Karl Kraus: Journalists, Aesthetes, Politicians, Psychologists, Academics and Others. . .

From: Pro Domo et Mundo
Of Society

I divide the people I don’t say hello to into four groups. There are those I don’t say hello to so that I don’t compromise myself – the simplest case. Then there are those I don’t say hello to so that they aren’t compromised – a case requiring some delicacy. Next are those I don’t say hello to so that I don't do damage to their image of me. They’re even harder to handle. Lastly there are those I don’t say hello to so that I don't do damage to my image of me. There I have to really be on the look-out. And yet I’ve got together a rough routine. My way of not saying hi to people is such that I know how to bring out each of these nuances so that no one is done an injustice.

Middle class society is made up of those who have already had their appendix out and those who already have so little ready money that they wouldn’t even be in the running for the Imperial Order of Franz Josef.

One couldn’t make head or tail of him, because he was something. He didn’t have that adroitness which is better than what one is because it draws to oneself what one isn’t.

They will sooner forgive you the low trick they played on you than the good deed you did them.

There have been so many times when someone who shared my opinion kept the better half for himself. Now I’ve wised up and only ever offer the public my thoughts.

The prospect of a city whose every extra seems to occupy centre-stage is definitely enough to drive one mad. In Vienna you find your way into a street blocked by the garbage man, you have time to observe his features till he's taken the can round the corner. There’s nothing in the street except the garbage man, he grows to gigantic proportions and stands between you and life itself. Or maybe it’s a local police guard. You see him on a daily basis, you take part in his story, you say to yourself - he’ll be grey soon, like me. Isn’t it tragic to spend your time waiting to die being the involuntary spectator of all this banality? . . . In this city the extras have taken over the film. The head of each sardine comes to have an individualisable visage of its own and threatens to devour the man whose plate it's on. Life here traces itself out without any hint of perspective; its figures are like those of a bad cartoon. They remain frozen when they should be on the move. They move in order to show off the boots they’re wearing. Horses hang in the air, their front legs extended. A man tells a joke, opens his mouth to laugh and will never again shut it. A flower-girl is petrified between takes of the self-same scene. A cab-driver points to his horses and hopes, by assuring the passer-by that he has a cab to go with it, to bring the latter to convince himself that he does indeed have one. The young gallant today is badly shaven.

I've found a thought, but then I have to look for $10. I lose the thought, but I find the $10. The thought is again nearby; I just have to look for it. The person behind the counter is waiting; I have to find change - a $2 coin. I have it already! No, it’s a button. The folks roundabout are getting interested. Then it’s gone again, that thought. The official personage behind the counter is still there. I’m supposed to hand over a $2 coin, but all I’ve got is the $10 note. My coat’s open, the weather's cold and damp, I’m standing in a draft. I’m going to catch flu and then – goodbye work. I have to make a decision: should I go to get change or should I concentrate on the thought? If I go for change, I know what will happen. A dirty-looking hand will reach out to mine, press some gold coins into it and then strew stupid shrapnel on top. I close my coat. Now the thought will be there again soon. The person behind the desk turns away contemptuously and makes a tooting noise. Oh thought, now you’re gone.

There is only one way of rescuing yourself from the machine – by using it. In effect, you only arrive at yourself by car.

The greatest ill in the world is the compulsion to fritter away one's inner vitality on material things that are supposed to serve that inner vitality.

The way people defend themselves against me demonstrates that my attacks on them are so justified that I always regret not having foreknowledge of their defensiveness – which I would otherwise have made a major theme of the attack itself. An academic philosopher, unmasked by me as a militarist, put it this way – Kraus went on the attack against me because I didn’t want to contribute to his magazine; as a lecturer he would supposedly have had to reject such an unreasonable demand. – Now admittedly I don’t remember having invited him to contribute to the magazine. If I did so, it must have been before he got his PhD, and what he really meant was that he had to decline because he wanted to become a lecturer. If I'm aware of something like that, it speeds up the process of getting to know the man and his mindset and I integrate it into the judgment I pass on him. For my attacks present their motives for all to see. By attributing my attack to vengefulness, this man is lying in a way that makes him guilty of worse motives than my supposed vengefulness. Apart from that, he’s going about it illogically, for it remains an open question how it’s possible I myself didn’t become an academic long ago if I’m that egotistical and calculating and make such a pretence of intellectual effort. If I were what they say I am I would have long ago become what they are now! Whenever someone I’ve called a bad apple retorts in this way, all I have to say is that I would never have thought he was such a bad apple!

I imagine an ugly woman who looks in the mirror could believe the mirror image ugly, not she herself. Thus it is that society sees its nastiness and crudity in my mirror and stupidly believes that I’m nasty and crude.

If you’re getting panicky in the slaughterhouse of middle-class life, maybe you should grasp the opportunity and desert to the war.

Journalists, Aesthetes, Politicians, Psychologists, Academics and Other Numbskulls

The distance between art and the general public was never so great as it is today; however there has never before been that art-like artificial hotchpotch, the sort of thing that seems to write itself and almost reads itself. Today everyone writes and everyone understands and it’s just a matter of chance who remains a reader and who steps forth as writer from out of this horde of educated Huns striding forth against culture.

