Chapter 8 5

There are moments when new and old, pain and pleasure, fear and joy, mix wonderfully.Sometimes I am in heaven, sometimes I am in hell, and most of the time I am in both heaven and hell.The old Harry and the new Harry sometimes quarreled violently with each other and sometimes lived in harmony.Sometimes old Harry seemed to be dead and dead and buried in the ground, and suddenly he was in front of him again, commanding, bossy, and above all else, and the new, small, young Harry was ashamed, and he couldn't keep silent , being pushed to the back.At other times, the young Harry grabbed the old Harry by the neck and pointed at him. The two often struggled to the death, often groaning, thinking of using a razor for the rest of their lives.

Pain and happiness often hit me in one wave.For example, one night not many days after my first public dance, I went into my bedroom and found the beautiful Maria lying on my bed. Of all the surprises that Hermine put me through, this was the most unexpected.Because I have no doubt that this Paradise Island was sent to me by her.This evening happened to be an exception. I was not with Hermine, but was listening to old church music in the cathedral.It was a beautiful and sad excursion, a excursion into my former life, a excursion back to where I lived in my youth, to the places where the ideal Harry lingered.In the tall Gothic hall of the church, lit only by a few candles, in the dim light of the candles, the exquisite netted vaults swayed to and fro like ghosts; The works of Herscher, Bach and Haydn, I once again walked on the old road I loved, and heard the beautiful voice of a female singer who sang Bach songs that was once my friend. through her excellent singing.The sound of this ancient music, with its infinite dignity and holiness, awakened all the piety, joy, and ardor of my youth, and I sat sadly and contemplatively in the choir of the high cathedral, in this noble and eternal A guest for an hour in a world that was once my home.When I played a duet by Haydn, my eyes suddenly burst into tears, and I didn't wait for the concert to end, giving up the opportunity to meet the female singer again (oh, before, after a concert like this, I spent my time with the artists. How many exciting and lively nights have I had, sneaking out of the church quietly, wandering through the quiet alleys at night, tired of walking. Some parts of the street, the jazz band in the restaurant is playing the melody of my real life. Oh, How gray and confused my life has become!

During this evening excursion, I thought for a long time about my strange relationship to music, and realized once again that this touching and irritating relationship to music is the fate of the entire German spirit.Matriarchy dominates in the German spirit, blood ties are expressed in the form of music, which has never been found in other countries.Instead of rebelling bravely against this, and listening to and obeying spirit, reason, and the word, we spiritual beings revel in a language without words that can say the ineffable and describe the unshapeable. thing.Instead of using his instruments as faithfully and reliably as possible, the spiritual German is always against words and reason, flirting with music.He is so absorbed in music, in the beauty and grace of sound, in beautiful, intoxicating feelings and emotions which he has never been urged to fulfill, that he forgets to perform most of his true task.We spiritual beings are unfamiliar with reality, ignorant of it, hostile to it, and therefore in German reality, in our history, politics and public opinion, the role of the spirit is pitifully small.Admittedly, I often think about this question in this way, and sometimes feel that I have a strong desire to shape reality. This desire is to do something seriously and responsibly, not just a craft of studying aesthetics and messing with the spiritual liver.But the result is always to give up this effort and yield to fate.The generals and the heavy industrialists were right: we "spiritual men" get nowhere, we are a bunch of dispensable, disconnected, irresponsible brilliant bombasts.Phew, to hell!Pick up the razor!

My head was full of thoughts, the reverberation of the concert in my ears, my heart was full of grief, full of desperate longing for life, for reality, for meaning, for what was irretrievably lost forever, to finally come home.I went up the stairs, went in and lit the lamp, trying to read something but couldn't.I thought of the date that loneliness had forced me to drink whiskey and dance at the Jersey Water Bar tomorrow night, and I felt a pang of resentment, not only at myself but at Hermine.Although she was a wonderful girl, and had good intentions for me--at the time, she might as well have let me be destroyed, she should not have dragged me into the water, dragged me into this chaotic, strange, grotesque world of entertainment, in this I am forever a stranger to the world, and the best things in me suffer and fade away.

