fRIENDS OF HIS YOUTH
153
When he is angry, something in him laughs. When he is sad, he is
up to something. When he is moved by something, he will reject it.
Every bad action will seem good to him in some connection or other.
And it will always be only a possible context that will decide what
he thinks of a thing. Nothing is stable for him. Everything is fluctuat–
ing, a part of a whole, among innumerable wholes that presumably
are part of a super-whole, which, however, he doesn't know the
slightest thing about. So every one of his answers is a part-answer,
every one of his feelings only a point of view, and whatever a thing
is,
it
doesn't matter to him what it is, it's only some accompanying
'way in which it is,' some addition or other, that matters to him.
I don't know whether I make myself quite clear to you?"
"Oh yes," Clarisse said. "But I think it's very nice of him."
Involuntarily Walter had been speaking with signs of growing
dislike; the old feeling of being the weaker boy-which goes with
so
many friendships-magnified his jealousy. For although he was
convinced that, apart from a few proofs of plain intellect, Ulrich
had never achieved anything, in secret he could not shake off the
feeling of always having been physically inferior to him. The picture
that he had been drawing relieved him, like the successful conclusion
of a work of art; it was not he who had brought it forth, but out–
wardly, linked with a mysteriously successful beginning, word has fol–
lowed word, while inwardly something dissolved without his becom–
ing conscious of it. By the time he had finished, he realized that
Ulrich was the expression of nothing but this dissolved condition that
all
phenomena are in nowadays.
"You like that?" he asked, painfully surprised. "You can't pos–
sibly mean that seriously!"
Clarisse was chewing bread and soft cheese. She could only
smile with her eyes.
"Oh, I know," Walter said, "we may have had a similar way
of thinking, ourselves, in the old days. But one mustn't regard
it
as
anything more than a preliminary stage! A man like that isn't really
human at all!"
Clarisse had finished chewing. "That's just what he says him–
self!" she declared.
"What
does he say himself?"
"Oh, I don't know! He says everything is dissolved, nowadays.
He says everything has come to a standstill-not only himself. But he
