" . . . May you be damned! I took you for an outstanding man, for a genius, I loved you, but you turned out a madman" . . .
Anton Chekov, The Black Monk.
. . . a madman who . . .
Feodor Dostoevsky, The Insulted and Injured.
. . . drives one yet faster into the abyss.
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Case of Wagner.
What made this emotion so overpowering was—how shall I define it?—the moral shock I received, as if something altogether monstrous, intolerable to thought and odious to the soul, had been thrust upon me unexpectedly.
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness.
Although some might see . . .
Senator John Ashcroft, Statement Concerning Impeachment of President William Jefferson Clinton (February 12, 1999).
. . . loving concern in Wagner's opening the subject; others might perceive a fearsome destructiveness.
Robert W. Gutman, Richard Wagner: The Man, His Mind, His Music.
But both the diabolic love and the unearthly hate of the mysteries it had penetrated fought for the possession of that soul . . .
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness.
. . . that mystery called Wagner . . .
Robert W. Gutman, Richard Wagner: The Man, His Mind, His Music.
. . . satiated with primitive emotions, avid of lying fame, of sham distinction, of all the appearances of success and power.
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness.
This graceless . . .
Jeffrey Toobin, A Vast Conspiracy: The Real Story of the Sex Scandal that Nearly Brought Down a President.
. . . ambivalence . . .
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams.
. . . suggested to me . . .
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness.
. . . a metaphor for a larger lesson of the case—
Jeffrey Toobin, A Vast Conspiracy: The Real Story of the Sex Scandal that Nearly Brought Down a President.
I daresay . . .
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness.
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil.
Did you ever hear of such a thing?
Joseph Conrad, The Secret Sharer.
"Wagner is rich in malicious ideas, but what do you say to his having exchanged letters on the subject (even with my doctors) to voice his belief that my altered way of thinking was a consequence of unnatural excesses, with hints at pederasty?"
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century quoting Nietzsche.
Preposterous, isn't it?
Joseph Conrad, The Secret Sharer.

_________________________________________________________________

The most dangerous physicians . . .
Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human.
. . . Nietzsche later wrote, . . .
Robert W. Gutman, Richard Wagner, His Life, His Mind, His Music.
. . . are those who, as born actors, employ a perfect art of deception to imitate the born physician.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human.
“What happened?”
Truddi Chase, When Rabbit Howls.
“Do you want to know?”
Michael Chabon, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh: A Novel.
It’s not a story I like telling very much even now. I’ll make it as short as I can.
Somerset Maugham, Straight Flush.
Plagued by his own physical deterioration and embarking on the composition of his final music drama, . . .
Marc A. Weiner, Richard Wagner and the Anti-Semitic Imagination.
. . . Parsifal, . . .
Peter Gay, Freud, Jews and Other Germans.
. . . Wagner turned . . .
Marc A. Weiner, Richard Wagner and the Anti-Semitic Imagination.
. . . day by day . . .
Richard Wagner, Parsifal.
. . . to the scornful examination of an increasingly undevoted friend, and especially of his sexuality, in an effort to preserve the integrity of the Self.
Marc A. Weiner, Richard Wagner and the Anti-Semitic Imagination.
He was filled with a virtuoso collection of wounds and angers . . .
Leonard Garment, Crazy Rhythm.
His ancient, emaciated body looked as though it were already attacked by the corruption of death.
Somerset Maugham, Straight Flush.
Tuesday, October 23 R. again had a wretched night; abdominal troubles—he reads . . .
Cosima Wagner’s Diaries (Tuesday, October 23, 1877).
. . . into the small hours, . . .
Somerset Maugham, Straight Flush.
. . . feels cold.
Cosima Wagner’s Diaries (Tuesday, October 23, 1877).
He cackled softly.
Ellen Glasgow, Jordan’s End.
‘What’s the good of going to bed when you can’t sleep?’
Somerset Maugham, Straight Flush.
In the afternoon he writes a long letter to Dr. Eiser in Frankfurt, who wrote a detailed report about our friend Nietzsche's state of health. R. says, "He . . .
Cosima Wagner’s Diaries (Tuesday, October 23, 1877).
