Yes, I continued, I’ve a good notion to run over there one evening and introduce myself.
She was angry now. If you ever do a thing like that, Val, I’ll never speak to you again. I’ll run away, that’s what I’ll do.
You mean that you don’t ever want me to meet your folks?
Exactly. Never!
But that’s childish and unreasonable. Even if you did tell me a few lies about your family…
I’ve never admitted anything of the kind, she broke in.
Come, come, don’t talk like that. You know damned well that that’s the only reason why you don’t want me to meet them. I allowed a significant pause to intervene, then said: Or maybe you fear that I
will find your real mother…
She was angrier than ever now but the word mother got her to laughing again.
You won’t believe me, will you? Very well, one day I’ll take you there myself. I promise you.
That wouldn’t do any good. I know you too damned well. The stage would be all set for me. No sir, if there’s any going I go alone.
Val, I warn you … if you dare do that…
I interrupted her. If I ever do it you won’t know about it.
So much the worse, she answered. You could never do that without my hearing about it sooner or later.
She was packing up and down now, puffing nervously at the cigarette which dangled from her lips. She was growing frantic, it seemed to me.
Look here, I said finally, forget about it. I’ll…
Val, promise me you won’t do it; Promise me!
I was silent a few moments.
She got down on her knees beside me, looked up at me imploringly.
All right, I said, as if reluctantly, I promise. I hadn’t the slightest intention, of course, of keeping my word. In fact, I was more than ever determined to get to the bottom of the mystery. However, there was no need to hurry. I had the feeling that when the right moment came I would find myself face to face with her mother—and it would be her real mother.
17
And now, finally, I feel urged to name once more those to whom I owe practically everything: Goethe and Nietzsche. Goethe gave me method, Nietzsche the questioning faculty, and if I were asked to find a formula for my relation to the latter I should say that I had made of his outlook (Ausblick) an overlook (Uberblick). But Goethe was, without knowing it, a disciple of Leibnitz in his whole mode of thought. And, therefore, that which has at last (and to my own astonishment) taken shape in my hands I am able to regard and, despite the misery and disgust of these years, proud to call a German philosophy. (Blankenburg am Harz, December 1922.)
These lines from the preface to The Decline of the West are-to haunt me for many a year. It happens that I have taken to reading the book during the lonely vigils which have begun. Every evening after dinner I return to the room, make myself snug and cosy, then settle down to gnaw at this immense tome in which the panorama of human destiny is unrolled. I am fully aware that the study of this great work represents another momentous event in my life. For me it is not a philosophy of history nor a morphological creation, but a world-poem. Slowly, attentively, savouring each morsel as I chew it, I burrow deeper and deeper. I drown myself in it. Often I break the siege by pacing to and fro, to and fro. Sometimes I find myself sitting on the bed, staring at the wall. I look right through the wall: I look deep into a past which is alive and fathomless. Occasionally a line or phrase comes with such impact that I am forced out of the nest, flung headlong into the street, where I wander like a somnambulist.
Now and then I find myself in Joe’s restaurant at Borough Hall, ordering a big meal; with each mouthful I seem to be swallowing another mighty epoch of the past. Unconsciously I stoke the furnace in order to gird myself for another wrestling bout with the omnivorous one. That I am of the borough of Brooklyn, one of the natives, seems preposterous. How can a mere Brooklyn boy ingest all this? Where is his passport to the distant realms of science, philosophy, history et cetera? All that this Brooklyn boy knows has been acquired through osmosis. I am the lad who hated to study. I am the charming fellow who consistently rejected all systems of thought. Like a cork tossed about on an angry sea I follow in the wake of this morphological monster. It mystifies me that I should be able to follow him even distantly. Am I following or am I being sucked under by a vortex? What is it that enables me to read with understanding and delight? Whence the training, the discipline, the percipience which this monster demands? His thought is music to my ears; I recognize all the hidden melodies. Though I am reading him in English, it is as if I were reading the language he wrote in. His vehicle is the German language, which I thought I had forgotten. But I see I have forgotten nothing, not even the curricula I once planned to follow but never did.
From Nietzsche the questioning faculty! That little phrase sets me dancing…
Nothing is so inspiring to one who is trying to write as to come upon a thinker, a thinker who is also a poet, a thinker who looks for the soul which animates things. I see myself again as a mere youth, asking the librarian, or the minister sometimes, to lend me certain profound works—deep I called them then. I see the astonished look on their faces when I mention the titles of these formidable books. And then the inevitable—But why do you want those books? to which I always rejoined: And why shouldn’t I want those books? That I was too young, that I hadn’t read enough to cope with such works, meant nothing to me. It was my privilege to read what I wanted when I wanted. Was I not a born American, a free citizen? What did age matter? Later, however, I had to secretly admit that I did not understand what these deep works were about. Or rather, I understood that I did not want the abscesses which accompanied the knowledge they secreted. How I yearned to grapple with the mysteries! I wanted all that had soul in it and meaning. But I also demanded that the author’s style match the mystery he was illuminating. How many books possess this quality? I met my Waterloo at the very threshold of life. I retained my ignorance, dreaming that it was bliss.
The questioning faculty! That I never abandoned. As is known, the habit of questioning everything leads one to become either a sage or a sceptic. It also leads to madness. Its real virtue, however, consists in this, that it makes one think for himself, makes one return to the source.
Was it so strange that in reading Spengler I began to appreciate all over again what truly wonderful thinkers we were as boys? Considering our age and our limited experience of life, we nevertheless managed to propound to one another the most profound and vital questions. We tackled them manfully, too, with our whole being. Years of schooling destroyed the art. Like chimpanzees, we learned to ask only the right questions—the ones the teachers could answer. It is on this sort of chicanery that the whole social structure is reared. The university of life! Only the desperate ones choose this curriculum. Even the artist is apt to go astray, because he too is obliged, sooner or later, to observe on which side his bread is buttered.
The Decline of the West! I can never forget the thrill which ran up my spine when I first heard this title. It was like Ivan Karamazov saying—I want to go to Europe. Maybe I know that I shall go only to a cemetery, but it will be to the dearest of cemeteries.
For many a year I had been aware that I was participating in a general decline. We all knew it, all felt it, only some succeeded in forgetting about it more quickly than others. What we hadn’t understood so clearly, most of us, was that we were part of this very West, that the West included not only Europe but North America. To us America had always been a chancy place—one day hot, one day cold, one day barren, one day fertile. In short, according to how you struck it, it was either all myrrh and frankincense or plain undiluted horse manure. It was not our way to think in terms of historical destiny. Our history had begun only a few years back—and what there was of it was dull and boring. When I say we I mean we boys, we youths, we young men who were trying to sprout long pants under our skirts. Mamma’s boys, all of us, and if we had a destiny it was to become cracker-jack salesmen, cigar store clerks or chain store managers. The wild ones joined the Army or Navy. The incorrigible ones got themselves safely stowed away in Dannemora or Sing Sing. No one pictured himself as a plodding engineer, plumber, mason, carpenter, farmer, lumberman. One could be a trolley car conductor one day and an insurance agent the next day. And tomorrow or the day after one might wake up and find himself an
