Just as my "traveller's tales" are only sketches, this work before
you is also just a sketch. It could not be anything else, because
what I am telling you has not ended yet and because numerous
lawsuits, which have been forced upon me, are taking aim at me
like menacing revolvers. Furthermore, brutal physical pain
prevents me from writing as I would like to. To receive, during a
time of ten years, four times a day, entire stacks of letters and
newspapers, overflowing with venom, mockery, and gloating, is more
than any Samson or Hercules could endure. Mind and soul have
remained strong. Not the slightest part of my inner self has
changed. My confidence in God and my love for mankind have not
been shaken. But in the end, it has still got the best of my
body, which used to seem so indestructible in the past. It is on
the verge of collapse. For one year, I lack natural sleep.
Whenever I want to rest for a few hours, I must resort to
artificial means, to sleeping powders, which only numb the senses
and are not harmless in their effect. I also cannot eat. Just a
few bites a day, my poor, dear wife forces me to take. But
instead, I am in pain, an incessant, terrible neuralgic pain,
which forces me up from my bed at night and rips the pen out of my
hand a hundred times during the day! I feel, as if I had to
scream all of the time, to shout for help. I cannot lie down,
cannot sit, cannot walk, and cannot stand up, and yet I have to do
all of these things. Most of all, I would like to die, die, die,
and yet I do not want to die and may not die, because my time is
not up yet. I have to solve my task.
My task? Yes, my task! I have finally, finally realized what it
is. It is just what I had thought, and yet so very, very
different. I have already said: The Karl-May-problem is, like
every other mortal's problem, an individual example of a problem
which concerns all of mankind. But while most people are only
called upon to represent to their small, immediate surroundings
certain phases of the great problem, there are also others who
have been given the hard task to serve as a representation of it,
though also just on a small scale, but not just representing an
individual detail, but rather the whole. The many represent parts
of mankind, while the few represent images of mankind. The many
can keep their narrow surroundings clean; people like this exist
by the dozens; they can even appear as exemplary people. But the
few are assigned the virtue and the sin, the purity and the filth
of the entire mankind in a representative ratio; they can become
famous generals or crude murderers, great diplomats or notorious
swindlers, philanthropic financial geniuses or despicable
pickpockets, but never exemplary people. They have not been
granted the enjoyable fortune of unconscious mediocrity. If the
forces around them are more powerful than they, they are torn
between virtue and vice, between height and depth, between cheer
and desperation, until they dissolve above the clouds or plunge
into the abyss. If they are the stronger ones and if they are
born into fortunate surroundings, they will proudly and calmly go
on their shining course; but if they came into this world where
baseness, poverty, and want rule, they will still reach their
goal, because they have to, but the resistance they will have to
overcome will be brutal and unrelenting, and, once they have
ascended to this top, before they will be able to sound their cry
of victory, they will collapse with exhaustion, to close their
eyes to this word.
One would think that everyone knew which of these types of people
he would belong to, or at leat, everyone should feel obliged to
think about this. I have done this and have arrived at the
conclusion that I had no right to expect a simple, averagely happy
life, but that I had to get acquainted with mankind's misery in
its deepest depths, in order to work myself up from this misery
just as persistently and just as exhaustingly as mankind requires
floods of sweat and blood as well as millenia of time to rise from
its. Likewise, I am convinced that I had been destined to meet
with this unrelenting resistance, which opposes me up to this day,
and that I have no right to complain about it, because I have
brought it upon myself just as all of mankind would progress
faster, if they would finally stop blocking their own path with
obstacles. It is plain to see that I do not accuse anybody but
myself.
If I ever spoke too tough or harsh in this book, if I have been
unfair or stubborn, then this has, by no means, been intentional
or deliberate, but it has been the still not quite overcome anima,
dictating this to me. As long as a person moves in the low realm,
and this is what I had to do in this description of my life to a
more than large extent, the low matters have some power over him,
and I was not allowed to be untrue; I had to write as my social
surroundings required. But now, that I am reaching the end and am
starting to breathe a better, cleaner air, I am also cleaner and
freer in what I am writing and am regaining the strength to
overcome everything which seeks to embitter me.
