Sifting and Sorting

He, Roithamer, had never had to get away from Altensam, he had, in fact, struggled all his life only to draw closer to Altensam, to make himself understood where it had always been impossible, a crazy dream, where it always would be impossible for him to be understood, Roithamer had written, nor had he ever achieved the slightest rapprochement with Altensam, for he had always been a foreign element in Altensam. He simply wasn’t the man to adapt himself, against his grain, against the dictates of his character, the word opportune was totally alien, totally inapplicable to anything he could ever think or do, but as for me and my outlook and my ideas and everything, I’d always been an opportunist, Roithamer wrote. Everything in Altensam had always been impossibly hard for him, so he couldn’t stand Altensam from the beginning, he couldn’t give in to Altensam and its rules, he took the first opportunity to get clear of Altensam. Just as Altensam was alien to him, so he must have seemed a foreign element to his family, they had in the end worn each other out and used each other up in chronic mutual recriminations, primordial recriminations, Roithamer wrote, that is, he, Roithamer, on the one side and Roithamer’s family on the other side, were wearing each other out all the time in Altensam in the most inhuman way, a way least worthy of human beings, in this process of sheer mutual exhaustion. His natural bent for studying, i.e., for studying everything, however, had enabled him quite early in life, by studying Altensam, to see through Altensam and thereby to see through himself and to achieve insight and to take action, and thanks to these constant ongoing lifelong studies he’d always had to do as he ended up doing; all his life, though he’d rather call it his existence, or better still, his deathward existence, everything he’d ever done had been based on nothing but this habit of studying which he’d never been able to shake off, where other people get ahead easily and often quite rapidly, he’d never gotten ahead easily or rapidly, obsessed as he was with the habit of always studying, all of him, his organism, his mind, and everything he did, determined by this habit of studying. Everything had always come to him the hard way, the hardest possible. Yet it was evident almost from the beginning that such constant, above normal efforts paid off, Roithamer’s words, because of them everything I did went deeper, no step was taken without a thorough grounding in what preceded it, Roithamer wrote, nothing without completing all prior studies or at least trying to complete them, without trying to have first a clear understanding of everything that went before, although I knew, of course, that no clear understanding of anything is possible, only an approach to an understanding, an approximate though not an actual understanding, nevertheless an approximation. And so, while I loved Altensam more than anything in the world, because Altensam has always been closer to me than anything in the world, I also hated it more than anything in the world, because I’ve always been a foreign element there from the outset, and all my life, my whole existence, my deathward existence, had always been determined by that circumstance, causing a monstrous waste of all my energies. The question has always been only, how can I go on at all, not in what respect and in what condition, so Roithamer. But no one in my vicinity had even the merest inkling of what was going on inside the young man I was, they were never capable of conceiving the possibility of so devastating a state of mind that could determine and devastate and ruin an entire life like this, because they simply did not want to think about it, everything in Altensam always opposed thinking as such, it must be said categorically once and for all, to the discredit of Altensam, that Altensam was opposed to any kind of thought.

Altensam was always a place disposed to take action, there one took action without stopping to think, there action always excluded thought, and it still is like that, except that nowadays there’s not even any action left in Altensam, the Altensamers today are incapable of taking action, they are condemned to impotence, for lo these many years, they’ve been condemned to inaction, because their time is up, it’s all up with them. But what was Altensam like only thirty or thirty-five years ago? It’s a question I must face again and again, it’s the most important question of all, I must ask myself, What was Altensam, where I come from, thirty or thirty-five years ago, when I was beginning to think for myself? A composite of masonry and men where action was taken without prior thought, for centuries on end. At the outset, in earliest childhood, he, Roithamer, had not yet revealed himself as the person he manifestly came to be later on, not for a long time, not until he was well into grade school, had he himself understood who he really was, that basically, even though he was from Altensam or because he was from Altensam, he had always been against Altensam, as a child he had not yet been recognizably against Altensam though he’d turned against Altensam long since, but outwardly his childhood, at least his earliest childhood, had seemed to be a normal Altensam childhood, not yet an anti-Altensam childhood, although even then, as soon as I began to think at all, as I’ve said, everything inside me turned against Altensam, against everything connected with Altensam, connected with Altensam to this day, anyway there have always been two Altensams, so Roithamer, the one that I loved because it was not against me and the other one, the second one, which I’ve always hated because it was absolutely against me, from the start and with the utmost ruthlessness. The Altensam that I always loved, however, is not the Altensam that has nothing to do with the people in Altensam, Roithamer wrote, it is the one in which my nature always found sanctuary, while the other one, the one I hated, was always the one in which I never found sanctuary, the one that always rubbed me the wrong way. So when I say that I hate Altensam I always mean the Altensam in which I never found sanctuary, the one that always rubbed me the wrong way, rejected me, which is why I had to reject it in turn, and not the other one in which my nature always found refuge and where I was at least left in peace. Of course I tend to be preoccupied with the Altensam that refused me and rejected me and rubbed me the wrong way, not with the other one, as I am always preoccupied with everything that gives me no peace, repels me, rubs me the wrong way. There’s always the kind that leaves us in peace and lets us be ourselves and lets us develop in so many, sometimes quite wonderful ways, and then there’s the other kind that rubs us the wrong way and gives us no peace, no peace all our lives long, and so we are preoccupied with it all our lives long, it makes us fidgety, we become more fidgety day by day, there is no escaping it for the rest of our lives, and so we become angry with everything for the rest of our lives. All the stuff that’s constantly on my mind comes from this, this turmoil, and not from the other, the one that leaves me in peace, Roithamer wrote. From my earliest childhood, in Altensam, it was always the one that gave me no peace that I kept thinking about, not the other one, naturally. We speak, when we speak with all our being, only as we are driven by that unrest, not the other, Roithamer wrote. I have always spoken only out of that unrest, I was never driven to speak by the other one, which after all leaves me in peace, and so enables me to speak of my unrest.

It is not only a need we have to speak constantly, and to complain, and at least keep our attention on whatever is born of our unrest, since only these thoughts and feelings and thought-feelings and vice versa of course have the greater significance. Peace is not life, Roithamer wrote, perfect peace is death, as Pascal said, wrote Roithamer. But such phrases will get me nowhere, I must get away from these phrases, so Roithamer, I shouldn’t waste my time on truisms already demonstrated by history. My awakening in Altensam was the simultaneous decision to get away from Altensam, to get away from everything, to push off from everything that is Altensam, and this process of pushing off is all I have accomplished so far, no matter where I did it, or under what circumstances, and even when on the face of it there seemed to be no connection with Altensam whatsoever. An awakening in my room in Altensam, perhaps, in my turret room, an awakening at the south wall or the east wall, I loved the south wall and the east wall equally, an awakening perhaps under the linden tree or in the kitchen or in the entrance hall where I often sat for hours on end, waiting for my parents, in the icy cold, studying the floor planks in the hall and then, beginning with the floor planks, studying everything, the staircase, the lamps on the staircase, the chapel door, the kitchen door, the objects in the hall, or else an awakening in one of the cellars where I used to hide so often, sometimes in the wine cellar, sometimes in the beer cellar, sometimes in the apple cellar, so many cellars in Altensam, in one of those cellars came that awakening against Altensam, against everything connected with Altensam, or perhaps on that cliff in the woods where I went so often, or in the clearing where they put up the iron-cross memorial for an ancestor who was killed by a falling tree hit by lightning, or in my brothers’ room or in my sister’s room, the music room perhaps, or possibly the farm buildings, wherever the woodcutters, the farmhands, the maids are put up, I don’t know, Roithamer’s words. It might have been during one of those walks I took with my father, those silent walks, always in the same direction, year in, year out, the same way down from Altensam into that vast primeval forest, that forest which my father always referred to as the natural forest, since it hadn’t been planted in accordance with the rules of forestry but had simply grown, without human intervention, a forest that simply blew in by the most natural route, as my father always said, my father loved this forest, Roithamer wrote, his walks took him only into this forest, and I could come along, but I had to keep quiet. Quite possibly it happened on one of those walks that lasted six or seven hours during which the silence must never be broken. Deep down my father had loved only this natural forest, with its seeds blown in from anywhere, its random mixture of trees, Roithamer wrote, and nothing else.

My father’s life was unimaginable without this natural, wind-seeded, mixed forest, Roithamer wrote. On one of those walks my sudden awakening against Altensam and against everything connected with Altensam, Roithamer wrote, “everything connected with Altensam” is underlined. Or else it happened the time I was with my mother in the socalled pine woods, or with my sister in her room which was next to my room, I don’t know. But it was an awakening, a sudden awakening of my opposition against Altensam and against everything connected with Altensam, which determined the entire rest of my life. From that moment on I wanted to get away, to get out, but I had many more years to wait. Light broke with my school years, with the opportunity to get away from Altensam on the way down to school, to make contact by myself with other people on this road, with the kind of people who at least had nothing directly to do with Altensam, a wholly different sort of people. For I’d had no opportunity to make contact with other people, in full critical awareness, before my school days, for I’d always been prevented from making such contacts as I could have had in Altensam, in preparation for later contacts as it were, from making contacts up in Altensam to prepare for making contacts down below. If I visited the woodcutters, I was immediately called back home, the same for our own farmhands, but of course I’d always felt attracted to these people, probably from my earliest days and to a great degree, because such contacts were forbidden. And it was precisely their keeping me away from all others than those born at Altensam which caused me to hate them, later on, to hate all of them and everything connected with them. It was hatred, nothing but hatred, Roithamer wrote. The word “hatred” is underlined. But the people with whom I was denied and forbidden to make and keep contact, I loved, so Roithamer. The word “loved” is underlined. My childhood was nothing but wanting to get away from what I’d been forced into from the beginning, in Altensam, that is, and wanting to get into that other world which I was refused and denied and forbidden, wanting this with a perverse determination, as I now see. They must have sensed that I was different even from my own siblings, who had unquestioningly obeyed all the rules at Altensam, who had never rebelled, in contrast to myself who had rebelled from earliest childhood, three or four years old, as I know, against the regulations and against the brutality of those regulations enforced by my parents or the other socalled authorities in Altensam, they had sensed that from my earliest childhood I had felt absolutely independent, and later on had thought along absolutely independent lines, never willing to submit to their ideas and their orders. It was their misfortune to have brought me into the world, this could not be undone, though they probably often wished they could falsify history to this extent, so Roithamer. Neither my parents nor my siblings nor any of the others who came from Altensam or were connected with Altensam, the whole family in all its distant branches, could ever understand that they were confronted with someone who was always against them and their circumstances and conditions with all his mind and feeling, someone they themselves had brought into the world and who bore their name. And so the fact that my father left Altensam to me, so Roithamer, thinking that his other two sons and his only daughter, my sister, could be satisfied with a financial settlement by me, is nothing but an expression of my father’s intention to destroy Altensam by making such a will, giving a rude shock to all and sundry, a will which incidentally was contested in vain, by my brothers, father meant to destroy Altensam by such a will because he knew and above all consciously felt that he was destroying Altensam by leaving it to me, so Roithamer. No mad caprice on his part, he knew what he was doing, so Roithamer had added. For my father knew (seismographically) that Altensam’s time had come. But he preferred, so Roithamer, to destroy Altensam totally by willing it to me, thereby to destroy it totally in the shortest possible time, because he always fully understood that I hate Altensam, rather than let it gradually sink further into decline as would undoubtedly have been the case had he left Altensam not to me but to my oldest brother or to the younger one, or to both of them together, for there was never any question but that he’d have my sister’s share paid out to her.

When I sell Altensam, as I now intend to do, so Roithamer, and use the proceeds, and that must be a very high sum, I’d rather drag out the sale a little longer than rush it, Altensam must bring a very high price indeed, and when, using these high proceeds, I do all I possibly can for the ex-convicts after their release from the penitentiaries, then my father’s wish to destroy Altensam totally will have been fulfilled. Ads, possibly contact real estate agents, but cautiously, so Roithamer. By selling Altensam I’ll fulfill my dream of doing all I can for the outcasts of society, for the most outcast of all, whom society itself has always most complacently driven into crime, and by that I mean always most complacently without giving it much thought, let alone paid any attention specifically to what it was doing to them, I shall be helping those people whom society has made into, as it pleases to call them, criminals, because society doesn’t think, because it hates thinking, which is alien to its nature, more than anything. For me nothing can be more important than helping those released prisoners, using the proceeds from the sale of Altensam, but also to do something for those still imprisoned, as much as possible. And to smash, to destroy such a property as Altensam, which has simply outlasted its time, for the sake of such an undertaking, is at the moment more important to me than anything else. First, I must put the finishing touches on the Cone, the end is in sight there, secondly, I must sell Altensam for the sake of the convicts. Human society is absolutely shameless vis-à-vis its criminals, whom it locks up in its penitentiaries, so Roithamer, in full consciousness and with all the brutality and meanness and inhumanity which are its distinguishing characteristics, society catapults these people into their so-called crimes which are simply nothing but traps, death traps, set up for them by this inhuman society, and then turns away from them. If I have a mission at all, it is surely this, to help the convicts, those so-called criminals, who are actually our sick people, so Roithamer, those whom society has catapulted into their sickness. No man has the right ever to speak of criminals, no one and never, so Roithamer, it’s always, as with the others, a case of sickness, of those sickened by society, and all of society is nothing but hundreds and many hundreds of millions of people fallen sick of themselves, except that some of them, the unlucky and the most unlucky of them, the most slandered and betrayed, the victims of all the ridicule and mockery and meanness and all that human filth, are locked up and the others aren’t. The purchase price must be the highest possible, so Roithamer. Get various assessments etcetera, so Roithamer. Use the money to do everything possible for those people, so Roithamer, build homes, buildings for them, taking into account my experiences with the Cone project, so Roithamer, always near the centers, population centers, avoid anything contributing to isolation, disregarding the fact that everything is isolation, opportunities for work, opportunities to find occupations, optimal freedom of the individual. Intellectual freedom, physical freedom, so

