The artist who is crowned with success lives in the metropolis as if in an enchanting Oriental dream. He hastens from one elegant household to the affluent next, sits down unhesitatingly at the opulently laden dining tables, and while chewing and slurping provides the entertainment. He passes his days in a virtual state of intoxication. And his talent? Does an artist such as this neglect his talent? What a question! As if one might cast off one’s gifts without so much as a by-your-leave. On the contrary. Talent unconsciously grows stronger when one throws oneself into life. You mustn’t be constantly tending and coddling it like a sickly something. It shrivels up when it’s too timidly cared for.
The artistic individual is nonetheless permitted to pace up and down, like a tiger, in his cave of artistic creation, mad with desire and worry over achieving some output of beauty. As no one sees this, there is no one to hold it against him. In company, he should be as breezy, affable, and charming as he can manage, neither too self-important nor too unimportant either. One thing he must never forget: he is all but required to pay court to beautiful, wealthy women at least a little.
After approximately five or six years have passed, the artist — even if he comes from peasant stock — will feel at home in the metropolis. His parents would appear to have lived and given birth to him here. He feels indebted, bound, and beholden to this strange rattling, clattering racket. All the scurrying and fluttering about now seem to him a sort of nebulous, beloved maternal figure. He no longer thinks of ever leaving again. Whether things go well with him or poorly, whether he comes down in the world or flourishes, no matter, it “has” him, he is forever under its spell, and it would be impossible for him to bid this magnificent restlessness adieu.
1910
Kutsch
Of kutsch it is known that he has three unfinished plays in his armoire, besides which he’s at work on a fourth, using material borrowed from Maupassant.
Hey there, Kutsch!
Kutsch finds it distasteful to be so flippantly addressed, he’s distrustful and perhaps has good cause for this, as he is striving for ultimate greatness, and all who strive for greatness aren’t so keen on rubbing shoulders with their fellow man.
People of this sort are always envisioning a certain far-off something. Such individuals find themselves constantly faced with the necessity that whispers to them: Evolve! — Kutsch needs to evolve, it’s at the top of his list, and this same uncanny force is always tormenting him a little, making him prick up his ears and commanding that he assume a stricken, nervous facial expression.
He has long, narrow hands, sensitive hands. Certain satirical illustrators like nothing better than to have a go at such hands to exploit them in their drawings. My intention here is to offer up a serious character study, and since this is the case it is crucial to pay very close attention to ensure that no feature appears in exaggerated form.
Colleague Kutsch!
This is a word he’s not terribly fond of, he’d prefer not to be anyone’s colleague, he’s a sort of up-high person always tugging his collar up about his ears. When you give his hand a good squeeze, it makes a cracking sound, and when he’s wearing his hat, he has a quite interesting head.
He’s constantly afraid people might be poking fun at him, but there are certain individuals you cannot faithfully portray without poking a bit of fun.
One night Kutsch left a hastily penned drama lying in the coffeehouse, on one of those coffeehouse sofas upon which the habitual aesthete is wont to fling himself down to sip coffee and stare into space. Some other fellow found the play, picked it up, put it in his pocket, brought it home, copied it over, completed it, prepared it for staging, and then had it put on in a first-rate theater, where it was a success.
This one too was based on a story by Maupassant. Yes, indeed. In the work of Maupassant, that loutish peasant from Normandy, great quantities of “Life” are stored away, anyone who’s read him must surely have noticed this.
Kutsch studies his subject matter rather than life itself; the life he has heretofore experienced still leaves much to be desired. He writes for the papers and reviews books, that’s what he’s experienced, and this, in his opinion, is not particularly striking as experiences go.
What a shame he wasn’t born in — let’s say for example — the time of Louis XIV in France; surely he’d have shown some of those brilliant scalawags just having their heyday at the time what he was capable of.
The thing is: Kutsch can do anything, and he wants everything too, but in fact he does nothing at all. He writes critiques of novels because he himself is an epic author through and through; he reviews plays because he himself is thoroughly possessed by the devil of this discipline; and he writes about poetry because he himself ought to have written some poems if only he’d wanted to.
He’ll be angry when he reads this. I shall say to him: Here, take this! And shall press into his hand the modest, though for him not negligible, honorarium I shall have received for this sketch.
Sometimes those who poke fun have the extravagant habit of being philanthropic.
My God, Kutsch is so impoverished, so abandoned by all the world. Keep in mind that he strives only for what is noble and first-rate. He is not merely a person like any other, just as most people are not merely people like any other.
I, however, most definitely number among the hundred thousand. I am virtually indistinguishable from a household servant, and am glad to be so ordinary.
Did you catch the undercurrent of vindictive envy?
Why should I envy Kutsch? On the contrary, I pity him. After all, I’m writing an essay on him, and so I must of necessity feel he is beneath me, since otherwise I could hardly be writing “on” him.
This ignoble practice of just going and writing about living human beings as though they were dead. And then this Kutsch isn’t even interesting, I hear the reader protest.
1907
Fabulous
The weather was fabulous. On such a splendid day, Kitsch and Kutsch had no desire to stay home, and so they readied themselves to go out and then hurried down to the street. Fabulous, this light in the street, Kutsch murmured as the two of them marched vigorously forward, and Kitsch as well said: Fabulous. Soon a plump woman came walking toward them, and at once this woman was declared fabulous by the two promenaders. They boarded the “electric”—how utterly fabulous, Kutsch opined once more, scratching at his youthful beard, riding along like this, and Kitsch lost no time in agreeing emphatically with his companion. A girl with “fabulous eyes” was sitting in the car. Suddenly a light rain began to falclass="underline" Fabulous!
After a while our Kitsch and Kutsch got out again and went to an art salon. The art dealer was looking out the window of his shop, and this nearly appeared fabulous to the two of them, which would have gone like this: How fabulous, the way this fellow is looking out his shop window. But they avoided giving spoken expression to this thought because they sensed it wasn’t right to always go on saying exactly the same thing. Half a minute later they were standing before a Renoir: Simply fabulous! shot out of their mouths. Kutsch once more began to scrape away at his beard with his fingers, but already his colleague had discovered something that was a full ten fables more fabulous than the Renoir, namely an old Dutch artist. Something like this, they said, was more than fabulous, and both of them felt like shouting.