DEATH AND THE FOOLS

BY BENJAMIN BENNETT

Claudio’s last speech in Der Tor und der Tod has, over the years, been the occasion of some rather extravagant critical statements. This is easily understandable. The play is about death, specifically about death as a problem, and we therefore expect some sort of solution; we expect the protagonist somehow to come to terms with death, in a way that will be sufficiently general for us, as readers, to apply it to ourselves. Indeed, Hofmannsthal’s own notes on the play seem to justify this expectation.

Worin liegt eigenJich die Heilung?-Dai3 der Tod das erste wahrhaftige Ding ist, dessen tiefe Wahrhaftigkeit er zu fassen imstande ist. Ein Ende aller Liigen, Relativitaten und Gaukelspiele. Davon strahlt dann auf alles andere Verkl’drung aus.

Claudio, it seems, is somehow ‘cured’; there is a ‘truth’ which is somehow ‘grasped’, and there is a ‘transfiguration’. But does any of this imply that Claudio’s final speech, in any general sense, is valid We shall return to the above diary-entry at the conclusion of our argument.

Claudio, in that final speech, gives reamtts for his conclusion that death and life are somehow interchangeable or mutually interpenetrating. In particular:

Wer zwingt mich, der ich beides nicht erkenne, Dai3 ich dich Tod und jenes Leben nenne? (p. 219)

Of course nobody can compel Claudio to call death and life by their right names, but does this make any difference to the audience or reader? A conclusion drawn on the premise of one’s total ignorance (‘der ich beides nicht erkenne’) concerning what the conclusion is about, is logically a b s ~ r d . ~ That Claudio here argues on the basis of his own ignorance, moreover, seems to indicate that he has not really Learnedanything in the course of the play, since it is precisely the same sort of argument, his eagerly admitted Lad of experience of life, by which he has earlier attempted to persuade Death that he is not yet ripe.

But then what, if anything, d o d d Claudio have learned from the exhibit Death puts on for him? Let us look at what Death says he will teach Claudio:

Du Tor! Du schlimmer Tor, ich will dich lehren, Das Leben, eh dus endest, einmal ehren. Stell dich dorthin und schweig und sieh hierher Und lern, dai3 alle andern diesen Schollen

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Mit lieberftilltem Erdensinn entquollen, Und nur du selber schellenlaut und leer. (p. 212)

This, however, is precisely what Claudio himself has been saying from the very beginning. For example:

Was weii3 ich denn vom Menschenleben? Bin freilich scheinbar drin gestanden, Aber ich hab es hschstens verstanden, Konnte mich nie darein verweben. Hab mich niemals daran verloren. Wo andre nehmen, andre geben, Blieb ich beiseit, im Innern stummgeboren. (p. 201)

And after Death arrives, Claudio argues again that his own case is unique (‘Blieb zch beiseit’) because he has not undergone natural human life as lived by others. He argues, in other words, precisely ‘dai3 alle andern diesen Schollen/Mit lieberfiilltem Erdensinn entquollen’ , while only bir own existence has been ‘schellenlaut und leer’.

How, then, can Death threaten to teach Claudio what Claudio himself has been insisting upon from the start? Clearly, Death’s speech is ironic. When one is angry with a child, one sometimes says things like ‘I will teach you to be disobedient’, and it is my contention that Death is employing just this type of irony. What Death says is exactly the opposite of what he means to teach Claudio: namely, that Claudio is really no different from everyone else, that dl men suffer from what Claudio regards as his unique malady, that all men are thus fools, and that there is no such thing as ‘natural’ human Igejb for us to live in pefect harmony with. This is the only ‘lesson’ that makes any sense in the context. If Death were to show that Claudio’s life has been uniquely unnatural, he would only be supporting the argument that Claudio is not yet ripe to die.

We must therefore look more carefully than critics usually do at the threefold apparition.‘ In the first place, the very fact that the dead people appear raises a question. The walking of a ghost indicates traditionally that the person had unfinrihed business when he died-as, for example, revenge in the case of the elder Hamlet. But this idea, that the lives of Claudio’s mother, sweetheart and friend had been ultimately incomplete, conflicts with the idea that, by contrast with Claudio, these people had somehow managed to live their lives fully. In fact, what Claudio really learns from the vision is that the three lives in question had been basically similar to his own.

