as translated by Vincent Kling
Gert Jonke, who died last year just shy of 63, depicted with grace and mad humor what his fellow Austrian Hermann Broch once called the “jolly apocalypse” (“die fröhliche Apokalypse”) that accompanied the collapse of Europe from 1914 to 1945 and that’s anything but past and gone in the era of the European Union. The three short works here are a farewell tribute meant to show various related aspects of Jonke’s art. The first is a letter to his baby son Hans, who died suddenly at age four months, and is taken from a book that mingles fiction, autobiography, reminiscences, tributes to friends, and brilliant essays on music. “Hyperbole 1,” from a series of snapshots or vignettes in drama form called Insektarium, is one of several studies by Jonke showing the social origins of perception and memory. In his last few years, “Leavetaking” became Jonke’s much-anticipated signature piece.
Letter to Hans
You probably don’t remember much about when you went away, took “French leave,” as they call it. Who could have even explained to you then, in any way that would have fit inside your head, that you’re really not supposed to do it like that? Besides, it wouldn’t have been worth asking about, and the question wouldn’t have deserved an answer, if you had reached the age where you could have slowly learned to read these few belated lines, the first and last ones ever addressed to you; be happy, though, that the people who know everything and have all the answers never got you into their clutches and started trying to get you to answer questions you would find completely incomprehensible—not because these people were looking forward to your answers with burning anticipation but only because they were demanding you should be burned—burned up or burned out—by their highly drilled activity of rote memorization and constant repetition, parroting material in every one of their mandatory school subjects for endless hours and weeks until all the imagination is burned out of children’s heads. You were spared that, anyway, along with everything inevitably following from it, when you were four months old and began moving away from us, something all of us around you at first very steadfastly tried to prevent. And oh yes, it was a true liftoff of your little body, good and slow—not from the floor, no, not from the ground, but directly away from me; the time was noon, because I remember the bells being shaken through the window into the room by the sun at the height of summer and their washing the remains of the drowsy morning from my temples; I remember the hollows behind the walls of my sinuses suddenly being rinsed clear so that my skull bolted upright into the midst of the hollow room, from the highest corners of which the walls began flinging down on me a glittering, moist storm of mortar with all the crumbling ridicule of its wallpaper tatters loosened by laughter; that was when I first saw how you had lifted yourself off me and were trying to get completely away from me. You had slept next to me all morning, on me, really, lying on my chest, which you liked; you always did like it, except that day—apparently not any more, at least not that day, anyway, and then all I saw was how you had lifted yourself quite far off me by now, how you’d raised yourself really high and had drifted up, the distance growing and growing until your little body had practically soared up to the ceiling, fled away as if dissolving into the air of the room, become as good as “transparent,” though I succeeded at the very last minute, seemingly at least, in bringing you back down, getting hold of you again, intercepting you in flight, retrieving you, and so then I had you again and was holding you fast before you could slip away completely—no wonder, either, for the storm that had broken loose in the room had probably frightened you very much, and the whole room still had a totally frowning, wrinkled, furrowed, creased, beetle-browed, furiously enraged-looking ceiling! Anyone would become afraid! Still, I had been able to get you back at the last minute and hold you fast, as I said, and so it seemed things were turning out at least halfway right in the end. But then when I tried to wake you, your head started falling back and kept on just hanging down—for such a long time; it’s still going on today—even though I was trying to feed you some warm broth so you’d gain strength. Things kept on like this for some time, though, and that’s when I got scared. I called a taxi and dashed off with you to the nearest hospital, where I asked them to take us both into their care. The only thing they knew to do was to wrap you up in a tangle of tubes, because they thought you must be cold. Or did they want you confined in a labyrinth like that because they were thinking they could resolutely prevent your going away, your lifting off from the globe in this way? Dear Hans! It’s already frightening enough to see an adult locked inside one of those heart-lung machines, but when it’s an infant—I only hope you didn’t even notice what was happening, and I’m assuming that in the course of the thunderstorm inside the room earlier a couple of lightning bolts hit you hard enough that you never felt a thing after that. Later on they requested me to bring some decent clothes for you, and when I gave the morgue official the overalls you’d embellished a few weeks before with a huge strawberry stain, his deeply reproachful look—it stayed with me for a long time—held a strong reprimand after the fact for your untidy manners . . .
Later, at the grave, a very sweet, very aged clergyman said I shouldn’t be too sad about your untimely disappearance, because in all probably you hadn’t really and truly disappeared at all. For the fact was that in times to come, in future days and years, you would be with me, even though I wouldn’t be able to notice it very clearly—and, he went on, the way I’d see that you were with me is in how you would sometimes help my eyes to go flying very swiftly out of my head like a pair of darting wrens, circling the globe once and then telling me all about the world in great detail without my having to take the trip myself. And how nothing bad would happen to my eyebirds on their travels; they wouldn’t go and drown in the very first waterfall of light they came to, if maybe you’d look after them, keep an eye on them a little so they’d come back safe and sound and able to give dependable reports on all the latest going on in the world; you’d see to it and you’d help in many other ways as well—is this what he meant, that aged clergyman? Anyway, you can believe me when I tell you my eyesight has grown much sharper since then. Because I trust my eyes more and more since then, entrust more and more to them, so that their absence from my head is more frequent. Even so, I’m not anywhere nearly as blind as I was then, because the memories of the stories my eyes tell during their moments of absence convey so keen a sense of things to me that I can never again allow this globe, this earth of ours, simply to drift into forgetfulness.
