Klaus was shocked and saddened by the vehemence with which Kaspar was gauging matters. He’d always been like this, and, as things stood, it couldn’t be anticipated how a person might succeed in establishing fruitful relations with him. Klaus said nothing, merely offered his brother his hand in parting, for they had reached the place where he was staying.
Back in his monotonous room, he said to himself: “So now I’ve lost him all over again, and all because of a perfectly innocent, well-meaning but in fact somewhat incautious remark. I just don’t know him well enough, that’s all, and maybe I never shall. Our lives are too different. But perhaps the future, which we never quite fathom, will bring us together some other time. It’s best to wait and endure as one slowly becomes a more seasoned better person.” Feeling terribly lonely, he resolved to depart again soon and return to his own province.
— 5–
Sebastian was a young poet who recited his poems from a small stage to the audience seated below. Thanks to the impetuousness of his performance, he tended to wind up looking a bit ridiculous. He’d run away from home at an early age, living in Paris at sixteen and returning home at twenty. His father was music director in the small town where Hedwig, the sister of the three brothers, also resided. There Sebastian lived out his odd ne’er-do-well existence, sitting or lying for days at a time in a dusty attic room, stretched out on a narrow bed in which he slept at night without taking the trouble to tidy it before going to sleep. His parents considered him a lost cause and let him do as he pleased. They gave him no money, for they considered it inappropriate to support the dissolute lifestyle to which they knew he was prone with financial contributions. Sebastian could no longer be persuaded to undertake serious university studies; with some book or other tucked beneath his arm, he would wander about in the mountains and forests, often not returning home for days and passing the night, when the weather even halfway permitted, in tumbledown huts no longer used by human beings, not even rough, savage shepherds, in meadows whose altitude made them closer to the heavens than to any human civilization. He always wore the same threadbare suit of light yellow cloth and let his beard grow, but otherwise made a point of looking attractive and clean. He tended his fingernails more carefully than his mind, which he allowed to go to seed. He was handsome, and since it was known he wrote poems, his person was soon surrounded by a half-ridiculous, half-melancholy aura of enchantment, and plenty of serious-minded people in town honestly pitied the young man and warmly took his part every chance they got. As he was excellent company, he was often invited to social gatherings, which was some small compensation for the fact that the world was setting him no tasks that might satisfy his urge to achieve something. Sebastian possessed this urge to a considerable degree, but he’d strayed too far from the tracks of generally accepted and prescribed strivings. When he now strove, it was perhaps too fiercely, and, since he realized his strivings did him no good, he no longer felt much desire to pursue them. He also played songs of his own composition on the lute, singing along in his pleasant soft voice. The only injustice — a large one, to be sure — that had been done him was that he’d been coddled as a schoolboy, thereby helping him arrive at the notion that he was something like a child prodigy. How this proud fantasy insinuated itself into the boy’s receptive heart! Grown women favored the company of this lad, who was old beyond his years and understood such a great many things, and he inspired them with an incomparable attraction at the expense of his own human development. Sebastian was in the habit of saying: “My days of glory lie far behind me now.” It was horrifying to hear so young a man speak in such a way. Indeed, no matter what he did, aspired to, set about and performed, he managed to do this so wearily, coldly, and half-heartedly that he didn’t truly do anything, he was just toying with himself. Hedwig once said to him: “Sebastian, listen to me, I think you often cry over yourself.” He nodded his head, confirming this. Hedwig felt pity for him and sometimes slipped him a little money or something of the sort to make his life somewhat more bearable. Now, for example, she’d taken him along on this little trip to visit her brothers. This same evening when Klara was so blissful, Klaus sad and lonely, Simon in good spirits, and Kaspar irritable and overbearing, the two of them, Hedwig and her bard, went strolling silently, slowly along the shore of the lake. What was there to say; and so they kept silent. Kaspar approached them, saying:
“I hear you’ve been working on a poem that’s to mirror the events of your life. How can you mean to portray a life when you’ve scarcely yet experienced one? Just look at yourself: How strong and young you are, and to think that youth and strength like this plans to cower behind a desk singing its life in verse. Save it for when you’re fifty. Besides, how shameful, a young man crafting poetic lines. That’s not work, it’s just a hiding-place for the idle. I wouldn’t be saying any of this if your life were completed and had been crowned by some great, extenuating experience that would justify a person letting his flaws, virtues and meanderings pass in review. You, however, appear never to have failed, nor to have carried out a good deed either. Start writing poems when you’ve established yourself either as a sinner or an angel. Or better yet, don’t write poems at all.”
Kaspar had a low opinion of Sebastian; that’s why he was mocking him. He had no understanding whatever for tragic individuals, or rather, he understood them all too easily, all too well, and therefore had no respect for them. Moreover, he was in a diabolical mood this evening.
Hedwig leapt to defend the poor insulted fellow who was unable to stand up for himself: “How awful of you to speak in such a way, Kaspar,” she cried to her brother with an ardor that sprang from her eagerness to defend the lad, “and certainly not clever either. You enjoy hurting a person who should be spared and respected by all for the sake of his unhappiness. Mock all you like. I know you regret your words. If I didn’t know you so well, I’d have to consider you a ruffian, a tormenter. It’s so easy to torment an unfortunate, defenseless person, one might as well torture some poor animal. The defenseless all too easily fill the strong with a desire to inflict pain. If you can feel strong, be happy, and leave the weaker ones in peace. You show your strength in a bad light, misusing it to torment the weak. Why isn’t it enough for you to stand on a firm footing, do you have to place your foot upon the necks of others, the hesitant seekers, making them doubt themselves even more and sending them plummeting down, down into the waters of despair? Must self-confidence, courage, strength and determination always commit the sin of pitilessly, tactlessly riding roughshod over others, even though these others aren’t in their way at all, they’re just standing there covetously listening to the peals of fame, respect and success ringing out? Is it noble and good to insult a soul filled with longing? Poets are so easily hurt; oh, one should never hurt poets. By the way, I’m not even speaking about you now, my little Kaspar; for have you yourself amounted to much of anything in this world? You yourself perhaps still amount to nothing and have no cause to scoff at others who amount to nothing as well. When you wrestle with fate, let others do the same as best they can. Both of you are already wrestling, so why battle one another? How foolish, how unwise. Both of you will find pain enough in the perils and meanderings and promises and failures in your art; must you insist on causing one another even more pain? In all truth, I’d be a poet’s brother if I were a painter. And never be so swift to look in scorn upon someone who is failing or appears lethargic or inactive. How quickly his sunshine, his poems can arise from these long, dull dreams! And where does that leave the ones who were so hasty with their scorn? Sebastian is struggling honestly with life, that in itself should be a reason to respect and love him. How can one mock him for his soft heart? Shame on you, Kaspar, and may you never again give me cause — if you have even a trace of love for your sister — to get worked up like this over you. I’d rather not. I revere Sebastian because I know he has the courage to admit his many failings. As for the rest, it’s all just idle chatter — feel free to leave if you prefer not to walk with us. What a face you’re making, Kaspar! Just because a girl who enjoys the privilege of being your sister happens to give you a lecture, is this grounds for anger? No, don’t be angry. Please. And of course you’re allowed to make fun of poetry. Why ever not. I was taking things too seriously a moment ago. Forgive me.”