Laszlo Krasznahorkai - War & War

It was the name of Voigtel, the Dombaumeister , that most often came up, that and Dombouverein and Dombau-fonds , not to mention terms like Westfassade and Nordfassade , and Südturm and Nordturm , and most importantly how many thousand tallers and marks were spent yesterday and how many today, this was what the grumpy Hirschhardt spouted day after day, continuously and unstoppably, while admitting that the cathedral, should it ever be finished, would be one of the wonders of the world, and the world of art, as he put it, was sure to turn its immediate attention to it, although , as he immediately pointed out, that would never happen, since the building would never be completed, given such a Dombauverein and such a Dombau-fonds and the constant bickering between the Kirche and the Staat about who should pay for what, and he couldn’t see any good coming from it, despite the fact that it was supposed to be one of the wonders of the world, and so on and so forth, though this was Hirschhardt’s manner generally, to be running things down, to be moaning, full of acid remarks and skeptical about everything, cursing now the stonemasons, now the carpenters, now the transporters, now the quarries at Königswinter, Staudernheim, Obernkirchen, Rinteln and Hildesheim, the point always being to curse someone or something, or so it seemed, said Korin, though equally there was no one who knew better what was happening outside his window, so he knew, for example, that at any particular moment there were 368 stone-carvers, 15 stone-polishers, 14 carpenters, 37 stonemasons and 113 assistants engaged on site, was aware of what had gone on at the last negotiations between representatives of church and crown; was informed about disputes between carpenters and stone-carvers, stone-carvers and stonemasons and between stonemasons and carpenters; knew who was sick and when, about shortages of provisions, about fights and injuries, in other words about truly everything there was to be known, so while Kasser and his companions had to put up with Hirschhardt and his grumbling, they were, nevertheless, obliged to him and to no one else for the information in whose light they could interpret events outside, events that might have remained hidden from them, for Hirschhardt also knew about Voigtel’s predecessor as Dombaumeister , Zwirner, a man of inexhaustible energy who nevertheless died young, and about long-dead characters like Virneburg and Gennep, Saarwerden and Moers, and not only them but obscure ones like Rosenthal, Schmitz and Wiersbitzky, as well as being able to tell them who Anton Camp was, who Carl Abelshauser and Augustinys Weggang were, how the winches, pulleys and traction equipment worked, and how the carpenters’ tools, the hoists and the steam engines were constructed; in other words you couldn’t catch Hirschhardt out on anything, not that Kasser and his companions even tried of course, in fact they hardly ever asked questions at all, knowing well that they would only be submitting themselves to one of Hirschhardt’s latest rants, merely nodding now and then as he spoke, for what they appreciated above everything else in the beer-hall was silence, that and a tankard of light ale from the tap, in other words the early and midmorning when there was hardly anyone but themselves in the bar and they could sit by the window, sipping at their beer, watching the work on the cathedral outside.

In Boisserée’s Ansichten there was already a drawing of the west front, dated 1300, most probably by Johannes, son of Meister Arnold, that was a work of outstanding beauty in itself and revealed something of the remarkable ambition behind the design of the building, but the deciding factor, first for Falke and then, following his summary, for the others, was the print they had seen displayed throughout the empire, a print hung in barbershops and on the walls of inns, that Richard Voigtel colored in after the etching by W. von Abbema for the Verein-Gedenkblatt , probably to draw attention to events in Cologne, in other words a print of 1867 originating from the Nurenberg workshop of Carl Meyer, that was all, and it was this that informed their decision where to go, because through their eyes, said the manuscript, the vast scheme depicted in the print immediately revealed the remarkable possibilities of this monumental shelter, a shelter, added Korin, that the four of them, as Kasser told a stranger who had been more successful than others in pursuing the question of who they were, that is to say merely a set of obsessed fugitives, though that was not how they described themselves that day, a week later, to Hirschhardt for example, but as simply expert defense-works engineers , in Kasser’s words when it seemed he had to say something to Hirschhardt, and that was all there was to it, he said, that was the chief reason the four of them had come, not simply to research, not only to analyze, but primarily, in fact above all, to admire all that was happening here, and in saying so they were not saying anything they would have had to deny elsewhere, for they did genuinely admire it from the moment they got off the mail-coach, caught their first glimpse of it and could not help but admire it, admire it there and then, the sight immediately and wholly captivating them, immediately for there was nothing with which to compare with it, because imagining it from Boisserée’s book, working it out from the drawing and the print, was entirely different from standing at the foot of the south tower and seeing it in real life, an experience that confirmed all they thought and imagined, though they had to be standing precisely where they were, at the precise distance, at a precise point and a precise angle to the south tower, Korin explained in the kitchen, so that there could be no mistake, but they did not mistake the distance, the point or the angle, and saw it and were convinced that it was not simply the building of a cathedral at stake, not just the completion of a Gothic ecclesiastical monument that had been abandoned centuries ago, but a vast mass , a mass so incredible as to surpass any building they might have imagined, one of which every detail would be finished — altar, crossing, nave, the two main aisles, the windows, the gates in all the walls — according to plan, though it was not what this or that aisle looked like, nor what this or that window or gate looked like that mattered but the fact that it would be an entirely unique, immensely high, incredible vast mass, relative to which there would be a point, as Gerhard had said to himself some six hundred years earlier, a specific point, as every Dombaumeister right down to Voigtel whispered, a point from which this beautiful piece of Amiens-work would appear to be a single tower mass , that is to say an angle from which the essence of the whole would be visible, and this was what the four of them had discovered by studying the legend of Gerhard, the drawing by Johannes, the Abbema-Voigtel print, and now, following their arrival, the reality itself, when, astonished, they sought out the ideal place where they might contemplate their own astonishment, a point that was not difficult to find, the beer-hall in other words from where they could watch each day’s progress and so be ever more certain that what they were seeing was not something they had imagined after seeing an architect’s plan but true, extraordinary, real.

Sometimes I would really like to stop, to abandon the whole thing , said Korin on one occasion in the kitchen, then, after a long silence, staring at the floor for minutes on end, raised his head and hesitantly added, Because something in me is breaking up and I’m getting tired .