The Idiom of the Poem
A Foreword
Rodolphe Gasché
Compared to most of modern poetry, which has been qualified by its tendency toward muteness, Paul Celanâs poems pose a particular challenge to the reader. Indeed, according to The Meridian, Celanâs sole text on poetry, âthe poem does speakâ (Celan, Meridian, 31a). And yet, his poems, especially the later ones, are held to be impenetrable, obscure, or hermetic. However, on the other hand, obscurity and hermeticism are considered to be essential characteristics of modern poetry.1 Therefore, the question to be asked in the case of Celan concerns the kind of obscurity of his poems, especially since the poems speak in a language that has gone âthrough terrifying muteness, through the thousand darknesses of murderous speechâ (Celan, Collected Prose, 34; translation modified). What kind of intelligibility characterizes an obscurity associated with poems that go through a language that experienced its own loss as a result of âwhat happened [das, was geschah]â and that are dialogically âheaded toward,â that is, âtoward something open, inhabitable, an approachable you, perhaps, an approachable realityâ (35)? What kind of impenetrability might characterize a poem for which this experience is one that can no longer be attributed to some epochal distinction such as âmodernâ but also, even though it is closer to Hölderlinean poetry than to Goethean, no longer fits the MallarmeÌan striving for the absolute and universal poem? When, in the Bremen speech, Celan famously speaks of the poem as a letter in a bottle thrown out to sea, he emphasizes not only that it speaks in hopes of an addressee but also, and especially, that the
x The Idiom of the Poem: A Foreword
poem is always a singular address rather than an instance of an epochal genre, modern or not; in other words, the poem is not âwearing a uniformâ (Dostoevsky, Writerâs Diary, 52), to quote in this context an unlikely source. If what is new about the poem today is that it âstays mindful of its dates,â this does not mean that it is âmodernâ but, rather, that it in a way belongs to a genre all by itself (Celan, Meridian, 31a). Perhaps this would even be something other than a genre to begin with! If, moreover, such a letter headed toward an Other is obscure, how does this destination shape its intelligibility? If, in all its obscurity, the poem is intelligible, it is because its singularity consists not in an individual personality and his or her purely personal or even idiosyncratic nature but, rather, in a resistance to all forms of understanding that, already in advance, have decided its meaning. Needless to say, since such singularity resists all appropriation, it inevitably remains obscure, but it is also, for this very reason, (minimally) intelligible as the universal trait of a singularity in all its irreducible uniqueness. This is thus an obscurity that must be respected, one that solely manifests itself in readings that themselves can and must remain singular. The reader of this foreword will by now already have understood that, hereafter, I will be interested in the readability and intelligibility of a poet who is also, as we will see, a thinker.
Pablo Oyarzunâs Between Celan and Heidegger is a philosopherâs book on Paul Celan. There is nothing particular in this respect, since a number of prior thinkers have been drawn to the study of poetry. Within the present context, Martin Heideggerâs interpretation of Friedrich Hölderlinâbut also of Rainer Maria Rilke, Georg Trakl, and Stefan Georgeâis a case in point. Furthermore, though Heideggerâs interest in Celanâs poetry did not materialize in a written philosophical commentary on his work, Celanâs own complex and subtle debate, both in The Meridian and in his poetry, with Heideggerâs thought and understanding of language is testimony to what has been called a dialogue between the poet and the thinker. Celanâs poetry has certainly attracted considerable attention from literary critics, philologists, and poetologists, but remarkable in his case is the consistent attention his work has drawn from philosophers and philosophically sophisticated literary critics. With this, the question arises: what is it in Celanâs writings that challenges philosophical thought? Among its many accomplishments, Oyarzunâs study not only engages the philosophersâ accounts of the poetry in question, along with the poetâs relation to the thinker, but also inquires into what motivates this philosophical interest in the first place. In short, it is an inquiry into the stakes of the philosophical encounter with poetry.
