entertainment machine,playing the fool for several nights — round the clock, as they say — for all sorts of people, all of them friends, without doing myself the slightest harm. For years, as it now seems, I never got home before three or four in the morning; I would go to bed with the dawn chorus, yet it didn’t do me the slightest harm. For years I would turn up at the Apostelkeller or some other dive in the city around eleven in the evening and not leave before three or four in the morning, having used up every possible drop of energy, I may say, with the utmost ruthlessness, though it was a ruthlessness which at that time was second nature to me and, as it now seems, did me no harm at all. And I spent countless nights talking and drinking with Joana, I thought as I sat in the wing chair. I had no money or possessions of any kind, yet the truth is that for years I whiled away the nights talking, drinking and dancing with Joana and her husband, with Jeannie Billroth, and above all with the Auersbergers. In those days I had all the energy a young man could possibly have, and I had no scruples about letting myself be supported by anyone better off than myself, I recalled in the wing chair. I never had a penny in my pocket, yet I could afford whatever I wanted, I thought, sitting in the wing chair and observing the guests in the music room. And for years I would go out every day to the Simmeringer Hauptstrasse in the late afternoon to spend the night with Joana, calling at Dittrich’s on the way to pick up the wine, and then return in the early morning, either catching the No. 71 or walking back to Währing along the Simmeringer Hauptstrasse, down the Rennweg, and across the Schwarzenbergerplatz. In those days, I recalled, horse-drawn carts could still be seen parked at night in front of the dairies, and it was still possible to walk down the middle of the Rennweg, cut across the Schwarzenbergerplatz, and walk along the deserted Ring without being afraid of being run over. I seldom met another soul, and if I did it was sure to be one of my own kind — another late-night reveler — and it was a rarity to see a car cruising through the streets at that hour. Never in my life have I sung so many Italian arias as I did in those days as I walked from the Simmeringer Hauptstrasse to the Rennweg, then across the Schwarzenbergerplatz and back to Währing, I thought as I sat in the wing chair. At that time I had the strength to walk and sing; now I’m not even strong enough to walk and talk—that’s the difference. Thirty years ago I thought nothing of a ten-mile walk home at night, I recalled in the wing chair, singing all the way in my youthful enthusiasm for Mozart and Verdi and giving vent to my intoxication. It’s thirty years, I thought, since I made operatic history in this way — thirty years. The truth is, I thought, sitting in the wing chair, that my life would have taken a different course had it not been for Joana; perhaps I’d have pursued a diametrically opposed course had I not met Auersberger. For my encounter with Auersberger meant essentially a return to things artistic, on which I had turned my back completely — and definitively, as I then believed — after leaving the Mozarteum. At that time, after passing out of the Mozarteum, I suddenly wanted nothing more to do with the supposedly artistic, having opted firmly for the opposite of what I would call the artistic,but then my meeting with Auersberger, I recalled in the wing chair, caused me once more to do a complete about-turn. And then I met Joana, I recalled, who was the quintessence of everything artistic. It was for the artistic, not for art, that I opted thirty-five years ago — only the artistic,I thought as I sat in the wing chair, though I had no idea what that was. I opted for the artistic,though I didn’t know what form it would take. I quite simply opted for Auersberger, for Auersberger as he was then, thirty-five or thirty-four years ago, and as he still was thirty-three years ago — for the artistic Auersberger. And for Joana, the quintessentially artistic Joana. And for Vienna. And for the artistic world, I thought, sitting in the wing chair. I owe it to Auersberger that I executed an about-turn and returned to the artistic world, I thought, sitting in the wing chair, and above all I owe it to Joana — to everything that was connected with Auersberger and Joana thirty-five years ago, and was still connected with them thirty-two years ago — that’s the truth, I thought, sitting in the wing chair. Several times I repeated to myself the words the artistic world and the artistic life. I actually spoke them out loud, in such a way that people in the music room were bound to hear them — as indeed they did, for all their heads suddenly turned in my direction, from the music room to the anteroom — though they could not actually see me — on hearing me repeating the words the artistic life and the artistic world. I recalled what the notions artistic world and artistic life had meant to me then, and still meant to me today — more or less everything, I now thought, sitting in the wing chair, and I thought how tasteless it was for the Auersbergers to call this dinner of theirs — or rather this supper — an artistic dinner. How low they’ve sunk, I thought as I sat in the wing chair — these people who as far as I can see have been artistically, intellectually and spiritually bankrupt for decades. But to all these people in the music room, hearing me utter the words artistic world and artistic life,it was of course as though I had said artistic dinner just as the Auersbergers might have done, and apart from being so audible they struck nobody as in any way unusual — nobody realized what they meant to me. At one time, of course, all these people had actually been artists, or at least possessed artistic talents,I thought, sitting in the wing chair, but now they were just so much artistic riffraff,having about as much to do with art and the artistic as this dinner party of the Auersbergers’. All these people, who were once real artists, or at least in some way artistic, I thought as I sat in the wing chair, are now nothing but shams, husks of their former selves: I have only to listen to what they say, I have only to look at them, I have only to come into contact with their products, to feel exactly the same way about them as I feel about this supper party, this tasteless artistic dinner. To think what has happened to all these people over the past thirty years, I thought, to think what they’ve made of themselves in these thirty years! And what I’ve made of myself in these thirty years! It’s unrelievedly depressing to see what they’ve made of themselves, what I’ve made of myself. All these people have contrived to turn conditions and circumstances that were once happy into something utterly depressing, I thought, sitting in the wing chair; they’ve managed to make everything depressing, to transform all the happiness they once had into utter depression, just as I have. For there’s no doubt that thirty or even twenty years ago all these people were happy, but now they’re unutterably depressing, every bit as depressing and unhappy as I am myself, I thought as I sat in the wing chair. They’ve transformed sheer happiness into sheer misery, I thought, sitting in the wing chair, unalloyed hope into unrelieved hopelessness. For what I saw when I looked into the music room was a scene of unmitigated hopelessness, both human and artistic, I thought, sitting in the wing chair — that’s the truth. All these people had come to Vienna in the fifties, thirty years earlier, some of them forty years earlier, hoping they would go far, as they say, but the farthest they actually went in Vienna was to become tolerably successful provincial artists, and the question is whether they would have gone any farther in any other so-called big city—