Extinction (17 page)

I
see it, for everyone has to describe things as
he
sees them, as they appear to
him
. And if I had to admit to myself that I saw Wolfsegg as a terrible place inhabited by terrible people, I’d be obliged to state it. I’m sure this is roughly what Uncle Georg intended to do in his Anti-autobiography, but since that work no longer exists, it falls to me to take a dispassionate look at Wolfsegg and report what I see. If I don’t do it now, when else should I do it? I ought to do it now, when I’m in a position to do it, when I’m in the right frame of mind and have the detachment that comes from living in Rome, which can only be beneficial to such a project. Here, in my apartment on the Piazza Minerva, where I have
quiet and am basically undisturbed, yet at the center of the modern world, I have the ideal circumstances for writing such an account. For years I’ve thought that I must write about the people at Wolfsegg and the conditions they live in, of their misery and baseness, their frailty and lack of character, about everything they’ve shown me of themselves, which, to be truthful, Gambetti, has given me sleepless nights all my life. I’ll try to portray my family as they are, even if the portrait corresponds only to the way I have seen them and still see them. Since nobody has so far written anything about them, except Uncle Georg, whose Anti-autobiography has been destroyed, it’s up to me to do so. Of course the problem is always how to begin such an account, how to hit upon the right opening sentence. The fact is, Gambetti, that I’ve often started work on it, only to be defeated by the first sentence. I’ve given up again and again, clapping my hand to my head and reflecting that it’s probably madness even to think of writing an account of Wolfsegg, because only a madman would do such a thing. I’ve always asked myself what use it will be and come to the conclusion that it can’t be of any use. Yet it’s always been clear to me, and it’s become even clearer to me recently, that it has to be written, that I can’t get out of writing it, and that one day I’ll have to write it, whatever misgivings I may have. My mind demands it of me. And my mind has become implacable, above all toward myself. Absolutely implacable. And you know I’ve precious little time left. If I don’t make a start it’ll be too late. I don’t know, I told Gambetti, but I feel I’m running out of time. And an account like this requires the writer to spend years over it, possibly not just one or two years but several, I said. It’s not enough simply to make a sketch, I said. The only thing I have fixed in my head is the title,
Extinction
, for the sole purpose of my account will be to extinguish what it describes, to extinguish everything that Wolfsegg means to me, everything that Wolfsegg is, everything, you understand, Gambetti, really and truly everything. When this account is written, everything that Wolfsegg now is must be extinguished. My work will be nothing other than an act of extinction, I told Gambetti. It will extinguish Wolfsegg utterly. I sat with Gambetti on the Piazza del Popolo until almost eleven, I recalled as I contemplated the photos on my desk. We carry Wolfsegg around with us, wanting to extinguish it in order to rescue ourselves, to extinguish it by recording it
and destroying it. Yet most of the time we haven’t the strength to perform this work of extinction. But maybe the moment has arrived. I’ve reached the right age, I told Gambetti, the ideal age for such an undertaking. In the semidarkness of my apartment on the Piazza Minerva, with the curtains almost completely drawn so that I can be undisturbed, shielded from the Roman light, I can start work. What’s preventing me from starting right away? I had asked Gambetti, though I had immediately added, We think we can embark on such an undertaking, yet we can’t. Everything’s always against us, against such an undertaking, and so we put it off and never get around to it. In this way many works of the mind that ought to be written never see the light of day but remain just so many drafts that we constantly carry around in our heads, for years, for decades—in our heads. We adduce all sorts of reasons for not getting on with the work. We dredge up every possible excuse, we invoke all kinds of spirits—malign spirits, of course—in order not to have to start when we should. The tragedy of the would-be writer is that he continually resorts to anything that will prevent him from writing. A tragedy, no doubt, but at the same time a comedy—a perfect, perfidious comedy. But it should be possible to compose a valid account of Wolfsegg, even if it’s not faultless, of the Wolfsegg that I’ve already told you so much about, Gambetti, which has always meant so much to me and is probably the most important thing in my life. It’s not enough to make notes about something that’s important to us, perhaps more important than anything else, I said, namely the whole complex of our origins. It’s not enough to have filled so many hundreds and thousands of slips of paper on the subject, a subject that encompasses our whole life. We must produce a substantial account, not to say a long account, of what we emerged from, what we are made of, and what has