The sociability of the theatregoer is the shabby remainder of an epoch that's already kicked the bucket. Life, having got in a tangle, once got free of itself on the stage – from which location the devil once took it; from which spot the knacker now will.

In hatching the idea of teaching journalism at universities, mainstream culture has really come up with a funny one. Anyone with any social responsibility would demand it be made part of the MBA.

The idea behind all sorts of education is to make life into a charmless business, either by telling you how life is or telling you it amounts to nothing. We’re confused by this continual to-ing and fro-ing, one minute enlightened, the next endarkened.

Space and time get written about as if they were things for which no practical application had yet been found.

I’d give my life to know what the majority of human beings is meant to do with these much touted wider horizons.

Psychoanalysis unmasks the poet at first glance, you can’t put a single one over it – it knows exactly what Des Knaben Wunderhorn means. So be it - though now I'd say it’s high time for a psychological method that can see through the man who seems to be talking about sex but who’s secretly actually talking about art. For this return journey on the highways of symbolism I gladly offer my services as chauffeur! Though I’d also be pleased if a man who thought he was talking about psychology could be proven to have a subconscious that was actually talking about something else.

Neither jurists nor doctors seem to be aware that in matters erotic there are neither certain truths nor objective facts; that no expert report can convince us of the worth of an object we cannot love and no diagnosis of its flaws disappoint us once it has awakened our love; that we love totally in spite of realistic considerations, gratifying ourselves if need be in spite of the true state of the world. In short what they are oblivious to is that it’s high time to hound jurists and medicos out of a world that belongs to thinkers and poets.

They have the press, they have the stock-market, now they have the unconscious!

If someone steals something from you, don’t bother going to the police, who won’t be interested. Don't go to a psychoanalyst either, who will only be interested in one thing, that it is actually you who have stolen something.

Fine views are worthless. It all depends who has them.

Satires which the censor understands deserve to be banned.

The fool who can’t pass by a single one of the riddles of the world without restating the riddle as if it were nothing but his humble opinion wins a reputation for modesty. The artist who turns his thoughts ecstatically to something as inconspicuous as a trellis or a cobblestone is considered arrogant.

What is education? That which most are given, many pass on and few possess.

The nurse rouses the child to higher things by pointing the world out to it: “Look over there sweetie – look, look!” You show grownups something of the world of art and science so they don't start to bawl. You sing children to sleep with “Twinkle, twinkle, little star”. Grownups become placid when they know all the names too, together with the distance between Cassiopeia and the Earth, oh and that the former was named after the spouse of the Ethiopian king Kepheus and the mother of Andromeda.

People who have drunk in more knowledge than required to satisfy thirst are a nuisance to society.

One should learn no more than one needs to get by against life.

How does it come about that liberalism can find no other language with which to express itself than this repulsive idiom that’s been spat out a million times through whole aeons of banality? That they can only imagine the phoenix as an insurance agent and the genius of liberty as a gesticulating stockbroker foaming at the mouth?

The thing and its cliché are one.

The report’s distortion of reality is the truly faithful report on reality.

The world has been defeaned by deadly intonation. It is my conviction that events no longer come to pass, that instead clichés do the entire work of their own accord. Or if events are supposed to come to pass all the same, without being scared off by clichés, then they will cease once the clichés are shattered. The matter is befouled by the language. Our time stinks of its phraseology.

The pariahs of mankind are permitted to lay vengeful hands on the beautiful dreams of mankind; poetry and saga fall foul of the miserable needs of the historical and psychological industries; religion and everything else of the hallowed past have become a sort of garbage can for trashy intellectuals – such are the things that only make life unendurable once it has sung a song of victory over the hazards of time itself.

Of Women and Morals

There are metaphors in the language of love too. Those who are illiterate call them perversions and abhor poetry.

A woman is enough to please a healthy man. Silky knickers are enough for the erotic devotee, because they lead to the woman. Silky knickers alone are enough for the sicko.

Sex can be brought into connection with everything in heaven and earth, with holy religion and sweaty armpits, with the music of the spheres and hurdy-gurdies, with prohibitions and moles, with the soul and with corsetry. One gives these linkages the name perversions. They have this to be said for them – that they put you in possession of the whole when you only have the part at your disposal.

Erotic life is related to sexuality as winning is to losing.

To bring morality into one's sex-life is to do as the Persian king, who ordered a wild sea to be put in chains.

Christian morality has succeeded in transforming hetaerae into nuns. Unfortunately it has also succeeded in transforming philosophers into brothel creepers. Thank God the first metamorphosis doesn’t come off as reliably.

One shouldn’t let oneself be too upset by the nasty effect on women of 2000 years of labour on the part of culture. A bit of curiosity makes it all good.

Immorality finds its ultimate enforcer in the pimp, morality in blackmail.

In theology physical love is a sin, in jurisprudence it’s an illegal understanding between two persons, in medicine it’s a mechanical insult and in philosophy – well, philosophy won’t have anything to do with it.