Books: My Life and My Efforts
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Karl May >> My Life and My Efforts
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Said, done! We were not alone. Another seminarist was with us;
someone from the first grade, one grade above mine. I am
reluctant to give his name. His father was a gendarme. This
upstanding fellow student observed everything. He did not warn me
at all, but was quite friendly, left, and - - - reported on me.
The principal came in person, to investigate the "theft". I
admitted very calmly what I had done and returned the "loot" I had
taken. I truly thought nothing bad of it. But he called me an
"infernal character" and assembled the faculty, to decide about me
and my punishment. Just half an hour later, I was informed of it.
I was dismissed from the seminary, I was free to go to wherever I
wished. I left right away with my sister - - - for the holy
Christmas season - - - without tallow for the Christmas angles - -
- these were very gloomy, dark Christmas holidays. I guess, I did
already say that especially Christmas had often been for me a time
of sadness, not joy. In those days of Christmas, holy flames of
my soul were quenched out, lights which I held dear. I learnt to
differentiate between Christianity and those who call themselves
Christians. I had come to know Christians who had acted less
Christianly against me than Jews, Turks, and heathens would have
done.
Luckily, the department of culture and public education, I had
turned to, proved to be more reasonable and more humane than the
seminary's management. Without any objections, I obtained the
permission to continue my interrupted studies at the seminary of
Plauen. There, I got into the same grade, that is into the second
one, and after having finished the first grade, I passed the
examination to become a teacher, after which I obtained my first
job in Glauchau, but soon got to Altchemnitz into a school,
belonging to a factory, where the all of the students were rather
grown up factory workers. Here, my confessions have to start. I
give them without hesitation, according to the truth, as if I was
not dealing with myself, but another person, a stranger.
I am going to turn back to my parents' poverty. The examination
had required a tailcoat, an expensive matter for our
circumstances. Furthermore, as a teacher, I could not continue
being dressed like a student, and needed at least some modest
supply of laundry and other necessary items. My parents did not
have this kind of money; I had to take care of this myself; this
means, I borrowed it, to pay it back from my salary in
installments. So I had to be economical, thinking twice before I
would spend a single pfennig! I limited myself to the bare
necessities, and had to do without all expenses, unless they were
absolutely unavoidable. I did not even own a watch, though this
is quite indispensable for a teacher, who has to be punctual by
the minute.
The owner of the factory, the school of which had been entrusted
to me, was obliged by contract to supply my accommodations. He
chose what was most convenient for him. One of his accountants
had also been granted free accommodations, a living room and a
bedroom. Until now, he had both for himself; now, my quarters
were to be at his place; he had to share with me. By this, he
lost his independence and his convenience; he was constantly
annoyed by my presence, and thus one can easily comprehend that I
was not particularly welcome by him, and that the idea had crossed
his mind, to get rid of this intrusion in some way. Otherwise, I
got along with him rather well. I did him every favour I could
and treated him, since I saw that he wanted it this way, as the
actual master of the lodgings. This obliged him to return my
kindness. An opportunity for this came very soon. He had
received a new pocket watch from his parents. His old watch,
which he now did not need any more, hang unused on a nail at the
wall. Its value was at most twenty marks. He offered to sell it
to me, because I did not possess any; but I rejected, because if
I would eventually buy a watch, it was supposed to be new, a
better one. Of course, this was still a long way to go, because I
had to pay back my debts first. Then, he himself suggested to me
that I should take his old watch with me to school, since I was
required to be punctual. I went for it and was grateful to him
for this. At first, I placed the watch back on the nail as soon
as I returned from school. Later, I occasionally failed to do
this; I kept it in my pockets for several hours more, because to
me, it would have seemed not that much conscientious, but rather
ridiculous, to put so much emphasis on the fact that it did not
belong to me. Finally, I even took it with me when I went out and
only hang it back up in its place after I had returned at night.
There was no real friendship or even cordial relationship between
us. He accepted me, because he had to, and occasionally, he made
it a point to let me know that he was not pleased to share his
lodgings.
Then, Christmas came. I informed him that I would spend the
holidays with my parents and bid him farewell, because I wanted to
depart immediately after school, without returning to our
lodgings. After the last lesson was over, I went to Ernstthal,
which took just one hour by rail, so it was not far to go at all.