So I sadly turned off the lights, sadly went into the bedroom, and sadly began to undress.At this time, I smelled a strange fragrance, and I was startled. It was a faint smell of perfume. I looked around and saw the beautiful Maria lying on my bed.She was smiling, slightly embarrassed, and her blue eyes were wide open. "Maria!" I called out to her.My first thought was that if my landlord found out, she would repossess the property. She said softly: "I'm here, are you angry with me?" "No, I know it was Hermine who gave you the key. Didn't I?" "Oh, you're angry about it, and I'm going."

"No, beautiful Maria, please stay! It's just that I'm sad tonight, I can't be happy today, and I may be happy again tomorrow." I bent down slightly towards her, and she suddenly took my head in her two big, strong hands and moved down, kissing me for a long time.I sat down on the bed next to her, took her hand, and asked her to speak softly, because we couldn't be heard.I looked at her beautiful and plump face, like a big flower, strangely and wonderfully on my pillow.She slowly brought my hand to her mouth, under the covers, and on her warm, quiet, even-breathing chest.

"You don't need to be happy, Hermine told me, you have a lot of troubles. Anyone can understand that. Do I still appreciate your heart, you were so lovely when we danced together not long ago." I kiss her eyes, mouth, neck and breasts.Just now when I thought of Hermine, I was annoyed and scolded her.Now I hold her gift in my hand, very gratefully.Maria's caresses did not embarrass me, I listened to this wonderful music today, and I feel that she is completely suitable for this music, she is the realization of musical ideals.I slowly lifted the quilt from the beauty and kissed her all over, right down to her feet.When I lay next to her, her flower-like face looked at me kindly, as if she knew everything.

That night, lying beside Maria, I did not sleep long, but slept soundly and soundly like a child.We woke up several times, while I enjoyed her fine, lively youth, and we talked in low tones, and I heard many things worth knowing about her life with Hermine.I knew very little of this type of people and their lives before, and only in the theater did I meet them, men and women, half artist, half playboy.Only now do I get a glimpse of the lives of these strange, strangely innocent, strangely depraved people.Most of these girls came from poor and humble backgrounds, but they were very smart and good-looking, so they didn't want to spend their whole lives in a low-paying and joyless occupation. The handsome and charming life.Sometimes they work at typewriters for several months, sometimes they become quite rich fair lovers, receiving pocket money and gifts, sometimes they wear satin, they have cars, they live in Jiahua hotels, and sometimes they live in small houses. Attic, although in some cases they would marry someone who offered a high price, but on the whole they were not enthusiastic about marriage.- Some of them have no desire for love, they bargain, and only when the other party pays a great price, they reluctantly sell themselves to him.Others—Maria belongs to this category—have an extraordinary talent for love, need love very much, most of them have experience of love with both sexes; love is their only purpose in life. There have always been other kinds of love relationships besides the friends who are friends and payers.These butterflies are so tireless, busy, full of worries and frivolous, intelligent, numb life, live an innocent and well-arranged life, they are not attached to anyone, not everyone can buy them with money They hope to get their share from luck and good objective conditions. They love life, but they are not as persistent as ordinary citizens. They are always ready to follow a prince in a fairy tale into his life. Palace, they were always dimly aware of their tragic end.

On that incredible first night and the days that followed, Maria taught me a lot, not only new elegant and lovely sensual games and erotic pleasures, but new realizations, new perspectives , new love.Teahouses, restaurants, dance halls, bars, theater entertainment venues, the world formed by all these, to me, a lonely person and an esthetician, always contains some vulgar, morally unacceptable, and demeaning things, but to me To Maria, Hermine, and their companions, this was their whole world, neither good nor bad, neither worth pursuing nor hating, their short, longing lives in Blooming and bearing fruit in this world, they feel familiar and intimate in this world.Just as we love a composer or a poet, they love champagne or a special roast cooked in front of guests; As passionate and excited as they are to a new pop dance number or a jazz singer's sentimental song.Maria told me about the beautiful Pablo the saxophonist, about an American song he sometimes sang for them, and she talked about it with more attention, with more admiration, than any highly educated person could ever talk about. I was even more moved by the deep ecstasy shown when talking about elegant artistic enjoyment.I was ready to revel with her, no matter what the song; Maria's kind words, her wistful, radiant eyes, opened long and wide gaps in my aesthetic.It is true that there are some beautiful things, and in my opinion, these pseudo few selected beautiful things - although at the top of the list, Mozart is undoubtedly very sublime, but where is the line?We pundits and critics loved passionately in our youth.Don’t we feel suspicious and bad about certain artworks and artists today?Isn't that true of Liszt and Wagner for us?Wasn't even Beethoven in the eyes of many?Maria also had a great childlike feeling for the songs from America, not the same pure, beautiful, unquestionably sublime artistic feeling, as a teacher felt when he read Tristan , the passion of a certain orchestra conductor when conducting the Ninth Symphony?Doesn't this coincide strangely with Mr. Pablo's opinion, surely he is right?

