Soul of the Age (36 page)

TO ALFRED KUBIN

Montagnola, Christmas 1935

Your roll arrived the day before yesterday, at a time when I was in need of some friendly sign, so I opened it and peeled out your sketch,
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which is now hanging on my wall. Your urge to create this fine homage to our dear Stifter makes me feel even closer to you! What a beautiful, mysterious, intimate sketch! The worthy man is surrounded by the forest of his life and works, and the two gently lit figures approaching him bear with them the fragrance of strawberries and woodlands. I'm not just pleased with the sketch—I would have been delighted with anything you chose to give me—but regard it as a very special gift, which I shall absorb like a melody.

The year is almost over, and I wish the same could be said for all the problems and worries I have had this year. There are no indications that this is so, even though I have already had to contend with more than enough bad luck, disappointment, and misfortune. My life is rather messy at the moment, and I'm no longer in touch with my own work. In the last two years the new novel hasn't grown an inch, and I cannot even look at it anymore. Of course, I'm still diligent, more so than ever, in fact. I read and review hundreds of books, etc., but that's a substitute, a mere gesture. And then I wasn't feeling well all year, had gout and other ailments, felt no joie de vivre whatsoever. I also had to contend with all sorts of losses, the loss of friends either through death or acts of disloyalty, attacks on me in Germany, professional disappointments, total uncertainty about the continued existence of my publisher and the availability of my works, and finally a special blow: In November, I went to Baden on the Limmat, where I go almost every year, to bathe and, if possible, rest a bit. I didn't have much of an opportunity to rest. I had brought along too much work, and since Baden is so close to Zurich, I often had visitors, etc. I had a brother in Baden; he had been living there for many years, worked as a low-level clerical employee, had a wife and children. He was such a kind, childish person, musical, great friends with children, loved games, but he was unhappy and completely alienated in his awful career. In recent times he very much feared losing his job and seeing his family starve. He complained to me about this, and we spent an evening together: I tried to comfort him, offered some advice, promised to help out in an emergency, suggested that he be patient and keep his sense of humor. His mood eventually improved somewhat. Then I visited him again with two of my sons, who had come to Baden for the day to see me. Four days later, I was told that my brother had left home in the morning, but had failed to appear at the office. He was missing for two days, and we searched for him; he was lying in a field, with a severed artery. I buried him on the last day in November.

Actually, the absence of my brother doesn't mean that there will be a large gap in my life; he had no part in my life. But I was very shaken by the discovery that he, who had seemed so petit bourgeois, childish, and harmless, was even closer to the demons than I, and had slashed himself with his penknife when the situation became intolerable for him.

So instead of thanking you for your Stifter, I have told you all sorts of lugubrious tales. Well, that's all for now; I shall have better news some other time.

All the best for the New Year!

TO WILHELM SCHÄFER

[
January 1936
]

You sent greetings recently through Schmidtbonn,
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and so I feel I should let you know about an episode that, to my mind, reflects very badly on the current state of German literature and the manners of the literati.

I mean the vociferous attacks—or rather denunciations—that Will Vesper has been launching against me over the past few months.
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The ostensible reason for these attacks is that I occasionally write reviews of German books for a Swedish journal. I realize that Vesper doesn't share my opinions; there was a time when he couldn't lay hands on enough Heine for his
Ernte,
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but now he is virulently anti-Semitic, etc. He has started resorting to a despicable tactic: he just floods the German dailies with articles claiming that I am an émigré and have no right to call myself Swiss, etc. What is really intolerable is that his assertions are based on “facts” invented by himself, quite unabashedly so. It is obvious what he has in mind: Vesper wants people in Germany to treat me as an émigré and traitor. I also happen to know the driving force behind all of this.

I am enclosing a copy of a letter that rebuts the assertions he has made about me and corrects his falsified biographical data. Vesper has never sent me copies of his attacks—in order to lessen the likelihood of my refuting his fabrications. But the world of German letters may well feel that an outspoken fellow writer should not be treated that way. In any case, there are some colleagues whom I respect, and I want to make sure they get to hear about this. Hence this importunity.

Funnily enough, their opponents—the German press in exile—accuse me of exactly the opposite.
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But that campaign (using methods similar to Vesper's) is directed, not at me, but at my publisher, Fischer, whom they're out to destroy.

TO OTTO BASLER

[
January 24, 1936
]

I now find myself in a situation that I have long expected and predicted: the press in the German Reich has called me a traitor to the
Volk,
etc., etc. (a hint to officialdom that my books should finally be banned); at the same time the German-Jewish refugees are writing about me in the manner suggested by the enclosed article,
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even though I have really done everything I can to help them, and have had to make quite a few sacrifices as a result. The man who wrote that piece probably knows just as well as I do that I am a Swiss citizen, not an émigré, and that it has been over twenty-four years since I last lived in Germany. He probably also knows that I have done a lot for the émigrés, especially their literary output. But, of course, when there is such strife, the facts and even truth itself become irrelevant, and the émigré press, which is determined to get rid of my publisher, has long since adopted the methods of the Nazis: they even persecute imaginary enemies with the utmost brutality, using every means at their disposal, no matter how illicit.

And now they have also gone and destroyed what I was trying to do for German literature, which is in a sorry state; I had buried myself in that work, but cannot keep it up for much longer.

This isn't particularly interesting, and doesn't surprise me in the least. But I thought I should let you know.

Bernhard's assertion that I am a contributor to the
Frankfurter Zeitung
is an utter fabrication.

Addio.