The Meridian, a speech given by Celan on the occasion of receiving the BĂŒchner prize in 1960, is not only devoted to Georg BĂŒchnerâs reflections on art and poetry, as the circumstances demanded, but also a debate with the poetological speeches of several previous recipients of the prize, among whom figuresâto name only oneâGottfried Benn. Taking his point of departure from BĂŒchnerâs reflections on the complex relation between art and poetry, indeed, the singular occasion of the award presents Celan with the unique opportunity of elaborating on the nature of the poem and, more precisely, âthe poem todayâ (Celan, Meridian 32a; emphasis mine). Because of his concern with the poemâs datedness, Celanâs speech already, unlike speeches made by previous recipients of the prize, ceases to be poetological: it is not a theoretical speech on poetry in general or on poetry from an epochal perspective like, for example, âmodernâ poetry. Its prose, it has been observed, is also that of the poet as a poet.2 But what does this mean in the specific case of Celan? First and foremost, Celanâs is a âspeech,â that is, a performance that, as Kristina Mendicino remarks, must be approached on its own terms and through the position it assumes âwithin a tradition of public speaking, while resisting and participating in the tradition of rhetoricâ (Mendicino, âOther Rhetoric,â 633). This intrinsic resistance of the speech to its own public form manifests itself in several ways. First, the talk anaphorically repeats the rhetorical figure of the apostrophe (âLadies and gentlemenâ), especially toward the end, where, âfrom a transparent means of opening the speech,â this figure turns into âan insistent poetic figureâ (633â34). Furthermore, âthe pervasiveness of citation throughout the address,â whose aim as a rhetorical device is to â[bring] a witness to the foreâ in view of persuasion, âoverwhelms the speakerâs voiceâ to such a degree, indeed, as to ârender it impossible to locate from whom this speech comes in any univocal wayâ (634â35). In short, through the âintensification of a rhetorical techniqueâ required by public speech, The Meridian turns this technique âinto something else, threatening to obscure the rhetor rather than submit to his purposeâ (635). In both cases, Celanâs rhetoric or, rather, what Mendicino calls âan âOtherâ rhetoric,â an altering rhetoric, one that âspeak[s] in the cause of an Otherâwho knows, perhaps in the cause of a wholly Other,â âbends his speech toward poetryâ (635, 643â50).
Yet, in The Meridian, Celan also enlarges on a subject matter. What, then, about this textâs discursive dimension? How does Celan meet the challenge of discoursing in his sole text on what he terms âthe poem todayâ? Even supposing that one could make the distinction between the rhetorical and the discursive dimensions of a public speech, the latter would still have
The Idiom of the Poem: A Foreword
a rhetoricity of its own. And yet, no one particular figure dominates itâ say, for example, the figure of inversion. Indeed, if it is true that, as Celan advances in his text, the poemâs images are âwhat is perceived and is to be perceived once and always again once, and only here and now,â it follows that âthe poem would be the place where all tropes and metaphors want to be carried ad absurdumâ (Celan, Meridian, 39b). Furthermore, what is true of the poem in all its uniqueness is no less true of a prose text such as The Meridian. Not through any one particular rhetorical figure but, rather, through what I call, for better or worse, the âdeconstructionâ of rhetoric as a whole does a text like this accomplish its aim, namely, opening up on the level of discursiveness a space not for dialogical consent or for the fusion of self and other but, rather, for an encounter that preserves that which divides it in order for it to take place. However, as we learn from Between Celan and Heidegger, such a âdeconstructionâ of rhetoric is in no way a nostalgic return to an immediacy of encounter. Nor does it amount to an annihilation of one extreme by its opposite. On the contrary, it consists in tracing a line through opposite poles, a line that keeps them vacillating in their âbetween.â
As is obvious from The Meridian, while meeting the challenge that the occasion represents by taking as his starting point writings on poetry by BĂŒchner, according to whom art (distinct in a complex way from poetry) is the business of market criers, barkers, or monkeys and marionette players, Celan also engages the tradition of the more academic and technical poetological approaches to poetry and their established conventions. This characterization of art and theorizing about it is, unmistakably, indebted to BĂŒchner. The same obtains when Celan observes that art, along with discourses about it such as that of BĂŒchnerâs Lenz in the story of the same name, âcreates I-distance [Ich-Ferne]â (Celan, Meridian, 20d). Yet, when we read:
Ladies and gentlemen, please, take note: âOne wishes one were a Medusaâs headâ in order to grasp the natural as the natural with the help of art! / One wishes to does of course not mean here: I wish to,
it is shown that, though citing Lenz and apart from discussing art according to BĂŒchner, Celan is also in the same breath arguing that art, at its most fundamental, belongs to the realm of the Heideggerian Man, a realm of inauthenticity that The Meridian characterizes in terms of uncanniness (Unheimlichkeit), a realm in which the I is not at home (16aâb).
