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A
We'll never part again, A
Piss off! About time too. Do you always take that long? For a whole half hour after A
SOPHIE'S PLACE IS furnished with genuine Biedermeier. None of her schoolmates realises this because they are youngsters of today for whom the past is dead. Quite the opposite of bieder and Meier, though, are Sophie's wishes to be an utterly hard woman for whom feelings do not count, only figures. She would like to go to Switzerland to take special courses in finance and economics, and then deal in shares and currency. Anything that is not currency or a share will simply make no impression on her. In this respect she is a stark contrast to Rainer, who needs feelings for his writing. And for her, his Sophie. Because Sophie has touched the very core of him. Sometimes something of this kind happens to a man and a woman only once in their entire lives, and at times like that it's important not to miss the right moment or things will turn out wretchedly. Rainer deliberately lets feelings right inside him, but there nausea at those very feelings eats its way out and is expressed in a poem. Rainer has quite enough ideas concerning the past, the present, the world. He has only one request: to be left in peace to complete the book he plans to write. The man in him says he has to have Sophie, the artist says: Stay the lone wolf that you are. Rainer puts up armoured defences made of ice, but you're supposed to sense that Sophie could melt the ice.
Sophie is wearing a te
Hans, who is forever having to jump to attention at work, is the first to leap hastily to clear a space on the table for the maid. Pointlessly, his mother has taught him to behave with courtesy to women, as in the old days. At the last moment, Sophie holds him back, and so the maid has to cope single-handed. She doesn't exist, Hans, you have to understand. But everyone you see exists, isn't that right? Wrong.
Along with all their many other errors, the main mistake of the Austrian anarchists (in so far as they existed) was their terrible social situation, which they wanted to put behind them as fast as they possibly could. But that's idiotic. If you want everyone to be on an equal footing, you may as well have done with it and be a Communist. How dreary. What you have to do is destroy most of what was done by the older generation.
Rainer states that in the summer he is going sailing, that his brother in America knows several film stars, and that his mother is going to the warm-water spa at Villach tomorrow. This last is a long-standing dream of hers. And he doesn't have a brother either. Rainer reports that the German surrealist tradition was unfortunately broken by the War. He is interested in aesthetic problems, and wants leader status. Maybe leader status can be achieved by dealing Sophie a short, sharp blow on the mouth, making the said mouth bleed. No, nothing doing just now, she's opening a packet of biscuits, his favourite, chocolate-covered kind. Rainer gobbles like an idiot. The most powerful urge known to Man is the urge to be free of manual labour. Any means that accomplishes that end is fine. Some people erroneously imagine that they have a birthright to non-manual work. Rainer thinks Hans thinks that way. Because at irregular intervals Hans says that the only thing Nature means to him is leisure, which is a positive value. In his leisure time he goes off into Nature. I agree (Sophie), in my free time I'm out in Nature almost all the time as well, that's where to look if you need me.
I'd like to change my job some time, it doesn't satisfy me, I want to become a gym teacher. Feel my muscles, Sophie, I'm building them up just for you, they get worked on every day. When I'm out in Nature I unfortunately still have to keep to the marked public paths, but as soon as I'm good at climbing I can venture off on unmarked paths and pick one edelweiss after another. Rainer avoids Nature whenever he stumbles across it. He gets out of gym classes whenever he can, pleading sickness and debility. Father mustn't know of this. Mummy writes a note for him. Sophie says that it's too bad, public places are increasingly being messed up with paper and worse, the more average people (who invariably dump their muck) go off into Nature. It is a new problem, one which is harming the environment. In the old days people had no time to harm the environment because they were busy doing harm to themselves, in the War, for instance.
Rainer: Hey, Sophie, I've written another poem, another new one about you.
Sophie: It's really the only way you stand out from the masses. Because you don't have the material means to stand out from the masses. Which naturally you'd infinitely prefer. Rainer: You really make me sick today. Money! Yuck. People's minds are independent of their worries about their daily bread. For instance, the upper strata of society often lack the necessary intelligence, whereas ordinary people can sometimes be very bright. The two things are totally unrelated.
In Hans's opinion, all that counts is a person's essential nature. You have to refine your character, Hans would like to go into a longer explanation of this, since it is intrinsically difficult for him. But alas, now Sophie sends him off to repair the record player, because for some unfathomable reason it is not working. Doubtless she thinks every kind of electric current is the same. And he would dearly like to join in the talk and profit by it. Who can say what he mightn't be able to put to use later, when he's a gym teacher! You have to think of the future too. The future is not heavy current. Rainer expounds the beauty of violence. Feeling bones and knuckles break, sinews and tendons rip and tear, taut skin burst. Or even making these things happen. He also declares that they are going to be redoing their home soon, with period furniture imported from France.