Death in Rome
Wednesday, November 24th, 2010
I’ve been reading Death in Rome by Wolfgang Koeppen, and it has been pretty dry. But this conversation I read last night is quite good. I thought I’d share.
“‘The donkey pulled the cart. It thought it was pulling the cart heavenwards, and soon it would reach paradise, where there were no loads to carry, evergreen pastures, and the beasts of prey were friendly companions. But gradually the donkey realized that heaven was drawing no nearer, it grew tired, and the hay of religion no longer induced it to step out bravely. So lest the cart come to a halt, the donkey’s hunger was switched to an earthly paradise, a socialist park where all donkeys will be equal, the whip will be abolished, where there will be lighter loads and improved fodder, but then the road to this Eden turns out to be just as long, the end is just as far off, and the donkey becomes stubborn again. But in fact, he was wearing blinkers the whole time, so that he never realized he was going round and round, and that he wasn’t pulling a cart but a carousel, and perhaps all we are is a sideshow on the fairground of the gods, and at the end of their day out, the gods have forgotten to tidy the carousel away, and the donkey is still pulling it, only the gods have forgotten all about us.’
He said: ‘Then you live in a world without meaning.’
I said: ‘Yes. But does everything have to have meaning?’
He said: ‘If I thought as you do, I would kill myself.’
I cried: ‘What for? I’ll be dead soon enough anyway, and believe me, while I’m not greatly impressed by life, I dread the idea of being dead. So why should I kill myself? Now, if I was like you, and thought of suicide as a sin, that would mean there was a hereafter! The real inducement to leave this world is a belief in the beyond. If I don’t believe in heaven or hell, then I must try to find a little happiness here, a little joy here, beauty and pleasure all here. For me there is no other place, no other time. Here and now are the only possibility for me. And the temptation to kill myself is just a trap someone’s set for me. Now who set it? If the trap is there, the trapper won’t be far off. Then doubt sets in. The unbeliever’s doubt in his unbelief is at least as terrible as the doubt of the believer. We all of us doubt. Don’t tell me you don’t doubt. You’d be lying. In the three-dimensional cage we perceive with our senses, there is room for only doubt. Surely everyone feels the presence of a wall, I mean some kind of barrier that separates us from an inaccessible region that may be very close, just next to us, maybe inside us, and if we could find a door to this other domain, a crack in the wall, then we would have a completely different view of ourselves and our lives. Perhaps it would be awful. Perhaps it would be unbearable. The legend says that when we behold the truth, we turn to stone. I’d like to see the unveiled picture, even if I turn into a pillar. But perhaps even that wouldn’t be the truth, and behind the picture that petrifies me there would be other pictures, other veils, still more baffling, still more inaccessible, perhaps even still more terrible, and I would have turned to stone, and still not really seen anything. There is something that is invisible to us, alongside the world and our lives. But what?’
‘You are looking for God not in His house, you are looking for him in dead ends,’ said Adolf.
‘If God exists, He will also live in dead ends,’ I said.”
I’ve been reading Death in Rome by Wolfgang Koeppen, and it has been pretty dry. But this conversation I read last night is quite good. I thought I’d share.
“‘The donkey pulled the cart. It thought it was pulling the cart heavenwards, and soon it would reach paradise, where there were no loads to carry, evergreen pastures, and the beasts of prey were friendly companions. But gradually the donkey realized that heaven was drawing no nearer, it grew tired, and the hay of religion no longer induced it to step out bravely. So lest the cart come to a halt, the donkey’s hunger was switched to an earthly paradise, a socialist park where all donkeys will be equal, the whip will be abolished, where there will be lighter loads and improved fodder, but then the road to this Eden turns out to be just as long, the end is just as far off, and the donkey becomes stubborn again. But in fact, he was wearing blinkers the whole time, so that he never realized he was going round and round, and that he wasn’t pulling a cart but a carousel, and perhaps all we are is a sideshow on the fairground of the gods, and at the end of their day out, the gods have forgotten to tidy the carousel away, and the donkey is still pulling it, only the gods have forgotten all about us.’
He said: ‘Then you live in a world without meaning.’
I said: ‘Yes. But does everything have to have meaning?’
He said: ‘If I thought as you do, I would kill myself.’
I cried: ‘What for? I’ll be dead soon enough anyway, and believe me, while I’m not greatly impressed by life, I dread the idea of being dead. So why should I kill myself? Now, if I was like you, and thought of suicide as a sin, that would mean there was a hereafter! The real inducement to leave this world is a belief in the beyond. If I don’t believe in heaven or hell, then I must try to find a little happiness here, a little joy here, beauty and pleasure all here. For me there is no other place, no other time. Here and now are the only possibility for me. And the temptation to kill myself is just a trap someone’s set for me. Now who set it? If the trap is there, the trapper won’t be far off. Then doubt sets in. The unbeliever’s doubt in his unbelief is at least as terrible as the doubt of the believer. We all of us doubt. Don’t tell me you don’t doubt. You’d be lying. In the three-dimensional cage we perceive with our senses, there is room for only doubt. Surely everyone feels the presence of a wall, I mean some kind of barrier that separates us from an inaccessible region that may be very close, just next to us, maybe inside us, and if we could find a door to this other domain, a crack in the wall, then we would have a completely different view of ourselves and our lives. Perhaps it would be awful. Perhaps it would be unbearable. The legend says that when we behold the truth, we turn to stone. I’d like to see the unveiled picture, even if I turn into a pillar. But perhaps even that wouldn’t be the truth, and behind the picture that petrifies me there would be other pictures, other veils, still more baffling, still more inaccessible, perhaps even still more terrible, and I would have turned to stone, and still not really seen anything. There is something that is invisible to us, alongside the world and our lives. But what?’
‘You are looking for God not in His house, you are looking for him in dead ends,’ said Adolf.
‘If God exists, He will also live in dead ends,’ I said.”
