Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Ernst Bloch (1885-1977) was one of the great philosophers and political intellectuals of twentieth-century Germany. Among his works to have appeared in English are The Spirit of Utopia (Stanford University Press, 2000), Literary Essays (Stanford University Press, 1998), The Utopian Function of Art and Literature: Selected Essays (1987), and The Principle of Hope (1986).

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TRACES

Stanford University Press

Contents

Not Enough...............................................1Sleeping.................................................1Drawn Out................................................1Always in It.............................................2Mingling.................................................2Sing-Song................................................2Slight Change............................................3Lamp and Closet..........................................4Learning Good Habits.....................................5The "Mark!"..............................................5SITUATIONThe Poor.................................................9Filth....................................................9The Gift.................................................9Different Needs..........................................10Games, Regrettably.......................................10The Useful Member........................................14Shaker of Strawberries...................................15Bread and Games..........................................15Narrow-Minded Comrades...................................16Disturbing Whim..........................................17FATEPassing It Forward.......................................21The Negro................................................21The Watershed............................................22No Face..................................................24Comte de Mirabeau........................................25Rich Devil, Poor Devil...................................29The Kitten as David......................................30Triumphs of Misrecognition...............................31Scribe at the Mairie.....................................36The Beautiful Appearance.................................37The Rococo of Fate.......................................39Spirit Still Taking Shape................................42The Motif of Parting.....................................51Supernaturalism, Stupid and Improved.....................56Strange Homeland, Familiar Exile.........................58Pippa Passes.............................................59The Long Gaze............................................61Reunion Without Connection...............................62The Muse of Restitution..................................64Raphael Without Hands....................................66EXISTENCEJust Now.................................................71Dark by Us...............................................71The Fall into the Now....................................72The Spur of Work.........................................73No Free Lunch............................................76Ten Years' Jail, Seven-Meter Train.......................79Silence and Mirrors......................................80Ways Not to Be Seen......................................82Imminent Boredom.........................................83Moment and Image.........................................87Potemkin's Signature.....................................88Incognito to Oneself.....................................89Motifs of Concealment....................................91Just Knock...............................................97The Corner of the Blanket................................97Short Excursion..........................................98Terror and Hope..........................................99Excursus: Human and Wax Figure...........................101Nearby: Inn of the Insane................................105Tableau with Curve.......................................106Some Patterns from the Left Side.........................108The Twice-Disappearing Frame.............................113The Motif of the Door....................................116THINGSHalf Good................................................123The Next Tree............................................123Flower and Unflower......................................124The Leyden Jar...........................................124The First Locomotive.....................................124The Urban Peasant........................................125The House of Day.........................................126Montages of a February Evening...........................128An Odd Flneur...........................................130Eating Olives Precisely..................................132Making a Point...........................................133The Reverse of Things....................................134Greeting and Appearance..................................136Motifs of Temptation.....................................140Appendix: No Man's Land..................................147A Russian Fairy Tale?....................................149The Clever Way Out.......................................151Disappointment with Amusement............................154The Invisible Hand.......................................155Tales of White Magic.....................................159Wonder...................................................169The Mountain.............................................171Dead and Usable..........................................171The Pearl................................................172Notes....................................................175

Chapter One

One is alone with oneself. Together with others, most are alone even without themselves. One has to get out of both.

Sleeping

By ourselves we are still empty. So we easily fall asleep with no external stimuli. Soft pillows, darkness, quiet let us fall asleep; the body grows dark. When one lies awake at night, that is hardly waking, but rather a stubborn, exhausting creeping in place. One notices then how unpleasant it is with nothing but oneself.

Drawn Out

Waiting likewise makes one desolate. But it can also make one drunk. Someone who stares too long at the door where he expects another to enter can become intoxicated. As by tuneless singing that draws and draws. Dark, where it draws us to; probably into nothing good. If the man, the woman whom one awaits doesn't arrive, the clear disappointment doesn't really undo the intoxication. It only combines with its result, a particular kind of hangover that occurs here too. Against waiting, only hoping helps, which one must not only drink, but cook somewhat too.