And there has been more than enough reason for me to be
embittered. In this, I am only talking about the last ten years
and what has happened as a consequence of the lawsuit against the
Münchmeyers. This lawsuit has been conducted by my opponents, or
rather by their lawyer Gerlach, in a manner which I had thought
entirely impossible before. I had no idea to what an extent the
law protects a lawyer in this respect. For the purpose of
degrading the opposing party before the judge, he is at liberty to
use means which nobody else is permitted to use. He is under the
protection of article 193, because he is acting in his client's
interests. I am going to list a selection of sample expressions,
I had to put up with from the Münchmeyers' advocate Dr. Gerlach,
because he employed them in his capacity as a lawyer:
He accused me of "imprudent extortions", "unjustified demands",
numerous "audacities", and "mumbo jumbo". He called me "cunning",
"fresh", "audacious", "slandering", "pathologically provoking
untruthfulness", "liar", "lying May", "show-off", "Münchhausen",
"boaster", "fraud", "scoundrel", "swindler", "commonplace
swindler", "burglar", "imposter", "convict", etc. etc. I am
asking you: Are these kinds of offensive statements, even if
there was some truth in them, permitted in everyday life? Would a
truly well-educated man want to move in the same circles as
someone who has made them? Well, in the circles of the court they
are permitted, for I have sued this lawyer on account of them for
gross insult and have been rejected. But there is even more: In
response to this complaint of mine, he filed counter-charges
against me, and this was not rejected. The judge is perfectly
innocent in this; he could not act any other way; the law
proscribes it like this! One day, when the testimonies of the
witnesses had turned out to be unfavourable for the Münchmeyers'
party, this lawyer said to the judge: "But in any case, it is
entirely impossible that a person with prior convictions, like
May, could win this trial!" "You'll just have to wait and see,"
the judge answered to him. I was right there and had to put up
with this insult, because the law allowed him to make it. For
almost ten years, this has been going on like this and is still
going on up to this day in the same tone and in the same manner.
A very high-ranking judge said, regarding this, to my lawyer:
"Never in all of my long time on the bench, a case has touched me
so deeply like the that of Karl May. How much must this poor, old
man have suffered!" He might very well have added: "How much is
he still suffering, and how much more will he suffer!" This judge
knew my prison record very well; he had studied the files which
existed on it. Nevertheless and in spite of the verbal abuse of
my opponents, I won the trial and all appeals, surely an
expressive proof that German judges are not influenced by
invectives on the lawyers' part; but nevertheless, I had to
listen to them without being able to speak up and I still have to
do so up to this day. And they work their effect, though not on
the verdict, but definitely into another direction. They
introduce a cruel rudeness into the way the parties interact with
each other and extent beyond the courtroom, out into the public
and even into the private life. All those insulting expressions
about me, which I have listed above, one would already have read
in the newspapers and would likewise also have come across them in
private conversations. This is the necessary consequence of those
liberties which every malicious, unscrupulous lawyer is allowed to
take, once he sees that crude rudeness will get him further than
humaneness. He writes these rude statements into his legal
documents, and from there, he arranges it for them to appear as
official files proving his case in the newspapers. Or he might
first sent them to the newspapers and then submit them in printed
form to the court as evidence, without saying that they originally
came from him. If such a lawyer has several like-minded, or by
him persuaded, newspapers or small papers on his side, it is easy
for him to shatter, or possibly even to destroy, within a short
time, every existence, no matter how firm it might stand. "To
destroy in the newspapers of all of Germany", this is called. And
the law encourages this practice!
There is also another, most interesting example I care about,
which, if anything, will sound less than favourable for me. But I
am mentioning it nevertheless, because, intending to write for the
benefit of the general public, I must not ask whether I might harm
my own interests by this. My first wife had insulted the wife of
an author from Dresden, who had been told by the Münchmeyers that
I had been previously convicted. He got even by informing against
me with a German sovereign and told him that his relatives were
reading my books and also visited me in person. The sovereign
gave no reply. Then came a second letter with accusations, and
now the sovereign was compelled to turn to Dresden, in order to
find out what my prior convictions were all about. He received
detailed information. An official was sent to Radebeul, to
conduct on-the-spot investigations. He found out that my marriage
had not been a happy one, which was the reason why I had not
stayed at home in me free time, and that I had written in my books
about countries where I had never been; everything I reported in
them was not true. Therefore, the files of the police of Dresden
record about me that I was leading an unsteady life and was an
imposter by means of my literature. The sovereign was informed of
this, and one of those relatives, he matter was concerned with,
passed it on to me at the next opportunity in all the details. He
knew very well how much there was to this matter, but asked me to
be discrete, so that I had been compelled to keep silent about
this. I also believed that I could keep silent, because I
presumed that these kinds of police records were among the most
secretive things in the administration. But now, they are being
published by Lebius to my astonishment and are being exploited
accordingly by my opponents. How does a former social democrat,
who has seceded from the church, get hold of these secret records
of the police of Dresden? The law permits it! Quite naturally, I
now no longer feel obliged to be discrete and will insist that
these records will be revised and corrected.