Being filled with the joy of the holidays, I completely forgot, to
leave the watch behind. When I noticed that it was still in my
pocket, I did not care about this at all. After all, there was
not even the slightest dishonest intension in my mind. This night
with my parents was such a happy occasion. My time as a student
was behind me; I had a job; I received a salary. The beginning
of my career was there. Tomorrow was Christmas Eve. We already
started preparing for the exchange of the Christmas presents.
While doing so, I spoke about my future, my ideals, which all
appeared shining most brightly before me in the lustre of
Christmas. Father joined my enthusiasm. Mother was quietly
happy. Grandmother's old, faithful eyes were shining. After we
had finally turned in for the night, I still lay awake for a long
time in my bed and contemplated what I had done right and wrong in
my life. For the first time, I grew fully aware of my internal
uncertainty. I saw the treacherous abyss gaping behind me, but
none in front of me, because my path seemed to be, though hard and
strenuous, still entirely free from obstacles: to become an
author; to achieve great things, but first to learn a great
things! To cast off, one after another, all those faults of my
inner self, which were the consequence of my wrong upbringing, so
that there shall be room for something new, better, righter,
noble! With those thoughts, I fell asleep, and when I woke, it
was already almost noon, and I had to go to the Hohensteiner
Christmas market to buy a few more small gifts for my sisters.
There, I came across a gendarme, who asked me, if I was the
teacher May. After I had confirmed this, he told me to come to
the town hall, to the police, where I they wanted to question me.
I went along, not suspecting anything at all. First, I was shown
into the living room, not the office. A woman was sitting there
and sewing. Please, allow me to keep to myself whose wife she
was. She was a close acquaintance of my mother, who had gone to
school with her, and now she looked at me with anxious eyes. The
gendarme ordered me to sit down and left the room for a short
time, to give his report. The woman used this opportunity to ask
me hastily:
"You've been arrested! Do you know that?"
"No", I answered, mortally startled. "Why?"
"You're said to have stolen a watch from your roommate! If
they'll find it on you, you'll be sent to prison and will be
dismissed as a teacher!"
Everything flickered before my eyes. I felt like being hit over
the head with a club. I thought of last night, my thoughts before
falling asleep, and now all of a sudden there was dismissal and
imprisonment!
"But it's not stolen at all, just borrowed!" I stuttered, pulling
it out of my pocket.
"They won't believe that! Put it away! Return it to him
secretly, but don't let anybody see it now! Quickly, quickly!"
My devastation was indescribable. A single clear, calm thought
would have saved me, but it did not occur to me. I just had to
show the watch and tell the truth, then everything would have been
well; but I was so scared that I was like in a fever and acted
like in a fever. I did not put the watch back into my pocket, but
into my suit, where it did not belong to, and as soon as this had
happened, the gendarme returned to get me. Let be as brief as
possible on what had happened now! I committed the insane act of
denying the possession of the watch; but it was found, when I was
searched for it. Thus, the lie destroyed me instead of saving me;
but it always does; I was a - - - thief! I was brought to
Chemnitz to appear before the investigating judge, spent the
Christmas holidays not with my parents, but locked up, and was
sentenced to six weeks in prison. Whether and by what means I
defended myself; whether I sought refuge in an appeal, an
appellation, any kind of legal remedy, a petition for clemency, a
lawyer, I cannot say. My recollection of those days has
disappeared, entirely disappeared. For important psychological
reasons, I would like to tell everything as openly and
comprehensively as possible, but unfortunately, I cannot do this,
because all of this has been wiped off my memory, due to rather
peculiar psychological conditions, on which I will have to report
in the next chapter. I only know that I was entirely lost, and
that I found myself again once I was back in the care of my
parents and especially of my grandmother. After the strain of
recovering, when I had regained enough of my strength, I went to
Altchemnitz, to refresh my damaged memory. In respect to the
locations, it was in vain; I recognised nothing, neither the
factory, nor my former lodgings, nor any other place where I
undoubtedly must have been. But suddenly, he stood before me, my
roommate, the accountant. He happened to come my way on the
street and stopped, once he had reached me. Him, I recognised
immediately, he me too, though he assured me that I looked
completely different than before, so very ailing. He gave me his
hand and asked me, to forgive him. He had not intended for it to
come out the way it did at all. He said, he was so infinitely
sorry for having spoiled my career! I gave him an astonished
look. Having spoiled my career? Would anybody have been able to
do this? Even if the government would not want to hire me any
more, there are still enough private jobs available, which are
even better payed. And it had also never been my intension to
remain a teacher of a public or even factory school; I had
entirely different plans and still had them on this day. I just
left the man standing in the middle of the street and went away,
without a word of reproach.