Maria also seemed to love this Pablo, the handsome man! "He's a handsome man," I said, "and I like him very much. But tell me, Maria, how else do you like me, a dull, boring old fellow? I'm not pretty, and I've got gray hair , who can neither play the saxophone nor sing English love songs. " "Don't say it so horrible!" she criticized me. "It's very natural. I like you too. There's something beautiful, cute, and special about you. You can only be you and nothing else. These things shouldn't be talked about, and you can't ask for an explanation. You see, when you kiss my neck or my ears, I feel that you like me and I like you; when you kiss me a little shyly, it tells me: he likes you, he appreciates your beauty. That's what I like very much. And with the other man, I like the exact opposite, he doesn't seem to like me, he kisses me like it's a favor he's doing to me."

We fell asleep again.When I woke up again, I still had my beautiful and beautiful flowers in my arms. really weird!This beautiful flower is always a gift from Hermine!She always stood behind her, always covering her like a mask.I suddenly thought of Erica, my exasperated lover from afar, my poor girlfriend.She was no less handsome than Maria, only less youthful, less dissolute, and less erotic, and she stood before me for a moment like a picture, clear and painful, lovely. Deeply intertwined with my fate, and then gradually she sank again, into sleep, forgotten, into some mournful distance. that's it.On this beautiful tender evening, many images from my life came to me one after another. I had lived a very empty life for a long time, with no imagination in my head.Now, once opened by the magic of emotion, the images keep pouring in, and at some point, my heart seems to stop beating because of the joy and sorrow.Ah, once upon a time, how rich was the gallery of my life, and how filled the soul of poor Steppenwolf with high and eternal stars and constellations!A happy childhood and a loving mother appeared in front of my eyes like a distant mountain covered in blue mist, and my affectionate chorus sounded in my ears, with a clear voice. Man—Helvina's soul brother—begins this loving chorus of portraits of women I loved and sang of, like lotuses just emerging from the water, swimming toward me, so fragrant and dark, Desiring them, but I've only had contact with a few of them, trying to possess them.My wife was there too, and I spent many years with her, and she taught me about friendship, conflict, and depression, and the short time we lived together left a deep trust in her that I later , looking sick and delirious, she suddenly left me without saying goodbye.At this time, I saw that her dishonesty hit me so hard and my whole life, which shows how much I love her and how much I trust her. These hundreds of pictures, named or unnamed, came to my eyes again, and again poured out of the well of this night of love, each one so new and so bright, I understood again, what I had forgotten for a long time in my poverty what is it.I forgot that these pictures are the property of my life, the value of my life, and they will live on indestructibly.I can forget all these experiences of becoming a star, but I can’t eliminate them. Stringing these experiences together is the legend of my life, and their star-like brilliance is the indestructible value of my life.My life is very hard, bumping into walls everywhere, very unfortunate, depressing, life-denying.I have tasted all the ills of life and fortune, and yet I have lived richly, proudly and abundantly, and lived like a king even when I was poor.Even if the time before going to see God will be a waste of time, the core of my life is noble, and I live with integrity. It is not about the gains and losses of a few Finneys, but the pursuit of the sun, the moon and the stars. After a while, many things happened and many things changed. I can't recall many details of that night. The facial expressions and movements, recalling the bright moment when he fell asleep tiredly and woke up after the carnival.It was on that night that, for the first time since my life had failed me, that my own life looked at myself with relentlessly shining eyes, and I once again saw chance as fate, and the ruins of my life as divine fragments. .My soul began to breathe again, my eyes opened again, and for a split second I had a fervent foreboding that I would just have to bring these scattered pictures together and make my own Harry Harrell-esque Steppenwolf life as a whole Sublimated into a picture, I myself can enter the world of this picture, and go down in history forever.Isn't this our goal, and isn't every life an attempt towards