Another case brings me to Leipzig, where I, as I have reported on
page 119 [a], have been apprehended forty-five years ago by
unlawful means. This was such a long time ago that the court
records about this have long since been destroyed, because
humaneness demands that such traces shall only last for a very
specific time, and this time is up. Who has now considered the
possibility that the police of Leipzig might also have made notes
about this, which might still be in existence? Mr. Lebius has
recently published them! How does a man like he now also get hold
of the police records of Leipzig? The law permits it!
[a] Fifth chapter, second half of the 13th paragraph.
Likewise, has published the records of my divorce. These are most
certainly of a nature which requires discretion and are none of
his business at all. But the law permits him to do so!
He is informed about everything relating to my lawsuits. Who
gives him that permission, and who makes it possible for him? The
law and the Münchmeyers' lawyer, who is his lawyer as well. Both
are working hand in hand. At one time, Lebius even persuaded my
ex-wife in Berlin to sign a blank power of attorney, but sent this
to Dresden to the Münchmeyers' lawyer, who then filled in the
blanks as he saw fit for his particular purposes. These are only
a few examples from my rich, personal experience with the fact
that the law does not just permit, but even encourages, things
which it ought to prohibit most strictly. Even the most judicious
and humane judge is powerless against this, and this was what I
was thinking of when I said before that I had finally, finally
realised what my task was. About forty to fifty years ago, I have
involuntarily descended to that place where the despised people
dwell, for whom regaining the respect, which had been robbed from
them, is made so very difficult. I have come to know them, and I
know that they are worth no less than all those who only never
fell because they either had never been on a high level or did not
possess the necessary inner freedom to be able to fall. I want to
descent back down to them, now being almost seventy years old, not
being forced, but voluntarily, as my own decision. I want to tell
them what nobody dared to tell them before, this is that nobody
can help them, if they do not know how to help themselves; that
they are doomed, unless they save themselves using their own
power; by sticking most closely together among themselves. I
want to present them with my example, my life and my efforts. I
want to show them what will become of all of their good intentions
and all of their hard efforts, if others lack these good
intentions. I want to show them that a single unfair lawyer or
that single article 193 are enough to destroy even the most
beautiful and best achievements of their strength of mind, of
Christian love, and of humaneness in one blow. I want to tell
them that it is a sin of mankind to conceal their share in the
guilt of the guilty ones; but that it is also a mistake for the
latter ones to keep their past guilt a secret. Our lives, my
life, their lives shall be spread out openly before the eyes of
God, but in particular also openly before our own eyes. Then, we
will not bear a grudge, and then, we will not be resentful.
Because then, we will realise why it was possible for us to fall:
We made ourselves fall. And once we realise this, we are able to
forgive ourselves; and he who may forgive himself, will be
forgiven. So, do away with the inappropriate feeling of being
ashamed, and bring out openness! Only the secret we veil
ourselves in gives that article and every unscrupulous person the
power to think himself higher and better than us and still to be
our - - - executioner!
I am only giving you an outline here. Like everything up to this
point, this can also be nothing but a sketch for now. But I am
feeling the need to transform the evil things which others have
done to me into something good for my fellow human beings. I will
enable those who had the same fate as I to draw those conclusions
from my inhumane persecution which are beneficial to them. What
good is all so-called "justice", all so-called "clemency of the
court", all so-called "humane punishment", all so-called "care for
released prisoners", if all it takes is one cunning lawyer or one
questionable article to destroy all the good things which had come
out of these efforts in a single moment? How can anybody expect a
fallen man to get up again and to be a better person, as long as
they fail to create better conditions as well in the surroundings
he is put back into? Does it encourage him to know that, in spite
of all efforts to become a better person, he must still continue
to be, as long as he shall live, the ostracised one, the
suppressed one, the one without rights, and will continue to be
like this, because he is forced to remain silent, no matter what
is happening to him, and to let them do everything to him?
