hideous Loos settee — he had invited me to sit down on this hideous Loos settee which stood before a window looking out on to the Singerstrasse — I read Wieland to my wife for a whole year, Wieland, that great but underrated figure in German literature, Wieland whom Goethe winkled out of Weimar, with Schiller playing a distasteful part in it, Reger said; after a year my wife was aWieland expert, after a single year! Reger exclaimed then. And here on this Loos footstool, which is as uncomfortable as it is hideous, reputedly this footstool was also designed bythat unbearably grand-gesture man Loos, my wife would sit and between one and two every morning, during sixtysix and sixty-seven, read me the whole of Kant. To start with I had the greatest difficulty in introducing my wife to the world of literature and of philosophy and of music, Reger said then. It is obvious, surely, that literature is not conceivable without philosophy or the other way round, or philosophy without music or literature without music or the other way round, he said, it took years before my wife understood this, Reger said at the Singerstrasse flat then. I had to start from the very beginning with my wife, even though, if only through her origins, she was correspondingly highly educated when I met her. At first I thought that living together would be impossible, but then it was possible after all, Reger said, because my wife subordinated herself, naturally, because that was the prerequisite of our living together, which eventually I was able to describe as an ideal living together. A woman such as my wife only experiences difficulty in learning during the first few years of such a schooling, thereafter she learns ever more easily, Reger said. On this uncomfortable and hideous Loos footstool my wife, in a manner of speaking, saw the light of philosophy, Reger said at the Singerstrasse flat then. For years we pursue the wrong road of illuminating a person before, from one moment to the next, we perceive the correct one, from then on everything moves very quickly, from then on my wife comprehended everything very quickly, but of course I could have continued to work on her for certainly some years if not decades, Reger said at the Singerstrasse flat then. We take a wife and we do not know why we have taken her, surely not just so she should be a nuisance to us with her everlasting domestic fussing, in what is simply her feminine way, Reger said at the Singerstrasse flat then, surely we take her because we wish to acquaint her with the true value of life, to instruct her on what life can be if conducted intellectually. Of course we must not make the mistake of drilling intellectuality into the head of such a woman, as I had attempted initially and was naturally bound to fail, here too it is circumspection that leads to results, Reger said at the Singerstrasse flat then. Anything my wife had loved before we met she stopped loving once I had enlightened her, except for that art nouveau hysteria, this so-called artnouveau, this repulsive kitsch art, this nauseating art-nouveau aberration of taste: there I stood no chance. I did of course succeed in gradually curing her of false, which means worthless, literature and of false and worthless music, Reger said, and I introduced her to essential sections of world philosophy. The female head is the most obstinate, Reger said at the Singerstrasse flat then, we believe it to be accessible whereas in fact it is inaccessible. Before I married my wife she went on a lot of nonsensical journeys, Reger said then, which subsequently she no longer did, she simply had, as have most women nowadays, a travel mania, one place today, another tomorrow, that is their slogan yet basically they experience nothing, they see nothing, they bring back with them nothing but an empty purse. After our wedding my wife made no more journeys, Reger said, only those journeys of the mind, on which I accompanied her, we travelled through Schopenhauer and through Nietzsche and through Descartes and through Montaigne and through Pascal, and always for several years, Reger said. Here, you see, Reger said at the Singerstrasse flat then while sitting down on a chair, ahideous Otto Wagner chair, on this hideous Otto Wagner chair mywife confessed to me that, although I had instructed her in Schleiermacher for a whole year, she had not understood Schleiermacher. As, however, in the course of that instruction on Schleiermacher I had taken a dislike to Schleiermacher myself so that suddenly I no longer had the slightest interest in Schleiermacher myself, I quite simply took note that she had not understood Schleiermacher and no longer concerned myself with Schleiermacher; in such a situation we must quite simply and quite ruthlessly brush aside, as the saying goes, any philosopher whom our wife fails to understand, as for instance Schleiermacher, and move on. I immediately embarked on an instruction in Herder, this we both found to be a relaxation, Reger said at the Singerstrasse flat then. After the death of my wife I considered moving out of our joint flat, but then I did not move out, quite simply because I am too old for a move. A move would be beyond my strength. Naturally, two rooms would be sufficient, Reger said, but when one can no longer move out of a flat one has to make do with ten or twelve, as in the case of the Singerstrasse flat. Everything in this flat reminds me of my wife, Reger said, no matter where I look, she is always standing here, sitting there, coming towards me from this room or that, it is terrible even though, at the same time, it is heart-rending, it is in fact heart-rending, Reger said. That time, on my first visit to the Singerstrasse flat, while his wife was still alive, he said to me while gazing down on to the Singerstrasse, you know, Atzbacher, there is nothing I fear more than finding myself suddenly left by my wife and alone, the most frightful thing that could happen to me would be her dying and leaving me alone. But my wife is in good health and will survive me by many years, Reger said then. When we love a person as tenderly as I do my wife we cannot imagine their death, we cannot even bear the thought of it, Reger said then. When I was at the Singerstrasse flat for the second time it was to collect an old volume of Spinoza which he had obtained for me at a more favourable price than normal, that is not through an official bookshop but through an illegal dealer, and as soon as I stepped into the Singerstrasse flat he made me sit down in the nearest chair, also a hideous Loos chair, and disappeared into his library, from where shortly afterwards he reappeared with a volume of Novalis maxims. I shall now read you Novalis maxims for an hour, he said to me, and, while I had to remain seated on the hideous Loos chair, he remained standing and for an actual hour read Novalis maxims to me. I have loved Novalis from the start, he said, when he had closed the book with the Novalis maxims after an hour, and I still love him today. Novalis is the poet whom I have loved all my life always in the same way and always with the same intensity, more than any other. As time went on the lot of them, more or less, invariably, got on my nerves, profoundly disappointed me, revealed themselves as nonsensical or as pointless or, just as often, ultimately insignificant and useless, but there was none of this in the case of Novalis. I never believed I could love a poet who was at the same time a philosopher, but I love Novalis, I have always loved him and at all times and I shall love him in the future too with the same sincerity with which I have always loved him, Reger said then. All philosophers age with time, not so Novalis, Reger said then. But it is surely strange that my wife never even had a liking for Novalis, not even a liking, whereas I have always totally loved Novalis. There were a great many things I was able to convince my wife about, in time, but not about Novalis, although Novalis is the one author she would have gained from most, he said. At first she refused to go to the Kunsthistorisches Museum with me, Reger now said, she resisted, so to speak, tooth and nail, but eventually she came here with me after all, with the same regularity as myself, and I am convinced that, if she had survived me instead of me surviving her, as is the case now, she would have come to the Kunsthistorisches Museum on her own again, without me, just as I am doing now, alone, without her. Reger again looked at the