. . . Professor N. . . .
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams.
. . . is more likely to listen to the friendly advice of a medical man than to the medical advice of a friend."
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (Tuesday, October 23, 1877).
A smile flickered across his cunning little face and behind his thick glasses his rheumy eyes twinkled with ironic glee. He looked incredibly astute and malicious.
Somerset Maugham, Straight Flush.
Wednesday, October 24
Cosima Wagner’s Diaries.
Night, midnight.
Charles Dickens, The Chimes.
. . . a bad night, I come up on him reading . . .
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (Wednesday, October 24, 1877).
I approached him . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
. . . slowly: then . . .
Richard Wagner, Parsifal.
. . . looked at him inquiringly.
Jack London, The Sea Wolf.
After a short silence, he . . .
Charles Dickens, The Chimes.
. . . gave the thin, high-pitched cackle of an old man amused and answered with a single word . . .
Somerset Maugham, Straight Flush.
. . . Darwin!
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (Wednesday, October 24, 1877).
It is well known that Wagner was an avid reader of the works of Charles Darwin, and a connection may be drawn between his preoccupation with a regression in one's physiological condition owing to sensual stimulation and the very text he was reading before he wrote his letter to Eiser: Darwin's The Descent of Man (1871). In this work Darwin discusses "reversion" as a natural phenomenon "in which a long-lost structure is called back into existence" and argues that the Greeks "retrograded" "from extreme sensuality; for they did not succumb until 'they were enervated and corrupt to the very core.'" Because the concept of debilitation was central to the . . . diagnosis of Nietzsche, it may even account in part for Wagner's fascination with and repeated study of Darwin's theories at the time. . . . Darwin also wrote of the homologies man "presents with the lower animals—the rudiments which he retains—and the reversion to which he is liable"; with sexuality and degeneration as shared themes, Darwin's text allows for the reconstruction of a series of associations in Wagner's imagination that would have linked masturbation to physiologically inferior, virtually beastly humans.
Marc A. Weiner, Richard Wagner and the Anti-Semitic Imagination.
Of interest in this connection is the fact that in Wagner's Bayreuth library there are no fewer than five books by Charles Darwin (1809-82): The Origin of Species (in German and French), The Descent of Man, The Variation of Animals and Plants, and The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals.
The Diary of Richard Wagner 1865-1882 – The Brown Book.
­­___________________________________________________________

I could tell innumerable other stories, and they would all be true: all literally true.
Primo Levi, The Periodic Table.
Nothing in this book has been invented.
Barbara Tuchman, The Zimmermann Telegram.
Instead, I will tell just one more story, . . .
Primo Levi, The Periodic Table.
. . . the most secret . . .
Barbara W. Tuchman, The Zimmermann Telegram.
. . . and I will tell it with the humility and restraint of him who knows from the start that his theme is desperate, his means feeble, and the trade of clothing facts in words is bound by its very nature to fail.
Primo Levi, The Periodic Table.
It seemed fair enough to assume, in Darwin's time, that . . .
Isaac Asimov, The Wellsprings of Life.
. . . every living creature . . .
Genesis.
. . . was . . .
Richard Wilbur, Excerpt from Lamarck Elaborated.
. . . built up out of a relatively few building blocks that all species had in common. The completed organisms might be as infinitely various as the completed musical compositions that have been and can be written; but, like the latter, the infinite variety is built upon the arrangement and rearrangement of a relatively small number of notes.
Isaac Asimov, The Wellsprings of Life.
The Greeks were . . .
Richard Wilbur, Excerpt from Lamarck Elaborated.
. . . the first . . .
William Shakespeare, The Tempest.
—did you know—
Guy de Maupassant, Fascination.
. . . who said . . .
Richard Wilbur, Excerpt from Lamarck Elaborated.
. . . that all bodies are composed of indivisible and unchangeable atoms.
Will Durant, The Life of Greece.
Chemically, all life is one.
Isaac Asimov, The Wellsprings of Life.
That life is chemistry is true but boring, like saying that football is physics. Life, to a rough approximation, consists of the chemistry of three atoms, hydrogen, carbon and oxygen, which between them make up ninety-eight per cent of all atoms in living beings. But it is the emergent properties of life—such as heritability—not the constituent parts that are interesting.