Roithamer. Create new provisions for these people. Provision for their entertainment. Growth, so Roithamer. When we are obsessed with an idea and suddenly have an opportunity to realize this idea, because we have been constantly and incessantly preoccupied with this idea and always to the highest degree, always concentrated upon this idea (see Cone), until we became nothing but a mind concentrated only on this idea, when we can make our prediction come true, no matter how crazy we’ve been thought to be and even considered ourselves to be on account of such an idea. When despite everything we’ve succeeded in the realization of this idea. When for years, for decades, we’ve paid attention to nothing but this idea; with which we are identical. We achieve only that aim upon which we concentrate one hundred per cent, including our so-called subconscious, when we pay heed to nothing but this one aim for the longest time until the moment when we have fulfilled this aim. When we are always aware of the fact that everything unites in conspiring against our aim, that everything outside ourselves and very often too a great deal within ourselves is nothing but a conspiracy against our plan, against our aim. When we ruthlessly take a stand, and most ruthlessly of all against everything that obstructs our work toward our aim, everything that torpedoes our aim, until we finally take a stand against ourselves, because we also can no longer believe that we can achieve our aim despite this whole comprehensive, all-comprehending resistance and therefore revulsion against our aim, because we are constantly attacked by doubts of ourselves and thereby of our aim and become weakened by these doubts, which makes it seem impossible that we will achieve our aim, but we must allow nothing, “nothing” is underlined, to deter us from our aim, as I have never let myself be deterred from an aim of mine, so Roithamer, for, so Roithamer, everything is always against every aim. Even the smallest objective must be achieved despite total opposition, how much more so the great objective, so Roithamer. Suddenly there’s an idea and it demands realization, our entire life, our entire existence consists only of such ideas demanding realization, once this process breaks off, our life breaks off, we’re dead. We consist of nothing but ideas that surface inside us and that we want to realize, that we must realize, or else we’re dead, so Roithamer.

Every idea and every pursuit of an idea inside us is life, so Roithamer, the lack of ideas is death. And the person under consideration may appear as simple as we choose to think, which he never really is, however, or else as complicated as we like to think, which he never is either, so Roithamer. A man’s lack of ideas is his death, so Roithamer, just think how many there are quite without ideas, entirely lacking any idea, they don’t exist. Ads to begin with, then real estate agents, so Roithamer, but the utmost caution is called for with those real estate agents, it’s the same as with everything else, the utmost mistrust is in order, the more mistrust the better, but then, once a certain point of understanding has been reached, action must be taken. We always need to compare the various possibilities, without a chance to compare, we can’t think, we can’t act, we’re stymied, so Roithamer. Compare properties and prices, so Roithamer. Find out about the actual situation in real estate, the market situation. Understand that sellers and buyers always play the same roles, always liable to be conned by the other fellow. What a sensation when I sell Altensam, so Roithamer, so it must all be kept in the background, handled as inconspicuously as possible. No talk about it, not even when it’s done, no talk whatsoever about it. And take care beforehand that, first of all, my sister’s interests are safeguarded, that no one is unfairly implicated in that sale, not even my brothers, although to spare my brothers verges on idiocy, when did they ever spare me? they are not sparing me even now, but I won’t throw them out without compensation, though they have no right whatever to compensation, neither legally nor morally, they’ve always been against me, their aberrant brother, they made no bones about their contempt and their hatred for me, they really worked at becoming adepts in the art of tormenting me, not to forget their inventiveness in torturing me, their finesse in humiliating me was always extraordinary, not to forget that they never had any use for me whatsoever, still, that’s no reason to treat them without any consideration at all, anyway I’ll spare them, not because they deserve it, they don’t deserve it, but only because I want them out of the way, out of my way. And I want my sister inside the Cone I’ve built for her, once the Cone is all furnished she’ll move in, it’s the perfect work of art, building art, for her to live in, which I was actually capable of though it runs counter to my mind and counter to all, even my, reason. The Cone’s placement in the center of the Kobernausser forest is exactly right for her. Supreme happiness? Then we wake up and see that we’ve achieved what we wanted to achieve by being relentless and most of all relentless toward ourselves, by not deluding ourselves and by paying no attention to what other people say, for if we’d paid attention to other people, so Roithamer, we wouldn’t have achieved anything, because the others are always against us, that’s the only truth. Sell Altensam and use the proceeds to put the released convicts back on their feet. Offend against so-called good taste, against which I’ve always offended, all my life I’ve always offended against so-called good taste. Once we fail to offend against so-called good taste by doing something tasteful, we can say good-bye to our character, our reason, our self. Anyway it wouldn’t make sense to remodel Altensam for the convicts, the place wouldn’t suit them. It would make Altensam nothing more than one of many such places, in our country so many penitentiaries are located in the most beautiful landscapes, oh no, that’s out, why, that would be crazy! “that would be crazy” is crossed out, then stetted. The thing is to sell Altensam with everything in it, sell it at a good price, not at a loss, without squandering it, to sell it, using my head and perfect timing. Keep a sharp eye on the notary and pay him only for work actually done, not by the official legal tariff (or his own inflated expectations). His fee must reflect his actual success with the sale. But the question is whether I can’t sell Altensam myself, on my own, by some lucky chance perhaps, in which case I’ll save the middleman’s fee. They’ve always let themselves be taken by the notaries and the lawyers, all of them, that hasn’t changed. “Buy a smaller property for my brothers” is crossed out. Take care of all my sister’s needs for life.

“Contractual basis” is underlined. We reject everything having to do with contracts, because we reject bureaucracy in toto, but in fact the world is only held together by a patchwork of contracts, as we soon perceive, and in this network of hundreds and thousands and hundreds of thousands and millions and billions of contracts the trapped human beings are squirming. There’s no way to get around contracts except by suicide. Contracts everywhere, they’ve already choked everything to death, a whole world choking to death on its contracts, so Roithamer. To suppose that it is possible to exist without contracts or other written agreements and run away, anywhere at all, is to find ourselves soon caught again in contracts and written agreements, anyone who thinks otherwise is a madman, a malicious falsifier of the nature of things. It’s only in childhood that we don’t know what kind of a trap it is in which we squirm and despair and keep on despairing as we go on squirming in it, ignorant that these are the nets of contracts and other written agreements made by the grown-ups, by history. If anyone were to succeed in doing away with all these contracts and other written agreements, all he’d have accomplished would be the end of the whole world. In the future, where everything is possible, this too is possible. But so far it hasn’t been possible, nor is it possible in the immediate future, so Roithamer, the foreseeable future is all contracts, written agreements, and the resulting fits of despair, impediments, sicknesses, causes of death, that’s all. Our entire being is tied to contracts, written agreements, assessments, we’re trapped in them for life, no matter what we do, no matter who we are. Still we keep trying all our lives to escape from these contracts and other written agreements, efforts as painful as they are senseless, so Roithamer. Look up lawyers, notaries, find out just how sharp they are, conversely, how defenseless I am, compare the ignorance of the lawyers, the notaries, with my own defenselessness. Remember that everything that was sold hitherto was sold too cheaply, everything bought hitherto, bought too dear. Commercial instincts, perceptions, money, usury, swindle, forgery, sharp practice, so Roithamer.

Ours are the finest forests in the world, as well as the most productive, a hundred years’ growth. Quality of the soil A-1. And all those rights belonging to Altensam, fishing rights, lumbering rights, hunting rights etcetera. Bound to fetch a record price, anything else unthinkable. All living and dead inventory included. Make a study of traditional and untraditional agreements-to-purchase, financial regulations, buying-out nonsense, so Roithamer. Get the Cone finished, forget work on Cone, resume my scientific work while also getting on with selling off Altensam, so Roithamer. Working out of England at first, because I must get back into my Cambridge routine, where I hardly feel at home anymore, using Hoeller’s insights in Hoeller’s garret everything’s to be considered toward securing my career, my future, then operate from Hoeller’s garret. Observe my sister as she enters the finished Cone, show her the Cone’s interior from top to bottom, not from the ground up, may have to blindfold her when we enter the Cone, lead her up to the inside tip of the Cone, then open her eyes and bit by bit familiarize her with the entire interior of the Cone. Clear my head of everything connected with Richter’s Fundamentals of Statics and stress analysis, forget Chmelka, Melan, forget everything I was absorbed in during the building of the Cone, first during three years of planning, then during the three years it took to build the Cone, try to clear my head of everything connected with the Cone, try especially to get rid of the word “statics” that keeps turning up through the night, makes it impossible for me even to think of falling asleep, the moment I drop off, the word “statics” comes into my head and actually stops me from falling asleep, for years now. Terminate everything connected with the Cone and with finishing the Cone before I liquidate Altensam. Sister provided for by being stuck away in the Cone by her brother, as I hear it, that crazy eccentric brother, so Roithamer, that crazy, mad, eccentric, blasphemous, insane construction. Just the same I shan’t let any so-called architects come near the Cone even in the future, I must secure the Cone against all building professionals. These so-called architects and building professionals only show up in order to kill off the work of art, which it is, by setting foot in it, they destroy it, merely by looking it over. It’s the work of a madman, a violent intellectual, a crazy obsessed with a senseless idea, so said my brother, so Roithamer, the word “crazy” underlined. But I’ve never in my life cared what people said, not even what they always thought (about me), so I’m sure that I won’t bother about them in the future either. Professional riffraff, so-called architects, intellectual charlatans, so Roithamer, exploiters of their clients, knuckleheads, brains of cement. Never answered a single inquiry, its origin suspect, some architect or building professional might be behind it. They never heard of James Gandon, for example, Sir John Soane, John Nash etcetera. When we act, we know the source of our action, when we think, the source of our thinking. Boulle, Hamilton, Vignon, conceptual change etcetera, so Roithamer, we mention in vain. I’d merely make a suggestion, and they go to pieces. Nothing from Neutra’s publications, everything from Mies van der Rohe’s, “nothing” and “everything” underlined. No dealings with the professionals because they destroy our ideas, they are single-mindedly intent upon undermining our idea, upon destroying it. Never advance an idea to a professional because if you do it won’t be long before that idea will be shaky, the image dubious, impossible to realize, leave the idea in its hiding place until it’s realized, fulfilled. Leave the thought and the idea in its isolation cell until the utmost degree of realization, substantiation, perfection has been reached. Think how many will then be living off our idea, the idea we had,

“we” underlined, our idea gets picked up and shamelessly exploited, we see it happening time and again, how an idea is picked up and shamelessly exploited by hundreds of imitators, which is a way of destroying the idea, but if it’s a good idea it can’t be destroyed. An idea, always an extraordinary idea, attracts hundreds of parasites who hook onto it and suck it dry and ruthlessly capitalize on it, always to the loss of the person who had the idea in the first place. Keep thought and idea immured as long as possible. Yield it up when perfected, pay the price of absolute misery for it. Most people, the highest percentage of people, live off ideas not their own, which they exploit to the utter limit without shame, but they’re never called to account for this, on the contrary, they’re praised for it everywhere. Wherever we turn we see exploiters of (other people’s) ideas, making good money off them. So, I won’t let the so-called professionals come near my Cone, but the time must come when I can no longer hide the Cone, whereupon the so-called professional world will pounce on the Cone and exploit the idea, there’s no point in holding back the inevitable, sooner or later the Cone will be discovered, they’ll all pounce on the idea and on the hundreds and thousands of ideas connected with it, and the Cone will be exploited, ruthlessly. But no one can say the idea is mine, mine for life, “for life” underlined. We draw attention to something new and they all hurl themselves into this new thing even though this new thing was pointed out by us, but that’s never mentioned anymore. We’re the ones who make a discovery but we don’t exploit this discovery, it’s the people who exploit it who make a splash with it. First I must finish the Cone, then concentrate on the sale of Altensam, then resume my scientific work, Cambridge, London, London, Cambridge alternately, because that’s always done me good, if this leave of absence is to have served its purpose, in that the Cone will have been built and finished, Altensam will have been sold off. Although we hate everything at times, we find it possible, or even because we at times hate everything, it is at times possible to move onward, propelled by nothing but hatred, to move ahead.

Because we are weak, infirm, we must tolerate no weakness whatever. And if it isn’t life and if it isn’t nature then it’s what we read, it’s the life and the nature of what we read, for long stretches there’s only the nature we get out of our reading, life out of books, periodicals, all kinds of writings, we bridge the gaps between our contact with nature Itself by reading that represents nature, represents life. Because we can’t always, no organism is capable of it, absorb nature into ourselves, absorb life-as-nature into ourselves, we go for long stretches, for years on end absorbing it only through reading matter, from the newspapers, from written stuff. In several languages, for variety’s sake. At certain points in our existence we break off the nature of our existence and proceed to exist only in books, in written stuff, until we again have the opportunity to exist in nature and continue to exist in nature, very often as another person, always as another person, “always as another person” underlined. We couldn’t endure a life in nature, necessarily always a free nature, without respite, so we always step outside nature, for no reason but survival, and take refuge in our reading, and live for a long time in our books, a more undisturbed life. I’ve lived half my life not in nature but in my books as a nature-substitute, and the one half was made possible only by the other half. Or else we exist in both simultaneously, in nature and in reading-as-nature, in this extreme nervous tension which as a form of consciousness is endurable only for the shortest possible time span. The question can’t be whether I live in nature as nature, or in reading-as-nature, or in nature-as-reading, in the nature of nature-as-reading andsoforth, so Roithamer. To everything that we think and fill our own life and that we hear and see, perceive, we always have to add: the truth, however, is … as a result, uncertainty has become a chronic condition with us. Those abrupt transitions from one nature into the other, from one form of awareness into the other, so Roithamer. When we think, we know nothing, everything is open, nothing, so Roithamer. The nature of the case is always something else, so Roithamer. First, the Cone offers views in all directions, then, the Cone offers views only southward and northward, then, only to the west and to the east, finally, only to the north. The spaces, not rooms, the spaces are such as to correspond perfectly to my sister’s nature, they are designed to adapt themselves to whatever state of mind my sister finds herself in as she enters these spaces, and to do so immediately. To achieve this it was naturally necessary to have kept my sister under constant observation, continuous observation of my sister from earliest childhood on, it’s been most helpful that I’ve always kept her under the most intensive observation, and always quite objectively, trying to understand her nature through all the years of her life, even before it ever occurred to me to build the Cone for her. My observation of my sister turned into an art and into a science of observation.