Because if he does not do this, he is doomed. If he should go
ahead and seek his rightful justice against those who insult, rob,
and cheat him, his old files are dragged forward, and he is
pilloried. Let me just remind you that a public prosecutor form
Dresden, even just for purely "scientific" reasons, had nailed me
to the pillory, while I am still alive! He could not even wait
for my death and maintained that an article of the law gave him
the right to conduct this vivisection. In such a situation one
cannot help but look into the faces of those who talk about
humaneness, to see whether there might be a sardonic smile coming
through, revealing how things really are. And one feels, together
with the hundreds of thousands who are suffering from this, the
burning urge to take all of these articles, because of which
mankind's good intentions fail, drag them to the light of day, and
put them there where they must be, in order to be seen as what
they really are, - - - into the public, before parliament!
Here lies the point where my task has to begin. There have
already been several who have written down their experiences as
"released prisoners"; but what could be gathered from these
reports was so insignificant that it could not be of any benefit
for the general public. Here, it is not enough to show the small
lot of some people, but rather heavy, weighty fates of people,
which are also real fates in the classical sense. _And_my_fate_is_
_like_this._ I feel obliged, and it is my task, to put it into the
service of humaneness. What I mean by this will, so I hope, be be
evident from my second volume.
It was a part of this task of mine, that the public did not only
take an interest in Karl May the novelist, but also in the person
May, and that everything which could be held against the latter
had to be scooped up, down to the last drop. One thing was
justified criticism; the other was the work of executioners,
flayers, and knackers, I had to put up with without freeing myself
from this agony and torture by paying the money they demanded from
me. This was the spirits' furnace of my fable, where they were
bashing away at me, so that the sparks were spewing through every
newspaper. They even still spew today. But soon, this will
quiet down. The time of the hammer is over; only the file is
still to come, and then, it will be done. It goes entirely
without saying that all that pain, which came upon me, also had to
influence my other task, my task as a novelist. There also was
dross, and even more than enough. It also had to be removed.
Thus flew the soot, the filth, the dust, the hammer's blows. All
of this is still lying all around me, but now, it will be cleared
away, so that the clean, noble work shall begin.
It was quite generally a large, a hard, and a most painful process
of clearing up and out; not just inside of me, but also
externally, in my work, my profession, my house, my marriage.
Everything which had driven me to the furnace and the pain had to
go. It was replaced with what was clean and honest and what was
striving upwards with me, from Ardistan to Jinnistan, the land of
the nobly spirited people. This resulted in a separation of good
from evil, which could only be brought about by means of struggles
and sacrifices. Now it has been completed. The storms have
passed. Though there a still a few murky waters, murmuring here
and there, some lawsuit for gross insult, a complaint with the
public prosecutor's office, but this will also pass quickly, and
then, there will be calm and peace around me, so that I will
finally, finally obtain the time and space and state of mind, to
approach my real, my only and last "work".