Matt Ridley, Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters.
"Once upon a time, very long ago, . . .
Isaac Asimov, The Wellsprings of Life.
. . . in the dark backward and abysm of time . . .
William Shakespeare, The Tempest.
. . . perhaps two and a half billion years ago, under a deadly sun, in an ammoniated ocean topped by a poisonous atmosphere, in the midst of a soup of organic molecules, a nucleic acid molecule came accidentally into being that could somehow bring about the existence of another like itself—"

And from that all else would follow!
Isaac Asimov, The Wellsprings of Life.
That . . .
Richard Wilbur, Excerpt from Lamarck Elaborated.
. . . impossible matter . . .
William Shakespeare, The Tempest.
. . . bloomed in vibrant atmosphere, as music conjured Ileum from the ground . . .
Richard Wilbur, Excerpt from Lamarck Elaborated.
. . . and . . .
Homer, The Odyssey.
. . . raised the wall, and houses too . . .
Richard Wilbur, Excerpt from Lamarck Elaborated.
. . . permitting . . .
Charles Darwin, Origin of Species.
. . . the ordered life . . .
Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination.
. . . within . . .
William Shakespeare, The Tempest.
. . . to exist in the larger world.
Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination.
It is written: "In the beginning was the Word!"
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust.
The word proselytized . . .
Matt Ridley, Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters.
. . . the wild waters in . . .
William Shakespeare, The Tempest.
. . . the sea with its message, copying itself unceasingly and forever. The word discovered how to rearrange chemicals so as to create little eddies in the stream of entropy and make them live. The word transformed the land surface of the planet from a dusty hell to a verdant paradise. The word eventually blossomed and became sufficiently ingenious to build a porridgy contraption called a human brain that could discover and be aware of the word itself.
My porridgy contraption boggles every time I think this thought. In four thousand million years of earth history, I am lucky enough to be alive today. In five million species, I was fortunate enough to be born a conscious human being. Among six thousand million people on the planet, I was privileged enough to be born in the country where the word was discovered. In all of the earth's history, biology and geography, I was born just five years after the moment when, and just two hundred miles from the place where, two members of my own species discovered the structure of DNA and hence uncovered the greatest, simplest and most surprising secret in the universe.
Matt Ridley, Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters.
There are in any ordinary object some extraordinary tales. It is then only necessary to look closely at the object, contemplate, scrutinize it long enough to discover its secret and the marvelous tales it contains.
Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary.
In 1953, . . .
Isaac Asimov, The Wellsprings of Life.
. . . with ingenuity, endless patience, and sparks of inspired guessing, . . .
Barbara W. Tuchman, The Zimmermann Telegram.
. . . two biochemists at Cambridge University, F. H. C. Crick and J. D. Watson, . . .
Isaac Asimov, The Wellsprings of Life.
. . . rapt in secret studies—
William Shakespeare, The Tempest.
. . . like a . . .
Leonard Shengold, Soul Murder.
. . . crack team of . . .
Barbara W. Tuchman, The Zimmermann Telegram (editor’s note).
. . . military . . .
Leonard Shengold, Soul Murder.
. . . decoders . . .
Barbara W. Tuchman, The Zimmermann Telegram (editor’s note).
. . . deduced that molecules of nucleic acids in viruses (and presumably elsewhere) consisted not of one, but of two nucleotide strands. This double strand was arranged in a helix about a common axis; that is in the form of two interlocking, spiral staircases about the same central post. The two strands were so arranged that the purines and pyrimidines of one faced the purines and pyrimidines of the other, each purine (or pyrimidine) . . .
Isaac Asimov, The Wellsprings of Life.
. . . a step on the staircase . . .
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil.
. . . being attached to the purine (or pyrimidine) opposite by a type of weak link called a hydrogen bond.
Isaac Asimov, The Wellsprings of Life.
