Lenz Page 6

  The next day went well. With Oberlin through the valley on horseback; broad mountain slopes funneling down from great heights into a narrow winding valley leading this way and that to the upper elevations, great boulder fields fanning out at the base, not much woodland, but everything a gray somber cast, a view to the west into the countryside and onto the mountain range running straight from north to south, the peaks looming huge, solemn, or mute and motionless, like a twilit dream. Enormous masses of light sometimes surging out of the valleys like a golden torrent, then clouds again, heaped around the highest peaks and then climbing down the forests into the valley or darting up and down in the sunbeams like silvery fluttering ghosts; no noise, no movement, no birds, nothing but the sighing of the wind, now near, now far. Specks also appeared, skeletons of huts, straw-covered planks, somber black. People, silent and somber, as if afraid to disturb the peace of their valley, quietly greeted them as they rode by. There was animation in the huts, they crowded around Oberlin, he set things right, offered advice, consolation; trusting looks everywhere, prayer. People recounted dreams, premonitions. Then quickly on to practical matters, the laying of roads, the digging of ditches, visits to the school. Oberlin was tireless, Lenz his constant companion, now conversing, now attending to affairs, now absorbed in nature. It all had a benign and calming effect on him, he often had to look into Oberlin’s eyes, and the immense peace that comes over us in the tranquility of nature, in the middle of the woods, on liquid moonlit summer nights, appeared even closer to him in this quiet gaze, this noble solemn face. He was shy, but he made observations, he spoke, Oberlin found his conversation agreeable, and the childish charm of Lenz’s face gave him great pleasure. But things were only bearable for him as long as the light lay in the valley; towards evening he was seized by a strange anxiety, he wanted to chase after the sun; as objects gradually grew more shadowy, everything seemed so dreamlike, so menacing, he felt the anxiety of children who sleep in the dark; it was as if he were blind; now it was intensifying, the nightmare of madness was settling at his feet, the hopeless realization that everything was merely his dream opened before him, he clung to every object, figures fled by him, he pressed toward them, they were shadows, life drained from him and his limbs went stiff. He spoke, he sang, he recited passages from Shakespeare, he grasped after everything that used to make his blood race, he tried everything, but cold, cold. He then felt the urge to rush outdoors, the sparse light scattered through the night, once his eyes had gotten used to the dark, made him better, he plunged into the fountain, the harsh effect of the water made him better, also he secretly hoped he would contract an illness, he now organized his bathing so there would be less noise. Yet the more he grew accustomed to this life, the calmer he became, he helped out Oberlin, sketched, read the Bible; old vanished hopes rose anew in him; the New Testament spoke to him so directly here, and one morning he ventured forth. When Oberlin recounted how an invisible hand had steadied him on the bridge, how his eyes had been dazzled by a blinding light on a mountain, how he had heard a voice, how it had spoken to him in the night, and how God had entered into him so completely that he took his Bible reader out of his pocket like a child in order to seek its advice, this faith, this eternal heaven in life, this existence in God; now for the first time Holy Scripture was hitting home. How Nature so affected these people, divine mystery in everything; but not violently majestic, rather taken on faith!—That morning he ventured forth, snow had fallen during the night, bright sunshine lay over the valley, but the countryside further off half in fog. He soon left the path, up a gentle slope, no trace of footprints anymore, past a forest of firs, the sun chiseling the crystals, the snow fine and powdery, here and there the faint tracks of game leading into the mountains. Nothing astir in the air except a quiet breeze, the rustle of a bird dusting the snow off its tail. Everything so silent, and the expanse of trees, their white feathers swaying in the dark blue air. He felt more and more at home, the overpowering solid planes and lines that had sometimes seemed to address him in loud tones were blanketed over, he was suffused with a cozy Christmas feeling, at times it seemed his mother might loom forth from behind a tree and tell him she had arranged all this as a special gift; as he made his way down he saw a rainbow haloing his shadow and felt as if something had touched his brow, the Being was speaking to him. He came back down. Oberlin was in the room, Lenz went up to him cheerfully and said he would like to deliver a sermon at some point. “Are you a theologian?” Yes!—“Fine, this coming Sunday.”

  Lenz went up to his room contented, he thought of a text for the sermon and his mind drifted off, and his nights grew peaceful. Sunday morning arrived, a thaw had set in. Clouds scudding overhead, blue sky in between, the church on a spur of the mountain, the churchyard surrounding it. Lenz stood above while the bell rang and the churchgoers, women and girls in their somber black local costumes, white handkerchiefs folded on their hymnals and sprigs of rosemary, converged from all sides on the small paths leading up and down between the rocks. Bursts of sunshine playing over the valley, a soft lazy breeze, the landscape afloat in fragrance, distant bells, the whole as if dissolving into a single melodious wave.

