32. A Viennese Poet

Peter Altenberg

A few weeks ago in Vienna, I came across the then recently published book "Ashantee" by Peter Altenberg. I knew this poet's first work, "Wie ich es sche". When it was published, there was jubilation among the young Viennese literati, as if a new land had been conquered for poetry. As if sounds had risen from the depths of the soul that had never been heard before. I could not quite understand the jubilation. I have often felt this way in recent years when I have heard that a mighty genius has arisen here or there. I often found old familiar tunes where the most unconditional originality was proclaimed. It was no different with Peter Altenberg. I found real poetry in "As I see it". About four-fifths of the book was indigestible for me; but the rest led me into depths of the soul that were not new to me, but into which I followed the artist with yearning love. He spoke of many common things, but he knew how to lend them a rare brilliance; the common becomes noble when it comes from his mouth. I thought I recognized a true poet in Peter Altenberg, but not one of the great ones. Peter Altenberg does not know how to sing about the depths of nature, the abysses, the great sufferings and joys of the human soul. What interests man most, who immerses himself in the eternal harmony of the world, seems to be alien to him. He poetically transfigures the petty, the insignificant that lives on the surface of things. He is unpalatable to philosophical natures. He has nothing to say to them. For them, what he is talking about does not even exist. For them it is the accidental, the worthless, which is none of their business. No light from the "eternal ideas" penetrates Altenberg's eyes. But the non-eternal, the accidental, shines in his hand like the "eternal ideas" in Plato's. You have to be in a good mood to enjoy Altenberg. You have to be in the mood to dally, to revel voluptuously in the pettiest, the most insignificant things. If you don't know what to do with your time, it's best to turn to his books. In such a mood, I also picked up his latest work "Ashantee". And once again found the little poet I had found in "As I see it". I indulged again in the voluptuous sensations that excite the insignificant, the surface of things. But these feelings did not seem to me to be entirely sincere. Altenberg sometimes deludes himself. When a very small thing fails to arouse any emotion in him, he becomes a comedian of the soul. He pretends to have feelings that he doesn't have. Because Altenberg is very flirtatious. And it is not only his coquetry that reminds us of the emotional world of the degenerate female nature. He has a decidedly feminine streak. Yes, I find an even greater flaw in him. He lacks the skeleton of the mind. He looks to me like a child born with crippled bones. He seems to believe that even the slightest thought disgraces the poet. Soon after reading Altenberg's book, I found an interesting essay by Hermann Bahr on poetry in the Viennese weekly Die Zeit. I can't help it, but I find everything Bahr writes interesting. He is not a critic like others. He doesn't go around the creations he talks about. He can crawl inside them with an enviable agility. And when he is inside, he often says things that are as enlightening about the works of art as Kepler's laws about the nature of the planets. I thought to myself that Hermann Bahr would also have something enlightening to say about Peter Altenberg. When I started reading his essay, I was quite ashamed. Bahr would like to be as successful as Peter Altenberg. "To be the darling of connoisseurs and so hated by people of mere intellect. Blessedly he walks along, much loved, and laughs at the stupid crowd of the "clever", who must not understand him, who must hate him; for he is the pure artist, who nowhere touches the region of mere intellect; the latter lacks the organs for him ..." Now I knew where I stood. I don't hate Peter Altenberg. But I did get the feeling that his critic would count me among the stupid crowd of "clever people" who "are not allowed to understand" Altenberg. In his essay, Hermann Bahr now wants to speak to the stupid "clever ones" or the "barbarians, as Barres called them, about Mr. Peter". And what does the critic tell the barbarians? That everyone in their youth raved about Posa and Max and later found in life that in reality, on the street, in the coffee house, there is no Posa and no Max. And that a drama whose characters are portrayed in a true-to-life way does not satisfy us. That we are not satisfied when we meet the laundress and the waiter we know from life on the stage. Reality needs to be idealized if it is to have an artistic effect, Hermann Bahr teaches us. But what do we have to do, he asks, since we don't find ideal figures like Götz or Posa in reality? Hermann Bahr said in a few words what the "stupid clever ones" should do to discover art: "Well, I know a teacher for them. All they have to do is go to our Mr. Peter. He has the good fortune to love people. He looks at every commis with his love, and so he can find Max and Posa in every coffee house. He has the great eye of eternal love. I could have told them that more briefly, I should have just said: he is a poet."

When I read that, I didn't feel quite like a barbarian again. On the contrary. Hermann Bahr has to say the most elementary truths, the most trivial things, in order to lift the "barbarians" up to Mr. Peter. One could speak of the most insignificant poets as Bahr does of Mr. Peter. But at the end of the essay, Bahr's true feelings come to the fore. "But he is not the naïve poet who cannot say mean things because under his gaze they are always immediately transformed into noble things. No, our Peter has often seen the common. Then the poet seems to sleep in him, he listens to people's vain speeches and looks at their earthly afflictions. There are pauses in his love. When it finally awakens, he cries out so blissfully, as if all mesquine things were suddenly transfigured under the ray of his goodness, and in their transfiguration he must always remember with wonder how poor they were just a moment ago. He has the peculiarity of never forgetting to Gretchen that she was a silly little washerwoman before his love awoke. He is a poet who constantly marvels at the fact that he is a poet. This endears him to us like a good child." That is the same opinion I have formed about Mr. Peter. The poet awakens in him when he sees the mesquine things shimmering in a beautiful light that emanates from their surface. But this beauty is accidental. One goes a step further, and the same thing that first shone like a crystal appears in its dull baseness. If Mr. Peter could see the truly eternal in the stupid little washerwoman and if she then appeared to him as Gretchen, he would have to forget the stupid little washerwoman completely. What distinguishes me from Hermann Bahr, then, is only that I cannot overlook the fact that in the "pure artist", Mr. Peter, he has no sense of the eternal in things, of the backbone of life. For once, I cannot give up the belief that one can be completely "clever" and still feel artistically, even create artistically. Why then does the "stupid crowd of clever people" sit devoutly in the theater while Gerhart Hauptmann's "Sunken Bell" is being played?