I want you to go away.
I'm selling out to a supermarket, you'll get some of it.
No...
Don't say anything, Wilhelm dear.
Wait till you have to.
And don't lose that unrest and discontent of yours.
You'll need it for writing.
I'm going to enjoy life now.
I'll be smoking when I cross the square.
I'll be drinking a Martini in the Haider Hof...
and reading your letters.
I'll order Martini "with ice please."
I'm not desperate, just listless and fed-up.
It's as if I had no tongue.
I haven't spoken for two days.
Except in my sleep I keep talking, says my mother.
I want to be a writer...
but how, not liking people?
If only I could write. Write!
Have you got an evening show?
No.
Janine.
I wanted to see you again.
I can't look at you in that outfit.
You've got something there.
No, here.
In the course of time...
When I left my home town, it seemed alive for the first time...
though with the dreariness of people left behind.
Janine and the pain she felt because of her clothes...
I had already forgotten.
Mother had packed my suitcase.
On top, she put two books.
"Life of a Good-for-Nothing" by Eichendorff...
and "Sentimental Education" by Flaubert.
I determined not to withdraw my arm if she linked arms...
as I'd always done if anyone came.
In the taxi, she suddenly told me not to be intimidated...
if people pointed out how useful a doctor or carpenter was...
and how useless my life was.
People with restricted professions reminded her of dried-up snails.
I listened, but my mind was already far away.
Your ticket.
In my other hand, Mother.
Why did you choose Bonn?
I leafed through the novel you read recently.
I'm fond of you, Wilhelm. Please don't forget me.
I left her to a fate I didn't believe in myself.
I imagined the taxi-driver asking her...
whether he should take her home.
By herself, she'd have taken the bus.
Suddenly I wanted to comb my hair in the train.
I waited for it to leave.
I would remember her better later...
in some other place.
I soon forgot all about it.
It was a nice, peaceful day.
The gulls that had screamed across the sea were silent.
I remembered too, the canal we were passing.
I began to think ahead...
intending to find out more about myself.
Somebody's nose must have bled on the opposite seat.
"Life of a Good-for-Nothing" by Joseph von Eichendorff
Chapter one:
My father's mill-wheel was splashing merrily...
and snow dripped from the roof...
and sparrows twittered and created a racket.
I sat on the threshold and rubbed the sleep from my eyes.
It felt fine in the warm sunshine.
Father came out of the house.
He'd been busy in the mill...
and his night-cap was askew.
Hey.
The woman that made you so full of longing...
She's Therese Farner.
She's an actress.
You'd like to know why my nose is bleeding?
It comes from remembering.
Maybe I'll tell you about it at breakfast tomorrow.
Do you know the story of St. Januarinus...
whose blood is kept in a Neapolitan church?
It becomes fluid once a year...
on the anniversary of his death.
Where are you going?
To Bonn.
There's only one ticket.
No, no, you aren't dreaming.
Two tickets are missing.
You can get your companions' tickets in the train.
Something terrible happened to me today.
I only pay half for the girl.
I leave the house...
and when I'm outside I notice...
I've forgotten my umbrella.
I opened it up.
I had odd-colored socks on too.
It was indescribable.
Was it raining at all?
No, but that wasrt the point.
I remember that salute from old movie newsreels.
Go on, thank the gentleman for the ticket.
No, no.
Have you decided on something?
I thought maybe 3 minced veals, dumplings and salad.
And one beer and orange juice.
It was Eichinger the conductor who gave me the note.
Carriage 83, compartment 3, window seat.
It can only mean you.
I'm sure it's not me.
Carriage 83, compartment 3 (window seat)
What profession did you give?
I'm a singer...
and she's an artist.
WRITER
Good night.
Seeing that woman this afternoon on the train...
seemed adventure enough to me.
I thought I'd regret it for the rest of my life if I didn't pursue it.
Get me 06351-7270.
But now in this hotel-room with its feather bed...
plastic waste basket and neon light over the sink...
I was as deflated as my surroundings.
I was practicing what I would say on the phone.
Such as: I'm dying to see you.
I decided to shake off the urge and not start blabbing.
If she said nothing, I would say nothing too.
I looked down onto the square.
Suddenly I had the urge to write.
It would take my mind off of her.
This thought dissipated my fear of a new person.
I wanted to know her voice, which I hoped was like her gaze.
