom, namely the freedom of knowledge or the ability to know. The difference between men may very well lie only in the degree to which someone takes hold of this freedom, versus those who deny it, despite whatever reasons there may be for seizing hold of it. At this Josef wonders whether it’s because there is not an obvious cause to rise to, no clear act or even a way to prepare for it, whereby one’s inner tendency remains independent of any possible or actual dissolution, meaning an act that one could accomplish and can accomplish in order to devote oneself to it and thus arrive at an overall sense of purpose that potentially leads one through any catastrophe, though Josef wants to again point out that it must require a genuine readiness. He is well aware that he is not expressing himself clearly enough, but what he is talking about is the need to maintain an unwavering intent that is not entirely tied to the general course of daily events but instead keeps its eye on an ideal that helps one become independent, no matter what goes on in the world, as well as remaining independent of the web of relations we find ourselves ensnared in. In short, Josef doesn’t believe that all such supposed or actual ascension or demise is the final authority on how human beings should live their lives.

Siegler doesn’t agree, it not being possible through reason to account for what really happens, it being necessary that a person breathe the air of the world as it happens in order to appreciate this formulation, for sometimes it rises and sometimes it falls, just as sometimes one is lifted up and at other times cast down, the only response available being the ability to grasp this and know it in the way that Siegler has already explained. Josef is not convinced, but no more is said about the issue, Siegler turning to a discussion of memory and saying that memory is solace, and man should not close himself off to such solace. Simon here is a good example, for he has music, and he can recollect powerfully what he has played or heard, all of which gives rise to images, perhaps images within tones, but images with foregrounds and backgrounds and, even more so, moving images that continually change, as in a panorama, which perhaps Simon knows as a precursor to the cinema, it being obvious that one can’t just jump into such images but instead you stand before them, and where Simon stands there is a new railroad, then there is his work detail, then the pick and the shovel that he clutches, then there is the continual noise surrounding him, and his thoughts about his father and mother, then there is worry and fear, all of this part of an unbroken moment, the railcar needing to be filled in thirty minutes, always such hurry and trepidation about whether you will be finished in time, Sajdl a rather unpleasant colleague as he stands behind your work and pushes Simon on, your every movement watched, while you have to slog away twice as hard if your neighbor is lazy or can’t go on anymore, all of this so immediate, so much the outward run of things which Simon can’t escape. But for him there is something unattainable that no one can seize hold of, otherwise it could be gotten to, but through memory you can still access a part of it, and for Simon that means music, though Siegler admits that he has no such thing himself, he being not very musical, nor does he even have any kind of relation to art, yet perhaps his knowledge of literature is enough, novels and dramas coming most to mind, they being able to display life as an intricate amalgamation of social webs, though Siegler prefers to remain removed from literature, for his relation to it is intellectual, and memory is not part of the notional world, but rather it lives in the world of feeling, for he doesn’t mean any kind of sloppy sentiment but instead a continuous stream, he thinking of his trip to Italy, though he has to correct himself, for it’s not a thought but a memory, namely that of the view of the Umbrian landscape from Erementani near Assisi, the view from Orvieto down across the land, the view from the Neopolitan garden down to the sea full of ships, Vesuvius in the background, all of them such powerful memory images. For Simon it’s music, for Josef it might be something else, something that stands outside of time, where time itself exists and is frozen solid, this world of images lending the viewer something to hold fast to. Whoever does not hold such a world within himself, whoever can’t save it, he is today lost before he is even killed, for all will be killed, but Siegler hopes for the strength to be able to maintain such solace right up until that last horrible moment, he also wanting to advise Simon and Josef to maintain this world of images right up until the threshold of their own dissolution, for then it is bearable, you hold tight to your most secret feelings and aspirations, which perhaps are indestructible, even if they cannot be entirely reached.