Thank you so much for everything.
Hyperbole 1
He and She are sitting as if on raised audience benches and looking out into the auditorium, as if they were watching a circus performance.
He: Now comes the standard tightrope walk. I don’t envy the man doing it.
She: He’s already reached the middle of the rope. How daring! It’s amazing that some eyes are tossing blank looks of contempt right between his legs to make him stumble and falter. But he’s defending himself tooth and nail, or arm and leg anyway; he’s making every effort to thrust away the air behind him like a mule kicking backwards.
He: No he’s not, he’s giving a sign, a forceful slipping and sliding backwards with both his heels; he’d doing it on purpose to give his assistant down below a very specific sign. Do you understand?
She: Yes, because this sign results in both rope walkers’ freeing themselves altogether unexpectedly, suddenly, and simulaneously, so that the rope, even without being attached, nonetheless hangs in air like a straight line that can bear the weight of the one artist still traversing it, like a horizontal pole, without his plunging to the ground at once.
He: Now the rope has turned into a gigantic snake and is wrapping itself around the artist’s body, preparing to squeeze him to death.
She: No, you’re mistaken. Don’t you see that the rope is wrapping itself in a loving embrace around the body of the dancer in air and trying to protect him, to help cushion his body from the plunge down to the ring, no doubt left filthy on purpose, that’s now about to take place; do you see?
He: You’re right. I bet he won’t even mess up his hair.
She: But where’s the artist now? He probably wanted to do nothing but just slip away with his failure.
He: No, no, this is something different now. This next act is what’s known as the “escape number.”
She: It looks now as if he’s trying with all his heart to work free of his entanglement in that cumbersome, gigantic mass of colossally piled-up, coiled ship-towing cable. And in fact, he’s becoming more and more visible all the time, as if he were an emerging pupa. But no, not quite yet, but still you can see him, yes, there he is; maybe he’s being just a little too brash now, simply popping out that way right in front of our eyes so he can complete his transformation within full sight of us, just like that.
He: Yes, exactly like a sphinx moth coming out of its cocoon, isn’t he?
She: The audience doesn’t know what to think. No real tightrope walking, no dancing in air. Not even a botched act or an injured artist. The audience is finding this escape number pretty feeble, even if it is placed on purpose under the guise of a botched tightrope walk, because he wasn’t even the one who untied the knots.
He: There he is, the artist. Listen to the ovations! He’s simply allowing all the laughter to enter the arena of his face and then to exit, and then bowing once more, then exiting again and making another entrance and radiantly bowing to the audience. If we weren’t to tear ourselves away, if we were to keep looking on to this laughter he’s conjuring up so artfully, well, for the next few hours or maybe even all night or for days and days after this we’d . . .
She: But isn’t that why we came here in the first place?
He: Yes, of course. And now all of a sudden the audience is really thrilled and is starting to go berserk. And even if you’d never in your life seen all these smiles before, you’d think right away you were seeing them again and are being recognized on a personal basis. Fantastic! Amazing.
She: Come on. Let’s go down to see the artist and request his autograph. Then maybe we can bask in his smile from close up. Like a little sun. Come quick.
Leavetaking
Farewell Speaker: Now before we arrive at the point of general dispersal, I would very much like to convey to all of you, to each and every one of you, that is, meaning all and sundry without exception, my express admiration at how you all—“all” referring to an entirety, a collective entity—have borne with me for so long, right up to this present moment, that is. You see, I ordinarily, which is to say as a general rule, can’t bear with anyone for very long, certainly not as long as you, each and every one of you, have borne with me. In the place of any and all of you I would normally have long since been up and gone by now. In the place of any or all of you, I would normally not even have turned up here to begin with, in fact, all the more not had I known that I were to be in any way involved in any of the present proceedings. But while sharing this time together amongst or amidst—that is simply to say with—each and every one of you, I have felt so very happy as to be entirely unable to tell you, at least not at this point, the last time I felt so happy being together with anyone—whether it be one person or several people, or animals, vegetables, or minerals—as I now feel with you.
It strikes me as totally absurd that you and I—you as a communal or collective entity, encompassing all and sundry—should have gathered together for the first time only today and hence not have made one another’s acquaintance until just now.
It quite simply surpasses my powers of comprehension that I should never have gathered together with you, all and sundry considered collectively, at any point in time before today’s date, as of which moment—the present one, of course—we are indeed and in fact gathered together, “we” meaning I with you, aggregately and collectively! It’s my stated belief that we—you as a collective aggregation and I—would have had no need to gather together for any such thing as a “first time” with a view toward establishing mutual acquaintance.
As of now, however, we’ve been sitting together for quite a long while.
We really must meet again soon.
