6. Doctor Faustus - chapter XII + Quetzal

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p92 [Description of Halle and their accommodations there] ...On the wall above the piano [in Adrian’s room] was an arithmetical diagram fastened with drawing-pins, something he had found in a second-hand shop: a so-called magic square, such as appears also in Durer’s Melancolia, along with the hour-glass, the circle, the scale, the polyhedron, and other symbols. Here as there, the figure was divided into sixteen Arabic-numbered fields, in such a way that number one was in the right-hand lower corner, sixteen in the upper left; and the magic, or the oddity, simply consisted in the fact that the sum of these numerals, however you added them, straight down, crosswise, or diagonally, always came to thirty-four. What the principle was upon which this magic uniformity rested I never made out, but by virtue of the prominent place Adrian had given it over the piano, it always attracted the eye. and I believe I never visited his room without giving a quick glance, slanting up or straight down and testing once more the invariable, incredible result.

Detail of "magic square"

Melancholia

I assume, given the thorough description -- and the possible similarity to the sign of the Macrocosm in Faust’s study near the beginning of Goethe’s Faust, that this curiosity will be significant. If not Mann is a very tricky bastard.

p93 ...Philosophy, the regular course for the first examination in theology, was the point at which our two programs coincided [Zeitblom is studying philology], and both of us had put ourselves down with Kolonat Nonnenmacher, then one of the luminaries of the University of Halle. With great brilliance and elan he discussed the pre-Socratic, the Ionian natural philosophers, Anaximander, and more extendedly Pythagoras, in the course of which discussion a good deal of Aristotle came in, since it is almost entirely through the Stagirite that we learn of the Pythagorean theory of the universe... we heard this early cosmological conception of a stern and pious spirit who elevated his fundamental passion, mathematics, abstract proportion, number, to the principle of the origin and existence of the world; who, standing opposite All-Nature as an initiate, a dedicated one, first addressed her with a great gesture as “Cosmos,” as order and harmony, as the interval-system of the spheres, sounding beyond the range of the senses, Number, and the relation of numbers, as constituting an all-embracing concept of being and moral value: it was highly impressive, how the beautiful, the exact, the moral, here solemnly flowed together to comprise the idea of authority which animated the Pythagorean order, the esoteric school of religious renewal of life, of silent obedience and strict subjection under the “Autos epha.” ...

How well... we talked, going home after Nonenmacher’s class, about that immortal thinker, influential down the millennia, to whose mediation and sense of history we owe our knowledge of the Pythagorean conception of the world! Aristotle’s doctrine of matter and form enchanted us; matter as the potential, possible, that presses towards form in order to realize itself [sounds like Goethe’s Homunculus?]; form as the moving unmoved, that is mind and soul, the soul of the existing that urges it to self-realization, self-completion in the phenomenon; thus of the entelechy, which, a part of eternity, penetrates and animates the body, manifests itself shapingly in the organic and guides its motive-power, knows its goal, watches over its destiny... “When,” he [Adrian] said, “theology declares that the soul is from God, that is philosophically right, for as the principle which shapes the single manifestations, it is a part of the pure form of all being, comes from the eternally self-contemplating contemplation which we call God. . . . I believe I understand what Aristotle meant by the word ‘entelechy.’ It is the angel of the individual, the genius of his life, in whose all-knowing guidance it gladly confides. What we call prayer is really the statement of this confidence, a notice-giving or invocation. But prayer it is correctly called, because it is at bottom God whom we thus address.”

I could only think: May thine own angel prove himself faithful and wise!

This mention of entelechy reminded me of all the talk about daemons in the previous blog but a quick search turned up this passage which suggests important distinctions between the two terms:

Entelechy or entelechia refers to the `first actuality' of any particular organism...entelechia refers to an indwelling form or essence which determines the organism's activity and development, while at the same time containing within itself the organism's complete potential.The metaphor which perhaps best approximates the entelechy is the seed of a plant, which is the cause of the plant's existence, growth and characteristics, and which also holds the biological prototype or imprint of its full development. The entelechy is perhaps the closest thing in the Aristotelian corpus to the Platonic Daemon. In contradistinction to Plato's notion of the Daemon, the entelechy is imminent and substantial, rather than transcendent and insubstantial. Common to both terms, however, is an element of "fate" or "predestination." Like the Platonic Daemon, which on one level functions as the soul's "lot" in life, and which Heraclitus also specifically associates with the individual's fate or destiny, the entelechy is a kind of essence which determines the future development of the organism, in what amounts to a kind of biological determinism. (Nicholls, Angus. 2000. The Secularization of Revelation from Plato to Freud. Contretemps, 1: September )

p94 [On the theological side...] ...The middle years [of study] belong to systematics; that is to say, to the philosophy of religion, ethics, and apologetics... Adrian... [devoted] himself from the first to systematics, out of general intellectual interest, of course, which in this field comes most to account; but also because its professor, Ehrenfried Kumpf, was the “meatiest” lecturer in the whole university...

I’m thinking I don’t need to go into any more detail about Herr Professor Doktor Kumpf. While an interesting character, whose colorful manner of speaking -- copied by Adrian -- will later make my transcribing of his words a royal pain in my ass, I don’t think he is central to the story

Quetzal

Quetzal cafe is the only true Internet cafe I frequent. There are a row of iMacs you can rent besides the usual free WiFi service. The reason I’m here now is that they also have a printer and, due to the recent death of my Windows laptop, I can’t access my own printer with my Chromebook. More on printing here in a moment, but first a brief history of the neighborhood and cafe.

I’ve been coming to this stretch of Polk street -- Polk Gulch -- since the mid-1970s and it has always been marginal. Back then there were three distinct gay neighborhoods in town: The Castro was the political center as well as the place for a variety of gay bars, baths, bookstores and the like; The Folsom was the leather and S&M scene; and Polk was the underage male prostitute scene. For me it was just a place, not far from where I was living at the time, to find cheap food. There was an older building where Quetzal cafe is today that burned in a dramatic fire, and across the intersection was a popular deli where the boy prostitutes hung out, when not working, and where I almost overdosed on macaroons (they were so good and rich and, having just discovered them, I ate too many too quickly). Eventually the building holding the deli was torn down and replaced by a church, of all things. The burned down building, after a very long delay, was replaced with a multi-story parking garage with retail spaces at street level. Quetzal, part of a very small chain -- there was another one in Tennessee -- carved out a funky/trendy space out of the somewhat convoluted area below the garage. At first they sold handmade ethnic clothing in addition to Free Trade Organic coffee and tea, plus unusually good food and snacks. They carried my favorite cookie of all time: a large, peanut butter cookie, half dipped in chocolate. Unfortunately, the non-dipped half of the cookie lacked the rigidity of the other half and the cookies tended to break in half when pulled out of the jar. I didn’t care about that, but they considered these broken cookies defective and finally stopped carrying them. I stopped frequenting the place after that.

Since then, I believe Quetzal has changed hands, and the food has gone down hill. I’ve used their printer now on two occasions and both times the color inks were not right -- instead of blue I get cyan. A bit of a problem when I’m referring to the blue text as representing updates. The staff doesn’t seem to care. This is a tough business to be in, and I have almost never bought an actual meal here, so I can’t complain too much, but now I only come here to print.

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