Yes, I left, but where to?! I could not have guessed it, then. I
have said just before in this account that a treacherous abyss was
behind me, but none in front of me, and that I intended to achieve
great things, but first to learn great things. The first thing
was wrong. On the very contrary, the abyss was not behind me, but
in front of me. And the great thing I had to learn and to achieve
was, to tumble into this abyss, without being shattered and to
freely ascend it on the other side, without ever relapsing into it
again. This is the hardest task there is for a mortal, and I
think I have solved it. - - -
V. In the Abyss
I now turn to the time which is for me and every compassionate
soul the most horrible, but for a psychologist the most
interesting of all times. As I take up my pen write this down, I
could give this account in such terms of psychology or even
criminal psychology, which are most suitable to let an expert
comprehend what happened inside of me then; but I am not writing
this for a specialist in psychology, but for the general public
reading my books, and therefore, I have to abstain from all
attempts to practice psychology. Consequentially, I will avoid
all technical terms and rather employ an allegoric form of
expression than a terminology which is not universally understood.
The event described in the previous chapter had effected me like a
blow, like a blow over the head, the impact of which will make a
person collapse. And I did collapse! I did rise again, though,
but only externally; internally I stayed down in mindless
unconsciousness; for weeks, even for months. That it had
happened at Christmas out of all times, had doubled the effect.
Whether I had turned to a lawyer, whether I appealed, appellated,
or had employed any other kind of legal remedy, I do not know. I
only remember that I lived in a cell for six weeks, together with
two other men. They were prisoners on remand. Apparently, I was
regarded as harmless, or else I would not have been locked up
together with persons who had not been convicted yet. One of them
was a bank official, the other one an hotelier. I did not care
why they were investigated. They were kind towards me and made
every attempt to lift me out of the state of internal
petrification I was in, but in vain. I left the cell, once my
imprisonment had ended, with the same lack of emotion with which I
had entered it. I went home to my parents.
Neither father, nor mother, nor grandmother, nor the sisters would
have thought of reproaching me with something. And this was
perfectly horrible! At that time when I, with all the ignorance
of a child, wanted to go to Spain and father brought me home, I
had promised myself that would never sadden him again anything
similar, and now it had turned out so very differently and so much
worse! I was not concerned about my future or about a job; I
could have obtained this any time. Now, with matters being as
they were, the thing for me to do was not to turn sideways off my
path, but to set on that course right now and for ever on the
other end of which were those ideals which I bore within the
deepest depth of my heart since my boyhood: To become an author,
to become a poet! Learning, learning, learning! To work myself
up by what is great, beautiful, noble, out of my present deep and
low state! To get to know the world as a stage, and the people
who swarm on it! And in the end of this hard, laborious life, to
write for that other stage, for the theatre, to solve, there, the
mysteries which had captured me since my earliest childhood and
which, though I felt them then, I was still far, far, far from
comprehending!
The process which formed those thoughts and intentions within me
was not at all clearly, shortly, and concisely expressing itself,
oh no, because inside of me there was now the very opposite of
clarity; it was night; there were only a few free moments when I
saw further than the present day would allow me. This night was
not entirely dark; it had the faint light of dawn. And
strangely, it only extended over the soul, not the mind as well.