it? Maria and I had breakfast the next morning, and I smuggled her out of the building without being caught.When I was growing up, I rented a small house in a nearby urban area for our trysts. My dance teacher, Hermine, was faithful and always on time, so I had to learn the Boston waltz.She was strict and exact, and gave me no less of a lesson; for it was already decided that I would go with her to the next masquerade.She asked me to give her money for a costume, but she refused to tell me anything about the costume.She always forbade me to see her or ask where she lived. There were nearly three weeks until the masquerade, and it was a wonderful time.Maria, it seems, was the first real lover I ever met.I have always demanded intelligence and culture from the women I have loved before, and I have not fully noticed that even the most intelligent and relatively the most cultured women never give an answer to the reason in me, but always Against my reason; I go to these women with all my problems and thoughts, but to a man who has hardly read a book, hardly knows what reading is, even Tchaikovsky and Bedau The girl Fern couldn't tell the difference, and I'd love her for more than an hour, I find that totally impossible.Maria had no education, no need for these detours and substitutes, and her problems all arose directly from the senses.Her art and her task are to use her natural senses, her special figure, her colors, her hair, her voice.Skin, using her temperament, to try to obtain the happiness of sensuality and love, to find and trigger the answer and understanding of her every skill, every curve of her body, and her charming posture in the person who loves her, Use her victories to induce the opponent to actively cooperate and make pleasing actions.I felt it the first time I danced shyly with her, already smelling some genius, very civilized sensuality, and I was captivated by her.It must have been no accident that the all-knowing Hermine sent me this Maria.Her whole demeanor is so cheerful and fresh, and her whole body exudes a fragrance of roses. I am not Maria's only or particularly favored lover, I am not honored, I am only one of her many lovers.She often has no time for me, sometimes giving me an hour in the afternoon and even less often an evening.She doesn't want my money, which is probably what Hermine meant.But she was very willing to accept gifts, and I gave her a new little red leather purse with a gold coin or two in it, and I didn't mind it.However, I gave a small red purse, and she really laughed at me!The purse was lovely, but outdated, a slow seller in the store.I didn't know any of these things before, I didn't understand them at all, just like I knew nothing about the Eskimo language.I learned a lot from Maria.First of all, I understand that these gadgets, these fashionable goods and luxury goods are not just flashy decorations, not just inventions of greedy factory owners and businessmen. The world of real, or rather big things—from powdered perfume to dancing shoes, from rings to cigarette cases, from belt buckles to bags, etc., is countless.The only purpose of these items is to serve love, to make the feeling more delicate, to animate the dead environment, and to equip the dead environment with new love organs like magic.A handbag is not a handbag, a purse is not a purse, a flower is not a flower, a fan is not a fan, everything is love, magic, exciting physical matter, messengers, black marketers, weapons, calls to battle. I often wonder who Maria is in love with.Her favorite, I believe, is Pablo on the saxophone.His dark eyes showed a dull light, and his slender white fingers looked noble and sad.Maria firmly told me that although it took a long time to ignite Pablo's passion, once he did, he was hotter, stronger, rougher, and more powerful than any boxer or horseman. Manly, if it weren't for Maria's words.I thought he didn't have much desire in love and was delicate and passive.In this way, I heard the secrets of these people one by one, knew the secrets of a certain jazz musician, a certain actor, certain women and girls, certain men around us, I knew all kinds of secrets, saw I got familiar with and entered this environment gradually (I used to be an isolated foreign body in this world) after getting rid of all kinds of connections and hostility under the surface.I have also heard a lot about Hermine.Especially I was often with Pablo whom Maria was very much in love with.She also needed those secret narcotics from time to time, and she always let me share them, and Pablo was always kind enough to help me.Once, he said to me very frankly: "You are so unfortunate, it's not good, it