Afterwards I'd write it down in detail.
I haven't dreamt for two nights.
I haven't cut my nails for over a week...
and have worn the same shoes for a month.
And I haven't thought of dying for years.
I've always thought things would go on without me, same as ever.
But since I met you, I have known what it feels like.
Couldrt you make a song of it?
If you let me have the poem.
I'll tell you my story soon. Maybe tonight.
Just a hint. I ran in the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
The 100 meters.
And you wouldn't shake hands with Jesse Owens, like your Fuehrer.
I only made the semi-finals.
But...
probably I wouldn't have shaken a black's hand.
What now?
We'd better take a walk.
I intended to start writing today.
But I dreamt so much...
it's impossible to write about anything else.
And just writing up dreams is...
I'd like to be able to write something essential.
Essential as a house, or a glass of wine in the evening.
More essential of course.
On the way here I saw that Germany still has scenery.
I wanted to stop...
but kept on going faster.
I felt like going for a walk with you out of town.
We were doing that!
I wanted to talk to you.
Nothing special, just talk.
But suddenly...
Would you like to be alone with me?
Not now!
It's good...
It's good to be in company, otherwise it would be worse.
This way, I feel I have a secret.
Do you have any idea what pain is?
Do you swine know the rushing of a sailplane...
in your brains?
- Here. - This way.
I like the way everything is so strange to you.
Otherwise you couldn't write.
What I don't like is...
You think only you can be that way.
Others can, too, believe me.
Excuse me.
I heard you reciting poetry in the hotel today.
I write poetry myself, so I followed you.
I'd like your opinion.
May I recite something?
I lay still half asleep.
Then heard the bells ringing.
One struck so hard, as if it struck me.
And the my skin peeled off in misery.
The feeling of not even being a silhouette in the universe...
was terrible.
I felt myself squeezing, jelly-fish-like...
through the spheres.
There's nobody serving here.
A child trod on me, like on snail-festooned...
jellied, rotting fungus.
I yearned to spurt myself into the gutter.
I felt like trembling, transparent veal jelly.
I fell though a trap-door into a last dream...
and hung like well-hung meat on a hook.
And a hanged man with a sign: "I AM A TRAITOR"...
twitched as MYSELF from a plum tree.
From my terror-stricken stiff member there shot sperm...
and dripped upon a white sheet.
Since then I've lived under a glass bell...
and let my rotting consciousness vapour the glass.
Why must there be so vast a space...
between me and the world?
I ought to introduce myself.
My name's Bernard Landau. I'm an Austrian.
I've never amounted to much...
and hope I'll stay that way.
I get injured once a year.
This year I fell on the edge of a chair...
and gashed the corners of my mouth.
It's healed up already.
My uncle owns a big bakery, and a country house.
We could all stay with him.
He wanted to be a composer...
and suffers now and then from being a capitalist.
People like that are the right sort of capitalists.
Put your gun away or we'll shoot.
It's me, Bernard from Vienna.
I've brought some friends.
We'd all like to stay the night.
This isn't my uncle.
And it's the wrong house.
It's the wrong time, too.
I don't actually know you...
but I'm glad you're here.
There's plenty of room. Stay as long as you like.
I'd just shoved the rifle into my mouth...
when I heard the car and waited, hoping that...
it would stop.
I live here all alone.
My wife hung herself three months ago.
That's why everything's in a mess.
I was going to redecorate, change everything.
She often wished for a machine...
to stretch all the tendons of her body.
I couldn't help her.
In the end, I even started praying.
I've been alone long enough.
I feel like reading papers again.
Come into the room.
I'd like to talk about Ioneliness.
I don't believe it exists.
It's more of an artificial feeling engendered from outside.
Once...
I sat in this room in profound idiocy.
Cigarette stubs from the evening before lay in ashtrays.
So I sat there that evening...
as idiotically as today, I thought.
Yesterday I sat there, today here.
And this vision of myself...
touched me so much that I felt myself caressed.
That, then, was Ioneliness.
I was proud with Ioneliness, carried away.
Drenched in Ioneliness.
I produced a similar Ioneliness one night...
while sitting on the terrace.
I drank a bottle of wine and time passed easily.
People strolled along the woods...
and looked across at me.
How Ionely I must seem to them, I thought.
At once I was cradled again...
in artificial, manipulated Ioneliness.
It's just a theatrical state which arises...
the moment you wallow in your own theatricality.
