Thomas Bernhard - Gargoyles

“The shattering thing,” he said, “is not the ugliness of people but their lack of judgment. I often walk for hours through the woods with my elder sister without saying a word to her. She does not notice that all the time we are walking through the woods without a word we are talking only about her . Her boredom is the very opposite of my boredom: the attempt to penetrate into a subject (marriage, philosophical speculation, etc.) while simultaneously trying to get out of this subject. In the past,” the prince said, “I always had good relationships with people at first; now the first relationship is always a bad one. It is less strenuous to move from an initially bad relationship to a good one than vice versa, from an initially good one to a bad one. If you listen closely,” the prince said, “what is told to you, played for you, is always your own story, adjusted to your rhythm. You can make this observation everywhere, no matter where, especially when traveling, at railroad stations, in waiting rooms. You are reading the newspaper and can feel the way your sickness, which is in the newspaper, in every line you read, is weakening, dominating, killing you. If we always moved in a single direction,” the prince said, “we would be inside nature in the most natural way. I have often been asked why I do not keep a dog. Why there is no dog at Hochgobernitz. I always answer: Because there is no dog here . Darkness depends entirely on geometry. We should always look straight at the geometry of things, on which everything depends. What is ridiculous about human beings, Doctor,” the prince said, “is actually their total incapacity to be ridiculous . I have never yet seen a ridiculous person, although everything is ridiculous about most of the people I see. In this house,” he said, “everything makes a reasonable impression, and I have never heard anyone speak of this house as anything but a reasonable house, but in fact there is not the slightest trace of reason in this house. Just as there is not, cannot be, the slightest trace of reason in most of the people whom we meet and call reasonable. Hochgobernitz is altogether reasonable, but without the slightest trace of reason. For decades I have tried to plant trees everywhere, wherever I wanted some. As you can see, I have planted hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands of trees. Now I am no longer planting trees; now I merely look at the hundreds of thousands of trees I have planted. I regard them. There is no satisfaction in merely looking. All roads are roads laid out by men. In your best moments you speak a language that everybody understands,” the prince said, “but nobody understands you. The resemblances to myself (to everything) often go so far that I no longer know whether I am there (where I cannot be) or here, where I no longer am. Faces grow old, as does the vulgarity or refinement in them,” he said. “I hear the strangest birds in the night; although I know what kind of birds they are, they become totally different at night. Outside the window, circling over Hochgobernitz, they are different. If I hold these birds in my hand they are birds everybody knows. My relationship to animals is such that I make them speak human language, a newly emotional language, and they practice human thinking. I ascribe philosophical meaning to animals, and feel that they are very close to commanding the grammar of nature perfectly, for which reason I am also afraid of animals. The intellectual always thinks he has to take Nature under his protection, although he is completely dominated by her. Last night, in my dream, travelers informed me that in the midst of their journey all speed limits were temporarily abolished, with the result that anything was possible. That moment existed . Life is exactly as long as needed for preparation for death. We talk to a person hundreds, thousands of miles away without his knowing we are talking to him. We ask questions in his stead. We answer for him. If we meet him, it seems to us that he actually had the conversation with us, the conversation that has moved us even farther apart. I often speak in such a way as to leave my interlocutor plenty of time for reflection, for talking with himself.” He said: “Higher society regards lower society as useful, but the lower thinks of the higher as useless.” Then the prince said: “People or rather each person by himself, can very well be viewed as a novel serialized in a daily newspaper which is printed by nature. In the editorial office, however, a horrible arbitrariness prevails, and as we see, the world daily looks forward to that arbitrariness with great eagerness. And the writers,” the prince said, “make use of the truth which is useless to the philosophers.”