The trouble with Claudio, as has been often enough remarked, is that he is excessively ~elf-aware.~ At the end of his opening monologue, for example, he says:

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Und auch das Leid! zerfasert und zerfressen Vom Denken, abgebldt und ausgelaugt! Wie wollte ich an meine Brust es pressen, Wie hiitt ich Wonne aus dem Schmerz gesaugt: Sein Fliigel streifte mich, ich wurde matt, Und Unbehagen kam an Schmerzes Statt . . . (p. 202)

The desire expressed here is absolutely unsatisfiable. It is probably possible, somehow, to derive pleasure from pain (‘Wie hiitt ich Wome aus dem Schmert gesaugt’), but it is not really possible to do so knowing&. If one knows that the experience of pain is pleasurable, then strictly speaking the experience is not painful after all, so that one has no basis for one’s pleasure and is left with ‘Unbehagen’ . Claudio’s self-awareness, his compulsive standing-back from his own experience thus robs his pain of its painfulness, his joy of its joyfulness, and his life of its vitality.

But precisely the idea of enjoyable pain, which we learn from Claudio to regard as an example of experience corrupted by consciousness, occurs in the first words of the mother: ‘Wie viele siide Schmerzen saug ich einlhlit dieser Luft’ @. 213). Even the verb ‘saugen’ reminds us of Claudio’s monlogue, and it is thus made clear to us that the mother is not exempt from the confusions of self-awareness. A few lines later, moreover, she describes her mental life as:

ein dumpfes Rad Mit Ahnungen und traumbeklommenem, Geheimnisvollem Schmerzgefihle, das Wohl mit der Mutterschaft unfdlichem Geheimem Heiligtum tusammenhiingt Und allem tiefstem Weben dieser Welt Verwandt ist. @p. 213-214)

Again, while there is no reason to believe that what is said here about the incomprehensible sanctity of motherhood is not true, still, even if it is, it cannot be known by a mother. In fact, this speech reminds us very strongly of Claudio’s distorted relationship to ‘das Leben’ . Claudio’s error is that he has insisted upon regarding life as an unattainable mystery, instead of simply plunging into it.

So glitten mir die jungen Tage, Und ich hab nie gewudt, d d das schon Leben heat. Dann . . . stand ich an den Lebensgittern, Der Wunder bang, von Sehnsucht siid beddngt, DaB sie in majestgtischen Gewittern Auffliegen sollten, wundervoll gesprengt. Eskamnichtso . . . (p. 210)

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The mother, in precisely the same way, instead of simply being a mother, is attempting consciously to inflate the simple facts of her life into a kind of religion, and the result of this attempt, the irritatingly trite self-pity into which she has fallen, is no more satisfactory in her case than in Claudio’s.

Another symptom of Claudio’s excessive self-awareness, and of his compulsive search for miraculousness in the ordinary, is his ftvation upon certain remembered experiences, which prevents him from applying himself meaningfully in the present.

Und Wanderzeiten kamen, rauschumfangen, Da leuchtete manchmal die ganze Welt, Und Rosen gluhten, und die Glocken klangen, Von fremdem Lichte jubelnd und erhellt: Wie waren da lebendig alle Dinge, Dem liebenden Erfassen nahgertkkt . . . (p. 207)

But if this is a fault in Claudio, then surely it is also a fault in the girl, who has sacrificed her whole existence on the altar of one memory, the memory, like Claudio’s, of a time when all things had seemed pervaded by joyful vitality (‘das wurde alles sch6nIUnd redete mit wachen lieben Lippen!’ p. 215). Even on her deathbed, the girl admits, she had thought of nothing but the revenge she is now taking upon Claudio for his having disappointed her. Of course she does not call it revenge:

Nicht grauenvoll, um dich zu qu’dlen nicht, Nur wie wenn einer einen Becher Wein Austrinkt und fliichtig ihn der Duft gemahnt An irgendwo vergedne leise Lust. (p. 216).

