“Why, if I might ask?”
“You go too far!”
“Misfortune is educational, that’s why I’m asking you to raise your glasses with this glittering wine to drink a toast to it. And again! There. I thank you. Let me tell you, I’m a friend of misfortune, a very intimate friend, for misfortune merits feelings of closeness and friendship. It makes us better — that’s doing us quite a good turn. Indeed, such an act of friendship must be reciprocated if a person wishes to behave respectably. Misfortune is our lives’ cantankerous but nonetheless honest friend. It would be quite insolent and dishonorable of us to overlook this fact. At first glance we never quite understand misfortune, and for this reason we hate it the moment it arrives. Misfortune is a refined, quiet, unannounced fellow who always surprises us as if we were mere galoots and easily surprised. Anyone who has a talent for surprising others must certainly, regardless of who he is and where he comes from, be something quite extraordinarily refined. Not letting any forebodings come to light and then suddenly standing there; having about one not the faintest inquisitive, anticipatory taste or odor, and then all at once clapping a person chummily on the shoulder, addressing him in a familiar tone while smiling and showing him a pale, mild, all-knowing, beautiful face: This takes more skill than eating bread, requires other devices than those flying contraptions mankind has already started boasting about with grandiose, bombastic words even though they’re still just half invented. No, it’s destiny — misfortune — that’s beautiful. It’s also good, for it contains fortune, its opposite. It appears to be armed with weapons of both sorts. It has an angry crushing voice, but also a gentle mellifluous one. It awakens new life when it has destroyed old life that failed to please it. It spurs one on to live better. All beauty, if we still harbor hopes of experiencing beautiful things, is due to it. Misfortune allows us to grow tired of beautiful things and shows us new ones with its outstretched fingers. Isn’t unhappy love the most emotional sort and thus the most delicate, refined and beautiful? Does not abandonment ring out in soft, flattering, soothing notes? Are these things I am saying all new to you, gentlemen? Well, they surely are new when someone says them aloud; for they rarely get said. Most people lack the courage to welcome misfortune as something in which you can bathe your soul just as you bathe your limbs in water. Just take a look at yourself when you’ve undressed and are standing there naked: What splendor: a naked healthy human being! What good fortune: being clothed no longer and standing there naked! It’s already a stroke of fortune to have come into this world, and having no other good fortune than your health is still fortune that outsparkles and outshines all the finest gemstones, all the beautiful tapestries and flowers, the palaces and miracles. The most marvelous thing of all is health, this is a fortune to which nothing comparable can be added, unless a person in the course of time has become savage enough to wish he might become ill in exchange for a money-purse filled with cash. This plenitude of splendor and good fortune — if we are indeed inclined to see the naked, firm, pliant, warm members that have been given us for our journey through life as such a plenitude — must be counterbalanced, and thus we have misfortune! It can prevent us from bubbling over, it provides us with a soul. Misfortune educates our ears to perceive the beautiful sound that rings out when soul and body, intermingled and conjoined, respire as one. It turns our body into something bodily-soulful and gives our soul a firm existence at our center so that if we choose, we can feel our entire body as a soul, the leg as leaping soul, the arm as carrying soul, the ear as a hearing one, the foot as a nobly walking soul, the eye as the seeing one and the mouth as the kissing one. It makes us truly love, for where can we have loved if no misfortune was present? In dreams it’s even more beautiful than in reality, for when we dream we suddenly understand the sensuality of misfortune, its enchanting kindness. Otherwise it’s usually a hindrance, particularly when it arrives in the form of financial loss. But can this be a misfortune? Say we lose a banknote — what are we losing? Admittedly, this circumstance is highly disagreeable, but it’s no cause to feel inconsolable for any longer than it takes to realize that this is hardly true misfortune. And so on! One could speak a great deal about this; and eventually grow weary of the topic—”
“You speak like a poet, sir,” one of the men remarked with a smile.
“That may be. Wine always makes me speak poetically,” Simon replied, “as little a poet as I am otherwise. I tend to lay down rules for myself and in general am hardly disposed to get carried away by fantasies and ideals, since I consider doing so ill-advised and presumptuous in the extreme. Take my word for it, I can be quite dry. It’s also far from permissible to assume any person you happen to hear speaking of beauty is a poet with his head in the clouds, as seems to be your habit; for I do believe it can occur even to an in general coldly calculating pawn-shop broker or bank cashier to think of matters not pertaining to his money-grubbing profession. As a rule, we reckon too few individuals capable of sentimental reflection, for people haven’t learned to look at each other. I’ve taken it upon myself to engage in bold, heartfelt conversation with every single person so that I’ll quickly see what sort he is. You often make a fool of yourself using a rule like this in life, and occasionally you might even get your ears boxed — by a delicate lady, for example — but what harm does that do? I find it enjoyable to disgrace myself and maintain the conviction that the respect of individuals in whose eyes you lose face the moment you begin to speak openly isn’t so terribly valuable that losing it is any reason to feel glum. Human respect must always suffer beneath human love. That’s what I wanted to say in response to the somewhat derisive remark you made at my expense.”