Looking back at the last ten years, I am full of gratitude for
having survived them. There has never been a "persecution" like
the one against me for as long as earth exists in the literature
of any country, of any nation. There were tempests in the
newspapers, tempests in the courtrooms, tempests in my own house,
and tempests inside of me. Though my old, faithful, good friend,
the body, maintains that he could no longer go along with me, I am
still convinced that he will nevertheless be as willing and
understanding again as he has always been. He had to endure what
normally could not possibly have been endured. First, there were
for entire six years the three instances of the first trial
against the Münchmeyers with all those upsetting and pathetic
aspects connected with it. Then followed the twenty-two months of
the investigation for perjury and incitement to perjury. This was
because the Münchmeyers' lawyer had filed a complaint for perjury
with the public prosecutor's office against me and my witnesses,
after he had lost the trial. The prosecutor had, according to his
own statement, accepted the complaint to finally clear this matter
up. This struggle, lasting for almost two years, quite naturally
ended with the finding that no proof of any punishable act
committed by me or my witnesses could be established. But this
was not the end of it yet, for other things came on top of this,
which were almost even worse than everything which had happened
before: the first assaults by Lebius; a double pneumonia, which
kept me between life and death for several months; the
accusations my ex-wife brought up against me, my present wife, and
her mother, and by means of which she had sought to bring a severe
punishment upon us; the complaints with the public prosecutor's
office, which she had then filed by a friend against us on account
of these accusations; the same complaints being repeated by
Lebius in Berlin. Luckily, this ex-wife had voluntarily told and
confessed everything which she then denied after the divorce,
during the divorce proceedings in the presence of perfect
strangers without any interference on my part, so that she could
only have been lured into this later denial. The presentation of
these pieces of evidence proved that all accusations against me
were lies. Furthermore, there is the petition of Lebius with the
public prosecutor's office to lock me up in a lunatic asylum; his
petition to have me followed to America with a warrant for my
arrest; the numerous articles against me in his paper "Der Bund";
his pamphlets with the most horrible lies, which were circulated
in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, France, England, North
and South America. In these, he even accused me of having
strangled my father-in-law! [a] This goes on like this up until
recent times. Finally, he informed against me for having made
insulting statements about an investigating judge, and the very
last thing was, about four weeks ago, a complaint with the public
prosecutor against me for incest, the punishment for which is, as
we all know, five years in prison. You see that the very most
extreme means are being used to "destroy" me! To endure this,
without losing the faith in God, the belief in the good of
mankind, and all joy of life and strength to live, is an act I
hardly think everybody would be capable of. I have endured it,
without allowing myself to be tempted to take the law into my own
hands, because I am incapable of doubting for a single moment in
God and his love, and because, in all of these more than hard
times, there had been a person by my side, whose brave, upward
striving soul had lifted me up, like on the wings of angels, above
all suffering, I was meant to be subjected to, this person is my
present wife. If someone has had the right to write books on the
topic of "The Savage Beast in a Woman" [b], I might just as well
feel obliged to publish, as a contrast to this, a book bearing the
title "Heaven in a Woman".
[a] This should probably read "grandfather-in-law", referring to
C.G. Pollmer, the grandfather of Karl May's first wife. At
any rate, Lebius's accusation is bogus.
[b] "Die Bestie im Weibe" by Carl Felix von Schlichtegroll
(1862-1946).
With such a woman by my side, who is a source everything which is
clean, noble, and eternal in a human being, everything can be
achieved in respect to the pains of life on earth, and everything
can be performed in respect to the work which is still ahead for
me, as far as it is humanly possible. I am no longer so terribly
alone. No longer, I have to tap into nothing but my own inner
self, but rather I have been joined by a delightfully plentiful
living soul, by whose influence everything inside of me which is
leading me towards the good goal is being doubled. Severely
ailing physically, I am of a fresh mind and in my soul at least
just as much full of confidence as in my youth. I am not foolish
enough to deny to myself that I am regarded as an outcast, cast
out from the church, society, and literature. One person will
start bashing at me, because he regards me as a Catholic or even
Jesuit in disguise; another one will reach for the cudgel,
because he thinks that I was still secretly a Protestant. Do you
think that those two would manage to pledge their allegiance
exclusively to whomever they happen to get the most thorough
thrashing from at any given time? That I am regarded as socially
dead, I do not care about. I do not have the slightest reason to
be eager to be a part of that society the acquaintance of which I
had been forced to make in my times of suffering. By the way, we
two old folks, my dear wife and I, are thus perfectly sufficient
to one another in respect to world within ourselves, that we would
not even be capable to yearn for the "society" of others. And
concerning me being cast out from literature, I can also live with
that. The path I am on has been taken by no one else before me;
I would therefore, even without the hatred directed against me, be
forced to be a lonely man. I am furthermore convinced that later,
once they will be properly acquainted with me and what I want, a
sizable number, perhaps even many, will leave the large crowd, in
order to join me. Old paths can lead to nothing more than old,
dead treasures. But whoever is searching for new, living
treasures, shall also take new, not old, paths. And my path is a
new one! The fate of my previous work will only be determined by
their worth or worthlessness, by nothing else. If they are any
good, they will stay, no matter whether they are presently being
praised or condemned. If they are no good, they will disappear,
no matter whether they are now rejected or not. And the most
important thing is, the person who has their worth or
worthlessness under his control is just me alone. No one of my
opponents, no matter how powerful and influential he may be in
literature, can influence this in even the slightest degree. This
sounds proud and boastful, but it is true. These works are
collections of sketches, are preliminary exercises, are
preparations for what is to come later. If those later things
will turn out well, everything by means of which I prepared myself
for it will be justified, no matter how or what is being thought
and written about it now.