And I naturally also observed everything connected with my sister, above all her habits, her possibilities, “possibilities” underlined, her impossibilities, what she was born with, what was bred into her, what she displays openly.

Constant study of her inner life, insofar as this was possible by means of constant, continual observation and the constant and continuous study of her appearance, the inside and the outside are the same, everything depends on the observer’s judgment. Knowing that I must never relax this observation of my sister, must never relinquish this observation, mustn’t allow my judgment to be swayed, to become imprecise. First I had to concentrate my entire being, meaning all my mind and feeling, on my sister, then I had to do the same for the construction of the Cone, finally I applied my observations as insights to the construction of the Cone, so that I must assume that the Cone is ideal for my sister. The Cone’s interior corresponding to my sister’s inner being, the Cone’s exterior to her outward being, and together her whole being expressed as the Cone’s character, the inside and outside of the Cone are as inseparable as the inside and outside of my sister, but the incessant observation of my sister and the incessant observation of the construction of the Cone have led to the result which now stands in the center of the Kobernausser forest. Therefore, if my observation of my sister is correct, then the construction of the Cone is correct, so Roithamer. The consistent study of one object (of my sister), the consistent mode of construction of the other object (the Cone). The construction of such a Cone for such a person as my sister is feasible only after the study of the person (my sister) for whom such an edifice (the Cone) is being erected, has been completed. First I study the person for whom I am building such an edifice, then I build the edifice on the basis of my study, and such a study must be ultraconsistent. And only after I have truly studied that person’s nature and gone far enough in my study to have grasped that person’s nature, or at least grasped it insofar as it is humanly possible to grasp it, can I be sufficiently clear in my own mind as to what I am building and what materials I must use to build with. This is an edifice of stone and brick. The problem of the statics of the one (the Cone) is the problem of the nature of the other (my sister). And to build against that person’s will, because one can build only against the will of a person like my sister. Not because of this person for whom I am building, but because of the person’s character, and in that character the one, if not emotionally sensitive, perhaps the one intellectually sensitive point. We decide to build though we don’t know what it means to build, as everyone knows, especially not what it means to build such an unheard-of edifice as the Cone for a person like my sister, we don’t realize that it is basically a lethal process.

Insofar as we have taken into consideration everything that must be taken into consideration we have to say that the art of building is a philosophical art in the highest degree, but the building professionals or the so-called building professionals have never understood, they shy away from this realization and refuse to enter into the problematics of it, and so we almost never get an art of building, all we see is the vulgarity of building. We must know the person and have seen through the person, or at least know the person up to the crucial point, and be familiar with him to the crucial, necessary degree, before we can build for him, for even after we have passed our tests on this score it remains questionable whether our edifice truly suits the person for whom we have built it, we assume that it suits him, just as I only assume that it suits my sister one hundred percent, because I must make this assumption, had to make this assumption all the time I was building, otherwise I’d have gone crazy and could never have finished the Cone at all, the completion of the Cone would have remained a utopian dream. Our buildings, no matter which, those intended as habitations as well as the non-habitations, would look rather different if those who built them had been in the least concerned about the people for whom they were building them, all of these buildings were built without asking those who would be affected, not to mention studying them. Just as we investigate the causes of disease nowadays, knowing they must be investigated, as the doctors can no longer evade this necessity of investigation, those who build should investigate those for whom they are building, they must investigate them, the investigation of the man for whom a building is being put up should be the duty of the man who is doing the building, the builder should be forbidden to build for someone he has not thoroughly investigated or at least understood to the necessary or the minimal necessary degree. The builders build without having concerned themselves with the nature of those for whom they are building, though the builders of course deny this when confronted with it. With nothing in their heads but their fees and their careers, those professional builders or whatever they may choose to call themselves put up their buildings without any idea of the people for whom they have built them, thereby committing one of the greatest crimes,

“greatest crimes” underlined. After all it took me six years to build the Cone, a long time when subtracted from my life, and yet a short time when I consider that first I solidly prepared for it and then did a solid job of building.

And I actually worked with a clear head the whole time, no building sickness, no building psychosis, so Roithamer. Then, after I had thoroughly studied my sister, above all her mental and emotional condition, it was clear that the edifice to build for her was the Cone. No other form. And I knew that no cone had ever been built before by any man, not even a Frenchman, not even a Russian, my Cone will be the first cone ever built to be lived in, I told myself, and I decided to build the Cone. When we set out to do something we’re constantly being sidetracked, we’re thought to be crazy, our refusal to yield and to compromise makes many enemies for us (enemies we’ve always had), but that’s just what impels us onward, those constantly mounting accusations against us, slanders against us, ruthlessness against us which is far greater than our own ruthlessness, all of it ultimately makes it possible for us to make our way through this human filth to which we’re continually exposed, through the filth of their slander, their false accusations. The world around us is constantly balking and hindering us and it is precisely by this constant inhibiting and hindering action that it enables us to approach our aim and finally even reach it. We’re told and we’re made to feel that we have neither the right nor the nerve nor the brutality to achieve our aim, but we do have the right and the nerve and the brutality and because we are what we are, our nerve and our brutality and our right keeps increasing. We’re constantly badgered with insinuations by those who don’t want us to accomplish our aim because they begrudge us our achievement, so we’re constantly subjected to their meanness, their spying presence which only fills us with disgust, they never cease their vulgar spying. Most of the time we have to deal with human filth, so Roithamer, we’re forced to wade through it, and when we’ve made our way through one heap of filth we must get through the next, on and on, each time faster, more radically than the last, because we’ve caught on that there’s nothing but this human filth, which we have to get through. To reach our aim we must traverse this human filth, human filth in the form of common filth in the head, the sole purpose of which is to do us in. Whoever says otherwise commits the violent crime of hypocrisy, “violent crime of hypocrisy” underlined, the words human filth always first underlined, then crossed out, then stetted. At first we hope for support from the person closest to us, but to cling to our “neighbor” would mean, as we soon find out, the suicide of the (of our) spirit, suicide of our being, our soul, “soul” underlined. Then we think that we must turn to the professionals (of the mind, the soul, the world of things), because we’re constantly looking for help, but there we keep meeting only with deepest disappointment, “deepest” underlined, we encounter only disappointments.

We’re up to something, as we know, it’s invariably something stupendous, even our most insignificant, unimpressive brainchild is always the most stupendous thing, and we feel we must speak of it, go into it, and we’re disappointed, either we’re not understood, no matter how clearly and force-fully we put our case, or else we don’t want to be understood. We’re always left without an answer, and of course in a more debilitated state than before, because no one, no expert or person, whichever, wants to help us. And so we naturally have to depend entirely on ourselves all our lives and we go our way alone, depending on ourselves only, working to earn everything ourselves, with no outside help. And so we’re always full up and never come to rest, so Roithamer, “never come to rest” underlined. We’re surrounded by malice, so Roithamer. First twenty-one chambers in the Cone, then eighteen, then seventeen chambers. A single chamber under the Cone’s tip, with a view in every direction, but in every direction the same vista into the forest, nothing else. Three-storied, because a threestoried edifice accords with my sister’s character, “my sister’s character” underlined. Of the seventeen chambers, nine are without a view, among them the meditation chamber on the second floor, beneath the chamber in the tip. The meditation chamber is so constructed as to make it possible to meditate there for several days in a row, and it’s intended for no other use but meditation, it’s totally devoid of any objects, there’s not to be a single object in the meditation chamber, nor any light either. A red dot in the center of the meditation chamber indicates the actual center of the meditation chamber, which is also the true center of the Cone. The radius from this center in every direction is fourteen meters long. Spring water on tap in the meditation chamber. Underneath the meditation chamber, areas for diversions. Above the meditation chamber, the circular chamber inside the tip of the Cone, affording views in all directions, but in every direction nothing but forest is to be seen, the Kobernausser forest, under this rotunda the meditation chamber, under the meditation chamber the diversions areas and under the diversions areas what I call the antechambers into which whoever enters the Cone, enters to prepare himself for the Cone, on the ground floor, in fact. On the ground floor there are five chambers, all without any designation in particular. These chambers must be left without the specific designation, like all the chambers in the Cone, always, without designation, except for the meditation chamber.

If the person domiciled in the Cone, my sister, in fact, should be tempted to assign specific functions to the individual chambers, for she is sure to be suddenly inclined and then impelled to designate the individual chambers as, say, a bedroom here and a workroom there and thirdly a kitchen andsoforth, she must remind herself, if necessary tell herself aloud, that the individual chambers in the Cone are not to be specifically designated, it must be possible to live in a building in which the individual chambers are undesignated, though it is only natural for the chamber constructed as a meditation chamber to be designated as a meditation chamber. The chambers are all whitewashed. No windows but look-outs that are neither to be opened nor shut, natural airing of the inner-spaces always without having to open or shut the look-outs. Solar energy for heating. Stone, bricks, glass, iron, nothing else. The Cone is whitewashed outside as well as inside. The Cone’s height is the same as the height of the forest so that it’s impossible to see the Cone unless one is standing directly in front of it, the road leading to the Cone! doesn’t lead directly to it through the Kobernausser forest but winds toward it six times in a northeasterly and six times in a northwesterly direction, so that the Cone can be seen only at the moment when the new arrival finds himself directly in front of it. Eight thousand loads of coarse gravel, two thousand loads of a finer grade, so Roithamer. At first I was going to let my sister in on my plans from the beginning, but I dropped the idea when she showed her aversion to my plan, I’ll build about a third of the Cone first, I thought, then I’ll show her the Cone, a third of it already done, but I dropped that idea too, because I suddenly realized that I must finish the Cone before I show it to my sister, there’s the risk in showing my sister the Cone before it’s finished, that I may (owing to her reaction) lose the strength to finish the Cone, the Cone must be finished, perfect, when I show it to her, it was built to be perfection for her. If anything happens to my sister during my lifetime, I’ll let nature take its course with the Cone, so Roithamer, after my sister no one is to set foot in the Cone, this stipulation to be included in my will to be drawn up eventually, so Roithamer, this will musn’t be put off too long. (Roithamer did in fact stipulate in his will, viz. the slip of paper he had on him when Hoeller found his body, that no one should be allowed to set foot inside the Cone now, after his sister’s death and after his own death, and that the Cone must be entirely abandoned to nature.

There’s no telling how far Roithamer’s heirs will go along with that stipulation.) Once she sees the Cone, she’s bound to be happy, “bound to be happy” underlined. A perfect construction is bound to make the person for whom it was constructed happy, “must make her happy” again underlined.

The idea was to make my sister perfectly happy by means of a construction perfectly adapted to her person, so Roithamer. Perfect to the degree to which perfection is possible, anyway, let’s say nearly perfect, “nearly” as with anything else. To materialize the idea to the point of securing my sister’s perfect happiness. But what if she doesn’t understand any of it? I ask myself.

We’ll see. The idea was to prove that such a construction, bound to bring perfect happiness, is possible, so Roithamer. Then, when my sister has moved into the Cone, so Roithamer, when she has entered the Kobernausser forest, I shall have no more fears for my sister. For the time has come when my sister also must leave Altensam behind, must above all leave my brothers, who are as alien to us (my sister and me) as we (my sister and I) are alien to them. Once a year, at most twice a year, I shall visit my sister and shall observe and study her and the Cone and both of them together in their mutual relationship, so Roithamer. And then I’ll retreat to Hoeller’s garret to work up my notes. I shall personally bury all the cost accounts regarding the Cone on the ground floor, so Roithamer, the day the Cone was finished. The Cone was meant to be a surprise, it is no longer a surprise because my sister knows of my plan and also knows how far I have progressed in my plan. Nevertheless she will be surprised when she actually sees the Cone, when she sees how it expresses her one hundred percent, or let’s say nearly one hundred percent, because a one hundred percent expression is impossible. Then everything within me will be resolved, as it will be resolved in my sister, at the moment when I show her the Cone. We have to go along with a crazy idea, our own, even when we don’t remember how we got it, we must go along with this crazy idea all the way, bring it to realization in the teeth of all the doubts and all the rules and all the recriminations, despite everything. We bring this idea to realization in order to bring ourselves to realization for a loved person, “loved person” underlined. It was always obvious that no help was to be expected from anywhere at all, and under no circumstances from Altensam. To finish the Cone means to destroy Altensam, once the Cone is finished, Altensam is destroyed. It’s all directed against my brothers, everything I’ve ever done in my life perhaps.

Everything always for my sister, but against my brothers. These proceedings, against my brothers, for my sister, I have made into a personal art.

Instinctively I have always acted against my brothers and for my sister. And now, by realizing my idea of building the Cone, I am proceeding most radically against my brothers and for my sister. The Cone, my proof, “my proof” underlined. I kept telling them I can do what I like with my money.