He could explain the whole vicinity to us even in the darkness, the prince said after we had been walking slowly on the outer wall for a long time. “But whatever appeal it might have would be for myself alone. Therefore I won’t explain the vicinity to you. The darkness alone makes it possible, you know, that we are walking where we are walking right here and now,” he said. And then: “I often hear sounds that announce my son is coming, and I ask his sisters or my sisters whether they have also heard them. I heard them clearly. They do not hear them. I go to the window repeatedly and look out to see whether he is coming. I know that he will not be arriving for four or five hours, but I have already been looking out the window for the longest while. I hear him coming daily. Coming toward me daily, while I am more and more disappointed by him. For years now I have also seen my death distinctly before me. And as actual dying gradually emerges from imaginary dying, so the actual approach of my son gradually emerges from his imaginary approach. For hours I look at the quiet that prevails here. I know that this quiet has always prevailed; it is a completely unchanged quiet which has changed me, is changing me, is changing us all. Time, doctor, is quiet even in the face of nature. Once,” the prince said, “I gradually turned all the clocks in Hochgobernitz back an hour every day, until we in Hochgobernitz were suddenly three days behind. I actually could have turned the clocks in Hochgobernitz back by several days, weeks, years. I had fun with that. Anyone who lives a little longer every day, if only a few minutes, at the end has saved up a whole lifetime,” the prince said. “I have a habit you know, of taking all the pictures in Hochgobernitz down from the walls once a week and changing their places according to a system that I alone know, four ahead, two back , then again six ahead, eight back . All through the years up to the present day I have kept up this custom. Whenever my sisters or my daughters see me at that, I seem crazy to them. Perfidious mockery of perfidy,” the prince said, “that is what we have in the never-changing observational material at the disposal of all of us here in Hochgobernitz. When I think of the many costume parties, masked balls, garden festivals, pavilion festivals, and plays that we have already given, seen here! Of the thousands of people who have come up and gone down again! Sometimes I hear them arriving, driving away, turning up, going down; I see them in the rhythm of my old age. I hear them laughing. I hear them in their laughter, fading away. The laughter up here is plainly something primordially human,” the prince said. “Hochgobernitz as a center of pure entertainment,” he said, “of magic acts. In the past the most famous magicians showed their turns here, the most famous singers sang, the most famous actors acted, the most famous writers read from their works, the most famous philosophers philosophized. Here, at one time or another the most famous of all virtuosi assembled. The virtuosi of the world met here to take leave of one another. Here,” the prince said, “everything was once always the most costly, the most impressive, the most astonishing. At certain times all the languages in the world were spoken here. Hochgobernitz as a climactic point of its history in history,” the prince said. “The torment is inside my body like a second body, inside my whole body like a second whole body. I dream of my amazing studies, all of which I have given up, for I no longer study at all, you know. I always pace back and forth here dreaming of my abandoned studies, of the life I have given up. Back and forth independently in this mountainous prison. What is tradition if not a perfectly acted but unbearable comedy which because it has become so incomprehensible makes our laughter freeze, in this atmosphere that makes us freeze? A play is acted here, everything is frozen hard here, and so on. What dominates this play are frozen states of mind, fantasies, philosophical tenets, idiocies, a masked-ball madness petrified at its climax. Passing by these walks, walking on these walls,” the prince said, “I hear the cracks enlarging, see the complete collapse of the world’s imagination impending. Whatever is very closely related to me repels me, not what is perfectly familiar to me. The quiet spreads in my head and is on the point of shattering it. I hear the way those who know all about it speak about me in significant tones, try to fool me with their show of concern. But my weakness has always been my strength; I am what I am out of weakness. When I dream, I first direct my attention to the whole world and only then to the dream I am dreaming by examining myself in a strictly scientific spirit. The feeling that permits a person to elude death for a longer or shorter period — we have it of ten — has for me become crudely stapled together with long sentences, comprehensible or incomprehensible ones. In books I have always discovered how unhappy I am, how callous, how insanely irresponsible, how sensitive, how superfluous. Think of a whole nation,” the prince said, “in centuries of unconsciousness, making history in this unconsciousness! Never have I been so clearly aware of this state as I am now. The underlying meaning of several objects taken together is not necessarily revealed to us when the underlying meaning of each of those objects is revealed to us. There you have the problem of history . I have earned the right to an idea when I have worked (metaphysically) all my life for this idea, when I have lived for it, existed for it, been mistreated and denounced for it. In the nerves, Doctor, the relationships which result in total chaos are touched on. Another man may now, at this season and in this century, be walking on the wall, alternating