TO GEORG BERNHARD, EDITOR, “PARISER TAGEBLATT”

Montagnola near Lugano, January 24, 1936

You mentioned me and my work in an article criticizing the Fischer Verlag; you were not just disparaging, but downright nasty, and, unfortunately, your comments also distorted the facts.

I have no wish to dwell here on my work as a critic, which has been acknowledged by the presses of the German émigrés. As a contributor to
Die Neue Rundschau,
the only German journal for which I still write, I am the only critic in the entire German press who is always prepared to discuss books by Jews, etc., in a most sympathetic manner.

Just in case you haven't forgotten your obligation to the truth in the heat of the battle, I would like to point out that your remarks about me bear no relationship to the facts.

First of all, I am a Swiss citizen, not an émigré, and have lived continuously in Switzerland for the past twenty-four years.

Second, contrary to your assertion, I am not a contributor to the
Frankfurter Zeitung.
I don't know where you dug up this lie.

Occasionally, however, German papers, usually smaller ones, have published old feuilleton pieces or poems of mine. Those are reprints, and they got the texts, not from me, but from a licensing agency, which purchased the rights to these old, short pieces years ago. If, contrary to all its traditions, the
Frankfurter Zeitung
published a reprint of something by me, which I very much doubt, I was entirely unaware of the fact.

Fighting is fun, but it can have a negative effect on one's character. The world war has taught us that the communiqués of every army are riddled with lies. It would be beneath the dignity of the German émigrés to adopt those tactics. Otherwise, why keep on fighting?

Your article makes statements about me that bear no relation to the facts. I wanted to draw your attention to this matter.

TO THOMAS MANN

March 12, 1936

Thank you for your letter, which I found enjoyable and comforting. You were right to suspect that I might need something of the sort. We're good friends with J. Maass, and perhaps it was he who told you I'm not feeling well.

My three years of book reviewing have proved very disappointing. All I received for my well-intentioned and, in the end, utterly strenuous labors was a slap in the face from both sides—i.e., Germany and the émigrés. This disappointment has shown me the extent to which my activity as a sympathetic commentator on German literature was also an escape, an escape from having to be a passive onlooker on world events, and an escape from my own work, from which I have been separated over the past two years by an increasing vacuum.

I shall first cut back on my critical activity, reduce it to a minimum, in the hope that I can thus recuperate from the exhaustion and saturation brought on by excessive reading. It will be harder to resume work on my book, which has suffered such prolonged neglect. The idea of writing the book is still there; I have been thinking about it a lot, but have not felt the urge to be productive, to work on the details, and make the spiritual become visible and tangible.

I'm glad to hear that they haven't been bothering you in the Reich. If your works are banned, I shall be distressed by the thought of carrying on my little business all alone over there. But time will tell; it's still conceivable that we shall be banned together, and that would please me, although I ought not provoke that. Our work nowadays is illegal. It is in the service of causes that irritate all fronts and parties.

I think of you rather often and am glad to know that you are spending some hours each day in Egypt.
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I, too, am again hoping for a journey to the East. Without that, it would be hard to put up with this soulless world.

TO THE MARTIN BODMER FOUNDATION

Montagnola, March 29, 1936

Dear Gentlemen,

Today, on this beautiful Sunday morning in spring, I received a kind letter from Herr Martin Bodmer with the surprising news that I have been awarded the Gottfried Keller Prize.
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This unexpected news reaches me at a time when I am sorely tried by the enormous crisis confronting German literature, and I am therefore doubly pleased to receive this award.

Although I tend to view my literary achievement quite skeptically (my character is, on the whole, more moral and religious than artistic), I feel that there is at least one quality of mine that meets the requirements and objectives of your foundation: Ever since childhood, my Swiss identity has been closely linked to my being German in linguistic and cultural terms. Grandson of a Swiss-French woman, son of a Balt who became a citizen in Basel around 1880, I heard, learned, and spoke in my childhood the Baltic German of my father and also the dialects of Basel and Swabia.

Gentlemen, I should like to convey to you my heartfelt thanks for the support, honor, and joy that the award of this prize has brought with it.

With an expression of sincere appreciation, yours

TO ALFRED KUBIN

[
September 1936
]

Thanks for your letter. I had just arrived back from what I consider a long journey; I was way up in northern Germany, where I consulted my ophthalmologist again and spent fourteen days undergoing treatment. There is nobody else doing these treatments, and he is seventy-five years old and can no longer meet me someplace along the way, as he formerly did.

Officialdom treats me the same way it treats you, with hostility, interference, and suppression. On several occasions they were all set on banning my books, but up to now the head person at my publishers has prevented this from actually happening. The publisher, which was once a leading house in the Reich, has dwindled in size and is now quite impoverished.

I have just sent you a short essay
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about Green; I mailed the same essay to you once before, but it must have got lost. Please return it (no big hurry).

My wife has read Green's book
Minuit
and likes it a lot; I no longer read anything in foreign languages and shall wait until a translation appears.

You got my little garden poem;
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I wrote it for my sister in the summer of 1935; I gave it to Dr. Bermann, Fischer's son-in-law, to help him out a bit, since he's setting up a new publishing house in Vienna; apart from that, I'm still bound by contract to the old publisher in Berlin.

I want to publish a little volume of new poems
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there next year. That is all I have by way of new material. After completing
The Journey to the East,
I started fiddling around with a new work, and this has been going on for years now; every now and then I add a short passage.[ … ]

Caro amico, the journey through Germany was less than gay; they are busy rooting out more and more of the things that people like us love and cannot live without. However, some of the values we worked for and upheld in our lives will survive this whole mess, and they will act as a narrow bridge connecting the humanity of tomorrow with the world that preceded us. This is our one task, and it is certainly sufficient.