Try to feel what I felt: I was flabbergasted and, for a while, completely at a loss. This unique way of paying respect to a work of the pen made an impression on me of an experience that has shaped me and that therefore I here present to you.
January 1920
THE GREAT TALENT
ONCE UPON a time there was a great talent who sat in his room all day long, looked out the window, and acted like a total do-nothing.
The great talent knew he was a great talent, and this stupid, useless knowledge gave him food for thought all day.
People in high places had said lots of very flattering things to the poor young great talent and had, correspondingly, given him money too. In their noble bounty, wealthy people enjoy supporting a great talent from time to time, but they expect in return that Mr. God’s Gift be appropriately grateful and also well-mannered.
Our shining talent here, on the other hand, was absolutely not grateful, well-mannered, and polite. In fact, he was the exact opposite — rude.
To take money, when you are a great talent, and on top of that to be rude: that is truly the highest pinnacle of rudeness. Dear reader, I tell you: a great talent like that is a monster; and I beg of you: never contribute anything to his advancement.
Our great talent here was supposed to go genteel and well-behaved out into the world in order to entertain ladies and gentlemen in a cute and talented way, but he was heartily willing to forego such an arduous fulfillment of his duties; he would much rather sit at home, dispelling his boredom with all sorts of selfish and wayward figments of the imagination.
Miserable, despicable scoundrel! What pride, what uncharitability, what an excessive lack of humility!
Anyone who supports great talents sooner or later runs the risk of having to lay a revolver on the table in front of him close at hand in order to be able to defend himself against possible stickups with a cocked and loaded weapon.
If I’m not mistaken, a great talent once wrote his benevolent, noble-hearted sponsor the following letter:
“As you well know, I am a great talent and as such in continual need of support. Where, my dear Sir, do you get the nerve to leave me in the lurch and hence to perish? I think I have every right to more fat advances. Woe is you, unhappy wretch, if you don’t send me ASAP enough for me to keep dawdling. But I am quite sure that you would never be foolhardy enough, and hence would never dare, to remain insensitive to the prospect of nefarious, predatory demands.”
Such endearing letters and others like them are what every gracious donor and patron of the arts receives as time goes by, and so I cry out loud to the world: Give a great talent no gifts and grant him no grants!
Our great talent here understood that he had to produce something, but he preferred to drift around on the streets and accomplished nothing.
As time goes by, after all, a sufficiently recognized and lauded talent quite naturally becomes a very comfortable eminence on its own.
Pricked by his conscience, the great talent finally did pull himself together out of his, so to speak, talent-rich jog-trot. He abandoned himself to the world, i.e., betook himself to the road and, far from any subsidies, became himself again.
By learning to forget that anyone was duty-bound to render him any assistance, he got used to being responsible for his own behavior once more.
A revival of integrity and a sudden impulse to be plucky now characterized him, raised him up, and these alone, people think, kept him from a miserable demise.
1918
THE WICKED WOMAN
A WOMAN who one day, as these things sometimes work out, had to see the dream of her life — the dream she had thought herself permitted to dream — dead and buried cried whole long days and weeks long over the loss of the aforesaid. But by the time she had finally cried out all her pain she had turned, almost astonishing even herself, into a mean, angry woman who from that point on had no need as deep and vital as the need to see other women properly toppled, embarrassed, and cast down through her efforts to make them unhappy. She began more and more to hate every cheerful female face, because every happy visage made her feel wounded and insulted. She felt moved to hatch plots and malicious plans against every last pleasure she caught sight of, since every jolly glance seemed to give her pain. Now is it right for an unhappy person to take his or her hatred of humanity so far? No, never! must come the resolute answer. This wicked woman, ruined by such manifold sorrow, by a striving after happiness in life that came to nothing, made it her sad task to cleverly bring young women and young men together, make them notice each other, bring them closer and closer together in friendship, and then, when their sweet friendship seemed ripe to her, tear the two of them apart again with cunning betrayals, crude tricks, cruel slander and deception. The sight of a sobbing, betrayed member of her own sex made her feel better and gave her pleasure. She did such things and others like them for quite a while, during which time the young women cheated of their joy and satisfaction continued to see her as a fine and noble lady. But little by little everyone noticed how wicked she was, and as soon as people achieved certainty on the matter her dangerous company was most rigorously avoided from then on, in such a way that the wicked woman soon had no further opportunities to cause unhappiness, do wicked deeds, and spread strife and discontent.
1917
A SON AND HIS MOTHER
A DEAR, good little mother, truly — I mean, someone should put up a statue to her! — made, with her diligent frugality and assiduous all-night sewing, the happy opportunity come to pass for her son, whom she practically worshipped, to attend high school and thereby achieve the best possible education. And observe, dear observant reader, what happened next. The great son, this object of maternal self-sacrifice, this glittering jewel and precious gemstone of a son, indeed made such great progress over time that already in his years of young manhood he had risen high and attained a position that not only allowed him but in fact practically obligated him to puff himself up, to coldly and heedlessly act the part of the haughtiest of beings, and to play the grand gentleman, as which he quickly learned to put his poor, modest background behind him. A superbly fat, stout, highly respected beast, as they say, he felt raised up above all the narrow little cares and worries of daily life, and, as his estimation of his own important and estimable self rose higher and higher, he forgot the maternal individual of his earlier days. Poor, good little mother! Dear oh dear, she should just sit nice and quiet in her little garret of care and sorrow, since it is of course completely impossible to introduce such figures into polite society. In the rarefied atmosphere and glittering social circumstances in which parvenus live, no one, as is well known, ever says a word, even speaks a syllable, about a child’s gratitude and a child’s love. Sultry, pleasurable love is certainly spoken of there, but about simple love as such one merely, in the very best case, pityingly shrugs one’s haughty shoulders. So if we suppose and assume that the great son of his dear little mother did feel inclined to pay her a visit at some point, we would be forced to likewise consider that such a visit would be impossible, since the splendid fellow was much too big and self-important, much too fat and puffed up, much too proud and much too rich to enter that den of poverty through the narrow, pitiful frame of the modest den door. There are palace doors, and high, wide salon doors, for such pride and such haughtiness. To say more is surely superfluous, the reader already understands what I am trying to say. The path to the little mother and thereby to modest human simplicity was and remains barred to the upstart, by reason of the doorframe and of the equally narrow circumstances to which he would have had to adapt himself once more. Perhaps I will be permitted the naturally apparently rather sentimental remark that I would be very inclined to say that I would like to kneel down before this dear little old mother and that it would practically transport me to worshipfully kiss the money that she scratched together for her proud oaf with her wearisome nocturnal labors. Let the oaf just stroll along with others like him, wherever his feet feel like taking him. I bow not before him and those like him, and for him and those like him I will never have either a courteous word or any respect to spare whatsoever.