And because the time has come. The Cone is the logical consequence of (my) nature. But I won’t satisfy the curiosity of the professionals or those who call themselves professionals though they’re not. None of them shall get near my Cone. So far I’ve managed to keep the site fenced off. By deploying my lookouts everywhere, who report anyone they see approaching the site, people are turned away, pushed back, before they have had even a glimpse of the Cone. But there’s no preventing people from coming one day, at a certain point when I have lost all influence over this situation, and from taking possession (mentally) of the Cone, or from thinking they have taken (mental) possession of it, and from exploiting my idea. “Exploiters of ideas”

underlined. At first I kept my idea of building the Cone under scrutiny for a long time, while engaged in my scientific pursuits, I kept mulling over this one idea, scrutinizing it, then I tested it, and then I proceeded to work on its realization. I never asked anybody, one never should ask anybody, when one has this kind of an idea, whether it’s a good idea and whether the idea should be put into practice or not, because the reply is sure to be deadly. I turned to no one, no other head, and started to put my idea into practice without knowing what the realization of my idea means. The question of the meaning of the realization of this idea arises only after the Cone is finished.

It’s because I got away from Altensam so early in life, and went to Cambridge, because I got away from the actual scene of my thoughts, which has always been, and still is Altensam and its environs, whatever I’m thinking about, having to think about, that I had the opportunity to concern myself with problems and ideas which, had I remained in Altensam and its environs, let’s say within a radius of two or three hundred kilometers, I never could have concerned myself with, I could not have thought the thoughts I could think in Cambridge, I’d never have had the ideas I’ve had in Cambridge. To do one’s thinking on a scene, though actually far away from the actual scene, one’s best thinking by virtue of being at the farthest possible remove from the scene of everything relating to that scene. Everything about Altensam, for instance, is always best considered at the farthest remove from Altensam, not in Altensam itself, everything concerning the Cone, for instance, is best considered in Cambridge. It was not on the Kobernausser forest site itself that I supervised the building of the Cone, but from Hoeller’s garret. We must be removed as far as possible from the scene of our thoughts if we’re to think properly, with the greatest intensity, the greatest clarity, always only at the greatest distance from the scene of our thoughts, in Cambridge my thoughts about Altensam became the clearest possible thoughts about Altensam, conversely in Altensam the clearest possible thoughts about Cambridge. Always the problem of how to get to the farthest point away from the subject I must consider or think through, in order to consider or think through this subject the best possible way. Approaching the subject makes it increasingly impossible to think through the subject we are approaching. We become absorbed in the subject and can no longer think it through, we can’t even grasp it. And so I, wanting basically only to think about, to think thoroughly about my native scene, Altensam, Austria, etcetera, had to go to Cambridge. In that sense my scientific pursuits in Cambridge were always nothing but an opportunity to think hard, in Cambridge, about the scene of greatest interest to me, Altensam and everything connected with Altensam, to go over it in my head. To think a subject through, one has to assume a position at the farthest possible remove from this subject. First, approach the subject as an idea, then, take the most distant position possible from this subject which at first we’d approached as an idea, to enable us to evaluate it and think it through, a process leading logically to its resolution. A thorough, logical analysis of a subject, whichever subject, means the resolution of the subject, an analysis of Altensam, for instance, means the resolution, dissolution, of Altensam andsoforth. But we don’t, we never think with the utmost analytical rigor, because if we did we’d solve, dissolve, everything. In that case I’d never have been able to get the Cone ready, as Hoeller puts it, so Roithamer, “get ready” underlined. Hoeller has made no changes in the garret since I last stayed in it, so Roithamer, and none of the Hoellers was allowed to set foot in the garret, because I asked Hoeller to let no one, not even his own wife and his own children, into the garret in my absence; now that I’ve entered Hoeller’s garret I have the proof that Hoeller hasn’t changed a thing in the garret in my absence, that I’d only imagined that Hoeller had changed something in the garret, so Roithamer, but now I have proof that he changed nothing in the garret, everything in the garret is in the same place where it was when I left the garret, he, Hoeller, enters the garret once or twice a week only to air it, so that there’s absolutely no musty smell in Hoeller’s garret, my thoughtchamber at the Aurach gorge, so Roithamer, “thoughtchamber at the Aurach gorge” underlined. At the very instant I entered Hoeller’s garret for the first time together with Hoeller who wanted to show me his garret because he thought it might be a suitable place for me to think especially about building the Cone, it had always occurred to him, every time he stepped into the garret, to wonder whether his garret wasn’t the most suitable place for me and my purposes, I’d known at that earliest instant that Hoeller’s garret could enable me, as no other retreat so far had enabled me, to get on with my thinking, especially in regard to the Cone, and so I told him immediately, while we still stood in the doorway to the garret, that this was the most suitable place for my purposes and that I wished to rent it, rent is what I said to Hoeller, but Hoeller said that I could move into the garret as often and whenever I wanted, stay there whenever and for however long I wanted, he wouldn’t rent it to me, he was of course putting it at my disposal gratis, this offer I immediately accepted and I moved into Hoeller’s garret that same day and was confirmed in my assumption that I could advance in my thinking in Hoeller’s garret, from that point where I had gotten stuck in Cambridge. Here in Hoeller’s garret I’d been able to make my most important calculations, those referring to the statics of the Cone, in a short time. If I’d become blocked in thinking about the Cone at Cambridge, I enjoyed a fresh start in Hoeller’s garret. I lost my fear of having to give up the idea of building the Cone, of realizing it, perfecting it. When it comes to finishing the Cone, I owe everything to Hoeller’s garret, so Roithamer. Suddenly it was possible to “go on living, go on working,” underlined. The problem of everything coming at once, so Roithamer, beginning with early childhood (three years old, four years?) having to cope with myself, with those around me, with the past on the one hand and with future prospects, so Roithamer, and with a constantly rising degree of responsibility, irresponsibility. Because we were born into Altensam, without preparation, as we’re all born unprepared into some environment unknown to us, a world that does its utmost to destroy the newborn, born into it, just as Altensam has always tried to destroy me, the concept Altensam, destruction of my person, of a being at its mercy, defenseless, totally unprotected. Suddenly facing Altensam without knowing what it is, and everything beyond and around Altensam, without knowing what that is. Our parents were not the right teachers for us, our rightful educators as it’s called, but they had no right to educate us, they merely brought us up for their own purposes, always only for their own purposes, with the result that my brothers were always ready to serve their purposes, but I was always against their purposes. By bringing me up for their purposes my parents succeeded in setting me against their purposes, my brothers for their purposes, me against their purposes, education for a purpose, “education for a purpose” underlined. The restlessness of my parents, everything in and about my parents was unrest, but unrest against everything, not for everything, the way they’d move from one bedroom to another every week, for instance, use a different room as a dining room every week, constantly change their preferences, now they’d opt for one thing and then again for quite another, now for one set of characters and then for the opposite kind of characters, for one kind of landscape, for the opposite kind of landscape, in reality they lived in a constant state of unrest because they were incapable of deciding in favor of a definite person, a definite landscape, anything definite for the long run, because they always believed they had to think, have, reject, attract, everything at the same time, so they were basically the unhappiest people imaginable. They’d punish us constantly, thinking it was a way to draw us closer to them, but they always repelled me with their strategy of punishment, parents taking possession of their children by means of punishments, so Roithamer, “taking possession of their children” underlined. How my father always referred to the tragedy, my mother always to the drama of their shared life. Weeks of silence between them, not a word spoken, openly parading their shutting each other out, weeks at a time of never opening the one (father’s) being to the other (mother’s), and the chaotic conditions that always reigned at Altensam because of this situation between my parents. They made children together, but were basically quite unsuited to having children and never really wanted children, my father only wanted heirs, not children, not descendants, just heirs. I remember my parents only as old people, “old people” underlined, who couldn’t stand each other and who could stand their children even less, miserable to have brought into the world these basically alien, strange creatures, to have them on their conscience, to be guilty of the crime of giving life, actually more than once, though without knowing toward whom, with respect to whom, they were guilty. Misfortune comes overnight, my father always said, so Roithamer, “overnight” underlined. My mother lived in a state of chronic anxiety, with frequent fainting spells that came on the heels of my fainting spells or vice versa. We children weren’t allowed to ask questions, so that our parents wouldn’t have to find answers. We were kept, as they say, on a tight rein. If the world only knew on how tight and short a rein we were kept throughout our childhood, the stinginess and meanness with which we were kept, like cattle in a farmyard, that’s how we children were kept in Altensam. We were always forced to do things, something was always demanded of us against our will, but even if it was something we wanted to do, it was demanded of us at a time when we didn’t want to do it. We were ordered to read, for instance, what we didn’t want to read, listen to what we didn’t want to hear, visit people we didn’t want to visit, wear clothes we didn’t want to wear, eat food we didn’t want to eat. My brothers, and my sister too, always gave in but I never gave in, they had to punish me to make me give in, I never gave in of my own free will. We had to live by strict rules in Altensam, rules made long ago for other people, for all those generations who’d lived in Altensam before us, rules not made for us at all, but we never had a chance to make and live by our own rules, nor by new rules made for us, so we constantly and on every occasion and non-occasion had to obey rules never made for us, rules that were decades behind their time, as everything in Altensam has from the start been behind its time. Because I understood this early in life I found myself in a situation which was constantly life-threatening to me, because I would not submit to those outdated rules and did not submit except under duress, even though the others always submitted, my siblings have always been submissive creatures, but I balked at everything. To my parents, everything about me and inside me had been disturbing, all my life, so I wanted quite early in life to live apart from my parents, and from my siblings as well, because they sided with my parents, which always made life easier for them, and it also made them turn out differently from me. I’m not a submissive man even today, rather I am more and ever more contrary, refractory, a quarrelsome character actually, in many ways more unyielding than necessary, all because of my years of desperation as a child, my long years of living in Altensam as a prison, Altensam always did feel like a childhood dungeon to me, it was never anything else, my good days at Altensam can be counted on the fingers of one hand, I had to spend my entire childhood in the Altensam dungeon like an inmate doing time for no comprehensible reason, for a crime he can’t remember committing, a judicial error probably. There I was, in solitary, in almost uninterrupted darkness, and speaking with my father was no different from being interrogated by a magistrate after an arrest. I was threatened with ever harsher punishments though my life was already enough of a harsh punishment. When I asked what I had done to be kept in this punitive fashion in solitary confinement at Altensam, I received no answer. Possibly I was kept in prison, in my parents’ dungeon, Altensam, to atone for their crime, for which I was, after all, so far doing a twelve to thirteen year stretch. The only witnesses to my innocence would of course have been my parents, but then my parents were also my prosecutors, they had conceived and born me directly into that dungeon, “conceived and born me” underlined. When, in unflagging despair, we have to regard our parents as nothing but our prison wardens in this vast, terrible dungeon, which is what I must call my parents’ house, father as the warden of his dungeon, his house, his property, my parental home, parental property, i.e., Altensam.

When we can never hope for a review of our case, because such a review is out of the question, for every reason in the world. We can dream of escape but we can never escape because, once escaped from our parental dungeon, we’d perish in no time. Then we’re released, they say prematurely released,

“prematurely” underlined, and we’ve taken up the struggle against the dungeon, against the institution of this dungeon into which we were conceived and born, our lifelong struggle, struggle of despair, “struggle of despair” underlined, which is being held against us, first we’re imprisoned and almost wholly destroyed by our parents and now, after being released from our prison, having simply gotten away from it by reaching a certain maturity, we are rebuked for opposing our parents, quite openly opposing them. I never visited my parents, incidentally, I went to Altensam only to discuss Altensam and the problems of running it insofar as I was concerned with these problems, I never again felt the need to see my parents, neither my father nor my mother, when I went there it was only to see my sister, who was as if chained to her parents, to visit my sister, on such occasions I simply accepted the presence of my parents and that of my brothers who always sided with my parents as part of the bargain. They went on living for years, all those years I was already living in Cambridge, by and on my own initiative (“own initiative” underlined, then crossed out, then stetted), until they died, I never saw them again for at least twelve years before their deaths, they both died within a week, my mother immediately after my father, she couldn’t survive without my father, Altensam would have crushed her, she’d probably realized this, people die in such cases, as they say, of natural causes, the heart stops, but it’s actually a case of suicide. But by that time I’d already built half of the Cone and was engrossed in working up toward the tip and I hadn’t allowed my father’s sudden death followed immediately by my mother’s death to distract me in the least from continuing my work in building the Cone, surely these people who’d just died practically overnight were total strangers to me? is what I thought and felt, too. For the funeral, arranged by my brothers, I drove to Altensam, nothing had ever gone more against my grain than that funeral, actually a double funeral, for the first turned into the second almost without any noticeable transition, father’s funeral turned into mother’s funeral, so I attended my parents’

funeral, two weeks of tragic spectacle at Altensam, “tragic spectacle”

underlined. Two such people die and all we feel is hatred for these people.