My soul was ill, not my mind. I possessed the capability to make
every logical conclusion, to solve every mathematical problem. I
had the keenest insight in everything unconnected with my inner
self; but as soon as something approached me, to interact with
me, this insight stopped. I was not able to inspect myself, to
understand myself, to guide and control myself. Just
occasionally, a moment came which granted me the ability to know
what I wanted, and then, this wish was my only desire until the
next one of these moments came. This was a condition I had never
observed before in another human being and never read about in any
book. And mentally, I was very well aware of this condition of
the soul, but did not possess the power to alter and even less to
overcome it. I developed the realization that I no longer was one
whole, but a split personality, very much according to the new
doctrine, that man is not an individual, but a drama. In this
drama, there were several characters, acting out their parts, who
at some time were entirely indistinguishable and then again took
on their very well distinguished forms.
First of all, there was myself, this is me, who was observing all
of this. But who this "me" actually was and where he was within
myself, I could not tell. He very much resembled my father and
had all of his faults. A second being within myself always kept
at a distance. It resembled a fairy, an angel, one of those
impeccable, bliss bringing beings from grandmother's book of
fairy-tales. It admonished; it warned. It smiled when I obeyed,
and it mourned when I was disobedient. The third entity, of
course not a physical one, but an appearance on the soul, was
nothing less than abhorrent to me. Fateful, ugly, mocking,
repulsive, always gloomy and threatening; I have never seen it
any other way, and I have never heard it any other way. This is
because I have not just seen it, I also heard it; it spoke. It
often spoke to me for entire days and entire nights without
interruption. And it never wanted what was good, but always just
what was evil and unlawful. It was new to me; I had never seen
it before, but only from now on, once my inner being was split.
But when, for a short time, it kept silent and I therefore found
the time to observe it secretly and attentively, then it struck me
as so familiar and well acquainted, as if I had seen it a thousand
times before. Then its appearance changed, and its face changed,
too. At times, it was from the Batzendorf, then from the bowling
alley, or from the Luegenschmiede. One day it looked like Rinaldo
Rinaldini, the next day like the robber-knight Kuno of the
Eulenburg
, and the day after like the god-fearing
principal of the seminary, standing before my tallow-paper.
I did not make these observations of my inner self all at once,
but gradually. Many, many months passed, until they had developed
to such an extent within me that I was able to behold their image
in my mind and commit this to memory. And then, I started to
comprehend was all of this was actually about. What occurred
within every human being, without him or she being aware of it or
even suspecting it, also occurred in me, but with me seeing and
hearing it. Was this a benefit, a gift of God? Or was I insane?
If so, I was at any rate not insane in the mind, but in the soul,
because I made these observations with an objectiveness and
cold-bloodedness, as if this would not concern myself, but someone
entirely different, a person who was a perfect stranger to me.
And I lived my ordinary, every day life just as any sane person
would, who is entirely unaffected by such psychological events.
The strength and the will to live returned to me. I worked. I
taught music and foreign languages. I wrote poetry; I composed.
I formed a small group of musicians, to practice and to perform
what I had composed. Members of this orchestra are still alive
today. I became the chairman of a glee club, which I conducted at
public concerts, in spite of my youth. And I began to write
fiction. First, I wrote humorous short stories, then
"Village-Tales from the Ore Mountains". I had no problems at all
in finding publishers. Good, suspenseful, and humorous short
stories are extremely rare and are very well paid. My stories
were passed from one magazine to another. It was a joy to see how
excellently this was developing. But this joy was ruined in a
cruel manner by another development, which took place at the same
time and in parallel inside of me. The split within me grew
further. Every sensation, every feeling seemed to demand its own
form. I was full of characters who wanted to worry with me, work
with me, create with me, write with me, and compose with me. And
every one of these characters spoke; I had to hear them. This
was enough to drive a person insane! As there had previously been
only two characters aside from myself, the bright one and the dark
one, so there were now two groups aside from myself. And as more
time passed, they became more distinguished, and I recognised them
more clearly. There were two hostile forces, fighting against
each other: grandmother's bright, luminous characters from the
Bible and her fairy-tales against the filthy daemons of this
unfortunate rental library from Hohenstein. Ardistan against
Jinnistan. The legacy of thoughts from the swamp, I was born
into, against the bliss bringing ideas of the highland, which I
was seeking. The miasmas of a poisoned childhood and youth
against the pure, redeeming wishes and hopes, with which I looked
forward to my future; the lie against the truth; the vice
against the virtue; the inborn human beast against the rebirth,
which every mortal has to seek to become a person of noble spirit.