With Gottfried Benn in mind, Celan qualifies as âartisticâ not only the latterâs art but also, implicitly, his technical elaborations on âmodern lyric.â The predicate âartisticâ refers to academic discourseâs nature as a public theatrical spectacle and intellectual entertainment. Celan evokes this artistic, artificial, and mechanical dimension of modern poetry in what seems, at first, to be a rejection. Moreover, it also has all the appearances of the entirely conventional gesture by which natural immediacy and the merely private or personal are construed as the opposites of art. But the specificity of the accomplishments of The Meridian begin to come into view when one pays attention to the fact that, rather than one of these opposites, Celan seeks to secure the space between them and in which he locates the place of poetry and of âthe poem today.â In spite of the rejection of art, poetry needs art. It must âtread the route of artâ in order to set itself free from it and, thus, make âthe stepâ to address itself (spricht sich zu) to not only the human other but also any âopposite [GegenĂŒber]â (Celan, Meridian, 21, 35a). In distinction from the âdistance of the Iâ that characterizes art and the discourse about it, however, does poetry need the private or the personal? No doubt, but only on the condition that, in the Celanian perspective, one understands poetry as dated, singular, and yet as having a universality of its own, one that resists not only universality as we know it but also its opposite in the immediacy of the particular. Rather than a rejection, the Celanian approach to the poem is of the order of a resistance against embracing art, subjectivity, or both.
Poetry, according to The Meridian, is not artlike, andâunlike artâone cannot endlessly chat about it. It originates in a certain lack of understanding of what is said about art, suddenly, in the same way as Lucileâs counterword, âLong live the King,â irrupts in BĂŒchnerâs Dantonâs Death. Rather than âa declaration of loyalty to the âancien reÌgime,â â the exclamation is, by contrast, âan act of freedom,â a âstepâ that âintervenesâ in the struggle between the right and the leftist defenders of the revolution, a âstepâ that has something personal about it, not in the sense of the private but, rather, in that it consists in the singularity of the individual (Celan, Meridian, 6câ8a, 31f). This something personal has âdirection and destiny,â while its âabsurdityâ is the index of its specific intelligibility compared to that of the words piled upon words in artful fashion by all the defenders of the revolution (5b). As Celan remarks, Lucileâs counterword is testimony of âthe presence of the humanâ in the face not only of the Regime of Terror but also of the rhetoric of those who are its victimsââhomage . . . to the majesty of the absurdâ (8c). Lucileâs exclamation, her counterword (Gegenwort), is âabsurdâ because of
The Idiom of the Poem: A Foreword
the insistence of presence (Gegenwart), of the now in all its singularity, and because of its being dated. Celan writes: âThat, ladies and gentlemen, has no name fixed once and for all, but I believe that this is . . . poetryâ (9). This is, then, what Celan understands by Dichtung, along with what about the latter is precise: its concern with the singular and the datedness of its âstep.â3 Not unlike Lucile, âone who is blind to artâ (Celan, Meridian, 6c) and whose sudden interjection interrupts the artful words and theatrical speeches of her former companions who are being driven to the place of the revolution to be executed, Pablo Oyarzun resists the highly, often astoundingly brilliant and intimidating scholarship on Celan in Between Celan and Heidegger. In doing so, in an equally brilliant fashion, Oyarzunâs text makes us hear and see in Celanâs poetry not only what cannot be reduced to a Heideggerian interpretation but also what withstands Celan scholarship, however learned it proves to be. Again like Lucile, Oyarzun has heard and acknowledged the language of scholarship, but, having heard it spoken, he also distances himself from it and refuses to understand it if, however critically, understanding means to subscribe to the interpretations that it offers. The uniqueness of Celanian poetry, he holds, is that it literally winds itself out of the Western mode of thinking about poetry, a mode of thinking presupposed by any reading that seeks to understand it in the frame of a purported dialogue with Heidegger, and into an other space. This does not mean that there has not been something like a dialogue between Heidegger and Celan. But such a dialogue has only taken place, indeed, if it can be shown that Celan resisted Heideggerâs Western bent and, in a way similar to what Lucile achieved with her counterword, that this dialogue is interrupted by something that âintervenesââthe âbetweenâ of something non-Western. Rather than hasten to conclusions, however, I wish to turn to the importance that The Meridian plays in Oyarzunâs text. In this respect, a reflection on the title of Celanâs speech may first be warranted, not simply because Between Celan and Heidegger is a thorough exposition of this speech, but also because the way this title punctuates Oyarzunâs elaborations may already point to what is at stake in his reading of this text. Even before asking what the one (einen)âthat is, also the singularâmeridian is that, at the end of his talk, Celan claims to have found and touched again, we must ask what âaâ meridian is in the first place, although âone should not see in The Meridian,â as Oyarzun remarks, âthe essence of a sovereign wordâ (Between Celan and Heidegger, 17).