Death changes nothing in our attitude, it comes too late to change our feelings for these people. Even later on, no change for the better, on the contrary, in time these people seem to be more and more responsible for our misfortunes. That I am alive and working today I owe to my having been able to extricate myself from my parents at the crucial moment in my life, had it been up to them my life would have been over years ago, even though they might not have consciously wanted to kill me off, they’d soon have killed me off. And my siblings too continue to exist only because they’d completely given themselves up to my parents. Survival by self-surrender, so Roithamer. We go to a grave where we have buried our parents, buried them in accordance with their expectations, a so-called prominent grave along the church wall, where all their predecessors on Altensam are already interred, but all we feel is hatred, we haven’t even a chance, we simply have it no longer or never had a chance of feeling the least sympathy with them. That’s why I no longer go to my parents’ grave either. Because to go on living with such a lie afterward could have only the most destructive effect on everything else. But of course a man can never really liberate himself from anything, he leaves the prison into which he was propagated and born only at the instant of his death. We enter a world which precedes us but is not prepared for us, and we have to cope with this world, if we can’t cope with this world we’re done for, but if we survive, for whatever constitutional reason, then we must take care to turn this world, which was a given world but not made for us or ready for us, a world which is all set in any case, because it was made by our predecessors, to attack us and ruin us and finally destroy us, nothing else, we must turn it into a world to suit our own ideas, acting first behind the scenes, inconspicuously, but then with all our might and quite openly, so that we can say after a while that we’re living in our own world, not in some previous world, one that is always bound to be of no concern to us and intent upon ruining and destroying us. Beginning with our earliest flickers of intelligence we have to explore intently our chances of making this world, that’s been put on us like a worn, shabby suit of used clothes much too tight or much too large but in any case a shabby and torn and ragged and stinking outfit handed to us, as it were, off the world’s rack, we must explore the whole surface of our world and its subsurface, and keep probing it deeper and deeper, so as to discover our chances of making this world, which is not our world, our own after all, our entire existence is nothing but concentrating on such chances and on how, in what way, we’re to change this world which is not ours, ultimately to change it, so Roithamer.

And the moment of this change, such a moment is followed by the next andsoforth, must always be the right moment, so Roithamer. So that we can say at last, at the end of our life, that we have lived at least for a time in our own world and not in the given world of our parents. But ninety percent of us die without ever having lived in a world of their own, only and always in a world that was ready-made, presented and adapted to them by their parents’

generation, never, please note, in no way and never in their own world, they live and work out their lives in their parents’ world, not their own. Unless ten percent is too high an estimate for those who live in a world of their own making, not that of their parents? Isn’t it actually a much smaller percentage who’ve had a world of their own to live in? We must, from the first signs of intelligence, make the effort to change the parental world into which we have been conceived and born, into a world of our own, each for himself and each entirely for himself at the very first signs of intelligence, so that this effort that takes years, decades, will bring results, admittedly by overexertion,

“overexertion” underlined, so that we can say, at the end of our existence, that we existed in a world of our own, so that we will not have to go to our death in the disgrace of having existed only in the world of our parents, because that would be the worst disgrace of all. We must use our heads from the very first to get away from our parents, birth is not enough, it does just the opposite, we must do it ourselves by our own unyielding effort, always strengthening our willpower, so that we can say, one day, that we have lived in our own world, and not only in the world of our parents. I remember that my mother always used to lock me up, in summer, in the so-called southeast turret room with its total exposure to the sun, when she’d been unable to make me submit to her will on some point or other, no doubt I was hard to handle, just as there’s no doubt whatever that my parents never shied away from brutality, so she’d lock me up in the turret room which never was unlocked all summer long except to lock me up in it, it was opened for no other purpose, nor were the windows in the turret room ever opened, the window bolts had been immobilized by rust for decades, so the windows couldn’t have been opened, that’s where she locked me up where the air, the hot, sunbaked air, had long since been suffocated and thousands, hundreds of thousands of dead flies lay about on the floor and on all the furniture, heaps of dead flies, in this turret room with its terrible smell, with those windows covered from top to bottom with fly shit by all those flies in all those years of their hectic death throes, this room left in an indescribable state of filth was where she locked me up for hours on end until she had me begging her through the locked door to let me out, because I was choking to death. I remember how she wanted to hurt me and did hurt me, by telling me again and again that I was the last straw, that I was evil incarnate, at an age when such words can already have the most deadly effect on a child’s soul. And father said nothing, he devoted himself to my brothers, not to me, he always treated my brothers as his successors, while punishing me most of the time by always referring to me, from the time I was only three or four years old, as a foreign element in Altensam. Even after their death my parents can’t be transformed into an idealized image for me, not even a bearable image, I’ve nothing to support me in such a falsification, so Roithamer. And father’s greatest punishment, or shall I call it his last move in his chess game against me, was to toss Altensam at me in his will, Altensam! though he knew how I felt about Altensam, that it filled me with loathing, nothing but loathing.

When he did that, however, he also handed me the means of showing my appreciation, in fact and in full accordance with my character, by selling Altensam, selling it and destroying it and using the proceeds for the purpose I’ve set my mind on. My parents would turn in their graves (this remark is crossed out). It’s like dissolving a dungeon, to dissolve Altensam, so Roithamer. Are my hatred and my aversion, these two weapons still in effect against my parents today, also in effect against my brothers? I ask myself.

Yes, but to a much lesser degree, so much less as to be basically insignificant, so Roithamer. While our eye is on our work and on the riskiness and vulnerability of our work, we spend most of our time barely trying to bridge over the next time span just ahead, and we think that getting through the time just ahead is all we need to think about, not our work, let alone the complicated work that claims our entire existence. To get through the time itself, no matter how, is what we think, what we instinctively feel we need.

Beginning in childhood. How to get on with it, that’s what we keep thinking constantly, and yet most of the time it doesn’t matter a damn how we get on with it, only that we get on with it. Because we have to concentrate all our mental and physical forces on just getting along, without achieving anything beyond that, so Roithamer. Work, to bridge over time, no matter what work, our occupation, whether digging in the garden or pushing on with a concept, it’s all the same. Then we’re obsessed with an idea though we’ve barely enough strength left to go on breathing, torment enough in itself. We’re obligated to (do) nothing, so Roithamer, “nothing” underlined. When we were children, how they talked us into believing that we had a right to live only if we accomplished some sensible work, how they assured us that we had to do our duty. All of it a case of irresponsible parents, irresponsible so-called authorized educators, irresponsibly plaguing us. Stuffed into the same kind of clothes regardless of our different personalities, our different characters, marched to church, made to eat, made to visit people, so Roithamer.

Mother’s fixed idea that we brothers must always be dressed alike and appropriately for Altensam, whatever that was, and her equally fixed idea, always, that all three of us should always think the same, act the same, believe the same things, do or refrain from doing the same things, but I always did something else and I always refused to wear the same clothes as the others, which led to daily anticipations of apocalypse. We weren’t alike, never, so Roithamer, but neither was I, ever, eccentric, it’s not true that I was eccentric, though they never tired of calling me an eccentric, it was their way of slandering me, because I acted in accordance with my nature without concerning myself with the others and their opinions, I was denounced as an eccentric, I, who simply tried to live always in accordance with my own, absolutely not eccentric nature, all I did was simply to be true to my own nature, day after day, but that’s how I was turned into an eccentric from earliest childhood on, and they also always called me a troublemaker, rightly, in this case, because I really always did trouble their peace in Altensam, I troubled their so-called peace all my life, in the end I made it my mission to trouble their peace in Altensam, so the term troublemaker really suited me more than anyone. That we were something special because we came from Altensam, that everything having to do with us and Altensam was something special, is a notion I always fought off, there was every indication that we, my parents, my siblings, me, everyone in Altensam, were ultimately something special, of course in the sense that everything in the world is something special, but nothing is more special than anything else, everything is so equally special that there’s nothing further to be said about it, so Roithamer. The ideas our parents had of us, and the hopes which our parents attached to these ideas of us and which were not fulfilled, ideas are not fulfilled, so Roithamer, not ideas all by themselves, “not all by themselves”

underlined. We’d had to learn to play violin, play the piano, play the flute, partly because mother insisted and partly because each showed some talent for one or the other musical instrument, but all four of us hated these music lessons equally, music began to interest me, to fascinate me, only after I no longer had to practice it, once I could choose freely I became for a time, in fact for years, totally absorbed in music, I’d started to think that I must study music on a higher, on the highest, level, I’d even started on such a course of study but then gave it up again, because the formal study of music would have put me off, the formal study of music did not endear music to me, on the contrary, it affected me the same way as the compulsory music lessons at home in Altensam. Disobedience at Altensam had always been punished by inflicting deadly injuries on the psyche. I’d always lived in fear of that sunny-side turret room, but this special torture was reserved only for me, neither of my brothers was ever locked up in the turret room. For them, a slap in the face would be deemed enough, but me they locked in the turret room, the worst punishment of all, or else they said things about me that did me in, did me in emotionally and mentally, the worst possible punishment, of course. We were constantly forced to do things we didn’t want to do. But we’d always been told that our parents meant it for our own good. Every day, very often, we’d get to hear how much they meant it all for our own good, they never tired of repeating that phrase, it was one of their favorite maxims, time and again, we mean it for your own good (speaking to one or the other of us) until I felt more and more intimidated and humiliated, they could easily bully us, our parents, we were so naïve. Such a beautiful house, so artistic, so cultivated, our visitors always said, what could anyone say to the contrary? Such delightful surroundings, every piece of furniture a work of art, all the interiors they ever got to see the most splendid anywhere, all the vistas from Altensam opening on the loveliest, most farflung landscapes.

How, I often asked myself, how is it possible to see oneself going to ruin in so, to quote my mother’s constant phrase, luxurious an atmosphere? To be dying by inches, for no reason any outsider could see. Of course I wasn’t wholly a stranger to such concepts as joy, beauty, even the love-of-life, the beauty-of-nature andsoforth, so Roithamer. My eyes were as open in that direction as in the other. A man like me, who finds his greatest happiness in thought, most of all when engaged in thought out in the open, in the free (philosophical) world of nature, is saved by this fact in itself, by such an observation as this in itself, so Roithamer. Happiness can even be found in the so-called acceptance of pain, so Roithamer. One might, for instance, find supreme joy in writing well about supreme misery, so Roithamer. The ability to perceive, the ability to articulate one’s perception, can be a supreme joy andsoforth, so Roithamer. A statement in itself, no matter what is being stated, can be a supreme joy, as is ultimately the fact of simply existing, no matter how, so Roithamer. But we mustn’t keep thinking such thoughts all the time, keep mulling over everything we’re about, otherwise we may suddenly find ourselves deadened by our own persistent, relentless brooding and end up simply dead. I began by playing violin, against my will, so Roithamer, piano, against my will, because forced into it, later on the (voluntary) effort to study music on a higher and the highest level, the history of music andsoforth, so Roithamer, all came to nothing because under duress in the one case, in the other voluntary but formal, in the end serious involvement with music, getting into music of my own free will and without formal backing (university etcetera), Webern, Schönberg, Berg, Dallapiccola andsoforth. Began by reading against my will, read everything against my will, because my parents forced me to read, they’d thought that I was inclined to read, but because they assumed I had such an inclination, respect/inclination etcetera, I refused to read, never read anything but schoolbooks till my twelfth year, then, from about my twenty-fifth year on, I read incessantly, everything of my own accord, whatever I could lay my hands on. Because they demanded order, I chose disorder, because they demanded that we wear hats on our heads, never a hat on my head for decades, aversion to hats etcetera, so Roithamer. Because they always tried to stop me from going down to the various villages from Altensam, for all sorts of reasons which were bound to seem unreasonable to me, I’d always go down to the villages behind their backs, I made myself independent down there below Altensam, timidly at first but later with great firmness, while they believed me to be in my room, I’d actually gone down to the villages at night. And so more and more often behind their backs down to Altensam, so Roithamer, until one day I left Altensam for good and went down, never to come back to Altensam, never again, “never again” underlined. But in these outbreaks I was also alone. My siblings never and in no way followed me.

Absolute mutual incomprehension among us children even then. There’s nothing more for us to explain to each other, so Roithamer. Typical, mother’s fainting spells as a form of blackmail, her constant bouts with nausea, she controlled the household from her so-called nausea chair, I almost never saw mother free from nausea or the signs of nausea, father was the opposite, a robust constitution by nature, but she, my mother, always in her moods, always gloomy, bad moods because of her gloominess, father always in a good mood, she couldn’t stand it. Unlike his first wife, who had borne him no children, which was his reason, naturally, for divorcing her, as he always said, so Roithamer, she was the daughter of a Klagenfurt attorney, though all she’d ever had in her head was theaters and amusements, my father regarded everything connected with the theater and music as mere amusements, which is what he quite contemptuously called it, he had married this woman because he’d made her pregnant, but the child was born dead, its mother had been half insane for a long time after this stillbirth, so father said, until he, my father, simply couldn’t bear it any longer, because it was obvious that she could never have another child, hence the divorce, but then he overhastily married my mother, who certainly could and did give birth and to living children at that, so father said about my mother, she was never anything more to him than a good breeder, my father kept saying and he said it to anybody, even mere acquaintances, even strangers when he was drunk, unlike his first wife, who was always young and fresh, but then was completely ruined by that stillbirth, she’s still living, my father kept saying, whenever anyone asked him about her, his first wife, she’s still living, in France I think, anyway unlike his first wife, his second, our mother, was always an old woman, even as a young woman she was already old, her sort are old even as children, so my father said, a good observation, as I can attest, such people are born with wizened old faces, it’s always frightening how ancient their faces look, the kind of newborn human being my mother apparently was always looks from the first moment as he or she is likely to look at seventy or eighty, but this aged look stays on that face, always, our mother was always the Old Woman, from the beginning, unlike his first wife, his second, our mother, was also a calculating woman, she was all calculation, she never did anything without calculation, while my first wife, so my father, so Roithamer, without being at all calculating, suddenly became an unhappy creature as a result of that stillbirth, my second wife was always calculating, with every fiber of her being, to such an extent, so my father, so Roithamer, that she’d get into a terrible state whenever one of her calculations didn’t happen to work out, but basically her calculations always worked out, this type of woman will get a bee in her bonnet, for instance something unnecessary she wants to buy, so my father, and she gets her way, even though by getting her way she weakens the relationship, which she doesn’t notice, but she thinks that she is strengthening her position.

