“Indeed? And why is that?”
“I didn’t last long,” the young man continued, “in any of the places I’ve worked at thus far, for I found it disagreeable to let my young powers go stale in the narrow stuffy confines of copyists’ offices, even if these offices were considered by all to be the most elegant in the world — those found in banks for example. To this day, I haven’t yet been sent packing by anyone at all but rather have always left on the strength of my own desire to leave, abandoning jobs and positions that no doubt carried promises of careers and the devil knows what else, but which would have been the death of me had I remained in them. No matter where it was I’d been working, my departure was, as a rule, lamented, but nonetheless after my decision was found regrettable and a dire future was prophesied for me, my employers always had the decency to wish me luck with my future endeavors. With you, sir, in your bookshop (and here the young man’s voice grew suddenly confiding), I will surely be able to last for years and years. And in any case, many things speak in favor of your giving me a try.” The bookseller said: “Your candor pleases me, I shall let you work in my shop for a one-week trial period. If you perform well and seem inclined to stay, then we can discuss it further.” With these words, which signaled the young man’s dismissal, the old man at the same time rang an electric bell, whereupon, as if arriving on the gusts of a strong wind, a small, elderly, bespectacled man appeared.
“Give this young man something to do!”
The spectacles nodded. With this, Simon became an assistant bookseller. Simon — for that was his name.
At around this same time, Professor Klaus, a brother of Simon’s who lived in a historic capital where he’d made a name for himself, had begun to worry about his younger brother’s behavior. A good, quiet, dutiful person, he would dearly have loved to see his brothers find the firm respect-commanding ground beneath their feet in life that he, the eldest, had. But this was so utterly not the case, at least till now, in fact it was so very much the opposite, that Professor Klaus began to reproach himself in his heart. He told himself, for example: “I should have been a person who would long since have had every opportunity to lead my brothers to the right path. Until now I’ve failed to do so. How could I have neglected these duties, etc.” Dr. Klaus knew thousands of duties, small and large, and sometimes it seemed as if he were longing to have even more of them. He was one of those people who feel so compelled to fulfill duties that they go plunging into great collapsing edifices constructed entirely of disagreeable duties simply out of the fear that some secret, inconspicuous duty might somehow elude them. They cause themselves to experience many a troubled hour because of these unfulfilled duties — never stopping to consider how one duty always piles a second one upon the person undertaking the first — and they believe they’ve already fulfilled something like a duty just by being made anxious and uneasy by any dark inkling of its presence. They meddle in many an affair that — if they’d stop to think about it in a less anxious way — hasn’t a blessed thing to do with them, and they wish to see others as worry-laden as themselves. They tend to cast envious glances upon naïve unencumbered people, and then criticize them for being frivolous characters since they move through life so gracefully, their heads held so easily aloft. Dr. Klaus often forced himself to entertain a certain small modest sensation of insouciance, but always he would return again to his gray dreary duties, in the thrall of which he languished as in a dark prison. Perhaps, back when he was still young, he’d once felt a desire to stop, but he’d lacked the strength to leave undone something that resembled a nagging duty and couldn’t just walk past it with a dismissive smile. Dismissive? Oh, he never dismissed anything at all! Attempting this — or so it seemed to him — would have split him in twain from bottom to top; he’d have been incapable of avoiding painful recollections of what he’d cast aside and dismissed. He never dismissed or discarded anything at all, and he was wasting his young life analyzing and examining things utterly unworthy of examination, study, attention or love. Thus he’d grown older, but since he was by no means anything like a person devoid of sensibility and imagination, he often also reproached himself bitterly for neglecting the duty of being at least a little happy. This was yet another neglect of duty, a new one, which with perfect acuity demonstrated that the dutiful never quite succeed in fulfilling all their duties, indeed, that such individuals are the most likely of all human beings to disregard their foremost duties and only later — perhaps when it’s already too late — call them once more to mind. On more than one occasion Dr. Klaus felt sad about himself when he thought of the precious happiness that had faded from his view, the happiness of finding himself united with a young sweet girl, who of course would have to have been a girl from an impeccable family. At around the same time as he was contemplating his own person in a melancholy frame of mind, he wrote to his brother Simon, whom he genuinely loved and whose conduct in this world troubled him, a letter whose contents were approximately as follows:
