23-27 The Birth of a Great Idea

In these chapters we are introduced to Dr. Paul Arnheim, a rich Prussian who travels with a "little blackamoor," and we learn more about Diotima. In chapter 27 we discover that Arnheim's visit has given Diotima a "great idea."  And what is it?

. . . Diotima's great idea amounted to nothing more than that the Prussian, Arnheim, was the man to assume the spiritual leadership of the great Austrian patriotic endeavor, even though this Parallel Campaign contained a barb of jealousy aimed at Prussia-Germany. 

This idea, of course, advances the plot. But what is more interesting is the narrator's analysis of Diotima and how she came to maintain, with Count Leinsdorf's help, "a 'salon' which enjoyed a reputation as a place where 'society and intellect' met."

One characteristic of Diotima's approach to society is her cultivation of women:

"Life is much too overburdened with knowledge these days," she was accustomed to say, "for us to be able to do without the 'unfragmented woman.'" She was convinced that only the unfragmented woman still possessed the fated power to embrace the intellect with those vital forces that, in her opinion, it obviously sorely needed for its salvation. This concept of the entwining woman and the power of Being, incidentally, redounded greatly to her credit among the young male nobility who attended regularly because it was the thing to do . . .

Another characteristic is her suffering because she has grown tired of the very "Old Austrian culture" she represents:

At this point Diotima had discovered in herself the well-known suffering caused by that familiar malady of contemporary man known as civilization. It is a frustrating condition, full of soap, radio frequencies, the arrogant sign language of mathematical and chemical formulas, economics, experimental research, and the inability of human beings to live together simply but on a high plane. 

Diotima is also unhappy in her marriage, especially in terms of sex which the narrator sums up as "something violent, assaultive, and brusque that was released only once every week . . .  This change in the nature of two people, which always began promptly on time, to be followed, a few minutes later by a short exchange on those events of the day that had not come up before and then a sound sleep."

Here is how the narrator describes the effect this has on her:

On the one hand, it was the cause of that extravagantly swollen ideality --- that officious, outwardly-oriented personality -- whose power of love, whose spiritual longing, reached out for all things great and noble . . . Diotima evoked the impression, so confusing to males, of a mightily blazing yet Platonic sun of love . . . On the other hand, . . . this broad rhythm of marital contact had developed, purely physiologically, into a habit that asserted itself quite independently and without connection to the loftier parts of her being, like the hunger of a farmhand whose meals are infrequent but heavy. 

Enter Dr. Arnheim, "not only a rich man but also a man of notable intellect . . . [who] proclaimed nothing less than the merger of soul and economics, or of ideas and power."  The narrator gives us a wonderful sample of their "intimate" conversation.

   "Yes," he had said, "we no longer have any inner voices. We know too much these days; reason tyrannizes our lives."
   To which she replied: "I like the company of women. They don't know anything and are unfragmented."
   And Arnheim has said: "Nevertheless, a beautiful woman understands far more than a man, who, for all his logic and psychology knows nothing at all of life." 

As Diotima tells Arnheim about her desire to "bring ideas for the very first time into the domain of power," Arnheim sighs and then, the narrator tells us, says something very important: "No democracy of committees but only strong individual personalities, with experience in both reality and the realm of ideas, would be able to direct such a campaign!"

Thus a great idea is born in Diotima's mind.  And trailing along, almost as an afterthought, is her decision that Ulrich should still be part of the campaign, "where he would have occasion to be much in her and Arnheim's company."