When it comes to trying things, she always got her way when it came to trips or innovations at Altensam, and she did it almost always by using her sick spells with which she ruled Altensam for long periods of time without a letup, especially in the spring, when Altensam was ruled entirely by nothing but our mother’s nausea, in the heat of summer, in the sudden chill of autumn. If she’d failed in getting her wish, those wishes and ideas and projects of hers that always had so devastating an effect on Altensam, she resorted to threats, and most of all to the most terrifying of all threats, so my father, so Roithamer, suicide, she’d throw herself off the top of the wall one day, see if she didn’t, she’d be smashed to bits, because her life meant nothing to us, even though we all depended on her, she was the heart and core of our life, but basically she wasn’t the heart and core of life in Altensam as she kept telling us, but rather the heart and core of our creeping death in Altensam, and she never made her threat good, these people, so Roithamer, never stop talking of suicide, they threaten suicide every time their wishes and ideas are balked, and because they have no other resources except this threat, because they’re basically without resources, absolutely without resources, but they don’t kill themselves, they go on living for years, for decades, with this threat and by grace of this threat, and then they die a perfectly natural death, so Roithamer. When she was alone in Altensam, because my father was away on business, she thought about how she might torment him when he’d come back home, what kind of horror she could surprise him with, it had to be a horror with at least a touch of perversion in it, which would instantly put him in a frightful mood which would of course have the most frightful effect on us children and on all of Altensam, and when father was coming home to Altensam, she’d sit for hours, always looking at her watch, in her turret room watching the road from the village by which he had to come up, watching everything that went on down there, always glancing at her watch.

noting who was coming up to Altensam on what errand, who was leaving Altensam and on what errand and with what baggage and especially what kind of tools, because more than anything else mother was mistrustful, she completely mistrusted not only us but everything, and it was probably this mistrust that had undermined her health from her earliest years because even as a child she had been most noticeably mistrustful, and so of course, what with her organism weakened by her incessant mistrustfulness, she was almost always sickly, or pretended to be sickly, you could never be absolutely sure at any given moment whether she was sickly or pretending to be sickly, what was interesting about it was just this, that she was always sickly, but never really sick, never seriously sick so as actually to arouse real concern, but only always sickly, this sickliness of our mother’s was one of the main characteristics of the atmosphere at Altensam as far back as I can remember, with her chronic sickliness she finally infected all of Altensam so that the entire atmosphere there was sicklied through, everything there in addition to herself was always equally sickly, it seemed as though she was quite consciously using this sickliness of hers as a means to her ends, meaning that she used it against us, also against her husband, our father, with this sickliness she controlled not only the most important aspects of life at Altensam but also all the secondary aspects, even the most insignificant ones, and this sickliness was instantly sensed by everyone who’d come to Altensam, even those who don’t know Altensam that well and those for whom Altensam was something new, such a newcomer was immediately included in this sickliness which had already seized and taken hold and poisoned everything at Altensam, he couldn’t know. what it was that had brought him into this peculiarly ailing condition when he’d barely set foot in Altensam, but it was nothing else than our mother’s sickliness, whereas father’s first wife was always fresh and young, so my father always said, so Roithamer, his second, the one he called the nanny, was always old and sickly, he always stated this quite openly and he’d often told my mother to her face that her only weapon apart from her boundless stupidity, was her sickliness, stupidity and sickliness which she used against him and against everything that made up Altensam, against everything Altensam had been until she appeared on the scene, and it is a stage entrance, my dear! I can still hear my father telling her to her face, a stage entrance, my dear!

stupidity and sickliness, so Roithamer, were our mother’s chief attributes, father was right in his judgment of her, we children had always suffered from her stupidity and her sickliness, because our mother’s ill nature was fed as much by her stupidity as by her sickliness, which most times was a crafty production of hers, a spectacle she put on for us every day, in which she played the lead. My father had soon turned away from this wife, our mother, she had borne him children, whelped them, but even this at a time when he no longer wanted any children, once they were born he realized that he didn’t really want them at all, and so, since they (we) existed, willy-nilly, we were treated accordingly, always as creatures to be considered his own children but whom their progenitor basically no longer wanted and hadn’t wanted for the longest time. Mother, always unkempt, her appearance invariably neglected, as father said, so Roithamer, sloppily dressed, her buttons half undone, her stockingless feet in unlaced shoes, that’s how I remember her, on her feet all day long only in the hope of catching one of us or one of the so-called staff out, running or limping all the time, another typical trait of hers was a quick succession of injuries or ulcers, inflammations on her legs, mostly the calves, so she ran or limped along always smelling of every kind of medication, bought from so-called quacks, always bought in large quantities, always disseminating the smell of such medications throughout Altensam, most of the time wearing an old bathrobe, a legacy from my grandmother, in this bathrobe, which hadn’t even been worn by my grandmother any longer, she’d only used it to cover the dahlias against the autumn frosts, but my mother had dragged it out from the heap of rags in the gardener’s shack and put it on and then worn it for years afterward, my father loathed that bathrobe, we children loathed that bathrobe, but mother was always wearing this bathrobe we all hated, she even appears in this bathrobe in family photographs, the woman in these pictures is always a total stranger to me, these pictures convince me more than the reality did that my mother was always some strange woman, she’d turn up suddenly everywhere and always unpredictably, as if she had sneaked up on you, to check up on things, no matter whose room it was, suddenly there she was checking up, she’d always wanted to know what was going on in the various rooms, she’d rip the door open like a bolt of lightning and stand there, demanding an explanation, because we’d always just done something which, in her view, we shouldn’t have done or hadn’t been allowed to do, something improper always, if not strictly forbidden, nevertheless improper or useless or embarrassing, in any case something typical of us. In the farm buildings she was generally feared, she was always checking on everybody’s work and accused the farm workers, who’d stayed at Altensam only on account of my father, whom they loved, she accused them of getting nothing done, or not enough, she always criticized all of them for being too slow or careless, yet not one of them was ever slower or more careless than that woman, our mother. All day long she was on her feet in her repulsive state of slovenliness, toward evening she’d always retreat to her room and put on a simple black dress, basically even elegant, very expensive too, but on her it somehow didn’t look good, something seemed wrong with it, it was a collarless dress with a large diamondstudded gold pin on her chest, this pin had come into her hands from the estate of my grandmother’s sister as a wedding present, and so she got herself ready to go to the theater. She’d get one of the stewards to drive her to the Linz Theater, on principle she never missed a première, and returned toward midnight, never without a totally adverse opinion on everything she’d happened to see at the Linz Theater, making fun of everything, it was always the same story, she’d get out of the car in the courtyard, the steward would drive the car back to the car barn where all the cars were kept, and from the moment she’d come in the big front door, even before going to the downstairs kitchen for the hot coffee that was kept for her there, she’d unloose a tirade against everything she’d just experienced at the theater, I have never heard her say. anything positive about the Linz Theater, though I must admit that it’s one of the worst theaters extant, always producing only wellintentioned plays which invariably turned into some kind of catastrophe or other, in some repulsive way, too, anyway I never heard her say anything positive about it. Still she had never managed even once to pass up one of their premières. She was an addicted theatergoer even though she understood nothing whatever about the theater, a passionate theatergoer; that the Linz Theater was absolutely the worst theater in the world, as she said time and again, was of course no secret to her, especially since she was repeatedly confirmed in this judgment by others, so-called theater buffs with whom she’d chatted during the intermissions, but I happen to know that she only went out to the theater in order to lay in a supply of colognes and face creams at a certain cosmetics shop on the way to the theater, before curtain time, she had hundreds of these face creams and colognes in her bathroom and she made incredibly lavish use of the contents of these hundreds of bottles and tubes, unfortunately all these so-called fragrances, our mother’s taste in fragrances is debatable, were always overwhelmed by the stinking salves and concoctions of her quacks, they’re called health practitioners in our country, so they were basically always superfluous. The theater is only a pretext, so father said, so Roithamer, for stopping at the cosmetics shop for a supply of all that chemical stuff which is so totally ineffective on that woman (our mother), the grand opera is only a pretext for her crazy perfumes, the comedy or the tragedy in Linz is only a pretext for her ghastly moisturizing delusions. She understood nothing, neither the theater nor music, and cared less, but the theater (in Linz) and the music (in Linz), for she also attended the more important concerts in Linz, provided her with an opportunity and a pretext, not only to pick up supplies of every possible kind of aromatic filth (so my father) at the Linz cosmetics shop, but all this theater-and concert-going had also always served to prove to us her appreciation of art and her cultural requirements, but most of all they served to humiliate my father, this uncultured man, as she always said, who hasn’t the least regard for great art, all these forays to theaters and concerts, which cost heaps of money, so father said, just to rub it in how cultured she was. But in reality our mother was not at all a cultured woman, not cultured in the least, and our father, who in fact couldn’t care less about her kind of culture, the kind of culture she had in her head, she was quite right in this respect, he cared nothing at all about it, but the very fact that he cared nothing at all for her kind of culture makes him a cultured man, so Roithamer. Father had at least read a so-called good book from time to time, but mother had never, to my personal knowledge, read a good book, she detested everything that had to do with books, especially good books, as she herself said, hated them like the plague, and she’d always done everything in her power to keep us, my siblings included, away from so-called good books, away from all books on principle, she’d aborted any possibilities for us to get anywhere near good books or any books, it was typical that our three- to four-thousand-volume library at Altensam, dating back to the times of our great-grandparents and grandparents, was locked up, and that we had to ask mother, not father, when we wanted to get into the library, which incidentally was always in a state of terrible neglect, it was never put in order, never even dusted, for decades on end, and our mother never approved of our desire to read, she’d always sidetracked us, when we wanted to read a book in the library, any book, into the music room instead, that’s where she wanted us to spend our time, not in the library, the library was off limits to us, but she’d maneuvered us into the music room, doubtless the less dangerous of the two, even though our mother, our parents, knew that we, my siblings too, loving music as we did, nevertheless hated making music, because we’d been forced to practice. We were locked out of the library, the others were also less interested in it than I was, so Roithamer, I had no way to get into the library, because mother had locked the library keys up in her key safe, books were meant for grown-ups, they’d go to your head like a disease, mother always used to say, we could read fairy tales, but we didn’t want to read fairy tales, fairy tales yes, everything else, no. She was afraid that I, in particular, might discover in the library that the world was bigger than Altensam, that it was basically entirely different from the world I knew, I am speaking of the time prior to my eighth or ninth year. In my eighth or ninth year there was a sudden complete reversal: she, my mother, had persuaded herself that I should be devouring the library, that I should go into the library everyday, but now I no longer wanted to go in, I refused to read a single book, she couldn’t make me, my mother was of course totally baffled by this, so Roithamer, first I want to go in but I’m not allowed in, then I’m supposed to go in but I no longer want to go in. She’d been of the widespread opinion that children to the age of eight or nine have no business in a socalled adult library, but that at age eight or nine they should be introduced to these socalled adult books, and she’d meant to follow these recommendations. But now I was no longer interested in our library. It’s such an old library, I thought, after all, I’ll find new books once I’ve left Altensam, why bother with these old books now, they’d certainly have interested me, so Roithamer, but I refused to give in to force. Of new books there were none in Altensam, they were all at least forty or fifty years old, and many much older, without counting my father’s books on woods, forestry and hunting, which were always kept up-to-date with the latest information on woods, forestry, both practical and research, and hunting. Attempt at a description of father: we’d always trusted him absolutely, but under the influence of that woman, our mother, he’d become more and more estranged from us, we could feel how with the years and everything that happened in all those years, happenings in Altensam always brought about by his wife, our mother, nothing really but pathological processes resulting from that woman’s constitutional predisposition, she was simply a disaster for Altensam, how in time we grew away from our father, just as he grew away from us. That woman also exercised a most harmful influence on our father, but he had soon succumbed, after an initial resistance, to her superior willpower and came to be totally controlled by this willpower of hers, everything in Altensam came to be ruled by that woman’s willpower, because of our mother, the daughter of a butcher in Eferding, everything in Altensam was suddenly sickly, ailing, though it had never been ailing before, not even during the period of my father’s first wife, whom I often visit, and who has never forgiven my father, never could forgive him for more or less ruining her life by seeing her only as a potential breeder of his children, so that she ceased to mean anything to him once my father’s first child was stillborn, changing her beyond recognition, which caused my father to remove this wife entirely from Altensam, under the influence of my mother whom my father quite openly and even to her own face called a makeshift solution, because he thought that he must secure the first available woman, so my father, so Roithamer, under the influence of that woman as a makeshift, that makeshift as a woman, so Roithamer, “makeshift as a woman” underlined, who had no sooner turned up than she tried to transfer to Altensam her lower-middle-class mentality, her crudeness, yet pitiableness, her ill-bred and incorrigible ways, and in this she succeeded, my father immediately fell completely under this influence, which soon took its devastating, in fact annihilating toll of Altensam and everything connected with Altensam, it was only at the start that he was able to resist this influence, but afterward, after only a brief period of life with this Eferding woman, when he was about forty, he gave up, he gave himself up, first he gave up Altensam under the influence of this Eferding woman, so my father always said, so Roithamer, then he gave himself up, he was probably overcome with indifference toward everything in Altensam, all at once, from one minute to the next, I had made the crucial mistake of my life, so my father himself said, so Roithamer, I should never have married this Eferding woman, this butcher’s daughter with her butcher’s physiognomy, so my father always said, so Roithamer, with her butcher’s way of life. But it makes no difference in the end, so my father, so Roithamer. Before this so-called mistake my father, born and raised in Altensam, had the usual boarding school experiences, then went through the necessary secondary and university courses at Passau and Salzburg and Vienna, and eventually led the life or the existence which the men of Altensam always led, working at his forestry and his farming on the one hand, comfortloving on the other hand, with all the love possible in so fundamentally monotonous a life reserved for hunting, he’d led this quiet life of such activities and inclinations, a life unremarkable even in spurts, up to the point when he realized that he could not possibly go on alone, as he had been since his parents’, my grandparents’, early death, entirely devoting himself to running Altensam, which left him fully occupied yet not really satisfied, for no matter how much such a splendid and always basically well-functioning, going concern as Altensam, always a healthy, untroubled mix of farming and forestry, including lumbering, brick-making, quarries and cement works, no matter how much so healthy an economic enterprise could keep a man like my father, who had grown up with it and was wholly at home in it, fully occupied, it could not in the long run be enough to satisfy even him. But he had no other source of satisfaction by nature, unless he’d given the whole thing up, which he wasn’t the man to do, so he’d begun thinking, by the time he was forty, of saving himself by cutting down on all that, and then suddenly decided, purely out of cold calculation, to have heirs, to bring children into the world, after the failure with his first wife, who probably was better suited to him, with the second, the most impossible mate imaginable for him, as became quickly apparent, though she did bear him the desired children, whom, however, at the very moment they were suddenly present, he simply no longer wanted, as I now know and as I secretly always felt, he had needed the children in order to let himself go, to relax the intensity with which he’d been forced to live, freed by now having children, even when they were still very young, as though the children had already begun to succeed him, to take over from and for him, as far as he was concerned, long before it could actually be possible for them to do so.