determined our being
for as long as we’ve lived. We may recoil from it for years, we may shrink from such an almost superhuman enterprise, but ultimately we have to set about it and bring it to a conclusion. What’s the point in having this whole Roman atmosphere and my apartment in the Piazza Minerva, unless I’m to achieve this end? But I’ve probably thought about it too often already: too much reflection saps one’s resolve. I’ll call my account
Extinction
, I told Gambetti, because in it I intend to extinguish everything: everything I record will be extinguished. My whole family and their life and
times will be extinguished; Wolfsegg will be extinguished, Gambetti, in the way I choose. Uncle Georg made a record of Wolfsegg, and what he could do in Cannes I can surely do in Rome, with even greater independence and clarity of vision. Rome is the ideal place for a work of extinction such as I have in mind, I told Gambetti. For Rome isn’t the ancient center of a superannuated history: it’s
the modern center of the world
, I said, as we can see and feel every day and every hour if we’re observant. The center of today’s world isn’t New York or Paris or London, it isn’t Tokyo or Beijing or Moscow, as we read and are told all the time—it’s Rome,
once again
it’s Rome. I can’t prove it, at least not at this moment and not in so many words, but I can feel it. You won’t believe it, Gambetti, but in the Piazza Minerva I’ve become a new man. I’ve found myself again after having been
lost
for so many years, in every possible place. For years I didn’t think I could be saved. All I could see was my approaching dissolution. In all these years, Gambetti, I could see myself going to pieces, slowly declining, getting increasingly lost. I saw myself nearing the end, an end that couldn’t be delayed. Everything within me had become quite meaningless. Neither in Paris nor in Lisbon was I able to find what I had sought for so many years, something new to hold on to, a new beginning. But in Rome I found it. And I hadn’t expected anything of Rome. I’d merely thought it would afford me a week’s distraction, nothing more. At best that it would take me out of myself for a few months. Incidentally it was Uncle Georg’s idea that I should leave Lisbon, which I love, and come to Rome. Lisbon may be splendid, he said, but it’s provincial, whereas Rome’s a cosmopolitan city, or
what is termed a cosmopolitan city
, he said, correcting himself. So I came to Rome, in the hope of retarding my relentless decline, but scarcely expecting to be saved. And then it became clear that Rome was the city for me, the only one, the one I needed, the one that could save me. In Rome I started to make notes again, something I’d been unable to do for years, and to formulate ideas about everything: not just about my approaching dissolution but about everything imaginable, Gambetti. I was suddenly interested in everything, even in politics, which hadn’t interested me for years. In all kinds of artistic matters. And in people, Gambetti, for the fact is that for years I’d had no interest in people; they’d been merely a nuisance and aroused no interest in me. In Rome I went to a theater for
the first time in years. And to the opera, which for years I’d shunned like the plague. And I started reading again. For years I’d read nothing but the newspapers, Gambetti, but now I read books, real books, not just the daily press with its unbearable garbage, on which I’d gorged myself daily in order to escape from my deadly boredom. For years, Gambetti, I’d been bored almost to death. Everything was bound to bore me, as I could find no distractions. I avoided everybody and everything, people and things, and in the end even the fresh air, and this led to a physical decline. I actually became sick, and wherever I was, the only people I saw were doctors. My sole company consisted of members of the medical profession, with whom I could talk only about disease; chiefly, of course, about my own indefinable diseases, which they all said were incurable, my own deadly diseases. And what is there more awful than talking to doctors, who are altogether the most uninteresting people in the world, because they’re the most uninterested? Doctors are the most depressing conversationalists imaginable, and at the same time the most disreputable, because they always tell you that you have only a short time to live and that you’re going to have a dreadful, miserable life, a useless and unnatural life, wrapped up in yourself and your diseases, a life not worth prolonging. In Paris or Madrid or Lisbon I would shut myself up in my apartment and go out only to the post office, to make sure that my money was still being remitted from Wolfsegg. It was so depressing that in the end I did nothing in Lisbon and Madrid but commute between the post office and various venal and irresponsible doctors. And it was