Now, there is only one final remark in respect to the Münchmeyer
novels left for me to make. One of my most unrelenting opponents
wrote I should by no means fool anybody into believing that a
trashy publisher could transform decent novels into indecent ones;
this would be a huge job, which nobody would be able to cope with.
This gentleman seems to be in the fortunate position to be
infinitely far removed from the live and activities of a trashy
publisher. First of all, if someone is able to spend the time and
effort to write a novel, then someone ought to be much more able
to spend the shorter time and lesser effort to change this novel!
Secondly, such a change requires by no means as much time and work
as my opponent seems to assume. The insertion of a few words is
perfectly sufficient to transform a "moral" sheet of printed paper
into an "immoral" one. Thirdly, there is more than enough
manpower for such changes available, and they have such an
astonishing routine in it that even an insider is amazed by the
the amount they can cope with. I have supplied evidence to this
and will supply even more. Walther, the frequently mentioned
factotum, sat at Münchmeyers' every day, from early in the morning
until in the evening, only doing these kinds of work, and then
reading the proofs, which the author never got to see. The
evidence given first by Fischer, who had bought the Münchmeyers'
business, and a few years later by his heirs, in a material manner
and in court, on these adaptations of my novels, is well known.
Concerning this, Münchmeyer's nephew, who had been the head
pressman, had confirmed as a witness in the trial that Münchmeyer
had personally altered entire chapters. Another witness had
testified under oath that Münchmeyer had confessed to him that he
was making large, extensive changes to my novels, he would better
not tell me anything about. I suppose, I do not need to list here
even more examples, which are available to me, to make you
comprehend why I am absolutely demanding to be presented with my
original manuscripts, which surely would carry a so very different
weight as evidence than the fading memory of an old typesetter,
who, after thirty years, is expected to find his way around
through the mess of Münchmeyer's letter-cases of that time.
Furthermore, these changes often stand out thus sharply from my
original text, that very numerous readers are assuring me that
they could say very precisely where the forgery begins and where
it ends.
Finally, I cannot neglect drawing your attention to a trick of my
opponents, and of Mr. Lebius in particular, which is being
employed to cause those of my readers who belong to the higher
classes to be outraged against me. They would write, for
instance, in an eye-catching place, that I was socialising with
the high society of Dresden and that I would quite generally make
the greatest effort to obtain the acquaintance of high-ranking
people. Not a single word, not a single letter of this is true.
When I am by myself, I feel most comfortable, and I also wish, in
this respect, for nothing else than to remain by myself. I would
like to see that person who would want to prove to me that I had
forced my company on him! In other places, it has been stated
emphatically, that I was a regular guest at "courts". This is
even more decisively untrue. If some aristocrat, who might belong
to some "court", would read my books and occasionally exchange a
few words with me, I would be the very last person to interpret
this as me being a "regular at court". Behind these statements,
which are pure fiction, there can only be the intention, to give
me, in those circles, the reputation of a indiscrete person or
even a liar, and to harm me even there, where I am absolutely not
to be found. - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
In the end of this volume, I am returning to the beginning, to my
old, dear fable of "Sitara", I had started with. Not much time
will pass, before this fable will be known as the truth, and even
as the most tangible there is. It is the task of the present
century, which has just started, to enable our untrained eyes to
see the great, exalted symbolism of daily life and to bring us to
the bliss giving and uplifting realisation that there are higher
and more undeniable realities than those with which the workdays
and weekdays keep us busy. The sketches I drew and published
shall serve to prepare for this realisation. Therefore, they are
written in a symbolic manner and only have to be interpreted
allegorically, if they are to be understood. One would think that
it is quite amazing that this seems to be so hard for the common
reader. It should not be too much of a hard nut to crack, to
figure out something when reading a parable. When I refer to
Ardistan as the land of the ethically low and Jinnistan as the
land of the high, nobly thinking people, it could not require an
almost academic education to see what I mean when I describe a
journey from Ardistan to Jinnistan. The reader simply has to
transport himself in his imagination from his world of weekdays
into my world of Sundays, and this, I would think, is surely not
harder for him than to leave his workshop every Sunday, in order
to go to church at the sound of the bells.
