272
PARTISAN REVIEW
her, in a fit of despair and madness, he has destroyed her
and
himself by
the sheer ruthlessness of his routines and obsessions.
In
Korrektur,
the protagonist, Roithamer, does indeed complete
his bizarre project: to construct, against almost insurmountable odds, a
conical dwelling for his beloved sister in the exact center of a forest near
their hated home, and
to
write out the details of its construction in
scientific, structural engineering terms, along with a local and family
chronicle, explaining in human terms,
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such a construction was
essential to the happiness of his sister and to his own self-fulfillment.
In achieving the delicate balance he seeks, he applies principles from
the Law of Statics. That the author was fascinated by the poetic and
philosophic implications of scientific laws could be seen already in his
choice of motto from an earlier play.
The Hunting-Party (Die jagdge–
sellschaft)
in which he quotes from Kleist's famous essay on the puppet
theater: "I then made inquiries about the mechanisms of these figures,
and asked how it was possible-without having myriad strings at–
tached
to
one's fingers-to direct each limb and all of its parts, the way
the rhythm of the dance required it." (The essay goes on to explain that
each movement has its own center of gravity.)
If,
in
Kalkwerk,
ruination is the result of noncompletion of a
project, in
Korrektur,
ruination is the precise result of the completion
of the projects, both the actual building and the chronicling. On
completion of the cone, Roithamer's sister dies, only death being able
to contain such sublime joy. And on her death, Roithamer, reviewing
both his scheme and the written account of it, comes to the shattering
conclusion that nothing short of total revision can eradicate the errors
contained in the work. (In
Verstorung,
the mad prince works day and
night, writing and destroying what he has written, writing and
destroying: " ... and if I destroy everything, yes, everything that I have
written up to now, he said, then I will have made the greatest
advance.... ") But total revision comes
to
mean total reduction, not
just of the products of his (Roithamer's) mind, but finally , annihila–
tion of himself.
(If
one doubts the credibility of such a notion, one may
remind oneself of the increasingly elliptical poems of Paul Celan,
whose work and life seemed
to
come to a single impasse for which
suicide proved the only way out.)
Limeworks
ends with its hero giving himself up to the police after
being found, half-frozen to death, in the sewage dump near his house.
For the hero of
Korrektur
there is no alternative to suicide. His only
freedom consists in choosing how and where.
His choice is significant and pulls the threads of the entire novel