And yet...
it's these moments of hypocritical Ioneliness...
that make me feel reborn.
It's the paradox of Ioneliness.
The overwhelming feeling of security...
I then experience.
You were going to reveal your secret to us.
I'm too tired. Let's put it off till tomorrow during our walk.
Come, Mignon.
Her name's Mignon? I never knew that.
You never asked her.
She's been waiting for you to ask for ages.
Wilhelm.
I'm going upstairs now. Will you be coming?
You know I will.
I'll stay down here for a while.
I'm dissatisfied because I've written nothing today.
He's written a poem already.
But I don't want to remain unsatisfied.
Look in on me.
And I'm glad...
I found you people.
Good night.
A self-portrait of my wife.
I'd just like to talk a bit...
about Ioneliness in Germany.
I think it's more hidden and...
more distressing than elsewhere.
Maybe the history of ideas here is responsible...
which made people seek a way of life...
that could help overcome fear.
The propagation of virtues like...
courage, fortitude...
meant to distract attention from fear.
Let's say it was that way.
More than anywhere else philosophy could be used...
as an ideology...
so that the criminal methods required...
to overcome fear could be legalized.
Fear was considered vain...
and shameful.
That's why Ioneliness in Germany is...
masked by all those revealing soulless faces...
that haunt supermarkets, recreation areas...
pedestrian zones and fitness-centers.
The dead souls of Germany.
A boy should know no fear, my parents said.
I refuse to overcome my fear.
I hope you will enjoy it here.
It was very touching to see the way you listened to me.
Maybe a person can want to write without knowing what.
Just like you want to walk.
Wanting to write is the need.
Not loving, but wanting to love.
I'm going upstairs now.
Are you in there?
I dreamt I was skating.
On a frozen sea.
It was the North Sea.
I was quite a way out...
and couldn't get back...
and kept skating straight on.
I was very afraid.
The worst was...
the grating of the runners...
on the ice behind me.
I kept thinking it wasrt my dream at all.
I dreamt you had to die.
A few hours before your expected death...
you were to go and prepare yourself in a mausoleum...
below the main street.
A child was to keep you company till you died.
The child stood next to you...
and the mausoleum was sealed with a large stone.
I dreamt of absolute darkness...
in which the child stood next to you...
till you died.
It was my child.
I dreamt I lay on the bed in my room...
seeing the wall with the door the whole time.
I kept waking up...
and really seeing the wall with the door in front of me.
I fell asleep and dreamed of it again...
almost exactly the way I'd really seen it.
Except it was nearer.
I had to vomit.
I'm sorry. Now it's daylight. I can't remember my dream...
though it gave me a start when I reached...
for the sugar bowl. I almost remembered.
It seems so significant.
And you, Mignon?
She finds dreams ridiculous.
A man screams at me frenziedly.
"Now I've got you, Rosenthal."
He grabs me by the collar.
And bashes four teeth in.
Then that man spits in my face.
I think to myself: "Who cares?"
My name's not even Rosenthal.
I couldn't care less.
When it's my turn to die.
I'll enter the coffin cheerfully.
And because I have so many friends.
I'll lie there upside down.
My belly I will hold quite still.
And think whatever I like.
Maybe someone will drop in.
I couldn't care less.
Can a person write if he's estranged from politics?
If he could describe how the estrangement came about.
It shouldn't appear natural.
That's the history of the Western World.
Of course!
Politics really escaped me when I started writing.
I tried to write politically, and realized words failed me.
The words there meant nothing to me.
I thought, it's not part of me.
I wrote as progressive politicians speak.
Only...
more helpless and pointed, because I was inactive.
It was helplessness.
A good reason to be politically active...
and drop writing altogether.
But it was writing that made me realize...
I couldn't formulate my needs politically.
Politicians never aroused them, only poets.
What are our personal needs to the world?
Everybody has personal needs. They're real.
For me that's all there is.
But they're unfulfillable...
compared with the needs that politics deal with.
Lf...
If only politics and poetry...
could be united.
That would mean the end of longing and the world.
I saw you during the night...
lying on the floor with a sort of whip in your hand.
What is your penance for?
It's time we heard your story.
Just now on the terrace I sang a Jew's song.
Your friend's?
I killed him.
Remember the salute the conductor gave...
when he left me on the train?
He was my aide in Vilna.