between the inner and the outer wall, just like us (perhaps that man is the doctor?), in keeping with the makeup of his mind, and he may say exactly as I do: I have nothing. Nothing . It does not hurt me, it merely torments me. Everything, I think, is only a geometry of bickerings, doubts, sufferings, ultimately torments,” the prince said. “I stand at the window and see myself in the yard, on the inner wall. While I observe myself I understand myself, I do not understand myself. I am four years old, I am forty years old. I play with myself, I play , I consider, I think. Someone calls me; it is a summer evening, my grandmother calls me, my grandfather, my mother, my father. They call me. Standing at the window I see, one after the other, my grandfather, my grandmother, my father, my mother, my wife. The seasons change continually while I stand at the window. They all call me. My father has on his winter suit, grandfather his winter coat, my grandmother her sheepskin coat, my mother her riding habit. I do not see my wife, I hear her but do not see her. For a whole hour I stand at the window and observe the scenery, which lies far back, very far in the background, and which I change according to my taste and by exercise of my own will. If I suddenly call out into it, this scenery dissolves,” the prince said. “I close the window, turn away from the scenery; it goes on. I forget it and it goes on. Without my constantly changing it, irritating it. Now this scenery is utterly without irritation. It often happens,” the prince said, “that I hear my wife. She very distinctly speaks sentences she spoke during her lifetime, but I cannot see her. For brief moments I think she is here; I turn around, but see nothing. My father-in-law, her father, frequently appeared in Hochgobernitz after his death; she met him, was able to see him and talk with him. But I only hear my wife, never see her. When she speaks I have the impression that the language she speaks has changed in the interval since her death, although she says the same things as she did in her lifetime. Her language, I think, is still aging while she herself is dead. Dead? She certainly is not one of those people who are completely dead when they are dead; she has died, but is not dead. But I am no longer writing such a study, although for a long time I wanted to do one, had in mind a study which describes this process. I no longer have any studies in mind. I hear my wife behind me, I turn around, she is not there, I call after her, out into the corridor, down into the vestibule, into all the upper and lower rooms. My sisters think me crazy, my daughters likewise think me crazy. I ought to go back to my room, they say. Who gives them the right to order me to my room? But I do not allow myself to challenge them and go to my room at once. My wife’s father appeared to her frequently after his death, everywhere in Hochgobernitz; she not only saw him but was able to experience him,” the prince said. “Whenever I myself have invited guests,” he said, “for years I have had the feeling that I have invited enemies. Enemies of my mind above all. They think they can risk entering a league with my sisters and my daughters. I have always thought that I myself am paying for the impertinence of all my guests, first covert, then overt, in promptly taking the side of the women. I pay for everything that irritates me. And so I stopped inviting anyone to Hochgobernitz. Everybody dreaded my lectures,” the prince said. “It was my habit to deliver a matutinal address at breakfast, to place a philosophical question on the table. Political matters interested me above all; for decades they started me going when I awakened, or in fact before I had really awakened. Whenever I met someone, no matter where, someone suitable, that is, I began talking politics. And I defended my views at once even before I had heard the other person express his views, because I knew them before he expressed them. Nobody needs to open his mouth for me to know what his politics are. I feel that in advance, I feel it at once. Such and such a person has such and such politics in his head, I always thought whenever I met someone. I thought that about everybody all my life. In general everyone was and is afraid that I will address him. As you know I despise whatever is without effort. That is my highest principle, the only one I have. I always demand the utmost. But people are afraid of the utmost. I have almost always had nothing but domestic enemies . I am cold, I say to my sisters, and my sisters bring me my pullover. I say again, I am cold, and they bring me my overcoat, and I say again, I am cold, and they bring my fur boots and fur hood, and then I begin to undress and to feel better. I am saved, I think, I am no longer cold, I am completely naked, I am no longer cold, and that disturbs them. The cold that prevails here in Hochgobernitz has always had the greatest influence. It has always influenced everybody here. The cold in conjunction with the dampness of the old walls. Even in my most complicated thoughts I have always felt this cold and this dampness, always noted it. Yes,” he said, “possibly everything about me could be attributed to the cold and dampness. There are entirely different characters in the world, who are completely independent of one another and who yet are constantly being formed by climatic conditions. You can say of many of them that they grew up in a dry, a damp, a warm, or a cold house. Your home was cold, you could say to many, and to many others: You come from a dry home. And so on. People’s characters adjust to the climate; the climate changes them to accord with it. There are philosophies that could not arise in dry and others that could not arise in damp houses. There are concatenations of ideas which have their origin in cold