“About other people, Tonio Kröger—pardon me—or not merely about other people?”
He was silent. He knitted his slanting eyebrows and whistled to himself.
“Please let me have your cup, Tonio. It is not strong enough. And take another cigarette. Besides, you know very well that you see things in a manner in which they do not necessarily need to be seen. …”
“That is Horatio’s answer, my dear Lisaweta. ‘To look at things so,’ means ‘to look at them too closely,’ doesn’t it?”
“I say that we can look at them just as closely from another angle, Tonio Kröger. I am a mere stupid painter girl, and if I am able to make any objections to you, if I can somewhat protect your own calling from you, then it is sure to be nothing new which I advance, but merely a warning reminder to you of what you already know. … As for instance: the purifying, hallowing effect of literature; the destruction of the passions through knowledge and the word; literature as the road towards understanding, towards forgiveness and love; the emancipating power of speech; above all, the literary spirit as the noblest aspect of the human spirit, the literary man as the complete man, as saint—to look at things in this way means not to look at them closely enough?”
“You have a right to speak like that, Lisaweta Iwanowna, and especially in view of the work of your poets, of the adorable Russian literature which so truly represents the holy literature you speak of. Yet I have not left your objections out of account, but they go along with all that is in my mind today. … Look at me. I do not seem inordinately cheerful, no? A bit old and sharp-featured and tired, isn’t that so? Now, returning to ‘knowledge,’ a person would let himself think that way who, essentially pious, softhearted, well-meaning, and a little sentimental, would be quite simply destroyed and annihilated by psychological clarity. Not to let oneself be overcome by the world’s sorrow; to observe, notice, accept even the wretchedest things, while keeping in good spirits in the perfect assurance of moral superiority over the repulsive invention of life.—Yes, of course! Yet occasionally, in spite of all your delight in the expression, things become a little too much for you. Does understanding everything mean forgiving everything? I don’t know. There is something which I call the nausea of knowledge, Lisaweta: the condition wherein a man has simply to see through a thing in order to feel himself, not reconciled by any means, but disgusted to death—the case of Hamlet the Dane, this typical man of letters. He knew what it meant: being called to knowledge without being born to it. Compelled even to see clearly through the tearful veil of the feelings, to recognize, to notice, to observe, and to lay the observed thing smilingly aside at the very moment when hands are clasping, when lips are meeting, when mortal eyes, blinded by emotion, grow dim—it is disgraceful, Lisaweta, it is despicable, it is revolting … but what good is there in being revolted?
“Another, but no less amicable aspect of the matter is, of course, sophistication, indifference, and ironic weariness towards all truth; for it is a fact that nowhere else in the world are things more silenced and hopeless than in a circle of clever people who are already in full rout. All knowledge is old and boring. Pronounce some truth which perhaps has given you a certain youthful delight in its conquest and possession, and they will answer your ordinary enlightenment with a curt release of breath through the nose. … Oh, yes, literature makes weary, Lisaweta! In human society it can happen to a person, I assure you, that through sheer scepticism, through leaving his opinions unstated, he can be considered stupid, whereas he was simply haughty and lacking in courage. … So much for ‘knowledge.’ But as to the ‘word,’ isn’t it perhaps less a matter of salvation here than a chilling, a putting-on-ice, of the emotions? Seriously, there is an icy and revoltingly arrogant quality to this pat and superficial discharge of emotion through literary speech. If your heart is too full, if you feel yourself moved too much by some sweet or exalted experience: nothing simpler! You go to the man of letters, and everything is settled in the shortest possible time. He will analyse and formulate your affection for you, call it by name, express it and expatiate on it, will relieve you of the whole burden forever, and make you indifferent, and no charges asked. But you will go home relieved, cooled, and enlightened, and will wonder how anything in this matter could have been disturbing you with so sweet a tumult only a short while ago. And you want seriously to defend this cold and vain charlatan? Whatever has been expressed—his