Dear Brother,
It would appear you are refusing to tell me anything about yourself. Perhaps things aren’t well with you and this is why you don’t write. You are once more, as so often before, lacking a solid steady occupation — I’ve been sorry to hear this, and to hear it from strangers. From you, it seems, I can no longer expect any candid reports. Believe me, this pains me. So very many things now cause me displeasure, and must you too — who always seemed to me to hold such promise — contribute to the bleakness of my mood, which for many reasons is far from rosy? I shall continue to hope, but if you are still even a little bit fond of your brother, please don’t make me hope in vain for too long. Go and do something that might justify a person’s belief in you in some way or other. You have talent and, as I like to imagine, possess a clear head; you’re clever too, and all your utterances reflect the good core I’ve always known your soul possesses. But why, acquainted as you are with the way this world is put together, do you now display so little perseverance? Why are you always leaping from one thing to the next? Does your own conduct not frighten you? You must possess quite a stockpile of inner strength to endure this constant change of professions, which is such a disservice to yourself in this world. In your shoes, I would have despaired long ago. I really cannot understand you at all in this, but for precisely this reason — that after experiencing all too often that nothing can be achieved in this world without patience and goodwill — I’m not abandoning my hope of one day seeing you energetically seize hold of a career. And surely you wish to achieve something. In any case, such a lack of ambition is hardly like you, in my experience. My advice to you is: Stick it out, knuckle under, pursue some difficult task for three or four short years, obey your superiors, show that you can perform, but also show that you have character, and then a career path will open before you — and it will lead you through all the known world if you desire to travel. The world and its people will show themselves to you quite differently once you yourself are truly something: when you are in a position to mean something to the world. In this way, it seems to me, you will perhaps find far more satisfaction in life than even the scholar who (though he clearly recognizes the strings from which all lives and deeds depend) remains chained to the narrow confines of his study but nonetheless, as I can report from experience, is often not so terribly comfortable. There’s still time for you to become a quite splendidly serviceable businessman, and you have no idea to what an extent businessmen have the opportunity to design their existences to be the most absolutely liveliest of lives. The way you are now, you’re just creeping around the corners and through the cracks of life: This should cease. Perhaps I ought to have intervened earlier, much earlier; maybe I ought to have helped you more with deeds than with mere words of warning, but I don’t know, given your proud mind, with its one determination to be helped only by yourself in every way possible, perhaps I’d have done more to offend than to genuinely convince you. What are you now doing with your days? Do tell me about them. Given all the worries I’ve endured on your behalf, I might now perhaps deserve your being somewhat more loquacious and communicative. As for me, what sort of a person am I? Someone to be wary of approaching unreservedly and with trust? Do you consider me a person to be feared? What is it about me which makes you wish to avoid me? Perhaps our circumstance? That I am the “big brother” and possibly know a bit more than you? Well then, know that I would be glad to be young again, and impractical, and naïve. And yet I am not quite so glad, dear brother, as a person should be. I am unhappy. Perhaps it’s too late for me to become happy. I’ve now reached an age when a man who still has no home of his own cannot think of those happy individuals who enjoy the bliss of seeing a young woman occupied with running their households without the most painful longing. To love a girl, what a lovely thing this is, brother. And it’s beyond my reach. — No, you really have no need to fear me, it is I who am seeking you out once more, who am writing to you, hoping to receive a warm friendly response. Perhaps you are now in fact richer than I — perhaps you have more hopes and far more reason to have them, have plans and prospects I myself cannot even dream of — the thing is: I don’t fully know you anymore. How could I after all these years of separation? Let me make your acquaintance once more, force yourself to write to me. Perhaps one day I shall enjoy the good fortune of seeing all my brothers happy; you, in any case, I should like to see content. What is Kaspar up to? Do you write to one another? What about his art? I’d love to have news of him as well. Farewell, brother. Perhaps we shall speak together again soon.