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p221 The document to which repeated reference has been made in these pages, Adrian’s secret record, since his demise in my possession and guarded like a frightful and precious treasure, here it is, I offer it herewith. The biographical moment has come. And accordingly I myself must cease to speak, since in spirit I have turned my back on his deliberately chosen refuge, shared with the Silesian, where I had sought him out. In the twenty-fifth chapter the reader hears Adrian’s voice direct.
But is it only he? This is a dialogue which lies before us. Another, quite other, quite frightfully other, is the principal speaker, and the writer, in his stone-floored living room, only writes down what he heard from that other. A dialogue? Is it really a dialogue? I should be mad to believe it. And therefore I cannot believe that in the depths of his soul Adrian himself considered to be actual that which he saw and heard -- either while he heard and saw it or afterwards, when he put it on paper; notwithstanding the cynicisms with which his interlocutor sought to convince him of his objective presence. But if he was not there, that visitor -- and I shudder at the admission which lies in the very words, seeming even conditionally and as a possibility to entertain his actuality -- then it is horrible to think that those cynicisms too, those jeerings and jugglings, came out of the afflicted one’s own soul. . . .
[Written on music-paper prior to his visit (Zeitblom believes) and possibly even the previous summer] p222 Whist, mum’s the word. And certes I schal be mum, will hold my tunge, were it sheerly out of shame, to spare folkes feelings, for social considerations forsooth! Am firmly minded to keep fast hold on reason and decency, not giving way even up till the end. But seen Him I have, at last, at last! He was with me, here in this hall, He sought me out; unexpected, yet long expected. I held plenteous parley with Him, and now thereafter I am vexed but sith I am not certain whereat I did shake all the whole time: and ‘twere at the cold, or at Him. Did I beguile myself, or He me, that it was cold, so I might quake and thereby certify myself that He was there, Himself in person? For verily no man but knows he is a fool which quaketh at his proper brain-maggot; for sooner is such welcome to him and he yieldeth without or shaking or quaking thereunto. Mayhap He did but delude me, making out by the brutish cold I was no fool and he no figment, since I a mere fool did quake before Him? He is a wily-pie.
Natheles I will be mum, will hold my tonge and mumchance hide all down here on my music-paper, whiles my old jester-fere in eremo [in the hermitage = Schildknapp], far away in the hall, travails and toils to turn the loved outlandish into the loathed mother tongue. He weens that I compose, and were he to see that I write words, would but deem Beethoven did so too.
All the whole day, poor wretch, I had lien in the dark with irksome mygryn, retching and spewing, as happeth with the severer seizures. But at eventide quite suddenly came unexpected betterment. I could keep down the soup the Mother brought me (“Poveretto!”) [poor thing]; with good cheer drank a glass of rosso (“Bevi, bevi!”) [drink] and on a sudden felt so staunch as to allow myself a cigarette. I could even have gone out, as had been arranged the day before... [but he did not]
p223 I sate alone here, by my lamp, nigh to the windows with shutters closed, before me the length of the hall, and read Kirkegaard on Mozart’s Don Juan.
In Either / Or, Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) maintains that Don Giovanni leads an “aesthetic existence,” living for the immediate satisfaction of his senses. He lacks the ability to reflect, which is characteristic of the spirit (or: intellect {Geist}), and hence he has no inner life, no “subject.” Kierkegaard sees music as the best way to express such an aesthetic existence, since both are pure experience, existing only in the present.
-Dartmouth guide to Dr. Faustus [It is my convention to replace quoted brackets with curly brackets when I am quoting something. Normal brackets will always be my comments.]
Then in a clap I am stricken by a cutting cold, even as though I sat in a winter-warm room and a window had blown open towards the frost. It came not from behind me, where the windows lie; it falls on me from in front. I start up from my boke and look abroad into the hall, belike Sch. is come back for I am no more alone. There is some bodye there in the mirk, sitting on the horsehair sofa that stands almost in the myddes of the room, nigher the door... Sitting in the sofa-corner with legs crossed; not Sch., but another, smaller than he, in no wise so imposing and not in truth a gentilman at all. But the cold keeps percing me. [Interestingly it is even harder to transcribe this sloppy medieval spelling than proper -- even proper British -- prose. It is also interesting how understandable (roughly) all this is since half the time I don't know what exact word he is going for. I also suspect I am an utter fool for checking the spelling of such gibberish, but this I have done -- to the best of my ability.]
“Chi e costa?” is what I shout with some catch in my throat, propping my hands on the chair-arms, in such wise that the book falls from my knees to the floore. Answeres the quiet, slow voice of the other, a voice that sounds trained, with pleasing nasal resonance:
“Speak only German! Only good old German without feignedness or dissimulation. I understand it. It happens to be just precisely my favoured language. Whiles I understand only German. But fet thee a cloak, a hat and rug. Thou art cold. And quiver and quake thou wilt, even though not taking a cold.”
“Who says thou to me?” I ask, chafing.
“I,” he says. “I, by your leave. Oh, thou meanest because thou sayst to nobody thou, not even to thy jester gentilman, but only to the trusty play-fere, he who clepes thee by the first name but not thou him. No matter. There is already enough between us for us to say thou. Wel, then: wilt fet thyself some warm garment?”
I stare into the half-light, fix him angrily in mine eye. A man: rather spindling, not nearly so tall as Sch., smaller even than I...
p224 “Ye’re still there,” say I [after fetching coat, hat and “rug”]... “even after I’ve gone and come back? I marvel at it. For I’ve a strong suspicion y’are not there at all.”
“No?” he asks in his trained voice... “For why?”
I: “Because it is nothing likely that a man should seat himself here with me of an evening, speaking German and giving out cold, with pretence to discuss with me gear whereof I wot not would wot naught. Miche more like is it I am waxing sicke and transferring to your form the chills and fever against the which I am wrapped, sneaped by frost, and in the beholding of you see but the source of it.”
He... “Tilly-vally, what learned gibberish you talk!... a clever artifice, an ‘twere stolen from thine own opera! But we make no music here, at the moment... There’s no sickness breaking out, after the slight attack you are in the best of youthful health. But I cry you mercy, I would not be tactless, for what is health? Thuswise, my goodly fere, your sickness does not break out. You have not a trace of fever and no occasion wherefore you should ever have any.”
p225 I: “Further, because with every third word ye utter you uncover your nothingness. You say nothing save things that are in me, and come out of me but not out of you. You ape old Kumpf with turns of phrase yet look not as though you ever had been in academie or higher school or ever sat next to me on the scorner’s bench. You talk of the needy gentilman and of him to whom I speak in the singular number, and even of such as have done so and reaped but little thanks. And of my opera you speak too. Whence could you know all that?”
He... “Yea, whence? But see, I do know it... ‘Twere better to conclude, not that I am not here in the flesh, but that I, here in my person, am also he for whom you have taken me all the whole time.”
[to be continued]
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