Known as an avid reader of dictionaries, in all likelihood, Celan may also have consulted them in the context of preparing his speech. I do so,
too, and learn that the origin of this foreign word âmeridianâ makes it, indeed, a very complex one. From the dictionary, I take it that the term derives from the Latin meridianus, itself the adjective of meridies, meaning midday or noon. Meridianus signifies âof or belonging to mid-day,â noon, that is, âthe meridian hourâ (meridies), but it also signifies in its figural sense âthe middle of a given timeâ (Lewis and Short, Latin Dictionary, 1137), that is, the time midway between the times of sunrise and sunset, medius signifying âmiddleâ (or âsouthâ). The word âmeridianâ thus refers to the midday line, the line that connects all places on the earth that simultaneously share midday and where, during that time, the position reached by the sun is at its highest. In short, then, geographically or terrestrially speaking, the meridian corresponds to the line or degree of longitude that cuts the equator at a right angle.4
Yet, I learn also from the dictionary that the word has a double sense, astronomical and geographical. In geography, the meridian, or midday circle, signifies âa great circle [of the earth] which passes through the equator in two opposed points, and which passes as well through both poles, dividing the globe of the earth in each place where it is drawn into an eastern and a western part. Each place has its meridian. In other words, from each place I can draw a circle, which cuts through the equator and the polesâ (Brockhaus Conversations-Lexikon, 3:126). In astronomy, the meridian designates âthe great circle of the celestial sphere that passes through its poles and the observerâs zenithâ (Websterâs, 1203). However, before further exploring the wordâs celestial sense, let me take note of the fact that, when the dictionaries alsoâon the basis of Latin literary referencesâidentify the meridian as a circulus meridianus with the equator, the meridian as the greatest among the latitudinal lines is not only seen to be the line that divides the earth into a northern and southern hemisphere; it also has connotations of what, geographically, is situated in the south or belongs to the south. Furthermore, as the equator, the circulus meridianus is thus also understood in view of the equatorâs equalizing properties, in the sense that it not only partitions the earthâs surface in two equal halves, south and north, but also divides all its hours through their middle. Finally, this circle may also occur midway between the earth and the sky.
Indeed, distinct from its geographical or terrestrial meaning, the meridian also has an astronomic or celestial meaning. As the midday circle, it is the great circle that, in the celestial sphere, passes through the north and south poles (of the celestial sphere), as well as through the zenith and nadir in whose plane the terrestrial observer is situated, dividing the plane into the
The Idiom of the Poem: A Foreword
latterâs upper and lower meridian. In the same way that, stretching from one pole to the other, the terrestrial longitudinal semicircle stands vertically on the equator, the celestial semicircle âstands [also] vertically on the observerâs horizon and cuts the latter at its north- or midnight point, as well as at its south or midday point,â and it is thus perpendicular to the celestial equator. âBoth points are connected with one another through the midday-line. By passing through the meridian, the stars are for their observer at their highest position (meridian-, midday-height), or, twelve hours later, at their lowest height (midnight-low)â (Brockhaus EnzyklopĂ€die, 425). Finally, since an astronomical meridian is in the same plane as the terrestrial meridian projected onto the celestial sphere, its number of meridians is also infinite. It should be clear by now that the word âmeridianâ is not just any word. If âeach place has its meridian,â then it is a word that has to be thought on the basis of all its meanings, which imply connections that divide and divisions that connect all places and all times, such as south/ north, east/west, upper/lower, day/night, sunrise/sunset, and in particular the divide between the terrestrial and the celestial, the earth and the sky. It is a word that also names the middle, the âbetweenââmidday, midnightâand is itself situated between the poles that it interlinks while at the same time keeping them at a distance, resisting their proximity. Is this word, which Celan has found and touched, not perhaps a counterwordâa Gegenwortâto the term âdas Geviert,â a counterword against the unifying and harmonizing movement of the Heideggerian âfourfoldâ? Like Lucileâs âabsurdâ exclamation with which Celan opens his speech, then, he closes it with reference to a word just as provocative.
