DOROTHEA: Eberhard’s coming with a letter.
LICHTENBERG: Well, it’s high time he returned, because there seems to be a thunderstorm approaching.
A knock.
LICHTENBERG: Come in!
EBERHARD: Good morning, Herr Professor. The Justice has sent me. The Justice has received a letter from Gotha for the Herr Professor.
LICHTENBERG: I thank you. Please send the Justice my respects.
EBERHARD: Good morning.
LICHTENBERG: Just let it sit. I don’t really want to open it.
DOROTHEA: Why don’t you want to open it?
LICHTENBERG: I have an apprehension.
DOROTHEA: What do you mean?
LICHTENBERG: I have an unpleasant foreboding.
DOROTHEA: But why?
LICHTENBERG: It’s my superstition again. In every object I see an omen, and I turn one hundred things a day into oracles. I don’t need to describe this to you. Every creeping of an insect serves to answer questions about my fate. Is that not strange in a professor of physics?10 (Pause.) Perhaps it is, and perhaps not. I know that the Earth turns, and yet I am not ashamed to believe it’s standing still.11
DOROTHEA: But what could be written in the letter?
LICHTENBERG: I don’t know, but when I heard the glass shattering just now, it seemed to herald bad news.
DOROTHEA: You must allow me to open it.
LICHTENBERG: That wouldn’t help; you can’t read the gentlemen’s handwriting.
DOROTHEA: Gentlemen? What kind of gentlemen?
LICHTENBERG: No doubt the gentlemen from the life insurance.12
DOROTHEA: What is that, a life insurance?
LICHTENBERG: A company. They would have paid you something after my death.
DOROTHEA: I don’t like to hear you talk that way.
LICHTENBERG (audibly tearing a letter open): My premonitions were reliable. At least this time. The gentlemen write: “Dear, especially highly esteemed Herr Professor! In response to your letter of the 24th of this month, we regret to inform you that on the basis of the report made by our doctor, to whom we submitted the certificates and documents you provided, we are unable to offer you a life insurance policy.” That should feed my morbid thoughts.
DOROTHEA: What does the letter mean?
LICHTENBERG: The thoughts that it leads me to are much worse than the letter itself. Hypochondriacal, if you know what that means.
DOROTHEA: How would I?
LICHTENBERG: Hypochondria is fear of going blind, fear of insanity, fear of dying, fear of dreams, and fear of waking up. And when one has awakened, it means observing the first crow to see if it swoops by the tower to the right or to the left.
DOROTHEA: I didn’t imagine this morning to be like this.
LICHTENBERG: It is a quite beautiful morning, although humid. And when I look outside into the greenery, I can no longer make rhyme or reason of the odd ideas I had last night. Imagine: yesterday when I was half asleep it seemed to me suddenly that a man was like a one-times-one table, and later I awoke when I heard my own voice saying, “It must cool so splendidly,” and thought of the Principle of Contradiction, which I had visualized as if edible before me.13
DOROTHEA: Don’t you want to close the window? A wind is springing up.
LICHTENBERG: And a strong one it is. There will be a thunderstorm soon. At least we no longer need to mourn our cylinder, because in a few minutes we’ll have the most beautiful lightning sent directly to our laboratory for our use.
DOROTHEA: Is the lightning rod finished?
LICHTENBERG: Yes, since yesterday noon the first German lightning rod can be seen on this house, and now dear God wants to put it into operation directly.
Thunderclaps.
QUIKKO: There’s a thunderstorm in Göttingen right now.
Unfortunately, we are faced with the necessity of switching off.
SOFANTI: Perhaps I may use this intermission to announce some observations I have made relating to the subject of our discussion.
LABU: Mr. Sofanti has the floor.