The hydrogen bonding requirement meant that adenine would always pair with thymine, while guanine could pair only with cytosine. Chargaff's rules [adenine equals thymine, guanine equals cytosine] then suddenly stood out as a consequence of a double helical structure for DNA. Even more exciting, this type of double helix suggested a replication scheme much more satisfactory than my briefly considered like-with-like pairing. Always pairing adenine with thymine and guanine with cytosine meant that the base sequences of the two intertwined chains were complementary to each other. Given the base sequence of one chain, that of its partner was automatically determined . . .
James D. Watson, The Double Helix.
. . . according to some prearranged pattern.
Barbara W. Tuchman, The Zimmermann Telegram.
Conceptually, it was thus very easy to visualize how a single chain could be the template for the synthesis of a chain with the complementary sequence.
James D. Watson, The Double Helix.
The structure of the one strand determines the structure of the other; they fit together like a plug and a socket or one jigsaw piece and its neighbor . . .
Isaac Asimov, The Wellsprings of Life.
. . . not independent of one another, but soldered together in pairs.
Sigmund Freud, Notes Upon a Case of Obsessional Neurosis.
The discovery of DNA by James D. Watson and Francis Crick in 1952 revealed that a living creature is an organization of matter orchestrated by a . . .
David Berlinski, The Deniable Darwin.
. . . genetic code . . .
Isaac Asimov, The Wellsprings of Life.
. . . a genetic text.
David Berlinski, The Deniable Darwin.
Within the bacterial cell, for example, the book of life . . .
David Berlinski, The Deniable Darwin.
. . . the code book . . .
Barbara W. Tuchman, The Zimmermann Telegram.
. . . is written in a distinctive language. The book is read aloud, its message specifying the construction of the cell's constituents, and then the book is copied, passed faithfully into the future.
David Berlinski, The Deniable Darwin.
The idea of the genome as a book is not, strictly speaking, even a metaphor. It is literally true. A book is a piece of digital information, written in linear, one-dimensional and one-directional form and defined by a code that transliterates a small alphabet of signs into a large lexicon of meanings through the order of their groupings. So is a genome.
Matt Ridley, Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters.
How . . .
William Shakespeare, The Tempest.
. . . much could be "written" using the DNA molecules from just one sperm . . .
Francis Crick, Of Molecules and Men.
. . . cell?
William Shakespeare, The Tempest.
This comes to about five hundred large . . .
Francis Crick, Of Molecules and Men.
. . . books, . . .
William Shakespeare, The Tempest.
. . . all different—a fair-sized private library.
Francis Crick, Of Molecules and Men.
___________________________________________________________

"In the beginning was the Word!"
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust.
Words, words, words, words . . .
Candide (Excerpt from “Words, Words, Words,” lyrics by Leonard Bernstein).
. . . words; words as live things to be loved.
Sigmund Freud and William C. Bullitt, Thomas Woodrow Wilson: A Psychological Study.
The small boy lived in a world of books, the books which overflowed his . . .
T.Z. Lavine, From Socrates to Sartre: The Philosophic Quest.
. . . father’s . . .
Richard Wagner, Siegfried.
. . . study, the lending-library books of his grandmother, . . .
T.Z. Lavine, From Socrates to Sartre: The Philosophic Quest.
. . . the French Countess Marie d’Agoult, . . .
Cosima Wagner’s Diaries (translator’s introduction).
. . . the books from which . . .
T.Z. Lavine, From Socrates to Sartre: The Philosophic Quest.
. . . Mama . . .
Cosima Wagner’s Diaries (translator’s introduction).
. . . read him stories. “I began my life,” . . .
T.Z. Lavine, From Socrates to Sartre: The Philosophic Quest (quoting Jean-Paul Sartre, The Words).
. . . he said, . . .
Jacques Pepin, The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen.
. . . “as I shall no doubt end it: amidst books.” The words in these books became the world which he longed to possess and manipulate, . . .
T.Z. Lavine, From Socrates to Sartre: The Philosophic Quest (quoting Jean-Paul Sartre, The Words).
. . . but which now assumed the garb of . . .
Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo.
. . . tantalizing fruit . . .
Jacques Pepin, The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen.
. . . forbidden fruit, that . . .
Rabbi Heshy Grossman, Jerusalem Views.
. . . dangled well out of reach.
Jacques Pepin, The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen.
