210
PARTISAN REVIEW
Lenin, et aI.,
from
Edison, Lenin, et aI.-its only leader . Not a
responsible monarch, but a monarch of Responsibility. (Thus we
[time] once gave ourselves over, with all our questions , to Goethe,
made him-whether he wanted it or not-our response. We made
you-our responsibility . That's why you both gave hack :
Goethe-light, you-blood .)
"Und Kerper nur noch aus Galanterie, urn das Unsichtbare
nicht zu erschrecken" -was what you said about the last years (as it
turned out-days) of your body . A sick
or
a healthy man ' s-whose
words are these? Not a human's at all .
Remember your Malte, how everyone followed him along all
the streets of Paris, almost loafing about, entreating not everything
of him , but him , all of him. And so we followed you-for a time .
Remember Malte , who transmitted his will through the wall to his
neighbor, on whom he had never laid eyes . His neighbor hadn ' t
asked either. But Malte-heard that cry! "Wer is dein Nachster?
Der dich am nothwendigsten braucht"-an exegesis of the
neighbor, at a Protestant lesson on scripture, which has remained
definitive for me.
We were all your neighbors .
With admissions, confessions, penitence, questions, aspira–
tions' prostrations, affections, we loved you down-wore sores on
your hands. All the blood flowed out through them .
Blood. The word has been spoken .
Your
Blutzersetzung
(decomposition of the blood)-which I
didn't understand at first-how could it be: he was the first after the
Old Testament to say
blood,
having said blood
in such a way,
simply
having told of blood!-this
isn't an article and I won't try and prove
anything-it was
he
who died from this
Blutzersetzung
decomposition ,
the impoverishment of blood . What irony! Not irony at all, but my
first, in the heat of the moment, lack of foresight.
He bled good blood for the salvation of our bad blood . Simply
transfused his blood into ours.
Stop .
I know that the medical illness from which you died is treated
by blood transfusions, that is, some next of kin who wishes to save
the person, gives blood . Then the illness-ends . Your ill–
ness-began with the transfusion of blood-yours-into all of us.
The world was sick, you were its next of kin. What will then save the
transfuser!
Poetry doesn't have anything to do with it. "An unnecessary