Always in It

We can't be alone for long. One doesn't suffice with it; in one's very own room something's not right. Nonetheless one takes the room along everywhere, especially when young. Many are drawn strangely back into themselves; they make themselves mute. It rattles down as with chains and buries those who are only in themselves. Precisely because they can't get out of themselves, they grow scared, right in the corner where they are. Into which they're driven, even without anything bringing them there. We always dread only what we don't see. What visibly assails us causes awe, if we're weak, or resistance. But against dread, because it comes out of us alone, when we're alone, all that helps is to love oneself or forget oneself. Whoever cannot do so adequately gets bored. Whoever can, either takes himself seriously or takes what he does outside of himself just as it is. They aren't so far apart, and alternate in most of us. They let us get up every morning even when we shouldn't have to, and during the day both disperse only halfway.

Mingling

Is it good? I asked. Children like it best at someone else's home. They notice soon enough what's wrong there too. If it were so nice at home, they wouldn't leave so eagerly. They sense early that, here as elsewhere, much could be different.

Sing-Song

Strange, how some act when no one sees them. Some make faces in the morning, others do a little dance, most hum senselessly to themselves. Even during pauses-while counting, say-many hum something we can't understand, they themselves can't hear, in which, however, there may be a lot. The masks fall away, or new ones rise; the thing is crazy enough. Alone, many go a little crazy; they sing a bit of what went wrong with them once and was never set right. They are skewed, and puppets in a dream, because they were forced to grow up even more skewed and vacant.

Slight Change

I used to know someone who didn't put on airs. As a child, he would say, he'd actually been quite vain; at games he had to be the first. Whoever would not parry would be beaten, and usually the little prince would be on top, if only because the other wouldn't properly hit back.

But later that was gone, of course, at a stroke, as though swallowed up. Those of us from his earlier grades could still remember: he was quite a pitiful boy then. Others' awkward years took their toll on this new coward; they threw him in the pool, tied a rope to his leg on the playground and made him jump. From the boy who'd done the least to him, he stole a notebook, for which the other was punished; in short, he'd become a wretched boy, bad and unsteady. But then something remarkable happened: at fourteen years, or a little later, in the first flush of puberty, the same proud boy returned, and the wretched boy fell away; his character reversed for the second time; he grew strong and soon became the leader of the same grade. He had his personal slogans, with quite genuine force, insolent conviction, and little affectation; he would enter pubs with the cry, "Hats off, Fritz Klein is coming"; the patrons were already hatless. Another, somewhat later slogan was: "Who rejects me condemns himself"; but he didn't need to say such foolish stuff, there was already something about the young man that was quite special, and actually rather difficult to explain, something he shared with others I would later meet, and who by the way were not always the best people: he radiated power. One could hardly pull away.

Yet the same man now went on to say that later-many years later, naturally-he was riding high, he had a plum job. He was setting up house, and the builders suddenly had a feeling, or rather an old, long forgotten joke at his expense, he could describe it no better, but his other self from an earlier time was back. At least the fellows acted that way, grinning. So something in him, he thought, must not have been right, or remained weak from those bad old days. If dogs can sense someone's sex, the workers in that small town (and such workers!) had a sense that was just as exact. A distant memory grew fresh to him too, and he said he learned from it that no grass grows over inner misdeeds-that one can again become the coward one was, and again do the ill that one did, when one's younger brothers from the old days notice it so clearly.

One of us, who simply did not believe in the individual self, sought a friendlier interpretation here. But of course it depends on someone's situation; pitiful or benevolent airs, weak or strong actions are nurtured accordingly. If that honest man had had no track for his new self, or rather his childish self, to roll onto, he could never even have related this instructive stuff. Instead, the workers would have found him in the news, where the little scoundrels fall under the wheels or are hanged, especially the weak or lapsed.