During this period when he let go, when he gave up, and took to devoting himself wholly to nothing but his inclinations, the period after his fortieth year, the effective influence of his second wife, our mother, had naturally been enabled to spread very rapidly, because he was no longer emitting any energies of his own to counteract it, but, as noted, it was all the same to him, “all the same” underlined, he’d made a mistake and he’d also let go, given (himself) up, and from that point on I never saw my father do anything in particular except go out hunting, alone or with friends, often with my brothers, too, but never with me, hunting never even entered into my thoughts, I never understood it at all, while all my father cared about was the forest as forest, not as an economic reality, but just for the game in it, nothing else, till the day he died, and this indifference of his to everything other than his one single interest, hunting, wholly encompassed us, his children. Once he’d realized the aversion he felt for the Eferding woman, his dislike of her that grew from day to day, as he always said, he ended by resigning himself to the presence of this woman in his life as someone unacceptable, whom he couldn’t any longer accept, nor could he get her out of the way, but he could have no relationship with her not conditioned by aversion and hatred. He, our father, was the opposite of that woman in every respect and it had become ever more obvious that theirs was the case of a purely accidental encounter, probably during one of his visits to a friend in Eferding, actually it was only despair over the failure of everything he had hoped for from his first wife, which made him actually, and without a grain of sense, as he put it, take the bait of that Eferding woman, who was an absolute nothing, she was simply old and sloppy, which she simply continued to be at Altensam, only to a greater degree. But to judge the whole case in this biased fashion, putting all the blame on the Eferding woman, is also impossible, “impossible” underlined. The fact is that our father had quite often stopped at the public house in Eferding where our mother came from, to which the butcher shop was attached which is still being run by our mother’s brother today, and one day he stopped there again, and this led to the decline of Altensam, or rather the decline of what was left of Altensam that could still decline, because at that time Altensam was actually already in _ the process of deteriorating, because my father had already given up on everything inwardly, all he still wanted was to make good his decision, once he had taken it, to beget children, regardless with which woman, though deep down he no longer really cared. And from the moment in which he let go of things and finally gave up, Altensam, what was left of it, had been let go and had been basically given up. The appearance of our mother at Altensam was then no more than the outwardly visible sign of his letting-go and giving-up, by the time we children were born this process of letting-go and giving-up had been going on for a long time, and we were already weakened in advance by this very fact alone. Enveloped in this process of letting-go and giving-up, we had naturally been sensitive to this process from the very start of our existence and had then fallen increasingly under its influence, we could never escape from it, we were swept along downward in our father’s tendency to let go and give up. By the time we were born, our father had already turned away from Altensam, turned his back on it, all we ever experienced was this condition, more prevalent from one day to the next, this process of decay hastened on the one hand by my father, who had already turned away from Altensam, and for all sorts of easily understandable reasons such as her different background, lower-middle-class milieu, lower-middle-class mentality in general and throughout, Eferding etcetera, it was also hastened along by my mother in truly despicable fashion. A son in distress, no matter which son, will naturally go to his father for advice, but I never went to my father, no matter how troubled I was, and I never asked my father serious questions, because I knew that none of my questions would receive an answer from him, because he had turned away from us even before we were born, and I also never went to my mother, because I feared my mother. I had no way of reaching my father, although I longed all my life to reach him, because my father was not interested in me, no more than in my siblings, and mother I feared, we feared her, but I feared her more than my siblings did because I was more hated by my mother than my siblings, on the other hand I did have a somewhat better relationship with my father than my siblings did, who leaned toward my mother rather than my father as their parent. Only my sister was loved by my father like no one else, that was evident always and on every occasion, after his death she was the most defenseless creature in the world. She, my sister, was, like myself but perhaps even more demonstrably, her father’s child, akin to him, even more than myself who was akin to father, not to my mother, there was absolutely nothing in me, about me, coming from my mother’s, the Eferding woman’s, side, everything or almost everything came from my father and all this was true in an even higher degree of my sister, while both my brothers take after the Eferding woman in every respect, even though it expresses itself quite differently than with the Eferding woman, my mother, herself. This is also the reason I could never have a closer relationship with my brothers, because I always saw Eferding in them, everything connected with Eferding and the Eferding woman and her origins, while conversely my brothers always saw in me and in my (and their) sister everything connected with my, with our father, they saw more of it in my sister, but they hated me, my sister they always regarded as peculiar, they suspected her of being basically crazy, though it was nothing but my father’s nature in her, it was Altensam, but because they couldn’t openly hate her, a girl, as they hated me, it was Altensam they hated, unconsciously, as my mother did, she always hated everything unconsciously, anyway everything in her and about her took effect unconsciously, though also in the most calculating way, for people like my mother simply aren’t rational beings, they are instinctual beings, and her feelings tend to be, actually, nothing but falsifications, in no matter what direction they move, they’re unconscious falsifications of nature into something unconsciously denatured like themselves. In reality, however, it was a case of my mother at first always trying to win me over, she had soon realized that I, that everything in me, was against her, which is why she left no stone unturned to draw me closer to herself, in every way and by every means, but when she saw, when she understood, that all she did to gain her ends, to bring me over to her side, which in the nature of things simply wasn’t possible, was in vain, a senseless struggle, then she gave her contempt and hatred free rein. I’d not been able to go against my nature and enter into hers, lose myself in hers, as she had probably envisioned. It’s always clear from the first, what a newborn child is made of and where it is tending, it is always a tendency backward, a tendency of return, in my case I was simply cut out of my father’s cloth and it had to be madness to refuse to see this and want to change it. Quite as in my sister’s case, but my mother naturally did not let her feel it in the same harsh manner, not in the case of someone so delicate even from childhood on. Though the child always remained a stranger to her, my mother never treated her roughly, she simply didn’t dare, or she’d have come into quite unimaginable conflict with my father. And so my parents had brought children into the world, quite consciously, I know what their motives were, motives of securing the succession on my father’s side, and motives of securing a lasting establishment and what this meant for her, our mother, namely to get Altensam into her possession, just the same they’d quite consciously committed a crime, that capital crime against nature, to beget and to procreate children out of sheer calculation, “calculation” underlined, children some of whom sided with the father and some of whom sided with the mother, my brothers siding with mother, what I called taking the part of Eferding, so Roithamer, I and my sister with father, what I called taking the part of Altensam, so Roithamer. In this way my parents had seen to it from the start that Altensam had to fall apart into two deadly halves. My father always understood all of this, and the reason why I later let him too go out of my sight and out of my mind and even for a long time let him disappear from my memory was the fact that he, and I suddenly see this again before me as a very definite image, that from the moment we had come into being he basically only turned his back on us and left us behind, that’s how I actually see my father, in his gray loden suit, walking into the woods to hunt or quite simply to escape, always walking away from us, and always walking away from us to make his escape, basically depressed by nothing but a bad conscience over having closed his books and given up his life. For how many years I had tried to win my father over, but he always pushed me away, no answers, nothing but walking away from me, not noticing me. Such years and even decades of rejection and refusal will end in our dropping such a man out of our thoughts from one moment to the next, no matter what we may have felt for him only a minute before, we cease to think of him and it is as if he had never existed, he may turn up in our thoughts now and then, but we immediately turn our minds to something else. Until his fortieth year my father must have been a fairly happy man, from his fortieth year onward, however, he was the opposite, so Roithamer. Attempt at a description of Altensam and everything connected with Altensam, with special attention to the Cone: to be able to concentrate entirely in the evenings, on Tuesdays and Fridays, even beginning with my so-called free afternoons, on my manuscript about Altensam, my room suddenly the ideal place for this work, after having seemed for years to be unsuitable, entirely unsuitable for this purpose, with its view of the stone wall, lately always wet, of the physics institute, a view favorable to my undertaking in any case, a state such as the one that always prevails in Hoeller’s garret, which was always ideal for my purposes, Hoeller’s garret was the only place where it was possible for me to construct the Cone, just as it is now possible for me here, in my room at Cambridge, this room without an actual view, giving only on the damp, wet wall of the institute, to think about my work on the Cone now that the Cone has been finished, now that I’m back here and before I’ve become totally absorbed again in my scientific work, before it claims all of my attention, my chance after my return to devote some time to this work, a writing job,

“writing job” underlined, in retreat, “retreat” underlined, to clarify everything that has happened these last six years, since I did need six years to construct and to build the Cone, for one thing the time factor, a short time relative to myself, my origins, relative to Altensam, but basically much too long a time which very often and repeatedly drove me to the edge of madness. The idea and the realization of the idea, the achievement of the realization of the idea of the Cone as the tackling and the realization and the achievement of an aim that has totally dominated me these last years, the problem of making my intention, which has always been described as only a crazy and totally hopeless scheme, clearly understandable not only to myself but to everyone else who was involved with the realization and completion of the Cone. Taking under consideration the fact that I was on the one hand committed to England, to Cambridge, while on the other hand my energies were after all totally committed to my intention to build the Cone in the Kobernausser forest, I was duty-bound to this scene of the site of the Cone, the problem of being always here, in Cambridge, or in the Kobernausser forest, at the right moment, of not neglecting the one for the other, the lowest limit of my responsibility. Actually I should have spent years in Cambridge so as not to neglect Cambridge, while at the same time staying in the Kobernausser forest, meaning in Hoeller’s garret, specifically, so as not to neglect the building of the Cone, now that the Cone is finished and now that I haven’t lost Cambridge, I can see that it was possible for me to muster the necessary energy to build the Cone without neglecting Cambridge, that is, neither my teaching nor my own research, because it was possible for me to do the one under the stimulus of the other, not to neglect Cambridge by means of energies generated by my work on the Cone, not to neglect the Cone by means of energies generated at Cambridge, and to do both always in the highest state of concentration upon each objective as required. The assurance I acquired in the course of changing my scene of operations, staying now in Cambridge for a time, then again in Hoeller’s garret, in England on the one hand, in Austria on the other, always shifting from one to the other at the proper moment, without being aware of this fact, always doing the right thing as a gift, a form of talent, without consciousness, the change of locale, leaving Cambridge for the Kobernausser forest and vice versa, but also moving from one to the other in thought without any transition, for how often I was in Cambridge (in my thoughts) while being in reality in the Kobernausser forest, and how often, conversely, in the Kobernausser forest (in my thoughts) though in reality I was in Cambridge.

That I told myself from time to time, even though I was in Cambridge just now, I’m in the Kobernausser forest now of necessity, conversely, of necessity now in Cambridge, although in reality I’d been in the Kobernausser forest. I could always switch my head from one place to the other, instantly, even as a child I could switch instantly from one thing to another. And the very fact that I could be most effective especially in Cambridge for the Kobernausser forest, most effective in the Kobernausser forest for Cambridge, the fact that my intensity is greater for the one when I’m in the other place, and vice versa, and I could exercise this ability because I had complete control of this mechanism from earliest childhood on, so Roithamer.

To build the Cone without teaching and studying in Cambridge, studying as I teach, studying by teaching, and conversely, to have intensified my achievement in Cambridge as I did without the actual building of the Cone is unimaginable. We very often make headway rapidly and with the greatest assurance in some (most strenuous) work or occupation or passion andsoforth, so Roithamer, because we’ve started or become involved or planned another, similar work or occupation or passion and never abandoned it, so Roithamer. The one work or occupation or passion which very often takes us to the very edge of despair, often solely because we are in fact involved in another such strenuous effort simultaneously. I alone could have conceived such an idea, the idea of building such a cone, planning it and actually building it, everybody said so and they’re right. The need to understand what led to this idea, most likely everything led to this idea.