shouldn't be like this, I feel sorry for you. You smoke some light opium." The opinions of the people who were tested often changed, we became good friends, and I often took a little of those narcotics.I love Maria, he watched with a little bit of glee, and once he had a "celebration" in his room.He lived on the top floor of a hotel in the suburbs. There was only one chair in the room, and Maria and I had to sit on the bed.He poured us a drink, a mysterious and exotic liqueur mixed from three small bottles.After a while, I was in a good mood, and his eyes lit up magically, and he suggested that the three of us should be in love together.I refused without saying a word, I thought this nonsense was too much, but I gave Maria a sideways look to see how she reacted, and although she immediately agreed with me, I still saw it in her eyes. There's a blazing fire, and it feels like she's giving up on doing so with great regret.My refusal disappointed Pablo, but he didn't feel it broke his heart. "Unfortunately," he said, "Harry's got too many moral scruples. There's no way. It's beautiful, it's beautiful, but I have a way around it." The three of us Everyone smoked a few mouthfuls of opium, sat motionless, and went through the scene with open eyes, while Maria trembled with joy.After a while I felt a little unwell and Pablo put me on the bed and gave me some medicine and I lay there for a few minutes with my eyes closed.At this moment, I felt someone kiss me lightly on each eyelid.I let him kiss me, as if I thought it was Maria who was mine.Actually I knew it was Pablo who kissed me. One night he surprised me even more.He came to my room and told me that he wanted twenty francs and begged me to give him this money.As a condition, he can give Maria to me tonight. "Pablo surprised me." "You don't know what you're talking about!"To give up a lover for another's money seems to us the most vile thing.Just pretend I didn't hear your advice, Pablo. " He looked at me sympathetically. "You don't want it, Mr. Harrell. Well, you're going to have trouble with yourself. If you don't want it, then you won't sleep with Maria; give me the money, and I'll pay you back. I need it urgently. " "What is it for?" "To Agostino, you know, he's the little man who plays the second violin. He's been sick for eight days, nobody cares about him, he's broke, and now I've run out of money." Partly out of curiosity, partly to punish myself a little, I followed him to see Agostino.Agostino lived in a very rough attic.Pablo brought him milk and medicines, made his bed, opened the windows to ventilate the air, and put a damp cloth on the hot head of the patient to cool it down, all with the clean, gentle, skilled movements of a good nurse.That night, I saw him play again at Satie's until dawn. Hermine and I talked long and objectively about Maria, about her hands, her shoulders, her waist, how she laughed, how she kissed, how she danced. "Has she already taught you new ways to kiss?" Hermione asked once, describing the peculiar movement of the tongue during kissing.I asked her to perform for me herself, but she seriously refused. "That's for later," she said. "I'm not your lover yet." I asked her where she had learned about Maria's kissing skills and certain secret features of her life that only a man who loved her would know. "Oh," got up, "we're friends! Do you think we have any secrets between each other? I've slept with her a lot, and played with her. Well, now you've got a pretty girl, and she'll more than others." "But, Hermine, I'm sure you still have secrets between each other. Have you told her everything you know about me?" "No, it's different here, and she won't understand these things. Maria is a wonderful girl, and you're very lucky, but there are things between you and me she doesn't understand at all. Of course, I told her a lot about you, You certainly didn't like it when I told her so much, but I had to seduce her and get her interested in you! But when it comes to understanding you, my friend, she will never understand you as I do, and no one else will. That's how I understand you. I've learned something from her too, and Maria knows everything about you, and I know everything about you. I know you as well as we used to sleep together." When I met Maria again, I heard that she loved Hermine as much as I did, that she kissed, tasted, tried her limbs, hair, and skin as she kissed my limbs, hair, and skin. .I think it's really weird and mysterious.New, indirect, complex relationships and connections, new possibilities in love and life appeared before me, and I was reminded of the statement in the Steppenwolf treatise about a thousand souls.