Wednesday, November 16, 2011

28-31 Ulrich Thinking (With Bonadea Present)

Chapter 28 has the wonderful title "A Chapter That May Be Skipped by Anyone Not Particularly Impressed by Thinking as an Occupation."  We're back with Ulrich, who is at home "musing."  And what is he musing about?  "Wasn't I telling Clarisse something about water?" he says aloud.

Nothing, the narrator laments, "is so hard to achieve as a literary representation of a man thinking."  Yet the man without qualities is thinking, in a rambling kind of way, about water. And because he "has modern scientific concepts in his head," he comes to this conclusion:
Ultimately it all dissolves into systems of formulas, all somehow interlinked, and there are only a few dozen people in the whole wide world who thought alike about even so simple a thing as water; all the rest talk about it in languages that belong somewhere between today and some thousands of years ago.
Ulrich feels the "healing power of thought," but "unfortunately" it also "diminishes the personal sense of experience."

In the next chapter, Ulrich's thoughts are interrupted by the sudden appearance of a tearful, neglected Bonadea.  Of course, he responses to her "erotically," but he still can't completely stop thinking.
But this erotic transformation of the consciousness seemed only a special instance of something much more general: for an evening at the theater, a concert, a church service, all such manifestations of the inner life today are similar, quickly dissolving islands of a second state of consciousness that is sometimes interpolated into the ordinary one.
He is ready for Bonadea to leave (so he can continue with his thoughts), but "Bonadea did not hurry up, and Ulrich was forced to think of something else."  At first, he thinks about Walter, how he:
 "always had a quite special ability to experience intensely. He never got what he was after because he was swamped by his feelings.  He seemed to have a built-in, highly melodious amplifier of the minor joys and miseries of life."
But Ulrich has yet another idea:
"A young man with an active mind . . . is constantly sending out ideas in every direction. But only those that find a resonance in his environment will be reflected back to him and consolidate, while all the other dispatches are scattered in space and lost!" 
He then makes a leap of thought:
For if, in the course of time, commonplace and impersonal ideas are automatically reinforced while unusual ideas fade away, so that almost everyone, with a mechanical certainty, is bound to become increasingly mediocre, this explains why, despite the thousandfold possibilities available to everyone, the average human being is in fact average.
At this point, Bonadea is thoroughly irritated with him: "She felt it was indelicate of him to be so absentminded when they should be savoring the last drops of their precious time together."

In Chapter 30, which is little more than a page long, Ulrich's thoughts focus, and he suddenly has a vision of Christian Moosbrugger and "his judges."  Moosbrugger is arguing with the judges.  "Injustice" he says, "must be the basis of my brutality. I have stood before the court, a simple man, and thought Your Honors must know everything anyway. But you have let me down!"

So in Chapter 31 Ulrich and Bonadea end up discussing Moosbrugger. Bonadea "reminded of the . . . compassionate partisanship for Moosbrugger as victim," momentarily sweeps "aside any thought of Moosbrugger the criminal."  

"Then you are always for the victim," Ulrich challenges her, "and against the act?"

Bonadea declares that the conversation is not "appropriate" for the aftermath of the (amorous) situation in which they have just participated.  But Ulrich is thinking and has no idea of Bonadea's feelings.  This is how the chapter ends:
    "But if your judgment is so consistent in condemning the act," Ulrich replied, instead of instantly apologizing, "then how can you justify your adulteries, Bonadea?"
      It was the plural that was in such especially bad taste!  Bonadea said nothing but sat down, with a disdainful look, in one of the luxurious armchairs and stared up, insulted, at the dividing line between wall and ceiling. 
It could just as easily have been the "dividing line" between her and Ulrich.

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