Undoubtedly, Celanâs speech is a debate with the academic discourses on poetry, but it is also, as several scholarsâincluding Oyarzunâhave noted, a debate with the Heideggerian conception of language and poetry. At the end of his speech, Celan âundertake[s] some topos researchâ into the four regions or topoi from whence Karl Emil Franzos and Reinhold Lenz came, two figures to whom he refers in the speech and whom he âmet on the way here and in Georg BĂŒchner,â but this is also a study of âthe place of [his] originâ (Celan, Meridian, 49aâb). These four topoi are places of origin, regions from whence all four namedâFranzos, Lenz, BĂŒchner, and Celan himselfâcome. Notwithstanding the fact that none of these regions can be found, since none of them exist, Celan claims to find something: âI find somethingâlike languageâimmaterial, yet terrestrial, something circular that returns to itself across both poles whileâcheerfullyâeven crossing the tropics: I find . . . a meridianâ (50c). Rather than a region whose poles or
extremes are gathered in one unifying ring (Reigen), as in Heideggerâs fourfold or topology of Being, Celan finds a meridian in pursuing the study of topoi. What exactly is meant here by a meridian is not easy to understand. But let me emphasize that Celan finds a meridian, a singular meridian, and not the meridian! Needless to say, if this meridian traverses both poles and returns to itself, crossing and even crossing out (Durchkreuzendes) with the tropics also all topoi, that is, all accommodating (Commode) commonplaces, it is barely distinct from the gathering ringing of the Heideggerian fourfold.5 Therefore, it is crucial to understand the almost nothingâor to use Celanâs word, to which Oyarzun devotes a whole chapter of his study, the âdoit [Deut]ââthat separates this meridian from the gathering fourfold. Seemingly made in passing, Celanâs remark that, by crossing the tropics, the meridian also âmerrily [heiterweise]â crosses out all topoi shows this meridian to be of the order of languageâmore precisely, for Celan, the order of what language is and does. Indeed, what he claims to find after âhaving taken this impossible route, this route of the impossible,â the path of the study of topoi on which he embarked in the presence of his audience, âis something . . . like languageâ (Celan, Meridian, 50aâc). That is, what he claims to find is not language as it is commonly understood but rather something that, by crossing out language as constituted by topoi, is language in another senseââlanguage actualized [aktualisierte Sprache]â rather than âlanguage as such [Sprache schlechthin]â (33aâb). âI find what connects and leads, like the poem, to an encounterâ (50b).6 What distinguishes the singular meridianâthat which Celan holds to have touched âjust now againââever so slightly from something like the fourfold is, first, that it is found only in the singularity of its occurrence and, second, that it is the object of something as singular as a touch. Furthermore, the traversing and the crossing out of which it consists are what binds, and it binds by separating and dividing. A meridian is a singular happening, just like the poem, and like the poem it enables an encounter. It is the happening of an encounter, and it is also, as a movement that returns to itself like a circle, the âbetweenâ or nondialectical middle of all the places and commonplaces that it crosses and crosses out. It is the u-topic place not of a community to come but, rather, of a community that comes into being in the fragile moment of the encounter.
All of this does not make The Meridian a poemâthe difference is preservedâbut a meridian has made this speech the event of an encounter like that effectuated by the poem. At this juncture, I wish to evoke a remark made by Emmanuel Levinas about Celanâs speech. Having described it as
The Idiom of the Poem: A Foreword
a text âin which Celan gives us what he is able to perceive of his poetic act,â Levinas adds that it is âan elliptic, allusive text, constantly interrupting itself in order to let through, in the interruptions, his other voice, as if two or more discourses were on top of one another, with a strange coherence, not that of a dialogue, but woven in [ourdie selon] a counterpoint that constitutes their immediate melodic unityâthe texture [tissu] of his poemsâ (Levinas, Proper Names, 41). If, indeed, Celanâs speechâa prose text, as well as a discursive engagement with poetry and its relation to artâis interwoven by way of a counterpoint, if not even several counterpoints like the fabric of his poems, then his poems become instrumental to the interpretation of the speechâs vibrant formulations. In Between Celan and Heidegger, Oyarzun engages in precisely such a reading of The Meridian that allows it to be interrupted in all its moments by its counterpoints. Yet, rather than poetizing the speech by weaving Celanâs poems into the discursive text, his reading breaks down the classical divide between discursive speech and poetry. It is from the complex tissue that the text of The Meridian reveals when read in this manner, rather than being interpreted, that Oyarzun engages several among the most sophisticated interpretations, mostly philosophical, of Celanâs work.