But this merely makes her appear silly. Obviously she is torturing Claudio, whether she admits it or not.

The case of Claudio’s erstwhile friend, finally, is the clearest of all. What he complains about is that Claudio had depnved him of his i//usions, for if the passionate convictions he boasts of had been more than mere illusions, Claudio’s detached irony coulcbhve had no effect on him. The friend, moreover, even as he speaks, is still in the grip of illusion, for what he is now doing is boasting of his capability for self-sacrifice; in other words, he is using self-sacrifice as a basis for self-glorification, which is logically absurd, and it is clear that this is the way he had thought of himself in life as well. He is a shallow and deluded individual who clings to‘an impossibly contradictory idea of himself in precisely the same way that Claudio has clung to the illusionof the uniqueness of his self-conscious agony.

Or let us consider the one specific charge brought by the friend. Claudio, after

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terminating his own relationship with the woman in question, had explained his attraction in these words:

So reizte mich des Miidchens made Art Und herbe Hoheit, so enttiiuschten Sinns Bei solcher Jugend. @. 2 18)

And the friend now accuses him as follows:

Und sattgespielt warfst du die Puppe mir, Mir zu, ihr ganzes Bild vom Oberdrui3 In dir entstellt, so firchterlich verzerrt, Des wundervollen Zaubers so entblsflt, Die Ztige sinnlos, das lebendge Haar Tot hidngend, warfst mir eine Lame zu, In schnbdes Nichts mit widerlicher Kunst Zersetzend dtselhaften &en Reiz. @. 2 18)

It is clear from this, however, that Claudio had not really ruined the woman herself in any objective sense, but rather, by being too analytical (‘Zersetzend’) in his remarks, had cast doubt upon the friend’s mental image of her (‘Bild’); and it follows that the friend had really been in love only with his own fancies, with some ‘riitselhafter Reid (cf. Claudio’s ‘So reizte mich . . .’), not with a real person. What the friend charges Claudio with, in other words, is exactly what he himself had also been guilty of, a lack of full and sincere commitment in love. This is part of the meaning of the play’s final stage-direction, in which Claudio and his friend are merged in one figure.

Once we have perceived the basic similarity between Claudio’s life and those of the three ghosts, however, what effect does this have on our general idea of the play? In the first place, it enables us to see what Death really means in his key speech to Claudio:

Was allen, ward auch dir gegeben, Ein Erdenleben, irdisch es zu leben. Im Innern quillt euch allen treu ein Geist, Der diesem Chaos toter Sachen Beziehung einzuhauchen heat Und euren Garten draus zu machen Fiir Wirksamkeit, Beglikkung und Verdrui3. Weh dir, wenn ich dir das erst sagen mua! (pp. 210-211)

It follows from our argument that what is meant here is not that Claudio has denied himself participation in ‘natural’ human life (‘Erdenleben’) by excessive

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intellectuality. The meaning is quite different: namely, that Claudio’s self- awareness is an integral part of life as it is given to evetyone and that existence is, as Death says, a ‘chaos of dead things’ in which to live authentically (‘irdisch . . . zu leben’) is not simply available as a ‘Trank des Lebens’ (p. 201), but rather requires of all of us the unavoidable and always ultimately futile struggle with self-conscious confusion (‘Wege noch im Ewig-Dunkeln finden’ p. 220). In the sense that he has remained more clearly aware of this futility, Claudio is less a fool than the three ghosts.

But on the other hand, the knowledge that existence is eternally empty, that we are nothing but the convolutions of our self-consciousness, is a useless knowledge: the truth is not at all changed or softened by our knowing it. In order to live our lives meaningfully, therefore, we must forget the truth, even if this means, as it has meant for the ghosts, acting and thinking foolishly. The truth is always true, the world is chaotic, we always move ‘im Ewig-Dunkelin’, which means that all apparent order, all meaning or ‘Beziehung’ which we ‘breathe into things’, is ultimately fdse; wherever we ‘make a garden’ for ourselves, we are falsifying the truth (since there really are no ‘Wege . . . im Ewig-Dunkeln’), thus making fools of ourselves. But still, we must do this, we have no choice; this particular absurdity tj. lye. In the sense that he seems to have imagined himself capable of thinking his way around this absurdity, Claudio is more a fool than the ghosts.

