FRIENDS OF HIS YOUTH
149
parably decadent. In ages that outwardly fare well, while inwardly
they undergo the regression that is probably the lot of every thing
and hence also of intellectual development (if one does not by con–
stant exertions keep it supplied with new ideas), presumably the
most immediate question ought to be what one can do against this
state of things. But the tangle of clever, stupid, vulgar, and beautiful
is
precisely in such times so dense and involved that to many people
it evidently seems easier to believe in a mystery, for which reason
they proclaim the irresistible decline of something or other that defies
exact definition and is of a solemn haziness. It is fundamentally all
the same whether this is thought of as the race, or vegetarianism, or
the soul, for all that matters, as in the case of every healthy pessi–
mism, is that one should have something inevitable to hold on to. And
although in luckier years Walter had been able to laugh at such
doctrines, when he himself began to try them out he soon discovered
their great advantages. Had
it
up to then been he who was unfit
for work and felt out of sorts, now it was the time that was out of
sorts, and he the healthy one. His life, which had come to nothing,
was all at once given a tremendous explanation, a justification, in
terms of centuries, that was worthy of him; and indeed, there was
now positively something in the style of a great sacrifice about it
when he took up his pencil or pen and laid it down again.
Yet Walter still had his inner struggles, and Clarisse tormented
him. She would not have anything to do with critical discussions of
the spirit of the time, for she had a headlong belief in the idea of
'genius.' What this was, she did not know; but her whole body began
to tremble and grow tense whenever the subject came up. "Either you
feel it or you don't" was her one piece of evidence. For him she al–
ways remained the cruel little fifteen-year-old girl. She had never
quite understood his sensibility, nor had he ever been able to domin–
ate her. But cold and hard as she was, and then again so enthusiastic,
with
her insubstantial, flaming will, she possessed a mysterious capac–
ity
for influencing him, as though shocks came through her from
some direction that could not be fitted into the three dimensions of
space. It sometimes bordered on the uncanny. He felt this especially
when they played the piano together. Clarisse's playing was hard
and colorless, obeying a law of excitement that was alien to him,
and when their bodies glowed until the soul began to shine through,
he would feel
it
coming over with frightening intensity. Something