As I have already noted, Celan is generally considered to be cryptic, impenetrable, in short, a âhermetic poetâ (Gadamer, Gadamer on Celan, 164). His poetry is exposed to âthe âidiomaticâ threat: the threat of hermeticism and obscurity,â and his poems, consequently, are âcompletely untranslatable, including within their own languageâ (Lacoue-Labarthe, Poetry as Experience, 56, 13). All âthe approaches traditionally employed in literary interpretationâ (Szondi, Celan Studies, 27) fail in the face of poems that challenge intelligibility vis-Ă -vis these traditional tools. Right from the beginning of his reading, Oyarzun takes issue with these claims, noting that âobscurityâ is, first of all, the inevitable correlate of a hermeneutic approach to the poems, one that understands itself as concerned with an intended meaning of literary texts that, through interpretation, is to be brought to light in univocal clarity. It is not by accident, therefore, that Between Celan and Heidegger opens and closes with chapters devoted to explicitly hermeneutic approaches to Celanâs writings: first that of Hans-Georg Gadamer, and then, in the concluding chapter, that of Peter Szondi. It is this assumption that the poem intends a unitary and transparent meaning different from its linguistic formation that drives âthe zeal of hermeneuticsâ and explains, in Oyarzunâs words, âGadamerâs grandiose deafness to what the poem saysâ (Oyarzun, Between Celan and Heidegger, 3, 4â5).7 Distinct from Gadamerâs emphasis on the
univocity of the poem is Szondiâs hermeneutic approach, which conceives of itself as a hermeneutic reading rather than a hermeneutic interpretation. As Szondi holds, reading is the only appropriate response to a poem that has ceased to be mimeticâno longer a representation of something real but likewise, I add, not merely formal, as so much of modern poetryâand that is to be understood as a text âprojecting itself, constituting itself as realityâ (Szondi, Celan Studies, 31). âThe language of reading,â Szondi states, is the only appropriate approach to a poem when the latter is âneither verbal nor discursiveâ (38). As his reading of Celanâs âEngfĂŒhrungâ demonstrates in an admirable fashion, reading requires untiring attention to the nonsemantic complexity of the poem, such as the structure of the words themselves, their own tissue. This is true especially in the case of Celanâs considerably expanded vocabulary through compounded words (paranomasia), as well as the textual tissue deriving from their undecidable syntactic relations to one another, the caesuras that punctuate the poem, the hiatuses and ellipses that interrupt it, the movements of its rhetorical figures, the movements of inversion, correctio, or obscuritas that affect these figures themselves, and so forth. With a poem, one is from the start in a territory other than that with which one is familiar, a territory of âambiguity [which is] neither a defect nor purely a stylistic trait, [but] determines the structure of the poetic text itselfâ (29). Since an âessential ambiguityâ characterizes the territory of the poem, to ask what its words mean is to disregard the laws of their compositionâor as Szondi holds, in the case of âEngfĂŒhrung,â their musical composition (66â67). In reading a poem such as âEngfĂŒhrung,â it is not âa matter of selecting one of several meanings, but of understanding that they coincide, rather than differ. Ambiguity, which has become a means of knowledge, shows us the unity of what only appeared to be differenceâ (82). Compared to Gadamerâs hermeneutics of univocity, then, Szondiâs hermeneutic reading is one of polysemy whose unity, furthermore, is of Hegelian inspiration. It is, Szondi holds, the result of âthe mediation and thus the negation of [. .] opposed elements, the negation of negationâ (80).
Oyarzunâs reading of Celan is suspended between these two poles of hermeneutics. In the opening chapter, he distances himself from an interpretation that claims that each Celanian poem has a distinct unity of meaning, and in the concluding chapter he distances himself from a reading that, despite its admirable complexity, also reunifies the plurality and ambiguity of meanings despite having been called âessential.â In what follows, I wish to engage the space of reading The Meridian and Celanian poetryâthe âbetweenââopened up by Oyarzunâs text, which returns at its
end to its beginning, in order to search for what Oyarzun, in turn, finds along this trajectory.
Let us, then, also take note of the titles of the beginning and concluding chapters. They are identical: âDialogue.â The central chapter, chapter four, is titled âLanguage.â Suspending these titles between, to quote The Meridian, ââHasenöhrchenâ [hareâs ears], that is, something not completely fearless, that listens beyond itself and the wordsâ (Celan, Meridian, 48c), the quotation marks are also an indication that both are translations from the German: GesprĂ€ch and Sprache, respectively. From the opening chapter to the concluding chapter, while passing through the tropics of language or, more precisely, through Celanâs resistance to a topical understanding of languageâwhat he calls âmetaphor-flurryâ in a poem from Breathturnâa more profound understanding of âdialogueâ will have emerged (Oyarzun, Between Celan and Heidegger, 135 note 22). For the time being, however, it is certainly appropriate to note that Between Celan and Heidegger is also about a particular âdialogueâ that began in 1967 with Celanâs first visit to Heidegger in Todtnauberg, a dialogue that, while it âdelighted the thinkerâ (Petzet, Auf einen Stern zugehen, 209), left the poet bitterly disappointed, as demonstrated by the poem of the same name (âTodtnaubergâ), as well as testimony from some of those involved.8 Hailed as a summit talk of the thinker and the poet and described by one of its witnessesâGerhard Neumannâas an epochal event, the meeting has been the subject of numerous scholarly discussions. Let us note that such an interpretation of the event is, from the start, already an interpretation from a Heideggerian perspective. Oyarzunâs intervention in this discussion resists not only the pathos with which a number of scholars have spoken of it but also the idea that the encounter that took place was, indeed, a dialogue. If an encounter took place between both, between thought and poetry, it was an âencounter without encounter,â and not a dialogue but rather, at best, âsomething like a dialogueâ occurred at the occasion (Oyarzun, Between Celan and Heidegger, 6 and 9, 10). Since there is no question that Celanâs poetry and his thought of the poemâand The Meridian is a case in pointâwere always defined by not only a certain proximity to Heideggerâs thought but also, at the same time, an extreme distance from the latter, Oyarzun assiduously focuses on the âbetweenâ opened up by the impossible encounter and dialogue. In question is an examination not of the abstract intermediate space presupposed by all encounter and dialogue but, rather, of the âbetweenâ of this complex exchange in all its radical singularity, owing to what Oyarzun calls Celanâs âincarnated resistance, a resistance that comes imposed and surpasses all