  The snow was gone from the small churchyard, dark moss beneath the black crosses, a late rosebush leaning against the cemetery wall, late flowers rising through the moss, sun at moments, then the dark. The service began, human voices joined into a pure clear sound; the impression of gazing into a pure transparent mountain stream. The singing trailed off, Lenz spoke, he was shy, the music had completely melted his paralysis away, all his pain was now awake and lay within his heart. He was suffused with a sweet sense of infinite well-being. He spoke simply to the people, they shared in his suffering, and it was comforting that he could offer sleep to various eyes tired from crying and peace to tortured hearts, that he could show the way to heaven to existences tortured by material needs, all these muffled sorrows. He had grown more steady as he came to the end, then the voices began again:

  Burst, O divine woe,

  The floodgates of my soul;

  May pain be my reward,

  In pain I love the Lord.

  The pressure within him, the music, the pain, shook him to the core. The universe was an open wound; it caused him deep nameless pain. Another existence now, the quiver of heavenly lips bending down over him and sucking on his; he returned to his lonely room. He was alone, alone! Then the springwaters gushed forth, tears poured from his eyes, he crumpled into himself, his limbs twitched, it was as if he needed to dissolve, he could find no end to the ecstasy; finally his mind began to clear, he felt deep quiet pity for himself, he wept for himself, his head sank onto his chest, he dozed off, the full moon hung in the sky, his hair fell over his temples and face, the tears clung to his eyelashes and dried on his cheeks, he now lay there alone, everything peaceful and silent and cold, and the moon shone the whole night through, above the mountains.

  The following morning he came down, he very calmly told Oberlin how his mother had appeared to him in the night; she had emerged from the dark churchyard wall in a white dress and had a white and a red rose pinned to her chest; she had then sunk into a corner and the roses had slowly grown over her, she had no doubt died; he had felt quite calm about this. Oberlin then remarked that when his father died he was alone in the fields and had then heard a voice so that he knew his father was dead and when he came back home this was indeed so. This led them further, Oberlin spoke of the mountain people, of girls who could detect water and metal under the ground, of men who had been possessed on certain peaks and wrestled with spirits; he also told of how he had once been transported into a state of somnambulism upon looking into the empty depths of a mountain pool. Lenz told him that the spirit of water had come over him, that he had then experienced something of its special essence. He continued on: the simplest, purest creatures were closest to elemental nature, the more refined a man’s mental life and feelings, the more blunted this elemental sense became; he did not consider it
to be a higher plane, it lacked the requisite self-sufficiency, but he believed it must be an endless delight to feel moved by the unique life of each and every form; to have a soul for stones, metals, water and plants; to take in every being in nature into oneself as in a dream, as flowers do with the air at every waxing and waning of the moon.

  He continued to speak his mind, how all things were imbued with an indefinable harmony, a note, a bliss that in higher forms of life became more pronounced, more resonant, perceiving the world with a greater variety of organs, and was thereby all the more susceptible, whereas in the lower forms everything was more subdued, more circumscribed, yet thereby more at peace with itself. He pursued this even further. Oberlin interrupted him, this was leading too astray from his simple ways. On another occasion Oberlin showed him color charts, he explained the relationship of each color to mankind, he adduced the twelve apostles, each represented by a color. Lenz took this all in, he carried things further, began having anxious dreams, and started reading the Apocalypse like Stilling, consulting his Bible at great length.

