ARTISTS AND OLD AGE
31&
him-apart from them the whole place is still pretty empty. Can you
imagine that kindly Creator today? Vice, worms, maggots, sloths and
skunks-that yes, masses of it, ever new installments of it, fresh de–
liveries every day, 100% genuine, continual new editions-but an
affectionate little God who pulls two trees out of the ground? No
trees, no flowers-but electronic brains, artificial insemination for
cows and women, chicken farms with music laid on to increase pro–
ductivity, artificial doubling of the chromosomes bringing about giant
hybrids, deep freezing, overheating-you've sown a seed, have you?
Well, jump, quick! Else the shoot will get you in the leg!
Well, so here we are. The old man enters his studio-a bare
room, a big table covered with slips of paper and sheets of notes. He
goes up to it, saying to himself: 'Now what shall I do with this?–
essay, poem, dialogue? The notion that the form is born together with
the content is just another illusion hatched by philosophies of art–
I can use this here or there, coloring, weaving, fixing it up, all just
as I feel like it, I went through my beginning and I am going through
my end,
moira
J
my allotted part. Only one thing is certain: When
a thing's finished it must be complete, perfect. Though of course
there's the question: And what then?'
Take another look at the most famous 'late' works--what are
they like? For instance, there's Goethe's
Novelle-a
menagerie catches
fire, the booth bums down, the tigers escape, the lions are loose! And
it all works out harmoniously. No, this earth is scorched and bare,
flayed by lightning, and today the tigers bite. Or what about the
second part of
Faust?
Undoubtedly this is Germany's most mysterious
gift to the world. But all those choruses, gryphons, lamias, pulcinellos,
ants, cranes, and empusae, the whole thing humming and buzzing
away, singing to itself, away off to where the fairy rings are and
the crowns of stars and the angelic boys-where does it all come
from anyway? Let's face it, the whole thing hovers in the realm of
pure imagination, it's all table-rapping, telepathy, hocus-pocus. There's
someone standing on a balcony, unreal, motionless, blowing bubbles–
some bright, some dark-conjuring forth more and more clay pipes
and straws to blow his iridescent bubbles with-oh, a magnificent
God on the Balcony, inoculated with the spirit of the Classical and
the Baroque, with miracles and mysteries dangling from
his
coat tails.