I saved some Jews, if they were professionally qualified.
Can you swim?
How do you know I can't?
I was hoping so.
I feel like I had seven-league boots on.
I even understand your revulsion against politics, Wilhelm.
Nature is life to me.
It makes me forget what ever was.
Those innocent camp fires of my youth.
We cast sticks to foretell the future.
The way we leapt laughing through the fire without a care.
We got fun out of fire-baked potatoes...
whereas the spoilt kids of today...
think it's adventurous to roast a suckling pig in their parents' gardens.
I'm trying to remember my dream.
I know it's about my uncle.
I've just thought of a short poem.
A sort of Haiku.
In writing, observatiors better than inspiration.
Want to hear it, or don't you?
I just thought up a story.
Tell us!
You say your poem first.
It's called "Lovingly."
Lovingly.
Lovingly the mother watches her children eat.
A poem by Bernard Landau.
Very good.
My story runs something like this:
He finally got around to saying he loved her.
Just the moment he said "I love you"...
she chanced to use a toothpick. He hated her forever from then on.
Did he marry her, then?
Of course, once he said he loved her.
You must bring that in, it rounds the story off.
Otherwise, it's just a punchline.
Then again, I'd give them names.
"He" and "She"...
are just comic figures.
What names?
Anton and Martha.
Anton was finally able to tell Martha the he loved her.
It has the markings of a novel.
You didn't look for me.
Yes, I did look for you.
Your face is all soft. You really are sad.
Yes.
Don't say what you're thinking.
You had so much to tell.
I want to be alone with you today.
I'm not afraid anymore.
I made up that dream about skating.
I just felt that way.
I realized and looked away while you were telling it.
Did you see those feathers on the path?
Yes. Why?
Did you notice anything?
I didn't look properly.
There was a yellow beak, too.
There's a lot you don't notice.
True. I usually have to make a conscious effort.
Everybody else notices more details than me.
Yet you want to be a writer?
I know I haven't got so-called powers of observation.
But I believe I have...
the gift of a sort of erotic insight.
Suddenly I notice something that I've always missed...
and not only see it, but get a feel for it.
That's what I call erotic insight.
I then write what I experience...
not just observations.
That's why I want to be a writer.
Something ought to happen.
Everything is so matter-of-fact.
Finished. Closed-up.
I don't feel like walking anymore.
I feel we're putting things off. Let's do something.
Have you ever wanted to kill someone?
No.
I have.
As a child I had a bloodlust.
I've got it right now.
I wouldn't need a weapon, just my bare hands.
What do you mean?
I know what you mean.
I've just thought of my dream.
Our host ran along a coast road.
A camera-man pursued him. Our host shouted:
"Long live the world's exploited masses!"
Then he leapt over the side and plunged down.
Far below was the sea.
- I had to look at the film as a witness... - Let's go.
Let's go. I'm scared.
The one the camera-man...
At times I stared into space...
without seeing a thing.
Then I shut my eyes...
and only realized what was before me...
by the after-image that resulted.
When I'm writing, too, I shut my eyes and see things...
I couldn't see with my eyes open.
After the industrialist's suicide, whose presence stimulated me...
it seemed we had lost direction.
The journey through Germany...
which I felt was a kind of adventure and work...
was called off...
and we moved in an idiotic panic.
Bernard disappeared without explanation from a motorway cafe.
We others stuck together, but seemed to be moving apart.
Can you still run as fast as in the Olympics?
In the evening, we reached Taunus...
where Therese had a 10th floor apartment.
Feces lay in the lobby...
and the elevator was scrawled with genital symbols...
scratched in the woodwork.
Therese said she's only just moved in.
Her appartment walls were still unplastered.
I wanted to sleep with her.
But maybe it was just an urge...
to get a grip on things.
My aimless rage was directed at the old man.
I used his past as an excuse to myself.
She's not a child anymore.
I know.
What?
Know what?
Everything. I could tell at once.
Never mind.
I envy you, Wilhelm.
Me?
You usually don't bother about anything.
I know it's unpleasant for you...
but I can't help liking you.
Why?
Sorry.
You know what I think is funny?
Just now your stubble was scratching me...
and I felt your lips panting on my shoulder.
And now you're making that serious face.
You're ridi...
Your objective pose is ridiculous, you know.
Instead of becoming desperate, I got more stupid.
So I just looked stupidly at really desperate people.