  Around this time Kaufmann arrived in Steintal with his bride-to-be. Lenz was at first uneasy about meeting him, he had carved out such a nice little place for himself, this tiny bit of peace was so precious to him, and now someone was coming his way who reminded him of so much, with whom he had to speak, converse, who knew of his situation. Oberlin knew nothing at all; he had taken him in, cared for him; for him it was the hand of God that had sent this unfortunate creature his way, he loved him dearly. Besides, it was fitting that he be there, he belonged among them as if he had been there forever, and no one asked from where he had come and where he was bound. At table Lenz was again in fine spirits, the talk turned to literature, he was in his element; the era of idealism was just then beginning, Kaufmann was among its adherents, Lenz vehemently disagreed. He said: the writers who were purported to offer up reality had no idea of what it was, even though they were more bearable than those who wanted to transfigure it. He said: the good Lord has without a doubt made the world as it should be and there is no way we can scratch together anything better, our sole goal should be to imitate him in a small way. What I demand in all things is life, the potentiality of existence, and that’s that; we need not then ask whether it be beautiful or ugly, the feeling that whatever’s been created possesses life outweighs these two and should be the sole criterion in matters of art. As it is, we encounter it rarely, we find it in Shakespeare and it rings forth fully in folk songs, now and then in Goethe. Everything else can be tossed into the fire. These people can’t even draw a doghouse. They claim they want idealistic figures, but from what I’ve seen, they’re all just a bunch of wooden puppets. This idealism represents the most disgraceful contempt for human nature. Let them just once try to descend into the life of the humblest person and reproduce all the twitches, all the winks, all the subtle, barely noticed play of facial features; he had tried something of the sort in “The Tutor” and “The Soldiers.” They are the most prosaic people under the sun; but the pulse of feeling courses through nearly everyone, only the sheathings through which it must break are more or less thick. One merely needs the eyes and ears for this. Yesterday as I was walking along above the valley, I saw two girls sitting on a rock, one was putting up her hair, the other helping her; and the golden hair was hanging free, and a pale, solemn face, and yet so young, and the black peasant dress, and the other one so absorbed in her task. The finest, most heartfelt paintings of the Old German School scarcely convey an inkling of this. At times one wishes one were a Medusa’s head in order to turn a group like this into stone and call everybody over to have a look. They stood up, the lovely group was destroyed; but as they made their way down among the rocks, there was yet another tableau. The finest images, the most soaring sounds, group themselves, dissolve. Only one thing remains, an infinite beauty passing from form to form, eternally unfolding, transformed, but of course one cannot always capture it and stick it in museums or set it to music and call everybody over, young and old alike, and have them all prattle on about it, going into raptures. One has to love mankind in order to penetrate into the unique existence of each being, nobody can be too humble, too ugly, only then can you understand them; the most insignificant face makes a deeper impression than the mere sensation of beauty and one can allow the figures to emerge without copying anything into them from the outside where no life, no muscle, no pulse surges or swells. Kaufmann objected that he would find no models of the Apollo Belvedere or a Raphael Madonna in reality. So what, he replied, I have to admit they leave me quite cold, if I work at it within myself, I suppose I may end up feeling something, but I am the one making all the effort. The writers and painters I prefer are those who make nature so utterly real to me that their works move me to feel, everything else is plain annoying. I prefer the Dutch painters to the Italians, they are the only ones who make sense; I know of only two paintings, both Dutch, that have made the same impression on me as the New Testament; one of them, I know not by whom, is Christ and the Disciples at Emmaus. When one reads of how the disciples went forth, all of nature immediately lies within these few words. Shadowy night is falling, a solid red streak on the horizon, the road half in darkness, a stranger approaches, they talk, he breaks bread, in their simple humanity they recognize who he is and the divine suffering in his features speaks to them distinctly, and they grow afraid, for it has gotten dark, and something incomprehensible comes over them but it is not some ghostly dread; it is as if the dear departed one were coming up to you in the twilight just as he used to, and so it is in the painting, with its uniform brownish cast and the shadowy stillness of the evening. Then another one. A woman is sitting in her room, prayer book in hand. The room all tidied up for a Sunday, the sand strewn, cozy, clean and warm. The woman had not been able to go to church and she is holding service at home, the window is open, she sits facing it and it is as if the village bells were drifting over the wide flat landscape into the window and the singing of the nearby congregation were echoing forth from the church, and the woman is following the text. — He continued on in this fashion, people listened attentively, many points were being made, he had grown flush from all the talking, now all smiles, now serious, he tossed his curls of blond hair. He had completely forgotten himself. After the meal Kaufmann drew him aside. He had received letters from Lenz’s father, his son was to return, provide assistance. Kaufmann told him he was throwing away his life here, squandering it to no purpose, he should set himself a goal and so on and so forth. Lenz retorted: Away from here? Away? Back home? Go crazy there? You know, this is the only place I can bear; if I couldn’t now and then go up into the mountains and look over the countryside and then come back down to the house and walk through the garden and look in through the window, I’d go crazy!! Crazy!! Leave me in peace! Just a little peace, now that I am feeling a bit better! Back home? This makes no sense, these two words ruin everything. Everybody needs something; if you find peace, what more could you have! To be always scrambling upwards, struggling, and thus throwing away everything granted by the moment; to go always hungry in the hope of satiety; to go thirsty while clear springs leap over your path. Things are now tolerable, and this is where I want to stay put; why? Why? Because I am feeling well; what does my father want? What can he give me? Out of the question! Leave me in peace. He was furious, Kaufmann left, Lenz was in a foul mood.