Every thinking human being who seeks for advancement has to go
through such internal struggles. Normally, these are thoughts and
emotions, which are competing against one another. But with me,
those thoughts and feelings had taken on shapes of visible and
audible characters. I saw them with my eyes closed, and I heard
them by day and night; they interrupted my work; they woke me
from my sleep. The dark ones were more powerful than the bright
ones; when they forced themselves upon me, resistance was
useless. At ordinary times, my inner world was quiet; then,
there was no conflict. But was soon as I started to work, one
character after another woke up. Every one of them wanted to
change my work according to its wishes. This also very much
depended on the topic I was dealing with. Nobody objected against
a funny short story. I could finish something like this without
an argument, without interruption. But when working on a serious
village-tale, numerous voices spoke out for and against me. In
those village-tales, I have proven time and time again that God
will not permit any mockery of his power, but punishes precisely
according to the sin committed. Against this, certain characters
within me rose up. But I met with the greatest resistance, as
soon as I rose to even higher paths in my work or in my reading.
Whenever I took on a religiously, or ethically, or aesthetically
higher topic, the dark character within me rebelled with all of
its might against it and tormented me in a manner which is
entirely inexpressible. In order to demonstrate in what manner
this occurred and what kind of a torment this was, I want to give
an explanatory example: I had been commissioned to write a parody
of "Des Saengers Fluch" by Uhland [a]. I did
so. This parody got the title "The Tailor's Curse". A tailor
cursed a shoemaker, his ramshackle hovel, and tiny garden, where
only two gooseberry-bushes grew. The curse on the house took on
the form of the following lines:
[a] Ludwig Uhland (1787-1862)
"The mortgage does await this,
that you, today, shall fall.
Damn walls, hear what your fate is:
I will destroy you all!"
I wrote this parody, without being disturbed by my inner voices
while doing so. Nothing within me rebelled to the slightest
extent against such a base thing. Just the luminous character
disappeared; it mourned, because I had enough abilities to do
better and nobler things. Some time later, I had to write a
didactic poem, of which I now remember nothing more than the
following verses:
"Once you will comprehend the teachings,
Which your own saviour taught to you,
And in your country heed his preachings,
Obey and act as you should do,
Then, mankind will unite in one crowd,
From near and far, they'll join in then;
They'll pray to one Lord, all with no doubt;
The world's his church since it began.
Triumphant is the faith which says this:
One God, one Lord for evermore.
The names will fade, and what remains is
That all roads lead to heaven's door."
As soon as I had sat down to construct this ambitious poem, a rare
clarity came over me, I saw the joyful smile of the luminous
character, and a hundred beautiful, noble thoughts hurried towards
me to enter my mind. I reached for the pen. But then, I suddenly
felt as if a black curtain had veiled my inner self. The clarity
was over; the luminous character disappeared; the dark one
entered, laughing sarcastically, and throughout my entire inner
being a thousand voices echoed: "The tailor's curse, the tailor's
curse, the tailor's curse, etc." So it resounded within me for
hours and hours, on and on, endlessly, unrelentingly, and without
even the slightest pause, not just in my imagination, but for
real, for real. I felt as if those voices spoke not from within
me, but right before my very own ear. I tried my best to silence
them, but this was all in vain as long as I held the pen in my
hand remained on my seat to write. Even after I got up, they
echoed forth, and only when I considered to give up all attempts
to write this didactic poem, silence instantly followed. But
since I had to keep my promise to write it, I soon reached for the
pen again. Immediately, this multitude of voiced intoned again:
"The tailor's curse, the tailor's curse!" and when, in spite of
all this, I focused my thoughts on my task, they additionally
loudly roared these sentences: "The mortgage does await this, the
mortgage does await this; damn walls, hear what your fate is,
damn walls, hear what your fate is!" This went on for the entire
day and the entire night and even continued after this. Nobody
else saw and heard it; no one suspected of what and how terribly
I suffered. Anybody else would have described this as madness,
but not me. I remained distant and observed myself. In spite of
all opposition, I managed to complete my poem on time. But I
always had to pay very dearly for such victories; once it was
achieved, my inner self collapsed.
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