the forest, the virgin forest, the life of a woodcutter. I have since learned that these are catchwords used by many others like him, by millions of others. At the end of this artistic dinner I suddenly became aware of what the actor meant by using these catchwords, what he was trying to say to himself and others, what he was trying to tell all of us, and I began to listen to him attentively. It seems to me that this man, who started off by being merely tiresome and uninteresting, was transformed for a brief spell into an interesting person, a person who — if only for this brief spell — was able to capture my attention. Suddenly I was no longer interested in anything Jeannie Billroth or Anna Schreker had to say, but only in what the actor from the Burgtheater was saying. And so I turned my attention away from them and the other people present at this artistic dinner, whom I had found uninteresting right from the beginning. I haven’t listened to the others at all, I thought, I haven’t even heard what little they’ve had to say. This man, who had at first seemed merely a portentous driveler, seeking to create an effect with his feeble jokes and stale anecdotes, had in the course of this artistic dinner turned into a fascinating figure, even a philosophical figure, I thought. This is not, I think, a phenomenon that we observe in many people, though it may now and then be observed in the old: at first they appear as portentous drivelers, distasteful purveyors of jokes and anecdotes, putting on the act of the typical Viennese with artistic or intellectual pretensions, but then they undergo a truly philosophical metamorphosis in the course of an evening, in the course of a dinner like this artistic dinner given by the Auersbergers in the Gentzgasse: at first they strike us as ludicrously inflated and inane, but then, when they have had a few drinks — usually more than is good for them — they are suddenly able to convert our initial aversion into genuine liking by bringing a certain spiritual or even philosophical element into play. It seems to me that when the actor first made his appearance he was playing his accustomed role as the actor from the Burgtheater, and it was as the actor from the Burgtheater — a figure that I found quite repellent — that he later addressed himself to the genuine pike, continuing his Burgtheater performance throughout the pike-eating ceremony. But then, having finished with the pike and had two or three cigars and a few glasses of white wine, he suddenly became a thinking human being, even a philosopher of sorts, transforming himself from a gargoyle into a philosophical human being, from a repellent stage character into a real person. This is the converse of the normal process: usually people begin by behaving like human beings, but eventually, after a certain amount of eating and drinking, they turn into gargoyles, being unable to do otherwise. This is what we observe every day: we meet people at parties who become progressively more repulsive until they finally turn into gargoyles, and, as the evening wears on and increasing quantities of food and drink are consumed, the whole company becomes increasingly repellent. That night, however, the Burgtheater actor went through the reverse process, transforming himself from a gargoyle into a philosophically minded human being, if not from a driveler into a philosopher. In the end I found myself enthralled, as they say, by this man, whom I had for so long found quite distasteful and whose demeanor had aroused in me not merely indignation, but anger; I was now no longer angry and indignant, but enthralled, unlike Jeannie Billroth, who I think was enthralled by him at first, but gradually became infuriated during the pike-eating ceremony, and in the end detested him. I ended up by being enthralled by the actor from the Burgtheater, Jeannie Billroth by detesting him, I think, and that says it all. The way he said the forest, the virgin forest, the life of a woodcutter was not, I think, symptomatic of senile sentimentality, but of mental clarity. And the way he countered Jeannie’s attack appears to me as anything but senile, anything but a resort to the opportunism of old age. We sit through an interminable supper party with one of these artistic nonentities that pullulate in Vienna, one of these atrocious pseudo-artists of whom we know hundreds — these unappetizing painters and sculptors and writers and musicians and actors, these horrendous provincial artists who converge on Vienna in droves — and as if this were not enough, we find that the person sitting opposite us during this appalling, interminable supper at the Auersbergers’, which we would have done well to miss, is an actor from the Burgtheater, the very prototype, it seems to me, of the Viennese pseudo-artist. Then suddenly we observe that this man, who began by making the most distasteful exhibition of himself and filling us with the utmost revulsion, has been transformed into someone with a philosophical turn of mind who actually interests us, into what might be called a momentary philosopher, who is able to arouse our interest. It is clearly not true that all old people are philosophers, and I know of nothing so foolish as the proposition that this is so, but old people do have a philosophical propensity: they all have the potential to become philosophers, or at any rate to philosophize, if only for a few moments, just as the actor from the Burgtheater, during the course of this artistic dinner, was prompted, by whatever motives, to philosophize for a few moments, to become a momentary philosopher. Next morning, with the return of sobriety, the momentary philosopher no doubt reverts to being the insufferable stage character with whom we first became acquainted. It was precisely a party like this one in the Gentzgasse that produced this effect on him, I thought, transforming him for a few brief moments into a philosopher, though naturally it had no such effect on the others, for nothing could ever have a philosophical impact on them. Not on the Auersbergers, not on Anna Schreker, and certainly not on the other guests — especially not on the two young writers, whose age alone precludes them from what we may call the philosophical condition. I believe that to qualify for this condition one needs to have an experience of life that goes some way back into history and is constantly informed by history; this qualification was possessed by the actor from the Burgtheater, as it is by all old people, and above all by the very old. During the course of my life I think I have become more interested in the old and the very old than in the young; more and more I have sought out the company of the old and the very old and spent more and more of my time with them, rather than with the young. After all, I knew about youth when I myself was young, but not about old age: hence it was old age that interested me, not youth.