At the very end of the play, however, in his last speech, Claudio does at last willingly take upon himself the absurdity of existence. Precisely the logical absurdity of this speech is what makes it meaningful. What Claudio does here is what his mother and the girl have done in their excessive self-pity, and what the friend has done in his confused, self-magnifying selflessness: he takes an idea (here the idea of death), any idea that happens to be ‘Heraufgesplilt vom tbdlich wachen Blut’ (p. 220), and he calls that idea ‘life’, he hurls himself desperately, and knowingly, into an absurd illusion. He thus imposes for his own purposes a false and foolish order upon the chaos of existence, and in doing so he does what all men do. If we consider his last speech purely as an action, rather than as the communication of meaning, then precisely by way of our recognition of its utter logical absurdity, it becomes for us an exact image of aff human fife, and it is toward this climax that the whole play is directed.

This recognition, finally, that Claudio’s last speech is meant not to teff the truth but rather to be an enactment of the truth, allows us to understand more fully the diary-entry with which we began. The basis for Claudio’s ‘cure’ is ‘DaQ der Tod das erste wahrhaftige Ding ist, dessen tiefe Wahrhaftigkeit er zu fassen imstande ist.’ There is, however, a certain amount of word-play in this formulation. ‘Wahrhaftig’, as an adjective, ordinarily means ‘genuine’, whereas ‘Wahrhaftigkeit’ refers specifically to ‘veracity’, the quality of being willing and able to tell the truth, and the sense of this ambiguity seems to be that the genuineness of Claudio’s encounter with death as a thing is reflected in the truth told Claudio by Death as a person. But this truth, as we have seen, is that all is eternally in darkness, that the world is basically chaotic, that any truth or

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orderliness that ever seems to exist is not a truth that can be ‘told’ objectively, but rather must be created by positive human involvement and activity; and if Claudio were now to attempt somehow to ‘tell’ us thir truth, the result would be merely ridiculous. Language itself, if we take it too seriously, automatically leads into ‘Liigen, Relativitaten und Gaukelspiele’ , since by talking we relativize intellectually what we are talking about and ‘erleben wie ein Buch’ (p. 204): this much the later author of the Chandos-letter already understands well enough. Therefore, in .his last speech, Claudio has resolved not to take his language seriously as a vehicle for knowledge, but uses it instead as pure action, as a deliberate headlong plunge into the actual absurdity of existence, and it is from this resolve, from the force of that last speech as action rather than from its logical meaning, that the ‘Verklarung’ Hofmannsthal speaks of radiates.

NOTES

’ The play’s best critics are of course Sareful not to push this extravagance too far. R. Alewyn, for example, in ’Der Tod des Astheten’ (Uber Hugo von Hofmannsthd, 3rd ed., Gtrttingen, 1963, pp. 64-77), sees at the end of the play a progression from morality to mystery (p. 66 etpassim), and supports this point on the basis of both psychology and literary tradition, but refrains from attributing direct general validity to Claudio’s words. Likewise H. Siefien, ‘Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s Der Tor und der Tod The Paradox of the “nahe Ferne” ’, GLL, XXIV (1970/71), 78-87, sees a ‘complete change’ (p. 83) at the end of the play, but relates the paradoxes in Claudio’s speech to the more comprehensive paradox that self-isolation is itself a kind of entanglement.

’ Quoted from the volume Aufieichnungen (Frankfurt a.M., 1959), p. 106, in the series Gesammelte Werke in Einzelausgaben, ed. H. Steiner. Quotations from the play itself are located by page-number in the volume Gedicbte und/yrische Dmmen (Stockholm, 1946).