What led to this idea and the realization of the idea as the effect of its original cause, so Roithamer, a matter of consistency, just as the realization of the idea led to perfecting the idea andsoforth. To build is the most wonderful thing in the world, it’s the supreme gratification, “supreme gratification” underlined. It’s what everyone longs to do, building, but not everyone gets the chance to build, and everyone who does build gets this gratification out of it. Especially in building something no one has ever built before. It’s the supreme gratification, “supreme gratification” underlined, to complete a work of art one has planned and built oneself. To complete a philosophical work, or a literary work, even if it’s the most epoch-making and most important work of its kind, can never give us this supreme gratification, nothing like the gratification that comes with actually accomplishing the erection of an edifice, especially an edifice such as no one ever has erected before. With this one has achieved all that is humanly possible. Even if going all the way in perfecting this work is sure to cost one all he has and has, in fact, destroyed him. The price for such an edifice as a work of art of one’s own, the only one of its kind in the world, cannot be less than everything,

“everything” underlined. At first we shy away from even conceiving such an idea, we’re terrified that it may in time take possession of us utterly and end by crushing us altogether, so Roithamer, while on the one hand we rise up against ourselves for the sake of the idea, on the other hand we resist the idea in self-defense, yet in the end it turns out to have been a revolt against ourselves and for the idea. The idea demands fulfillment, it demands realization and never stops demanding to be realized. One always wants to give it up, but one ends by not giving it up because one is by nature disinclined to give it up and in fact one sets about realizing the idea. Suddenly one’s head is full of nothing else, one has become the incarnation of one’s idea. And now one begins to reap the benefit of all one’s suffering, of one’s origins and everything connected with one’s origins, in my case everything connected with Altensam, everything being primarily and to begin with the story of one’s origins, even if it all consists of nothing but martyrdom. It all turns out to be useful, and the worst of the horrors are most useful of all.

There’s a chance of realizing one’s idea, because it is precisely the torments of one’s family history and the torments of the present, which is as much of a torment as one’s history has been, torment and nothing else, it is precisely these past and familial torments, if they are bad enough, the worst possible, which enable one to realize one’s idea to a high and even the highest degree.

The greater the idea and the higher our aim by way of that idea, the greater our historical and our familial torments are required to have been. Suddenly I realized what an enormous capital my idea could draw upon, in the accumulated capital of torments I had suffered from my family origins and my personal history and all the history connected with me in any way, and I was able to put all these resources to work, in full possession of my faculties, once I had them suddenly at my disposal. For what was Altensam to me other than family as a torment, history as a torment, the present as a torment, leaving out of account the few bright spots such as the quite extraordinary natural conditions here, the extraordinary rock formations, animals, plants andsoforth, as the only chance of retreat andsoforth, so Roithamer. Human, natural, and art history as torment, as the possibility of reaching my aim, so Roithamer. At the terminal point of the conditions that have always prevailed here. The basis, Altensam, “basis” underlined, on which I have been able to realize my idea, finish the Cone, hence Altensam and everything connected with Altensam was absolutely necessary, because each thing always derives from all the others, so Roithamer. The Cone, as it is, is unthinkable without Altensam, just as everything is unthinkable without everything else andsoforth, so Roithamer. The terrifying idea, so Roithamer, which, the more terrifying it is, the closer to realization it is. And so everything at the terminal point of my observations made in my childhood and youth in Altensam has been necessary toward the realization and completion of the Cone, everything about (and in) the Cone, everything else andsoforth, so Roithamer. By studying Altensam and my sister and trying to think Altensam and my sister through and by continuing to extend these efforts on and on until they could be extended no further, I enabled myself to build the Cone and realize and complete it. Because I let myself in for the sheer terror of this undertaking to build the Cone, let myself in for the monstrousness, “the monstrousness” underlined, of my life, so Roithamer. As if I had lived, existed, all along, all those years of development, which were nothing else than my development in the direction of the Cone, the direction of this monstrousness. One is called upon to approach and realize and complete the monstrousness, and everyone has some such enormity in his life, or else to be destroyed by this monstrousness even before one has entered into it. In this way people always tend to waver at a certain point in their lives, and always at the particular crucial point in their lives when they must decide whether to tackle the monstrousness of their life or let themselves be destroyed by it before they have tackled it. Most people prefer to let themselves be destroyed by this monstrousness rather than to tackle it, because they aren’t equipped by nature to tackle and realize and fulfill their monstrousness, they’re rather inclined, by nature, to let themselves be destroyed by their monstrousness before they have tackled it. The matured idea is enough in itself to destroy most people, so Roithamer. And such an enormity as a work of art, a lifework of art—regardless of what this monstrousness is, everyone has such a possibility in him, because his nature is in itself such a possibility—can only be tackled and realized and fulfilled with the whole of one’s being. In so tackling such a monstrousness we have entered into pure defenselessness, into being alone with ourselves within ourselves, alone with our idea as an enormity, and everything is against us.

Because we believe that we can’t do otherwise we keep wanting to give up, because we can’t know that we are by nature quite well equipped for such a monstrousness, which we begin to see only after we’ve realized and completed this monstrousness as an idea, just as I hadn’t known whether I was capable of building the Cone before the Cone was completed. But once we’ve reached our aim, we no longer know anything about the way to our aim and we keep finding it impossible to believe, for the rest of our lives our doubt keeps increasing and we can’t believe that we have reached our aim, the realization and completion of our idea as, for example, a Cone, so Roithamer. At the end, when we have reached our aim, no matter what aim, even if this aim is the building of a so-called work of art, we find ourselves frightened by it. Attempt at a description of Hoeller, of Hoeller’s wife and Hoeller’s garret: before I tackled the study of statics I went to Hoeller in order to observe Hoeller, first to observe Hoeller and then I studied his house, the house he built out of his own head and with his own hands, the study of one thing always presupposes the study of something else from which the first is derived. Hoeller had most readily taken me into his house and into his family, I’d felt that it wouldn’t be enough for me to just visit briefly in Hoeller’s house, but that I needed to live in it as long as necessary, free to observe him in person and his building construction and his family, in his house and together with all of them, as long as necessary, in the way in which I thought I would have to live there in order to be able to tackle the realization of my idea of building the Cone. For the idea of building the Cone, even Hoeller hadn’t been able to imagine a cone as a building, and Hoeller also had to consider my idea of building the Cone in the center of the Kobernausser forest as a crazy idea, I’d been able to observe that in him, for the idea to build the Cone could be realized only after I clearly understood Hoeller’s house, I’d said to Hoeller, and that it was necessary for me to use Hoeller’s garret as my base of operations, for Hoeller’s garret had always, from the first moment I saw it, seemed to me to be the ideal place in which to do my thinking. To observe and explore Hoeller’s house as well as Hoeller’s person was the first thing I had to do before I could tackle the realization of my plan to erect the Cone. I tried to make my intentions clear to Hoeller and he understood me immediately. And then Hoeller informed his family of my reasons for staying in his house, he even told the children for what purpose I would be living and staying with them for weeks at a time, quite on my own, to work on my idea. That I would have to explore the Hoeller house, understand it and explore it thoroughly, in order to begin planning my own building. To this end I needed nothing but perceptiveness and the proper application of my perceptiveness to the object under observation, namely, the Hoeller house. So I had brought nothing with me except the absolutely necessary and the will to be able to understand and explore the Hoeller house, to understand and explore the Hoeller house and also Hoeller himself and his state of mind and his family and the garret, which I had entered very early one day in April, because I had left Altensam so early that day in order that no one might see me leave, because I’d wanted to leave Altensam unseen, unnoticed, and I’d succeeded in doing that; when we’re about to do something unusual, something extraordinary, something like my idea of building the Cone, so Roithamer, we must proceed with all secrecy, keep all our activities as unknown as possible. And so, having arrived in Altensam from England the previous afternoon I’d gone down to Hoeller’s house late that same evening to discuss with Hoeller whether it might be possible for me to move into his house the very next morning, Hoeller understood at once, in the downstairs family room where they have their meals, this room too had been constructed and realized by Hoeller in every detail to serve precisely and ideally for the purpose of taking meals there with the whole family, ideally functional like all the rooms in Hoeller’s house, and I asked myself where he acquired his mastery of the art of building, which can be seen in every detail of his house, or which can at least be recognized, at least felt, in every detail, anyway; in the downstairs room where they all sat together at supper, I had entered almost at the same moment I knocked on the door, surprised by the silence in the room considering that all the Hoellers were sitting there, that they hadn’t spoken a word during the entire mealtime and Hoeller had only signed to me to sit down with them, his wife had immediately risen and brought me something to eat from the kitchen, something other than what they’d been eating, I don’t remember what they gave me to eat, all I remember is, it was something else, but without a word spoken the whole time, I’d wanted to say something to the children, but the children made it impossible for me by their silence alone to say anything to them, the same with Hoeller and his wife, so I hadn’t been able to bring up the purpose of my visit at any time during supper, no one asked me anything nor did I feel any need to talk, yet I’d only just come from Altensam and this very evening, fresh from an argument with my mother, which ended up as a violent argument of everybody against everybody in Altensam, as soon as I’d arrived a quarrel had broken out over a just completed paint job on the farm building, quite unnecessary in my opinion, which I noticed the minute I arrived at Altensam and which caused me to ask why the farm building, which I’d remembered as being outwardly in rather good condition, had suddenly had to be freshly painted for no reason at all, whether that had been my mother’s idea, I avoided calling it this crazy idea, this, characteristically for my mother, crazy and senseless and in my opinion really superfluous idea, but naturally my mother had heard, because she’s always lying in wait for it, what I hadn’t even said, as she always hears everything that isn’t said but is being thought against her, and I’ve always thought against her, all my life long I’ve always thought against my mother, though these thoughts were hardly ever spoken aloud, but she always heard it even when it wasn’t said aloud, which always led to quarrels at Altensam, I’d hardly set foot in the place and already there was a quarrel, even on this afternoon, I hadn’t even taken my traveling bag up to my room yet, but while still down in the hall, I couldn’t restrain myself and I asked my mother whose idea it was to put a fresh coat of color on the farm building, I said there was no need for a new color on the farm building, that the somewhat older, but not too old color, a reddish tint I believed, had suited the farm building much better, it had suited the whole character of the farm building on its east side, against the sunrise, it’s important to consider the situation of such a building when one has to decide on its color, now I could take no pleasure at all in the sight of the farm building, I’d said to my mother, whereas I’d always taken pleasure in seeing it when it was still that old reddish color, especially in the evening, but now it gave me no pleasure at all, I said, that it could only have been her idea, my mother’s idea, to touch up the farm building with this hideous green color and at such a huge needless expense for the paint job too, I’d been accusing my mother only in thought, but she, with her uncanny ear for everything I was thinking, had heard what I was only thinking as if I’d uttered it, although I’d never have said aloud what I was thinking because I was fully aware how it would affect her, nor had I meant to start an argument with my mother the minute I arrived at Altensam, after all I didn’t come to Altensam that often from England, that I could have afforded to start an argument with my mother, always on my way to Altensam, the closer I came to Altensam, the more I determined not to argue with my mother, on any account, to do all in my power to prevent an argument with my mother, but I’d hardly set foot in Altensam when, presto, I’d be having an argument with my mother, most of the time I’d hardly sat down before I found myself already deep in some argument or other with my mother, and her reproaches, which came fast and often very loud, to draw the rest of the family, soon there was no damming them up, and all that mutual dislike and all that mutual hatred, barely held back for a moment or for only a few brief moments, have now again broken out into the open, darkening the scene. I never feared anything so much in all my life as these arguments with my mother, but these arguments inevitably broke out, and they broke out within the first few moments we met, and there was no damming them up. On that afternoon, when I’d hoped to rest up in Altensam, after so many strenuous months, a whole long six months which seemed even longer in that dreadful English climate and seemed even more strenuous and really terrible, I’d hoped to relax in Altensam for longer than usual this time, as I’d planned to spend some time in Altensam, a place after all more conducive to relaxation than any other place, though it had never yet been really at my disposal for such a purpose, but instead, because of the fact that I’d seen the new color job on the farm building, that I’d seen it at once on arrival, and seen instantly what a tasteless color job it was, what a brainless color job, which had, as I instantly suspected, cost a heap of money besides, it was after all my money too, so then and there I had this argument with my mother, we were hurling all sorts of accusations at each other’s heads while at the same time saying over and over again, now I to her, then again she to me, saying calm down, will you, why don’t you calm down, we’d keep saying this almost perverse do calm down, do calm down, tossed back and forth between us, probably resulting only in our getting deeper and deeper into our argument until, in the end, we’d argued ourselves as always into a state of exhaustion, these arguments always ended with both of us in a state of total exhaustion, it was an effort and took the utmost willpower merely to keep upright after one of those battles, then, when mother invited me, at the utmost point of exhaustion from this argument, to have a bite with her in the kitchen, there was no one in it that day, cook was having her Tuesday off, to have a cup of tea, just a snack she had prepared for us with her own hands, a welcome-home snack as it were, so I followed mother into the kitchen and silently drank a cup of tea with her, naturally I ate nothing, I was simply in no condition to eat. Then, as we sat in the kitchen after our argument, so Roithamer, it was always basically the same thing, I arrive, we have our argument, we go in to drink tea, sitting in silence, totally exhausted, simply no longer capable of hating each other, we simply let go, sitting face to face, we let it go as it comes, as it is, nothing can be changed, suddenly she demands a description of my trip, how was my journey, was the weather in London good or bad, what had I been doing, my friends, my colleagues, she touched all these bases, but even the way she pronounced Cambridge, the way she said London, instantly aroused my anger against her again, the way she said Dover, the way she said Brussels, Cologne, all the time with her eyes on me, she’d question me with these cue-words that were always the same cue-words, every time I came home from England, she wanted to know everything, every detail, but I remained closemouthed, I was silence itself, as always. She couldn’t get a word out of me. I tried a bite of bread, choking on it, with her eyes on me, taking possession of me, as she thought. As always, my siblings were in their rooms, and I thought they were waiting in their rooms for our inevitable argument to be over, for us to have calmed down, as they thought, then they’d come down, to put in an appearance for their brother, who had withdrawn from all of them by going off to England.