Just as going to church this way frees a person from earthly
pressures, I want to free the inner part of my readers from the
external pressure by means of my tales. They shall hear bells
ringing. They shall sense and experience how a prisoner feels who
hears the locks clanging, because the day has come when he is
being released. It is is just as easy to understand my books and
to comprehend their contents, as it is easy to interpret this
imprisonment allegorically. I want my readers to stop regarding
life as a merely material existence. This view is a prison for
them, beyond the walls of which they are unable to see, to behold
the sunny, free, wide land. They are prisoners, but I want to
free them. And in seeking to free them, I am freeing myself,
because I am also not free, but rather imprisoned since a long,
long time ago. At that time, when I was living in prison, I was
free. There, I lived protected by the walls. There, everyone
stepping into my cell came with good and honest intentions.
There, nobody was allowed to touch me. There, nobody was allowed
to disturb the development of my inner self. No villain had me in
his power. Whatever I possessed and whatever I obtained was my
sure and inalienable property, until I - - was released, not for a
moment longer! For when I was released, I lost my freedom and my
human rights. What others who only know how to talk in
materialistic terms refer to as freedom has been a prison to me, a
labour camp, a penitentiary, in which I have been languishing by
now for thirty-six years, without finding a single person, aside
from my present wife, I would have been able to talk to, as I used
to talk to that unforgettable Catholic Bible teacher. I have not
lived and worked for myself, but only for others. Whatever I
obtained, I have been defrauded out of. Whatever savings I made,
have been stolen from me. Any given person was allowed to do with
me whatever he pleased, for everywhere he found a lawyer taking
his case. Any given person was allowed to suspect me, insult me,
bash away at me, for everywhere there was an article of law
protecting him. I had to conduct lawsuits for six years for the
sake of my property, and when I had won the trial, this did not
mean by a long shot that I would have received anything, and I was
put under preliminary investigation for perjury for twenty-two
months. By now, I am already conducting lawsuits for almost ten
years, and still, I have no result. The law does not want to have
it any other way. But in the meantime, I have been like a prison
inmate, who may be flogged, hurt, and tortured by everybody
however he may please, if he only succeeds in arming himself with
one of those articles of law, which are the ideals of all
"resolute" lawyers. Yes indeed, I am a captive, a prison inmate,
even now! A dozen lawsuits have detained me, so that by no means
I would be able to escape, and everybody who wanted money from me,
but did not get any, has behaved like a disciplinarian and has
been bashing away at me. I have wanted the best for all of those
I write for, their internal and external wellbeing, their present
and their future happiness. What have I been given for this good
intentions of mine? Scorn, mockery, and sarcasm! When I was a
prison inmate, I was no prisoner. And now that I am it no more, I
am it still. Why?
And you are laughing about me writing allegorically? Are not even
hell and purgatory allegories to us, who are the poorest of them
all? Where is a hell, if not in yourselves? And where is
purgatory, if not in ourselves? I am talking about this purgatory
when I am symbolically telling the story of my "spirits' furnace",
the terrible time of which I will have overcome today or tomorrow.
I hold no grudge against you, for I know it had to be this way.
It had been my task to bear every heavy load and to taste every
bitterness, which was to be borne and tasted here; I have to use
this in my work now. I am not embittered, because I know my
guilt. And what others had been forced to do to me, I do not hold
against them. I am just asking for that one thing: Finally,
finally, let me have the time to start this work!
Now that my life's hard work is all quite done,
Just leisure is what old age shall be bringing.
And what perhaps I will still look upon
With harp and psaltry I will still be singing.
I gave you all I got from God above,
Not for myself, among you I've been living.
And when you're giving hatred for my love,
I'll be content with these thanks you are giving.
Now that my life's hard pains are all quiet done,
To soothe my grief on God I am depending.
And what might still on me will come upon
He shall, in me, lead to a joyous ending.
The guilt you burdened me with heavily,
Was partially not my own, I must be saying.
The worldly thoughts on this which stir in me,
I'll gladly hide, except when I am praying.
Now that my life's hard test is all quiet done,
The Lord's own verdict I might soon be hearing,
Which way on me He might decide upon
It's my salvation, nothing I'd be fearing.
I cheer. From dungeons I will be set free;
At last, this prison's ties He'll sever.
Farewell! And he who still will misjudge me
Might just as well go on, hate me for ever!
The End.