walls. We assume the spirit of the walls that surround us. I often see groups of people and think: This group comes from a damp region, this from a dry one. Some come from a completely parched area. In the course of the centuries external nature has completely permeated Hochgobernitz. I also sleep in this nature, I frequently think; I sleep in the dampness and cold typical of Hochgobernitz. And so I think in this dampness and cold. Hochgobernitz is the proof that a building can destroy people who are completely at its mercy. But it does not do any good to leave the building that will destroy you, to go away from Hochgobernitz for example. It encloses you wherever you go. Whether you go to London or Paris, it crushes you. Traveling far away has no point. Even in New York I always had the feeling that Hochgobernitz was crushing me, not New York. But it is much better to be crushed by Hochgobernitz in Hochgobernitz than in New York. We always want to hear something even worse than what we have inside of us,” the prince said. “That is the sole reason we listen, force ourselves to hold conversations. The noiselessness sometimes makes everything in Hochgobernitz so distinct,” he said, “makes everything past and future into the present. At times, when this noiselessness prevails and when I want to, I can effortlessly identify all the voices I have ever heard or not heard in Hochgobernitz. The violence of external nature, which continually arises from the mind of internal nature,” the prince said, “is the quiet. In fact I once suddenly awakened in the middle of the night and saw a gigantic note pinned to the sky on which the word open was written. My laughter awakened everyone in the house. They rushed to the windows and saw nothing. I kept saying, Open! Open! is written up there, really, open is actually written up there, but they saw nothing, thought me crazy, and I chased them back to their beds. In the nature of things I am more and more afraid of myself,” the prince said. “I am actually frightened. I try to distract myself from this fear, but I succeed only sporadically nowadays. What satisfaction I felt only a few years ago when I went down into the valleys, down into the gorge, into the mountain forest on fine days and into the lowland forest on rainy days. I was often happy contemplating the surface of the water at the Ache, happy at the rhythm of movement of the water itself, absorbed in poetic appreciation of the earth’s surface. The lowland forest, the Ache itself, was enough to keep me from despair. And if not the Ache, if not the mountain forest or the lowland forest, then the library. Books that make for contemplation. My mind was all right, my brain all right, I was all right. Today? For years all I needed was to think of my son, of my own youth, and I would go out of my room and down to join the women. A meal with them. A conversation with them. In those days I was convinced of the proximity of infinity. Today? Everything is very far away today. Farther and farther away. Did I ever approach the explanation? Lying in bed I am ashamed of myself. Then I get up because I am hungry, go down to the women and eat something, and feel as if I am plunging into double shame, hundredfold shame. Life more and more has an ill-smelling breath. And I am afraid of someday being discovered in my feelings. My life consists of efforts not to be discovered. Have they discovered me, seen through me? I often think. Which of them has discovered, seen through me? I am the world and must also incorporate it into myself in the form of books, vast libraries,” the prince said. “Absurd. While reading, no matter what I read in the past, I always had the feeling that everything was divided into two halves, into a decent and an indecent half. That is what is repulsive about reading: the division into two halves. I won’t say Good and Evil, but decent, indecent. But thinking is free of this repulsiveness. In reading, one tries to ignore oneself,” the prince said. “Permanent identity as consolation. An initially melancholic but then more and more tormenting kind of imagining influences us. I always tell myself that I know everything is fatal, but I act contrarily. My head is often separated from my body by the span of several centuries or millennia and absolutely an empirical master of galvanization . I always have fever, Doctor, but it is the kind of fever the thermometer does not show. I am a barometer that is no longer functioning. In court I once met a person I had never seen before,” the prince said, “but who reminded me of all the people I have ever seen. He said he had something magnificent in store for his head. But I must not think he was going to cut it off himself. He put a knife into my hand and said: Cut my head off, my dear fellow. I have long waited for you to turn up to cut off my head. For I have something magnificent in store for my head. Don’t be afraid , this eccentric said, I have calculated everything in advance. It cannot go wrong. Here, cut! He gave me three minutes. Here , he said, this is the spot where I want my head cut off. I’ll continue to stand, because it seems to me thoroughly undignified to have your head cut off while lying down, let alone sitting. I won’t embarrass you! the stranger said. Incidentally, the knife is manufactured by the Christofle Company , he said. And I actually saw the name Christofle engraved on the knife. I seized the head and cut it off. I was quite astonished at how easy it was. The head then said: You see, you had no difficulty cutting off my head. But then I see that I haven’t cut off his head, and the stranger said: You didn’t seriously imagine you could cut off my head, did you? Or did you? Let us go on , the stranger said. He was my cousin. Actually,” the prince said, “I did not dream the story to its end. That was a pity.”