His father did his utmost to beget in the son as great a love of words as he had himself. He never permitted the child to use an incorrect word or to utter a slipshod sentence. After their walks together, the boy and his father would talk over the whole experience, . . .
Sigmund Freud and William C. Bullitt, Thomas Woodrow Wilson: A Psychological Study.
. . . his father . . .
William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale.
. . . insisting that every description, every idea be expressed completely in perfect English. As soon as the boy learned to read, they played by the hour the game of "synonyms," taking turns holding the dictionary.
Sigmund Freud and William C. Bullitt, Thomas Woodrow Wilson: A Psychological Study.
What I liked best about him was his universality; he would pay scant attention to his own affairs or his family's, but, instead, his passionate interest would be aroused by some piece of literature or a remote item in an encyclopedia.
Arthur Rubinstein, My Young Years.
The son loved the teaching . . .
Sigmund Freud and William C. Bullitt, Thomas Woodrow Wilson: A Psychological Study.
( . . . as if it came from Prospero himself.)
J.D. Salinger, SEYMOUR—An Introduction.
Synonyms became his favorite game. He began to love words as much as his father loved them.
Sigmund Freud and William C. Bullitt, Thomas Woodrow Wilson: A Psychological Study.
Now . . . now I go back thirty-five years. No, I don't go back . . . I come back.
Claude Lanzmann, Shoah.
. . . back to a time when reality itself is little more than a playground for the imagination, the realm of the storyteller's once-upon-a-time.
Gilbert Rose, William Faulkner's Light in August: The Orchestration of Time in the Psychology of Artistic Style.
Recently, . . .
Sigmund Freud, Letter to Wilhelm Fliess.
. . . I stumbled upon [a] childhood memory of my father, when I was a boy of five, . . .
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams.
. . . or perhaps . . .
Henry David Thoreau, Walden.
. . . six or seven.
Sigmund Freud and William C. Bullitt, Thomas Woodrow Wilson: A Psychological Study.
My father kept . . .
Arthur Rubinstein, My Young Years.
. . . a fair-sized private library . . .
Francis Crick, Of Molecules and Men.
. . . a library temptingly rich in . . .
Will & Ariel Durant, A Dual Autobiography.
. . . the stuff of wonder.
Frank Ryan, Virus X: Tracking the New Killer Plagues — Out of the Present and Into the Future.
Leather-bound books reached from floor to ceiling.
John Le Carre, The Night Manager.
It was irresistible!
Arthur Rubinstein, My Young Years.
. . . glorious!
Sigmund Freud, Notes Upon a Case of Obsessional Neurosis.
At that stage, I must confess, . . .
Arthur Rubinstein, My Young Years.
. . . my father's . . .
Richard Wagner, Siegfried.
. . . holy of holies . . .
John Le Carre, The Night Manager.
. . . the room in which he . . .
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities.
. . . had assembled everything of consequence from his three-score-years-and-ten —
Joachim Kohler, Nietzsche and Wagner: A Lesson in Subjugation.
. . . that room was . . .
Charles Dickens, The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby.
. . . out of bounds, . . .
John Le Carre, The Night Manager.
. . . the most sacred of the relics . . .
Joachim Kohler, Nietzsche and Wagner: A Lesson in Subjugation.
. . . now displayed in glass cases . . .
Frank Rich, Conversations with Sondheim.
. . . for posterity . . .
Sigmund Freud, An Autobiographical Study.
. . . stood there . . .
H.G. Wells, A Moonlight Fable.
. . . once upon a time . . .
K.R. Eissler, Goethe: A Psychoanalytic Study 1775-1786.
. . . as . . .
William Shakespeare, The Tempest.
. . . mysteries which were hidden from me.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Confessions.
But then, . . .
Arthur Rubinstein, My Young Years.
—why not confess it?—
Howard Carter and A.C. Mace, The Tomb of Tut-Ankh-Amen.
I prowled hungrily among those treasures, . . .
Will & Ariel Durant, A Dual Autobiography.
—assembled there once and for all . . .
Joachim Kohler, Nietzsche and Wagner: A Lesson in Subjugation.
. . . hidden from all . . .
Richard Wagner, Das Rheingold.