sentiment or certainty even of proximityâ and that is âprior to every purpose, intention, or willâ (8). If the author can speak of âthe experience of the âbetweenâ â (10), it is because this âbetween,â which opens the space of all being-with and togetherness, is rooted in the resistance that singularity, not to be confused with privacy, represents as such. This peculiar âbetweenâ is also the language of the poem, which in Oyarzunâs words is âthe place to which an other and all others are calledâ (10). The place of the âbetween,â the place âof inter-esse, which makes possible Mitsein and Miteinanderseinâ (10), is something like a dialogue. In the same way as, according to The Meridian, the poem resists and frees itself from art in order to be a poem, for something worthy of the name âdialogueâ to occur, it must resist what is commonly understood by the term. In other words, the dialogue that took place between Celan and Heidegger, the formerâs poetry and thought having always been in an intimate relation with the latterâs thought, has thus been a dialogue in resistance to a dialogue about language, about language in general, in the name of individuated speech, in the name of what Oyarzun, with Celan, also refers to as a wound and, in particular, as the âraw [Krudes]â (8), which resist all translation.
At this point, I wish to bring into greater relief what I believe to be a fundamental gesture and remarkable tonality of not only Oyarzunâs reading of the hermeneutical attempt to reduce the so-called obscurity of Celanâs poetry and his prose by establishing the unity of its univocal or polysemic meaning but also his reading of a variety of outstanding philosophical discussions of Celanâs workâin particular by Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Emmanuel Levinas, Werner Hamacher, and Jacques Derridaâintent on dispelling some of its obscurity. First, however, I should emphasize that, although Oyarzun acknowledges his own indebtedness to these brilliant readings, it is precisely their brilliancy that, for him, is at issue. Indeed, the accounts of Celanâs poetry that Oyarzun takes on stand out not only for their impeccable scholarship and the impressive discipline of their readings but also for their striking lucidity. If Oyarzun guards against these readings, whose impressive rigor he nonetheless adopts, it is certainly not because they would promote a facile lucidity, however laborious, but rather because their very lucidity risks the paradox of covering over what shines forth through the obscurity of the poems themselves. Take, for example, Oyarzunâs response to Levinasâs emphasis that Celanâs poetry is to be understood in terms of the relation to the Other that precedes all dialogic forms. Undoubtedly, Levinas has âhit uponâ something crucial, Oyarzun acknowledges (Between Celan and Heidegger, 14). Yet, as Oyarzun also remarks, âin this enhancement,
I perceive an excessive force,â a force brilliant to the point of breaking the balance of the constant fragile oscillations between self and Other, and âthe more and less than beingâ (14). From the beginning of Between Celan and Heidegger, Levinasâs interpretation serves as a reference point for Oyarzunâs acknowledgement that, in the following chapters, his readings will âtake more or less distanceâ from the major commentaries on Celan and his poems (15). At first, such a caveat would seem to be a function of the attitude one expects from a scholar or critic, and yet something else is at stake here. At times blunt, at times subtle, Oyarzunâs resistance or reticence to adopting the conclusions of other readings, however philosophically astute, serves to prevent the âbetween,â with which he associates Celanian singularity, from fading from view. As Celanâs several encounters with Heidegger demonstrate, as well as the poem âTodtnauburgâ and the speech The Meridian, something like a âdialogueâ took place between the two, but it was in fact already taking place from the beginning of Celanâs work. Oyarzun inscribes a warning, the warning to preserve âthe quotation marks around âdialogue,â â a warning that âdoes not affirm or negate the dialogue but, rather, holds it in suspenseâ (15). To approach the GesprĂ€ch between Celan and Heidegger as a dialogue is to fall into the temptation to take Celanâs poems and his elaborations on the poem in his speech in Darmstadt as philosophical statements. Oyarzunâs goal is to remain aware of the âextreme, intolerable friction between what Celan says [about language, in particular] . . . and what Martin Heidegger thinksâ (45). As already pointed out, it is not a dialogue between the thinker and the poet; if, however, it is indeed a dialogue, then it is a dialogue between one who thinks and one who writes poems, that is, between singular individuals.9
A certain proximity between Heidegger and Celan is evident. Indeed, Celan was deeply familiar with Heideggerâs works and had been in contact with him by letter. They also exchanged their publications. Yet, as Oyarzun observes, unless the quotation marks around âdialogueâ are kept in place, to assume that there was a dialogue between them âcan become completely deceivingâ (39). Unlike the hermeneutically motivated readings of Celanian poetry, the aim here is not simply to keep the poem free from what is foreign to it, such as personal interpretations or anecdotal information; instead, by resisting all âemphasis foreign to Celanâs poetry,â Oyarzunâs aim is to bring out persistently and seek to keep open the âbetweenâ that, within their âvacillating oppositionâ (13), the poems are unfolding and thus to avoid deciding in favor of one pole over the other, in which case the âbetweenâ would become invisible.
