PüTTER: I’m not sure what you’re trying to say, dear colleague.
LICHTENBERG: I don’t mean to say anything; at best I want to ask something. Whether, when we break a murderer on the wheel, we don’t make the same mistake as the child who hits the stool he bumps against.19
A PEDDLER: Excuse me, gentlemen, for bothering you. If I could ask the gentlemen to glance at my collection. The best assortment of silhouettes you can find anywhere. One for a silver coin. The king of Hanover, the king of Prussia, the gentlemen Danton and Robespierre, of whom so much is said, and Herr von Goethe, Assistant Legal Secretary of Weimar and author of Werther, Herr Bürger of neighboring Göttingen, the great world traveler Herr Forster, the gentlemen Iffland and Kopf, the pride of the Berlin theater, Mademoiselle Schröder of Weimar, — I can’t count them all for you. No interest! (Pause.) Well, then the gentlemen will certainly not spurn a little memento of the day. I present to you the finely cut silhouette of our local monster. Please take a look at the text by Herr Lavater on the back.
PüTTER (reading): An inveterate murderer, full of quiet evil burrowing in on itself, an assassin of women, a mother-killer, a miser such as no moralist could ever have thought up, no actor portrayed, no poet written about. He reveled in nocturnal gloom, turned midday to midnight by closing his shutters, locked his house, averse to light, averse to people, he buried his stolen treasures in the earth, deep within cellar walls, under floors and in fields. Spattered with the blood of innocence, he danced, laughing, on the wedding day of the woman whom later he struck dead at the grave she had herself unknowingly prepared at his behest and in his presence. All this can be read in his likeness: his eyes look at nothing, his smile is like the open grave, and his fearsome teeth are the gates to Hell.20
PüTTER: This leaflet is worth a silver coin to me.
LICHTENBERG: And to me it’s even worth two, because there’s a story behind it.
PüTTER: What do you mean?
LICHTENBERG: I don’t mind letting you in on a little story. I indulged myself in a joke; but it has to remain between us.
PüTTER: Discretion is part of my job.
LICHTENBERG: I know. Even so, I wouldn’t dare to tell you if I didn’t know that we hold the same opinion of Lavater’s theory of physiognomy, which has become quite the rage these days.
PüTTER: What surprises me about Herr Lavater is that he, so attentive to the signs that allow character to be intuited, should have failed to notice that people who write the way he does are absolutely not to be believed. We, however, know that the manner in which a testimony is presented can sometimes be more important than the testimony itself.21
LICHTENBERG: All right then, listen to my story. Circumstances, which I do not wish to touch upon here, made it possible for me to send the silhouette of this monster, whom they are finishing off out there, to Lavater. And I did it in such a way that he neither knew who was portrayed, nor that I was the one who sent it. And now, listen to his response; I carry it with me. Such a leaflet is worth more than a kingdom.
PüTTER: Let’s hear it.
LICHTENBERG: This profile undoubtedly belongs to an extraordinary man who would have been great if he had a little more mental acumen and more heartfelt love. Whether I err in thinking I have discovered in him the aptitude and inclination for the establishment or dissemination of a religious sect is an open question. I can say nothing more. That is already too much.
PüTTER: I never heard a truer word. That’s a fortunate experiment you did with the physiognomist.
LICHTENBERG: If physiognomy becomes what Lavater expects it will, then children will be hanged before they have done the deeds that deserve the gallows.22
PüTTER: But perhaps we shouldn’t speak of the gallows here, so near the gallows’ mound.
LICHTENBERG: I am glad that the noise has moved on. I still shudder when I think back to the morning when I saw, for the first and last time, someone who was awaiting the gallows. It was in front of the court of assizes in London. The poor fellow stood in front of the jury, and as they read the death sentence, the Lord Mayor of London was sitting there reading the newspaper.23
PüTTER: I think it’s time to depart. The moon is already shining through the window.
LICHTENBERG: A waning moon, and murky as well. There is nothing I hate more than the sight of the moon when it…
QUIKKO: Gentlemen, you hear the attacks that Herr Lichtenberg is just about to make against us. It is beneath our dignity to follow this any longer. I am switching it off.
LABU: Without wishing to condone the impulsive actions of our esteemed colleague Quikko, I will now give the floor to Mr. Peka for his observations.
PEKA: Esteemed sirs, you will all have noticed that the Spectraphone’s images were clearer than ever this time, perhaps as a consequence of the thunderstorms that purified the Earth’s atmosphere. We all had time for a close look at Herr Lichtenberg, and I think I speak for all of you when I say: We can rest assured that the solution to our problem is closer than we suspected. Herr Lichtenberg is an unhappy character. Not because of the external circumstances that keep him in Göttingen, not because of his inner constitution that has turned him into a hypochondriac, but quite simply because of his appearance. It cannot have escaped you that he is a hunchback. Yes, gentlemen, it’s easy to explain why a hunchback has nothing good to say about the science of physiognomy. He has scarcely any other choice but to form his own opinion about everything, because he cannot agree with public opinion on at least one very important point, I mean as far as the hunch is concerned. We should also not be surprised to hear him speak ill of Lavater, as of enthusiasts and geniuses. Anyone whose physique invites criticism such as his does is left with no choice but to go on the defensive as a critic himself.
LABU: We thank Mr. Peka for his clear and timely explanations. But whether he is correct to say that such a hunchback is entirely incapable of enthusiasm or surges of feeling is something we should put to the test.
SOFANTI: A report has just come in from Venus about an occurrence that I consider of great interest to us. The fifty-year-old Lichtenberg, that enemy of sentimentalists, who has been loyal to reason his entire life, is about to betray it with the Muse. He is composing verse, that is to say, he is declaiming.
LABU: A welcome opportunity to deploy our Parlamonium. We will listen to the beginning of this poem and then translate it into music.
SOFANTI: Quiet, please.
The gong sounds.
LICHTENBERG (in a stately voice unlike his usual tone): What if at some point the sun did not return, I often thought, if I awoke in a dark night and was glad when I finally saw day break again. The deep stillness of early morning, the friend of reflection, combined with the feeling of increased strength and renewed health awoke in me then such a powerful trust in the order of nature and the spirit that guides it, that I believed myself as secure in the tumult of life as if my fate lay in my own hands. I thought then that this sensation, which you can neither force to come about nor feign and which grants you this indescribable feeling of well-being, is certainly the work of precisely that spirit, and it loudly tells you that now, at least, you think correctly. Oh, do not disturb with guilt this heavenly peace within, I then said to myself. How would this dawning day break for you, if this pure mirror-brightness of your being no longer reflected it into your interior? What else do you expect from the music of the spheres, if not these contemplations? What else is the chiming together of the planets but the expression of this certainty, which the spirit, at first with a storm of raptures, then gradually more and more—24 The recitation has already been undercut with music and at this point it changes into the melody of a hymn, perhaps one by Haydn or Handel. After a while, this music changes into a funeral march.