Lamp and Closet

Someone claimed: the only thing that still lives today is for two at a time, at most for three. He was thinking of love, friendship, conversation; he was a kindly, desperate man who froze at work and did not see what could come out of all this. In all this he made absolutely nothing out of individual or impressive persons, but was rather totally on the side of the people-a proper, lively, nonexistent people, of course. So he withdrew, as unbourgeois as possible, to the petit bourgeois side, not into a house, but where a lamp still stood on the table.

But another related: as I was fixing up my room, and thinking quite convivial thoughts, something peculiar happened. I'd bought old furniture, but when I finished, I noticed-or rather, women and friends noticed-that all the chairs seemed to be missing. Along the walls stood chests, credenzas, modest closets and above all large ones; in the middle lay a rug that covered the floor. But a place to sit and talk, which I thought I loved, had been forgotten. Even the lamps, not forgotten of course, stood not so much conversably, readably, as simply radiantly and outwardly, like lanterns detached from the wall. What a man is, said a shrewd woman, he sees walking ahead of him; but one should not be so much a man, said the teller, or a man who simply has everything move or stand along the objective wall. Who in this case had been so unobjective, perhaps, that his room finally wore only lovely, heavy, proud showpieces, almost like a woman. That was a lesson to me, concluded the astonished man, and he visited his friend, the same man we told of above, who was so humane that he even detested thick neckties.

Learning Good Habits

People sense quite precisely when things aren't going well for them, at least emotionally. Their thoughts are somewhat murkier-there they're easily diverted. But like their bodies, their feelings imitate the jerking and swaying of the vehicle that takes them to the factory or office every morning. Only habit helps a little here, as a very weak intoxicant one hardly notices as such. All of bourgeois life is pervaded by it, and is only thereby tolerable. If on the other hand the situation gets entirely desperate, not only monotonously but devastatingly bad, then a much stronger antidote forms, one that comes out of us. Boys already know the peculiar thrill when their grades keep getting worse and misfortune is really flying. Adults feel it differently but relatedly: if someone has bet everything on his last hand and lost, there sometimes comes a completely deceptive joy that it's finally over. A soft joy that absorbs the blows, so that for a time they strike past or to the side. No strength comes out of it, but when habit degrades and numbs us, the tiny, glittering thrill in misfortune is the enjoyment of a defiance, a defiance that seems to have no need to defy, that liberates us strangely if only briefly. There a bit of something that never came is hidden: partly as penny jar, partly as lamp, and not just an inward lamp.

The "Mark!"

More and more appears among us to the side. One should observe precisely the little things, go after them.

What is slight and odd often leads the furthest. One hears a story-say, about the soldier who arrives too late for muster. He doesn't insert himself into the ranks but rather stands next to the officer, who "thereby" notices nothing. Apart from the amusement that this story provides, an impression is still working: What was that? Something moved! And it moved in its own way. An impression that will not let us come to rest over what we heard. An impression on the surface of life, so that it tears, perhaps.

In short, it's good to think in stories too. So much just isn't done with itself when it happens, even where it's beautifully told. Instead, very strangely, there's more going on there. The case has something about it; this is what it shows or suggests. Stories of this kind are not just recounted; instead we also count what something struck there-or we listen up: What was that? Out of incidents comes a "Mark!" that would otherwise not be thus; or a "Mark!" that already is, that takes little incidents as traces and examples. They point out a "less" or "more" that will have to be thought in the telling, retold in the thinking; that isn't right in these stories, because things aren't right with us, or with anything. Some things can be grasped only in such stories, not in a more expansive, elevated style, or then not in the same way. How some such things came to notice will be retold here, and tentatively marked; lovingly, marking in the retelling; by marking, intending the retelling. It's little strokes and such from life that haven't been forgotten; our refuse is worth a lot these days. But an older impulse was also there: to hear stories, good ones, poor ones, stories in different tones, from different years, remarkable ones that, when they come to an end, only really come to an end in the stirring. It's a reading of traces every which way, in sections that only divide up the frame. In the end, everything one meets and notices is the same.