But still, I moved like a hero bearing the world's cares.
I have to pay 20 marks extra?
That's impossible.
- Yes. - Yes.
All the homework. I'm sick of them.
Math... 2-page essay...
I couldn't understand how all these people in the supermarkets...
on playgrounds, behind the windows of the high-rises...
in this country, not only in this country, put up with life.
Are you learning quantities?
Deadly dull.
Quantity A plus quantity B equals quantity C.
I have a friend on the 3rd floor.
Mine's the 8th.
I used to have one in the penthouse.
Everything strikes me as nonsensical.
No sooner do I try to learn my part in the play...
when I see this matchbox...
and wonder why it isn't in the play, too.
It's so artificial...
expressing oneself with other people's words.
Only when I keep remembering...
does a text sometimes make sense.
Because I remember...
experiencing something similiar...
I had just forgotten.
If I remember...
I can act without that suffocating feeling...
the feeling I always have.
After this memory work I enjoy acting...
and I am happy.
More often I don't get to remember and act like a robot.
In the last show I suddenly got stuck...
though I knew the text perfectly...
and the prompter whispered it.
Parrot repetition is humiliating.
I always thought.
Are you listening?
Parrot repetition is humiliating.
Help me, or leave me, Wilhelm!
It's disgusting the way everything leaves you cold.
Yesterday you envied me.
But today it makes me sick.
I could...
Kill me.
Go ahead.
Maybe I can learn something from you.
Beat me to death.
You disrupt my writing.
You talk about yourself and difficulties in working, not realizing...
I'm actually working.
Then I'm like you and the matchbox that isn't in the text.
And I can't go on writing, because I feel...
What you've just said should appear in my writing.
So, leave me in peace.
You werert even listening.
I was, but I kept thinking I was losing writing time.
You're a jerk!
Don't say that, Therese.
Say something.
You look revolting when you're silent.
What are you writing?
I'm writing the story of a man who is a kindly man...
but also incapable of any kind of pity.
I aim to prove that kindliness and pitilessness go together.
I think it'll turn out political.
Where can you go boating around here?
On the Main.
In that case, we'll go boating tomorrow and take the old man.
We'll leave Mignon here.
She'll have to get used to being alone.
He committed suicide.
He hung himself in the room behind the pastor's apartment.
It was a terrible end.
I couldn't help Therese.
My work was merely an excuse...
though I knew it didn't deserve the name of work.
I was discouraged and in my un-liveliness...
I could only act big in front of her.
Are we rowing here?
Wilhelm.
I've changed a lot since then.
It's not just that I sleep on the bare floor.
I have a back pain, as is.
The times were different.
You must understand.
We differentiated, like you, between the natural and politics...
and our natural defense against politics...
led to atrocious politics.
Are you sure you can't swim?
Wilhelm!
Please, Wilhelm!
Let me live, Wilhelm!
Wilhelm, I know you want to go on. Take me with you!
I can imitate animals.
And I'm a good cook, too. Liver dumplings, halibut...
Now I've got you, Rosenthal!
Now I've got you.
Wilhelm! Wilhelm!
The water used to be pure and clear here, right?
The cat was different in those days.
When are you leaving?
Tomorrow.
How did you find out?
You've been making slips lately.
That made me realize your thoughts were elsewhere.
Where'll you go?
I've just seen a photo of the Zugspitze in the paper.
I've never been up a mountain as high as that.
There's a cog-railway that goes up.
What if I ask you to stay?
I know I shall love you very much one day.
Therese.
Mignon, I'm leaving tomorrow.
You must decide for yourself what to do.
Your friend's decision-making is over.
So how do we part now?
Somewhere in the crowd.
Where is your crowd?
I'm disappointed, too.
I thought it would be so crowded...
we couldn't walk alongside each other.
Shall we meet again?
It's absolutely essential.
Parents #37 who dropped their child at the nursery...
please come to pick up your child.
Parents #37 who dropped their child at the nursery...
are kindly asked to pick up their child.
I told Therese I intended to stay in Germany...
because I knew too little to write about it.
It was only an excuse.
I really just wanted so much to live my stupid life alone.
I was waiting for an experience like a miracle.
But there was no snowstorm.
Why had I run away, why wasrt I back there with the others?
Why did I threaten the old man instead of listening to his tale?
I felt I had missed out somehow...
and was still missing out with every new movement.