SOFANTI: I’m afraid I cannot agree with our dear Mr. Quikko’s remarks regarding the German philosopher Lichtenberg. Anyone who has followed this conversation with his girlfriend must conclude that it is not the external circumstances that are ruining his life, but his own temperament. Yes, gentlemen, I won’t hesitate to describe the poor professor as sick. Please recall — a professor of physical science, a man who is used to linking the phenomena of the world to their causes and effects, and who bases his life’s happiness and his peace upon insects and crows, dreams and intimations. Whether this man was in London or Paris, Constantinople or Lisbon, the most vivid of lives and the most refined of courts would be lost on him, as he would just sit there, all hunched up and mournful, like a night owl. Such a man can certainly not amount to anything. Do we need proof of that? Gentlemen, I submit the evidence for the perusal of the academy. Photographs of the Göttinger Taschenkalender [Göttingen Pocket Almanac],14 courtesy of a resourceful operator on Neptune. Take a look at the entries written by the quill of this Herr Lichtenberg. Are these subjects worthy of a scholar? Observations about the preparation of ice cream in India and about English fashions, about first names and about samples of strange appetites, about the use of flogging by diverse peoples, about bells and about animals’ aptitude to learn, about carnival customs and about menus, about marriage—
LABU: I am reluctantly obliged to make our esteemed member Mr. Sofanti aware that not only is he, in the understandable excitement that accompanies his remarks, on the point of exceeding his time for speaking but also that, due to the well-known phenomenon of time warp between the Earth and the Moon, we have lost a year in our contact with the subject of our observations, Herr Lichtenberg. We will try to tune the Spectrophone to Göttingen again.
A series of purring and ringing signals can be heard.
QUIKKO: The Herr Professor is not in the laboratory but in the office of his present apartment in the house of his publisher, Dieterich. Using the files in our archive, we have been able to establish that Herr Dieterich lets Professor Lichtenberg live with him for free so that the Professor will write for his Göttinger Taschenkalender for free. Now Herr Lichtenberg is seated at his desk. We are adjusting precisely and are thus able to follow his hand, which holds the quill. The candle is to the right of the writer; the light conditions are quite favorable.—
My very dearest friend,
I call that true German friendship, dearest man. A thousand thanks for your thoughts of me. I have not answered right away, and heaven knows how things have been for me! You are, and must be, the first to whom I confess it. Last summer, soon after your last letter, I suffered the greatest loss of my life. What I am about to tell you, no other person can ever know. I met a girl in the year 1777, a burgher’s daughter from this town. At the time, she was just a bit older than thirteen years old. Such a model of beauty and gentleness I had never seen in my life, even though I had seen many. The first time I laid eyes on her, she was in the company of five or six others, who, as the children here do, were selling flowers to passersby on the ramparts. She offered me a bouquet, which I bought. I was accompanied by three Englishmen, who ate and lived with me. “What a charming creature she is,” said one of them. I had noticed that, too, and because I knew what a Sodom is our refuse-heap of a town, I thought seriously that I should remove this splendid creature from such trade. I finally spoke to her alone and asked her to call on me at my house. She wouldn’t go to any fellow’s quarters, she said. When she heard that I was a professor, however, she came to visit one afternoon with her mother. In a word, she gave up the flower trade and spent the entire day with me. And I found that this splendid body was inhabited by a soul such as I had long searched for but never found. I instructed her in writing and arithmetic and in other branches of knowledge that, without turning her into a bluestocking, developed her intellect ever further. My scientific apparatus, which cost me over 1,500 thaler, attracted her at first because of its gleam, but finally the use of it became her only entertainment. It was then that our acquaintance was raised to its highest point. She went away late and came back with the day, and all day long her concern was keeping my things, from necktie to air pump, in order. And all with such heavenly gentleness, which I had never before thought possible. The result was, as you will have suspected by now, that as of Easter 1780 she stayed with me completely. Her inclination toward this kind of life was so great that she didn’t even go downstairs except to attend church. She was not to be torn away from it. We were continuously together. When she was at church, I felt as if I had sent away my eyes and all my senses. In the meantime, I could not look at this angel, who had entered into such an association, without the greatest emotion. That she had sacrificed everything for me was unbearable to me. So I asked her to join at the table when friends ate with me and gave her the clothing that her situation demanded and loved her more with every passing day. It was my serious intention to also unite with her before the eyes of the world. Oh dear God! And this heavenly girl died on the 4th of August, 1782, in the evening as the sun went down. I had the best doctors. Everything in the world was done. Consider that, dearest man, and allow me to end here. It is impossible for me to continue.