Kaddish for an Unborn Child Read Free Page A

is not possible to be; how the very sustenance of life is, in point of fact, sheer bad manners since, in a more elevated sense and looked at from a more elevated perspective, it ought not to be permissible to be, simply by virtue of events and the continual recurrence of events, let that much suffice, that is reason enough; not to speak of the fact that more erudite minds already proscribed being from being long, long ago. Another thing that was brought up—I cannot recall everything, of course, for hundreds upon hundreds of similar conversations buzzed or rather echoed hollowly in a conversation that had come about as a result of pure confusion and accident, in the way that
in one creative
thought a thousand forgotten nights of love revive, filling it
with sublimity and exaltation
—I cannot, in truth, recollect everything, but I believe another thing that was brought up was: Is it not possible that the entire seemingly unknowing effort of being that is directed towards being is by no means a sign of some impartial naïveté, which would be an exaggeration and, in point of fact, impossible, but, on the contrary, a symptom that it can continue only this way, unknowingly, if it must continue at all costs. And only if survival is successful, and of course (Dr. Obláth), it can only succeed on a
more
elevated plane,
although (duet) not even the faintest signs point to this, to be frank quite the opposite, namely, a descent into unknowingness shows itself to be the case . . . Furthermore, that knowing unknowingness and the syndromes of schizophrenia obviously . . . And yet furthermore, this means that the experiencing (I) and reification (Dr. Obláth) of the state of the world to which every state of the world tends, in the absence of faith, culture and other official devices, is nowadays only a disaster . . . And so we tootled on, tootling the sour-toned cor anglais as on the crowns of the motionless, torpid trees there settled a hazy blue twilight mist, tucked away deep within which, like a dense nucleus, lay the more solid mass of the holiday home, where a laid supper table awaited, a presentiment of soon-to-be-rattling cutlery, clinking glasses, a swelling susurrus of conversation, and out of this stark fact came a plaintive sigh of the sour-toned cor anglais; nor can I pretend to myself that I did not, after all, turn back in order to shake Dr. Obláth off: spellbound and as a result of the emptiness concealed by my compulsion to speak and the bad conscience (disgust) that I felt on account of this emptiness, who knows why, but undoubtedly on account of this emptiness, I stayed with him to the very end in order not to hear, not to see and not to have to speak about what I ought to speak—indeed who knows?—perhaps even write about. Yes, and the night bestowed its punishment—or was it a reward?—for all this, bringing a turn in the weather, a sudden windstorm, claps of thunder and huge strokes of balefully flickering lightning that plowed right across the entire sky then decayed as zigzag hieroglyphics and dry, laconic, clearly—(at least for me clearly)—legible letters, each one a
    â€œNo!” that I had said, because it had become quite natural by then for my instincts to act contrary to my instincts, for my counterinstincts, so to say, to act instead of, indeed as, my instincts.
    â€œNo!” something within me bellowed, howled, instantly and at once, and my whimpering abated only gradually, after the passage of many long years, into a sort of quiet but obsessive pain until, slowly and malignantly, like an insidious illness, a question assumed ever more definite form within me: Would you be a brown-eyed little girl, with the pale specks of your freckles scattered around your tiny nose? Or else a headstrong boy, your eyes bright and hard as greyish-blue pebbles?—yes, contemplating my life as the potentiality of your existence. And that day, the whole night through, I