For the time being, let’s say that we, taken all together—you in the collective or aggregate and I—will meet once every two weeks. All of you together with me. My hearing is very sharp, incidentally, and it’s telling me now that there is no desire you—meaning each and every one of you—harbor more keenly than to meet and gather together with me.
Let’s say once a week at the tavern here, where your association convenes, and why not right away next week, as I’ve said, whereupon, having proposed which, I would like now to extend an invitation for you all to come—for each and every one of you, that is—to come visit me at home. Please come and enjoy my hospitality, but you all need to come, all and sundry, without exception, and everyone please needs to be on time!
Only if all of you, excluding not one single soul, shall have assembled not only on time but all together, as a complete contingent, without one single person being absent, as you have done today in this hall, would I be in a position to put in my own appearance, as I have done today, so that all of us, you and I considered as a collective and aggregate assemblage, might meet once again.
And when you come to visit me in my penthouse apartment, to which, as I’ve said, I am herewith inviting you, aggregately and in your full number, to gather together on my roof terrace—on which there is more or less room for just about as many people as you are when all present and accounted for in full contingent without anyone falling over the edge, or at least not very often—when you come to visit me, at any rate, all and sundry fully assembled, I must insist that you all arrive at the same time, all together as a full contingent. If you should wish to come visit me and should not be able to come as a numerically complete contingent, I simply will not be able to admit you. You can also at any time, whenever you wish, come to pay me a visit on the terrace of my penthouse, and you needn’t give any notice in advance; feel free to come at any hour of the day or night, at four in the morning or any other time, as far as I’m concerned, but only under the proviso that you all arrive and present yourselves, collectively and aggregately assembled, all present and accounted for, as a full contingent.
For that matter, moreover, we can gather together at any time or any place, in any location anywhere, for as long as you like, and all of you—each and every one, all and sundry—and myself, could stay together throughout the complete span of the remainder of our lives, anywhere at all, if you taken all together and I should happen to want it that way, but then only if you are always all together in your entirety. For if even one of you is absent, then we—you and I considered as an aggregation—would simply no longer be what we now are.
My wish, then, is always and ever to engage with all of you only as a corporate, collective entity and aggregate assemblage.
All of you—meaning each and every one, all and sundry, said collective entity—are most heartily and cordially welcome to come visit me at any time, always and everyone, but there is at no time ever to be any engaging with any single one of you separately, as an individual.
For various reasons I simply cannot do that.
In addition, I would not recognize or acknowledge any single, individual one of you by yourselves, as a distinct and separate entity, should I happen to encounter you on the street, and why indeed should I, since I know you all as a complete assemblage, not on any isolated, single, separate, individual basis.
Accordingly, I take no interest whatever in any individual one of you viewed as a single or separate entity, meaning that I am altogether indifferent to any or each one of you considered singly or individually, which is, furthermore, how it must be.
Only if all of you, the collective entity or assembled communality, should happen to encounter me on the street would I be able to acknowledge you. All of you together, in your entirety, the aggregate assemblage, you understand. That should be clear, I think. Were any individual one of you to come visit me alone, singly, on an isolated or separate basis, I would be entirely unable to place you, the individual, single visitor, into anything even approaching the context of “us,” meaning the aggregate assemblage of the collective, communal entity. You do understand me, I hope?
After all, I have always understood all of you perfectly well, even though not a single one of you has ever uttered one single word.
Accordingly, I would therefore advise every single one of you not to turn up under any circumstances on a separate or individual basis at my place of residence. I would have to slam the door right in the face of any stranger, which is of course what you would be, or would have to have such a person thrown out like a panhandler or peddler before a single word could be uttered. I also feel constrained to recommend to each and every one of you that no individual, separately or in isolation, make any solitary effort, in any manner, shape, or form, even to think of growing argumentative or pugnacious with me.
I simply cannot allow rumors to begin spreading to the effect that I at any time ever went cow-tipping with any individual one of you as a solitary or separate entity. I would not at all mind, on the other hand, if rumors were to be bruited abroad that it’s long been my practice to go cow-tipping with all of you as an aggregate or collective assemblage, whether occasionally or fairly often, or very often, or even constantly, for that matter, provided rumor has it that I’ve been doing it with all and sundry, communally; nay, I would even relish the spread of a rumor—so what if just as a matter of idle gossip or on the basis of common hearsay?—to the effect that I have never preferred to do anything more with all of you as an aggregate communality, that I indeed have never in fact done anything other than engage with all of you taken together and collectively in the activity of cow-tipping.
All of you together, the whole aggregation, and myself.
I’m prepared at any time to do anything whatsoever for you all as a collective entity, a group taken together, whereas for any single or individual one of you in isolation I would quite unable even to lift my little finger.
So now we can begin meeting fairly often and on a regular basis.
We’ll proceed from gathering once every two weeks to gathering once a week.
Then we’ll start meeting several times a week.
And every now and then perhaps even every day.
Sometimes here, sometimes there, sometimes here where you all are now, all and sundry in full aggregate assemblage and sometimes up on the terrace in my penthouse. I know we’re all looking forward to it a great deal.