. . . in the inner chambers of . . .
Peter Schrag, Test of Loyalty.
. . . father's personal library, . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
. . . like an ancient tablet locked in a vault.
R. Lipkin, A Look into Life's Chemical Past: A Computer Model of Gene Regulation Yields Some Evolutionary Clues.
It is astonishing—I find so many years later—what a clear picture I have of these early days.
Arthur Rubinstein, My Young Years.
I remember . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
Thoughtless, shallow-brained Fool!
Richard Wagner, Parsifal.
I remember once, . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
I said—
T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land.
I dashed to . . .
Arthur Rubinstein, My Young Years.
. . . father, looked at the library, and said, "This will one day belong to me, when I am big, you will be dead then."
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (Tuesday-Monday, February 10-16, 1874).
. . . silly boy now, what would his Papa say?
John Le Carre, The Night Manager.
His father . . .
Sigmund Freud and William C. Bullitt, Thomas Woodrow Wilson: A Psychological Study.
. . . scolded him and said, . . .
Genesis. A New Translation of the Classic Biblical Stories by Stephen Mitchell.
"What do you mean by that?"
Sigmund Freud and William C. Bullitt, Thomas Woodrow Wilson: A Psychological Study.
Since I am old you should accord me some honor.
Richard Wagner, Siegfried.
. . . but his father kept thinking about this for a long time afterward.
Genesis. A New Translation of the Classic Biblical Stories by Stephen Mitchell.
He was just eight then.
William Faulkner, Light in August (Chapter 7).
I loved, and could not get enough of, the discoveries I was making there. . . .
The house was like a gigantic treasure chest.
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
One other thing I just thought of. One time, . . .
J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye.
One evening before going to sleep I disregarded the rules . . .
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams.
. . . and entered the . . .
Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist.
. . . book-lined room . . .
Hermann Hesse, Excerpt from A Dream.
. . . the close, twilit room . . .
William Faulkner, Light in August (Chapter 7).
. . . intensely curious about what was inside . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
And saw that I was not the only guest. An old man stood before that grand array of tomes.
Hermann Hesse, Excerpt from A Dream.
I imagined . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
. . . for a moment . . .
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams.
. . . I was seeing a ghost;
Cosima Wagner’s Diaries (Sunday, June 6, 1869).
But no—
Arthur Rubinstein, My Young Years.
The older man (clearly my father . . .)
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams.
. . . was . . .
Richard Wilbur, Excerpt from Lamarck Elaborated.
. . . occupied with the task of arranging his library.
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (Thursday, July 2, 1874).
I am unpacking my library. Yes, I am. The books are not yet on the shelves, not yet touched by the mild boredom of order. I cannot march up and down their ranks to pass them in review before a friendly audience. You need not fear any of that. Instead, I must ask you to join me in the disorder of crates that have been wrenched open, the air saturated with the dust of wood, the floor covered with torn paper, to join me among the piles of volumes . . .
Walter Benjamin, Unpacking My Library.
. . . volumes by . . .
James Joyce, A Painful Case.
. . . Goethe, Rousseau, Dickens . . .
Geoffrey Skelton, Wieland Wagner: The Positive Sceptic.
. . . six-hundred-odd volumes . . .
Guido Suchtelen, The Spinoza Houses at Rijnsburg and The Hague.
. . . that are seeing daylight again after two years of darkness, so that you may be ready to share with me a bit of the mood. It is certainly not an elegiac mood but, rather, one of anticipation—which these books arouse in a genuine collector.
Walter Benjamin, Unpacking My Library.
Here was the inner meaning, here the key,
To poetry, to wisdom, and to science.
Magic and erudition in alliance
Opened the door to every mystery.
These books provided pledges of all power
To him who came here at this magic hour.
Hermann Hesse, Excerpt from A Dream.
And yet, . . .
Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis.
. . . more and more . . .
Charles Darwin, Origin of Species.
. . . the Old Man . . .
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust.