Chapter Two

The Poor

What are you doing? I asked. I'm conserving light, said the poor woman. She sat in the dark kitchen, a long time already. That was certainly easier than conserving food. Since there isn't enough for everyone, the poor step in. They work for the rich even when they rest, alone.

Filth

How low one can go! I heard that yesterday, and everything that goes with it.

In the Rue Blondel lay a drunk woman; the watchman rousts her. Je suis pauvre, says the woman. That's no reason to throw up in the street, shouts the watchman. Que voulez vous, monsieur, la pauvret, c'est dj moiti la salet, says the woman, and sighs. So she described, explained, and canceled herself, in one stroke. Whom or what could the watchman still arrest?

The Gift

Everything has a price, they say, just not happiness. On the contrary, precisely happiness; children begin early with it. An eight-year-old girl recently rescued a boy from drowning. Or screamed, seeing the boy turn blue, until others came and pulled him out. For screaming, the child received a twenty from Santa Claus, a lot of money; not too much, as we'll hear. As the girl later looks out the window again, something elongated is drifting on the water. She runs out in front of the house: Mister, there's twenty dollars in the water again! (It was just a log, however.) Considering the possible consequences (seeing a drowned corpse, and so on), here the trauma was remarkably resolved by money, indeed prevented. Two evils canceled each other out; the girl angel came to rest. It's the lowest sort of misfortune to be poor. Santa Claus, who rarely comes, doesn't cancel it, but at least puts it in its proper place.

Different Needs

It is told that a horse and a dog were friends. The dog saved the best bones for the horse, and the horse put the most fragrant bunches of hay before the dog; each wanted to do his best for the other, and neither one was fed. This depicts exactly the misery shared by two people close to each other: particularly a man and woman, when they can't leave their own house, but even more casual acquaintances. More modest expectations of what others offer, usually kindly, would help a great deal, of course. For when one sees their bundle of hay-their evening, their Sunday-one cannot understand how they can bear to live.

Games, Regrettably

1.

The day didn't promise much.

No money; even Paris seems smaller then. Went to the old workingman's tavern; there are worse places that are no cheaper.

But there I saw someone doing it right. So truly, so shamelessly enjoying himself, as one should. The man across from me grasped lobsters in his callused hands, bit off and spat out the red shells till the floor sprayed. But to the tender creature within he spoke cheerfully once he got it, quietly and sensibly. Here, finally, was a good not defiled by bourgeois enjoyment; the sweat of the deprived, the disgrace of capital gains didn't affect the flavor. Odd enough in Paris, where no bourgeois yet is embarrassed to be one: to call himself not just casually but proudly a rentier. The worker with the lobsters reminded one of something else too, of the great breakthrough back then, long ago. A certain something, later, glimmering, when money no longer barks at every good nor wags its tail in it. When we're spared the terribly stupid choice between pure conviction and pure taste.

2.

That night one didn't walk at all the same way. Didn't try to avoid the street, even the middle where the cars surged by, right and left, high and low, fast and right at us.

Instead the middle of the street came alive; something was even growing on it. The barrage of traffic that usually owned it was laid down, withdrew into the distance or to the edges; the glorious asphalt was inhabited. Colorful paper lanterns strung across made a low ceiling: beneath it, there was dancing. The houses became walls, the illuminated windows roundabout glowed like lamps, like mirrors with their own light source, again with people in them. And the most beautiful thing was that the dance floor was enclosed only on the sides but otherwise had the long street to itself, and the side streets too. At the next corner there was already music again, and couples roamed through the glowing quarter.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from TRACESby Ernst Bloch Copyright © 1969 by Suhrkamp Verlag Frankfurt am Main . Excerpted by permission.
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