the same in Naples, where I went for a time, but Naples didn’t suit me, as the climate was unbearable and the city unspeakably provincial. You must forgive me, Gambetti, I said, for calling Naples unspeakably provincial, but I can find no other phrase to describe it. The view of Vesuvius I find devastating, because it’s been seen by so many millions, possibly billions, already. In recent years, before moving to Rome, I’d been completely obsessed with myself and had therefore neglected myself in the grossest and most unpardonable way. I’d let myself go to pieces, chiefly mentally but also physically. I’d become thoroughly degenerate, not only sick but intolerant and distrustful, with the result that I almost suffocated in my ceaseless self-observation and self-contemplation. I’d entirely forgotten that in addition to my own terrible world
there was another, which was not entirely terrible. Above all I’d forgotten about intellectual life. I’d forgotten my philosophers and poets, and all my creative artists, Gambetti. I might even say that I’d forgotten my own mind. I clung to my sick body, and by ceaselessly clinging to this sick body I almost ruined myself. Until I came to Rome. Until my friend Zacchi got me the apartment in the Piazza Minerva, for at first I lived at the Hassler, as you know, not at the Hotel de la Ville like Uncle Georg—no, I’d become a megalomaniac and had to live at the Hassler. In the very first moment, I looked across the Spagna toward Rome, took a deep breath, and sensed that I was saved. I won’t leave here, I thought to myself in this first moment. Standing at the open window, I said to myself, I’m here to stay, nothing will make me leave. And it all worked out: I stayed in Rome, I didn’t leave. Although I loved all the other cities I’d lived in, none of them had such an overwhelming, existential effect on me. Although I’d spent long or longish periods in all these other cities, I’d never felt at home in them. They had a place in my heart, to use a foolish familiar phrase, but none of them had ever become
my
city. I love them all, Lisbon especially, and Warsaw and Krakow and Palma, even Vienna and Paris, and London and Palermo, but I couldn’t bear to live in any of them for long now. I’ve left them all behind, without feeling that I’ve lost something that belongs to me, that belongs to me absolutely. Sometimes I’ve thought I could spend as long in Lisbon as I’ve spent in Rome, but then I always recall Uncle Georg’s telling remark about Lisbon, which seems to me the most splendid city of them all. Indeed, Lisbon is more beautiful than Rome, but it’s provincial. The pleasantest years of my life were spent in Lisbon, but not the best years; these have been spent in Rome. Lisbon has a perfect blend of architecture and nature, such as you find in no other city. It’s a pity you’ve never had a chance to visit Lisbon, Gambetti. The years I spent there were my pleasantest and probably my happiest. But I have to say that Lisbon was not the ideal city for my mind, which is what matters to me most, whereas Rome always has been. Rome is of all cities the most congenial to the mind: it was the ideal city for the ancient mind, and it’s the ideal city for the modern mind—precisely for the modern mind, given the chaotic political conditions that prevail here today. No other city, not even New York, is ideal for the mind, but Rome quite definitely is,
beyond all doubt. It’s explosive, and that suits me, Gambetti. It’s explosive, Gambetti, and that’s what I love. At this point it occurred to me that I had already gone quite a long way toward alienating Gambetti from his parents, and I wondered how far I could go, how far it was permissible to go, in alienating him from his parents and their world—that is to say, from their ideas. But this thought at once struck me as absurd. I was annoyed at having even entertained it, for my relationship with Gambetti naturally involves alienating him from his parents and their ideas. By teaching him German and getting him to read
Siebenk
ä
s
and
The Trial
I am ostensibly acquainting him with German literature, but in fact I am quite consistently alienating him from his parents and their ideas, I thought, as if I were entitled to alienate him from them and remove him farther and farther from their world, a world that was diametrically opposed to mine. In other words, I thought, I’m now doing to Gambetti what I did to myself ages ago, when I removed myself from Wolfsegg. What was good for me then, I thought, is good for Gambetti now. I’m playing the role of Uncle Georg, who drove me out of Wolfsegg with all his ideas, with his revelations about Wolfsegg and all it meant, which finally made it impossible for me to remain there. Just as Uncle Georg drove me out of Wolfsegg, I’m driving Gambetti out of his parents’ world. But I haven’t deliberately tried to do this: it’s happened automatically, without my being aware of it at first, as a by-product of my teaching, so to speak. Gambetti has heard my views on how the world should be changed, by first radically