. . . had to bid farewell to the dream, the feeling and the pleasure of infinite possibilities, of a multiplicity of futures. Instead of the dream of unending progress, of the sum of all wisdom, [a timid youth who approached him with worshipful curiosity] stood by, a small, near, demanding reality, an intruder and nuisance, but no longer to be rebuffed or evaded. For the boy represented, after all, the only way into the real future, the one most important duty, the one narrow path along which [his] life and acts, principles, thoughts, and glimmerings could be saved from death and continue their life in a small new bud.
Hermann Hesse, Magister Ludi: The Glass Bead Game.
A little while elapsed.
Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis.
The study is lighted now, by a greenshaded reading lamp sitting upon the desk.
William Faulkner, Light in August (Chapter 4).
The old man . . .
Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha.
. . . took off his cravat, put on his dressing gown and slippers, and his nightcap; and sat down . . .
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol.
. . . at his desk . . .
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
. . . to compose a tranquil letter . . .
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Elective Affinities.
. . . in the pool of light from the shaded lamp.
William Faulkner, Light in August (Chapter 16).
Somebody had been writing to him about me.
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness.
(or so I fully believed)
Charles Dickens, David Copperfield.
And memory knows this; twenty years later memory is still to believe On this day . . .
William Faulkner, Light in August (Chapter 7).
. . . he resolved to write
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (February 1883, final entry).
. . . a personal note.
The Diary of Richard Wagner: The Brown Book 1865-1882.
—a letter I still have in my possession.
Arthur Rubinstein, My Young Years.
I was fascinated.
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness.
Hidden in the shadows . . .
William Faulkner, Light in August (Chapter 9).
. . . as noiseless as a ghost, . . .
Joseph Conrad, The Secret Sharer.
I saw that he was earnestly intent
Upon some task, and I could not resist
A strange conviction that I had to know
The manner of his work, and what it meant.
Hermann Hesse, Excerpt from A Dream.
After my father's death I opened it myself, thinking there might be, for anything I knew, some . . .
Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit.
. . . deletions and corrections in the text . . .
Hermann Hesse, Magister Ludi: The Glass Bead Game.
. . . something surprisingly new.
Sigmund Freud, Letter to Wilhelm Fliess.
That evening, however, . . .
Edgar B.P. Darlington, The Circus Boys on the Plains.
. . . silent and motionless at the side, . . .
Richard Wagner, Parsifal.
. . . I watched the old man, . . .
Hermann Hesse, Excerpt from A Dream.
. . . as if quite dumbfounded.
Richard Wagner, Parsifal.
I was not a little afraid, I must confess, to have to face the dreaded Papa alone.
Arthur Rubinstein, My Young Years.
He took up his pen several times and laid it down again because he could not make up his mind what he ought to write.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Elective Affinities.
At last he had a fortunate idea, and when it fell into his brain it lit up his whole head . . .
Mark Twain, The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg.
"Ha!" muttered the old man, "yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!"
Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit.
One gets sometimes such a flash of inspiration, you know.
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness.
Papa was speaking
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (February 1883, final entry).
Almost whispering, he read some lines to himself:
Hermann Hesse, Magister Ludi: The Glass Bead Game.
Gracious, Exalted Friend
The Diary of Richard Wagner: The Brown Book 1865-1882.
In days gone by . . .
Richard Wagner, Letter to King Ludwig II of Bavaria.
. . . so his thoughts ran . . .
Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit.
. . . I would simply discard anything which might have served as a memento of me . . . Then one morning I called out all over the house, 'I have a son!' All of a sudden the whole world looked different! The happy mother realized immediately that my whole past and future had acquired a completely new meaning . . . From then on every relic was preserved: letters, manuscripts, books which I once used, every line I had ever written, were tracked down and collected; my life was recorded in ever greater detail, pictures of all the places and houses I had lived in were accumulated.
Richard Wagner, Letter to King Ludwig II of Bavaria.
. . . the text concluded by saying, . . .
Primo Levi, The Periodic Table.
I do not remember ever having . . .
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Confessions.
. . . broken out of the ring of what I have already done and cannot ever undo . . .
William Faulkner, Light in August (Chapter 14).
. . . but before I . . .
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations.
. . . abandon myself to my fatal destiny, let me turn for a moment to the prospect that . . .
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Confessions.
. . . at least . . .
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations.