’ To my knowledge, the only critic who has drawn any conclusions from this absurdity is M. H. Porter, The Theme of Consciousness in the Poetry andEata‘y Plays ofHugo von Hofinannstbd @is. Cornell, 1970). pp. 94ff. Porter argues ‘that one is necessarily a fool in respect to death, that no one can relate death to himself (p. 9 3 , but does not support this ‘no one’ with parallels between Claudio and the ghosts.

‘ Of a total of 542 lines in the play, 140 are spoken by the ghosts, but no one has ever attempted more than a perfunctory interpretation of these speeches.

’ See, for example, Alewyn. pp. 68f.

H. C. Sceba, Kritik des iirthetischen Menschen: Heneneutik und Moral in Hofmnnsthds “Der Tor und der Tod” (Bad Homburg v.d.H., 1970), says in a footnote, ‘Da Claudio auf der Bilhne tot niedcrgaunken ist, scheint dcr Schauspieler des Freundes, den die Regieanweisung nicht nennt, den Part Claudios im Totenreigen iibernommen zu haben’ @. 87). But this is not to the point. If Hofmannsthal had wanted to differentiate between Claudio and the friend in the dance, he could easily have done so; ifnecessaq, another actor in a costume like Claudio’s could be used. On pp. 113ff., incidentally, Seeba also puts forward a convincing argument to the effect that in

stylistic character, Claudio‘s speeches are essentially indistinguishable from the ghosts‘. He thus has evidence, staring him in the face, that leads to precisely the point we have been making, but he fails to draw the conclusion.

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’ Claudio complains early on of being ‘Unfiihig des Vergessens’ (p. 202). On the uselessness of knowledge and the necessity of forgetfulness, see also Alewyn, pp. 68f. This idea, that life requires forgetting, is of course close to Nietzsche’s thinking in Vom Nutzen undNuchteilder Hirtone far ~ U J

Leben, on the importance of which work for Hofmannsthal, see P: Requadt, ‘Sprachverleugnung und Mantelsymbolik im Werke Hofrnannsthals’, D ~ J , XXIX (1955), 255-283.

FINAL IRONY IN DER ZAUBERBERG

BY FRANK J. TOBIN

The thoughtful reader might well find things to puzzle over in the narrator’s leave- taking from Hans Castorp in the closing paragraphs of Der Zauberberg. Certainly the narrator has preserved a critical distance from his hero as he follows Hans along his often meandering path of doubtful development. And we can well be dismayed that Hans shows so little ability to hold fast to the insights he gains. Still the young man has been presented in a not unsympathetic light so that it seems cruel enough to leave him on the battlefield where his chances for survival are, in the narrator’s estimation, slight. Why must he then comment concerning Hans’ survival: ‘Ehrlich gestanden, lassen wir ziemlich unbekummert die Frage offen.” Does this not imply a complete and heartless rejection of the hero on the part of the narrator out of all proportion to his shortcomings? Are we not forced to take issue with the narrator’s lack of humanity in thus dismissing his main character?

The narrator has not been the only person to exercise critical judgement nor has his role been one of absolute authority in criticizing Hans Castorp. His usual attitude has been to report Hans’ reactions and leave the reader freedom to judge. Thus, for example, after the crucial experience in the chapter entitled ‘Schnee’ y e are told that, having returned to the ‘hochzivilisierte Atmosphdre’ of the sanatorium, Hans begins to forget and can soon no longer rightly understand what he had experienced (p. 688). Of course, by choosing what we know about Hans and by selecting adjectives of ironic ambivalence such as ‘hochzivilisiert’ to describe the ‘Berghof the narrator is influencing and even shaping our judgements. But the posture he assumes in closing the novel is a clear departure from his earlier role.

The explanation for this would seem to be that it is not the narrator alone who is speaking. The penultimate paragraph, beside echoing the strains concerning time contained already in the ‘Vorsatz’, shows the narrator clearly assuming the mask and language of Settembrini in bidding farewell to ‘Hans Castorp, des Lebens treuherziges Sorgenkind. ’ Then he refers to the ‘pdagogische Neigung, die wir . . . gefdt und die uns bestimmen ksnnte, tart mit der Fingerspitze den Augenwinkel zu tupfen bei dem Gedanken, d d wir dich weder sehen noch hUren