a trivial everyday affair as a result of technical progress. Listening to music is nothing out of the ordinary any more, you can hear music wherever you go, you are practically forced to hear music, in every department store, in every doctor's surgery, on every street, indeed you cannot avoid music nowadays, you wish to escape from it but you cannot escape, this age is totally accompanied by background music, that is the catastrophe, Reger said. Our age has witnessed the eruption of total music, anywhere between the North Pole and the South Pole you are forced to hear music, in the city or out in the country, on the high seas or in the desert, Reger said. People have been stuffed full of music every day for so long that they have long lost all feeling for music. This monstrous situation of course has its effect on the concerts you hear nowadays, there is nothing out of the ordinary nowadays because all music all over the world is out of the ordinary, and where everything is out of the ordinary there, naturally, nothing out of the ordinary remains, indeed it is positively touching to see a few ridiculous virtuosi still taking pains to be out of the ordinary, but they are so no longer because they can be so no longer. The world is through and through pervaded by total music, Reger said, that is the misfortune, at every street corner you can hear extraordinary and perfect music on such a scale that you have probably blocked your ears long ago to stop yourself going out of your mind. People today, because they have nothing else left, suffer from a pathological music consumption, Reger said, this music consumption will be driven forward by the industry, which controls people today, to a point where everybody is destroyed; there is a lot of talk nowadays about waste and chemicals which have destroyed everything, but music destroys a lot more than waste and chemicals do, it is music that eventually will destroy absolutely everything totally, mark my words. The first thing to be destroyed by the music industry are people's auditory canals and next, as a logical consequence, the people themselves, that is the truth, Reger said. I can already see people totally destroyed by the music industry, Reger said, those masses of music-industry victims eventually populating the continents with their musical cadaverous stench, my dear Atzbacher, the music industry will one day have the population on its conscience, it will most probably ultimately have the whole of mankind on its conscience, not just chemicals and waste, believe me. The music industry is the murderer of human beings, the music industry is the real mass murderer of humanity which, if the music industry continues on its present lines, will have no hope whatever within a few decades, my dear Atzbacher, Reger said excitedly. A person with a sensitive ear will soon be unable to go out into the street; just go to a café, go to an inn, go to a department store, everywhere, whether you like it or not, you have to hear music; take a train or board a plane, music today pursues you everywhere. This ceaseless music is the most brutal thing present-day humanity has to suffer and to tolerate, Reger said. From early morning till late at night humanity is stuffed full of Mozart and Beethoven, Bach and Handel, Reger said. Go where you will, you cannot escape that torture. It is a downright miracle, Reger said, that ceaseless music is not yet to be heard at the Kunsthistorisches Museum as well, that would be the last straw. After the funeral of my wife I locked myself up in the Singerstrasse flat and did not even admit the housekeeper, Reger said. Immediately after the funeral he had gone to the nearby synagogue and lit a candle, without really knowing why, and the strangest thing was that from the synagogue he had gone straight into Saint Stephen's and lit a candle there too, again without really knowing why. Having a lit a candle in Saint Stephen's, he had walked down the Wollzeile for some way with the idea of killing himself. However, I had no clear idea of how I would kill myself and eventually I was able to dismiss the idea of killing myself from my head, at least for a short time. I had the choice between wandering criss-cross about the city for days and perhaps weeks, or staying locked up for weeks, Reger said to me, I decided in favour of staying locked up for weeks. After his wife's funeral he had not wished to see anybody at all ever again and at first not even to eat anything ever again, but nobody could stand drinking nothing but pure water for days on end for more than three or four days, and he had in fact lost weight very rapidly and in the morning, suddenly, had barely the strength to get up, that was a signal, Reger said to me, and I started eating again and next I started studying Schopenhauer again, it was Schopenhauer my wife and I had been studying when she had her fall behind me and broke the so-called neck of her femur, Reger said thoughtfully. During these six weeks of locked-up existence I merely conducted a few telephone calls with my lawyer and read Schopenhauer, that probably saved me, Reger said, even though I am not sure whether it was right for me to save myself, probably, Reger said, it would have been better not to have saved myself, to have killed myself. But the mere fact that I had so much running about in connection with the funeral did not leave me any time to kill myself. Unless we kill ourselves at once we do not kill ourselves at all, that is what is so frightful, he said. We have the wish to be just as dead as the person we loved, but still we do not kill ourselves, we think about it but we do not do it, Reger said. Curiously enough I could not bear any music during those six weeks, I did not once sit down at the piano, once in my mind I attempted a piece from the Well-Tempered Clavier, but immediately abandoned the attempt, it was not music that was my salvation during those six weeks, it was Schopenhauer, again and again a few lines of Schopenhauer, Reger said. It was not Nietzsche either, only Schopenhauer. Isat up in bed and read a few lines of Schopenhauer and reflected on them and again read a few Schopenhauer sentences and reflected on them, Reger said. After four days of nothing but drinking water and reading Schopenhauer I ate my first piece of bread, which was so hard I had to chop it off the loaf with a meat cleaver. I sat down on the window stool facing the Singerstrasse, that hideous Loos stool, and looked down on the Singerstrasse. Imagine, it was the end of May and there was a flurry of snow. I shrank away from people. From my flat on the Singerstrasse I watched them rushing about down below, one way and another, laden with clothes and foodstuffs, and I felt nauseated by them. I thought I do not wish to go back among these people, not among these people and there are no others, Reger said. Looking down on to the Singerstrasse I realized that there were no other people than those rushing about the Singerstrasse this way and that. I looked down on to the Singerstrasse and hated the people and I said to myself I do not wish to go back among these people, Reger said. I do not wish to go back to that infamy and that shabbiness, I said to myself, Reger said. I pulled out several drawers and several chests and looked into them and kept taking out pictures and writings and correspondence of my wife and put everything on the table, one item after another, and progressively inspected everything, and because I am an honest person, my dear Atzbacher, I have to admit that I wept while doing so. Suddenly I gave my tears free rein, I had not wept for decades and suddenly I gave my tears free rein, Reger said. I sat there, giving my tears free rein, and I wept and wept and wept and wept, Reger said. I had not wept for decades, Reger said to me at the Ambassador. I have no need to conceal anything or to hide anything, he said,