My son, for all his tender years, shall on reaching maturity, know exactly who his father was.
Richard Wagner, Letter to King Ludwig II of Bavaria.
a letter to the King
The Diary of Richard Wagner: The Brown Book 1865-1882.
If only I could have seen it lying finished before me!
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams.
I listened. There was nothing more.
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness.
With these words, and with a hasty gesture . . .
Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit.
. . . he laid down his pen, . . .
Fergus Hume, Mystery of a Hansom Cab.
. . . and came to a full stop at last.
Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit.
Then it happened.
William Faulkner, Light in August.
The next moment . . .
George Orwell, 1984.
. . . the old man . . .
William Faulkner, Light in August (Chapter 19).
. . . became sensible of confused noises in the air;
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol.
He can feel the other looking at him . . .
William Faulkner, Light in August (Chapter 13).
—and with a half-unconscious action, . . .
Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis.
. . . fidgets with coins in his pocket.
Alan Lightman, Einstein's Dreams.
'How now!'
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol.
Who’s there?
William Shakespeare, Hamlet.
Is it you, boy?
Richard Wagner, Siegfried.
'What do you want with me?'
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol.
It was quite still then.
William Faulkner, Light in August (Chapter 7).
The little eight-year-old . . .
Ernest Newman, The Life of Richard Wagner.
. . . Not so much in obedience, as in surprise and fear . . .
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol.
. . . stepped out . . .
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World.
. . . from the shadows . . .
Alan Lightman, Einstein's Dreams.
. . . knelt down at once beside his father . . .
Franz Kafka, The Judgment.
. . . and, by an impulse, . . .
Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure.
. . . begged a lucky coin from him
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
In the old man's weary face . . .
Franz Kafka, The Judgment.
. . . the boy, undressed for bed and in his shirt, . . .
William Faulkner, Light in August (Chapter 7).
. . . saw the pupils, over-large, fixedly looking at him from the corners of the eyes.
Franz Kafka, The Judgment.
The boy still knelt. He did not move at all.
William Faulkner, Light in August (Chapter 7).
His father said pityingly, in an offhand manner:
Franz Kafka, The Judgment.
Poor boy.
William Faulkner, Light in August (Chapter 17).
'My time is nearly gone.'
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol.
"I am old enough that any new day may be my deathday. . . ."
Harold Bloom, The Book of J.
"Here," he said. He opened his purse and took a coin from it.
William Faulkner, Light in August (Chapter 8).
But be patient!
Richard Wagner, Das Rheingold.
"You will soon be getting other things from me, dear child."
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
The boy was off like a shot . . .
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol.
. . . carrying the coin . . .
Tom Krattenmaker, New Dollar Coin Destined to Fail, Swarthmore Economist Says.
. . . clutched hot and small in his palm as a child might.
William Faulkner, Light in August (Chapter 8).
Not another word. That was their meeting, their conversation, and their parting.
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol.
He was just eight then. It was years later that memory knew what he was remembering; years after that night when . . .
William Faulkner, Light in August (Chapter 7).
. . . that moment in the library . . .
Alan Lightman, Einstein's Dreams.
. . . came back to him.
Peter Gay, Freud: A Life for Our Time.
We may say that . . .
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
. . . inheritance is the soundest way of acquiring a collection. For a collector's attitude toward his possessions stems from an owner's feeling of responsibility toward his property. Thus it is, in the highest sense, the attitude of an heir, and the most distinguished trait of a collection will always be its transmissibility.
Walter Benjamin, Unpacking My Library.
An hour passed.
Thomas Mann, Death in Venice.
Or perhaps . . .
John Le Carre, The Night Manager.
. . . perhaps it is an hour later, perhaps three.
William Faulkner, Light in August (Chapter 14).
The old man . . .
Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha.
—quite alone now—
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness.
. . . fumbled for his watch . . .
H.G. Wells, The Time Machine.
. . . that had slipped out of his pocket while he was . . .
Joachim Kohler, Nietzsche and Wagner: A Lesson in Subjugation.
. . . playing with his watch chain.
Franz Kafka, The Judgment.
"My watch!" he ejaculated.
Ernest Newman, The Life of Richard Wagner.