Once this discovery had been made, the discoverer naturally turned to watching women; and thus was revealed to him the whole inescapable significance of human architectonics. That which in a woman is round, and according to the fashion of the day was then more painstakingly hidden than it is today (so that it looked like nothing more than a small rhythmic irregularity in the otherwise boyish flow of motion), arched inward again, under the incorruptible eye of the binoculars, turning back into those ancient simple hills that constitute the eternal landscape of love. And round about, unexpectedly, a myriad of whispering folds, aroused by every step, opened and shut in her dress. They announced to the naked eye the inviolable appearance of the wearer or the talents of the tailor, and secretly revealed that which is not shown; for when magnified, impulses are actualized, and when viewed through the tube of the looking glass, every woman becomes a psychologically spied Susannah in the bath of her dress. But it was amazing how soon such a sophisticated curiosity evaporated under the immovable and clearly somewhat spiteful equanimity of the binoculars’ glance; and nothing remained but the trifling and flicker of those eternally constant values that require no psychology.
Enough of this! The best way to insure against an obscene misuse of this philosophical tool is to ponder its theory, “Isolation.” We always see things amidst their surroundings and generally perceive them according to what function they serve in that context. But remove them from that context and they suddenly become incomprehensible and terrible, the way things must have been on the first day after creation, before the new phenomena had yet grown accustomed to each other and to us. So, too, in the luminous solitude of our telescopic circle, everything becomes clearer and larger, but above all, things become more arcane and demonic. A hat which, according to common custom crowns the masculine figure and is synonymous with the overall appearance of the man of worldly influence and power (an altogether skittish form, belonging to the body as well as the soul), instantly degenerates into something insane when the binoculars strip it of its romantic attachments to the world around it and restore its true isolated optical presence. A woman’s charm is fatally undercut as soon as the lens perceives her from the hem of her skirt upwards as a sack-like space from which the two twisted little slits peer forth. And how frightening does the ivory flashing of love become, and how infinitely comical is anger, when both are separated from their effect, isolated in the circle of the lens! There is between our clothes and ourselves, and between our customs and ourselves, a convoluted relationship of moral credit according to which we first lend customs and clothes their entire significance, and then borrow it back again, paying interest on the interest; and this is why we border on bankruptcy when we cut off their line of credit.
Naturally this has some bearing on the much ridiculed absurdities of fashion, which one year make us longer and shorten us the next, which make us first fat and then skinny, sometimes wide on top and narrow on the bottom, sometimes narrow on top and wide down below, which one year prescribe that everything be combed upwards, and the next year insist that everything be combed back downwards again, impelling us now to brush our hair forwards and backwards, now to the right and to the left. If we consider it all from a wholly unsympathetic standpoint, fashion offers us an astoundingly limited number of geometric possibilities, among which we alternate in the most passionate way, without ever totally disrupting the tradition. If we likewise include the fashions of thought, feeling, and action, about which practically the same can be said, then our entire history must appear to the sensitized eye as nothing but a corral, within the confines of which the human hoard stampedes senselessly back and forth. And yet how willingly we follow the leaders, who themselves merely charge ahead of us out of terror, and what joy grins back at us in the mirror when we connect with the fashionable norm, looking exactly like everyone else, even though everyone looks different than they did yesterday! Why do we need all this?! Perhaps we fear, and rightfully so, that our character would scatter like a powder if we did not pack it into a publicly approved container.
The observer ended finally at foot level, that is, at the point where a man raised himself upright out of the animal domain. And how uncanny is that spot in the case of the communion between man and woman! We do after all have some prior knowledge of this sphere from the movies, in which famous heroes and heroines waddle rapidly toward us like ducks. But the cinema serves our love of life, and makes every effort to beautify its deficiencies, at which purpose it succeeds with ever greater technical proficiency. Not so our binoculars! They persist unrelentingly in showing us how ridiculously the legs disengage themselves from the hips and how clumsily they land on the heel and sole; not only does this organ swing inhumanly and land fat-end first, but it likewise manages meanwhile to effect the most revealing personal grimaces.
The man with his eye to the instrument noticed two such instances in the course of five minutes. Hardly had he aimed at a young fellow decked out in a sportscap (whose socks were striped like the neck of a ring dove), when he likewise noticed how with a concentrated and tiny jerk in each of his slow steps, this fellow knocked the leg of the girl sauntering beside him out of sync. No doctor, no girl, not even he himself had any inkling of the awful prospects that lay ahead; only the binoculars detached this tiny gesture of helplessness from the universal harmony of brutality and allowed the approaching figure to appear in the site! Something more harmless happened to the plump and friendly man in his prime who came quickly walking by and offered the world a kindly, obliging stride: according to a line down the middle of the site that neatly severed the legs one from another, it became apparent that his feet were repulsively twisted inwards; and now that at this one spot the curtain of truth had been lifted, one could see that his arms also swung selfishly in their shoulder sockets, that his shoulders tugged on the nape of his neck, and instead of revealing a benevolent overall appearance, all at once revealed a human system solely concerned with itself, a personality that couldn’t give a hoot about anyone else!
In this way, the binoculars contribute both to our understanding of the individual, as well as to an ever deepening lack of comprehension of the nature of humanity. By dissolving the commonplace connections and discovering new ones, it in fact replaces the practice of genius, or is at least a primary exercise. And yet perhaps for this very reason we recommend this instrument in vain. Do not people, after all, employ it even at the theater to heighten the illusion, or during intermission to see who else is there, thereby seeking not the unfamiliar, but rather, the comforting aspects of familiar faces?
It’s Lovely Here
There are many people who on their vacations are drawn to famous places. They drink beer in their hotel gardens, and if in addition they happen to make pleasant acquaintances, they already look forward to the memories. On the last day of their vacation they go to the nearest stationers; they buy postcards there, and then buy more postcards from the waiter back at the hotel. The picture postcards that these people buy look the same all over the world. They are tinted: the trees and lawns, poison green; the sky, peacock blue; the cliffs are gray and red. The houses are presented in downright painful relief, as though at any moment they might spring up out of the surface; and the color is so intense that a narrow band of it generally forms a contour on the flip side of the card. If the world really looked like that, one could indeed do nothing better than affix a stamp to it and toss it in the nearest mailbox. On these picture postcards people write: “It is indescribably beautiful here.” Or “It’s lovely here.” Or: “Too bad you couldn’t be here with me to see all this beauty.” Sometimes they also write: “You have no idea how beautiful it is here.” Or: “What a swell time we’re having here!”