too long the inhospitable winter, too narrow the minds of the Philistines, too loud the machines of the factories. Engelhardt climbs from the bench onto the table and down again, exclaiming his credo that only those lands in eternal sunlight will survive and, in them, only those people who allow the salutary and beneficent rays of the daystar to caress skin and head, unfettered by clothing. These brothers and sisters here have made a promising start, he says, but they really must now sell their farm and follow him, leaving Bavaria as Moses left Egypt of old and booking passage on a ship to the equator.
Is it to be Mexico or perhaps even Africa? Nagel wants to know while the peasant couple prepare more sandwiches, listening attentively. Engelhardt is, Nagel notes, obsessed with his ideas; they are like a little demon that has seized hold of him, tearing with a row of pointy teeth. He wonders for a moment if Engelhardt is still quite right in the head. Mexico—no, no, it has to be the South Seas, only there can and will it begin. High into the white and blue sky, he jabs his index finger; down onto the wooden table hammers Engelhardt’s slender little fist. Although the dazzling sfumato of his mindscape is served up with great demagogic skill, little, it would seem, stays with the honest peasant couple; the serpentine paths of Engelhardtian fancy wend too wildly.
Later at night, in the haystacks where it smells of the dust of the long summer, Nagel and Engelhardt lie next to one another, discussing at a whisper, forging plans and discarding them again, and Nagel realizes just how much he appreciates his friend and how much more radically than his own Engelhardt’s thoughts push out into the world. A cat moans above in the darkness of the timbers. Nagel seriously considers following his friend to the colonies: factors in favor would include that the ridicule poured out over him daily, endured for endless years, threatens to crush his soul slowly; that he has begun to doubt the integrity of his actions; and that Engelhardt, along with his obsessiveness, seems to him a leader who by virtue of his brilliance is capable of guiding him, Nagel, out of the dull wasteland that is Germany and into a bright, moral, pure pasture, not just metaphorically, but in realitas . On the other hand, however—and Nagel’s anima already beholds the portals of the land of Nod—he is also too lazy, plain and simple, to betake himself around the globe to create a new Germany at the back of beyond. No, he muses just before the realm of shades welcomes him, he will henceforth write his name in lowercase, eschewing capitalization entirely, will always write everything small, like this: gustaf nagel. That will be his revolution. And then sleep comes.
August Engelhardt is now seen again, far to the north, traveling toward Berlin; he has parted ways with Gustaf Nagel at the Munich central station, each having clasped the other’s forearms in heartfelt fellowship. Nagel is still advising him to make the journey to Prussia per pedes for ideological reasons, but Engelhardt replies that he must save time since he still has so much planned in the South Seas, and should his friend change his mind again, he will always and most sincerely be welcome.
Engelhardt, who is traversing the empire in express trains, likewise changes his mind just outside of Berlin, bypasses that gigantic, monstrous anthill, and boards a train to Danzig, sleeping on wooden benches, patiently awaiting connections, changing trains again, over and over, arrives in K ö nigsberg and Tilsit, and travels northwest again, toward Prussian Lithuania.
There, spat out by the train in East Prussia’s Memel, shouldering his bindle, he walks through the groves of birch trees blown through by the north wind, quitting the dull brick town, buys currants and mushrooms from a Russian babushka who crosses herself, taking him in his penitential robe for a Molokan apostate of Orthodoxy, sights the
Is it to be Mexico or perhaps even Africa? Nagel wants to know while the peasant couple prepare more sandwiches, listening attentively. Engelhardt is, Nagel notes, obsessed with his ideas; they are like a little demon that has seized hold of him, tearing with a row of pointy teeth. He wonders for a moment if Engelhardt is still quite right in the head. Mexico—no, no, it has to be the South Seas, only there can and will it begin. High into the white and blue sky, he jabs his index finger; down onto the wooden table hammers Engelhardt’s slender little fist. Although the dazzling sfumato of his mindscape is served up with great demagogic skill, little, it would seem, stays with the honest peasant couple; the serpentine paths of Engelhardtian fancy wend too wildly.
Later at night, in the haystacks where it smells of the dust of the long summer, Nagel and Engelhardt lie next to one another, discussing at a whisper, forging plans and discarding them again, and Nagel realizes just how much he appreciates his friend and how much more radically than his own Engelhardt’s thoughts push out into the world. A cat moans above in the darkness of the timbers. Nagel seriously considers following his friend to the colonies: factors in favor would include that the ridicule poured out over him daily, endured for endless years, threatens to crush his soul slowly; that he has begun to doubt the integrity of his actions; and that Engelhardt, along with his obsessiveness, seems to him a leader who by virtue of his brilliance is capable of guiding him, Nagel, out of the dull wasteland that is Germany and into a bright, moral, pure pasture, not just metaphorically, but in realitas . On the other hand, however—and Nagel’s anima already beholds the portals of the land of Nod—he is also too lazy, plain and simple, to betake himself around the globe to create a new Germany at the back of beyond. No, he muses just before the realm of shades welcomes him, he will henceforth write his name in lowercase, eschewing capitalization entirely, will always write everything small, like this: gustaf nagel. That will be his revolution. And then sleep comes.
August Engelhardt is now seen again, far to the north, traveling toward Berlin; he has parted ways with Gustaf Nagel at the Munich central station, each having clasped the other’s forearms in heartfelt fellowship. Nagel is still advising him to make the journey to Prussia per pedes for ideological reasons, but Engelhardt replies that he must save time since he still has so much planned in the South Seas, and should his friend change his mind again, he will always and most sincerely be welcome.
Engelhardt, who is traversing the empire in express trains, likewise changes his mind just outside of Berlin, bypasses that gigantic, monstrous anthill, and boards a train to Danzig, sleeping on wooden benches, patiently awaiting connections, changing trains again, over and over, arrives in K ö nigsberg and Tilsit, and travels northwest again, toward Prussian Lithuania.
There, spat out by the train in East Prussia’s Memel, shouldering his bindle, he walks through the groves of birch trees blown through by the north wind, quitting the dull brick town, buys currants and mushrooms from a Russian babushka who crosses herself, taking him in his penitential robe for a Molokan apostate of Orthodoxy, sights the
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