Oyarzunâs study takes issue with the claim that Celanâs poetry is obscure. In no way, however, does he therefore hold that it would not be difficult to understand. But what is it, precisely, that one expects from poetry and in view of which Celanâs poems are judged to lack transparency? Thinkers in the hermeneutic tradition have linked this obscurity to the poetâs break with the mimetic tradition, that is, to the fact that his poetry is no longer involved in representation. Celanian obscurity would thus be a function of an interpretive approach to the poetry in question, which demands, rather than interpretation, the practice of a certain reading. Undoubtedly, formidable skills are required to read Celanâs poetry, since what one may call the semantic core of the poems cannot, to put it in simple terms, be separated from what they accomplish linguistically and syntactically, which keeps all semantic content in indefinite suspense. But, then, a seemingly naĂŻve question also arises: is this not what one should expect from any poem worthy of its name? Is not the meaning that a poem offers, either in its immediacy or after some excruciating deciphering, deceitful from the start because it has been found at the expense of the poem as linguistic artifact and linguistic event? Celanian poetry is, perhaps, more demanding, but the technics of reading for which it calls might prove only somewhat more demanding and more radically demanded than those required by any poem. The unmistakable difficulty that these poems present is that they are neither âmodernâ nor instances of a genre, such as the lyric (a word, furthermore, that Celan does not mention even once in The Meridian). Their difficulty resides in their datedness, in short, in what Celan refers to as their âone, unique, punctual presentâ that results from âa radical individuation [of language]â (Celan, Meridian 36b, 33b; translation modified). Werner Hamacher has characterized this datedness of the poems as âthe movement of [their] infinite singularizationâ (Hamacher, âSecond of Inversion,â 252). Indeed, in The Meridian Celan writes: âPoetry, ladies and gentlemen: this infinity-speaking full of mortality and to no purposeâ (Meridian, 44). There is something ârawâ about these poems, something that resists translation and even thinking. Consequently, attending solely to the syntax of these poems does not yet suffice to do justice to them. Their very idiomaticity, which threatens them with obscurity, requires meticulous attention to the rules by way of which they achieve their singularity. Only on this condition does the obscurity that they exhibit become transparent. If the poem âwants to head for the Otherâ and, in order to do so, must pay careful âattention . . . to everything it encounters,â and if it has a âsharper sense of detail, outline, structure, color,â then the way by which the poem secures its datedness
begins with such âattention,â which Celan, citing Walter Benjamin citing Nicolas Malebranche, qualifies as âthe natural prayer of the soulâ (Meridian, 35aâd). Everything Celan does to language semantically and syntacticallyâhis undoing of its tropological and rhetorical common nature, its spatial and temporal disarticulationâis at the service of accomplishing a poem that has the status of a singular address to an Other. The obscurity that results from such undoing of the structures of language in general is the price to pay for the poem to be an address and for an encounter to become possible. Its unintelligibility is intended to bring about a response. Thus, rather than bemoaning opaqueness, Celan clearly âdemands the risk,â as Lacoue-Labarthe suggests (Poetry as Experience, 56), that comes with it.
If, as I hold, this radical singularization of language in a poem that seeks to reach the Other in his, her, or its radical singularity and that, therefore, inevitably comes with obscurity explains the fascination that Celanâs poetry has exerted on philosophers and philosophically astute literary scholars, the particular kind of obscurity involved certainly warrants greater attention. As we have already seen, rather than a deficiency, this obscurity is a positive aspect of the poem. It is not simply an effect of the poemâs reaching toward the Other; rather, it is meticulously produced by the transcendence in question. It is not produced hazardously but rather according to rules, which much of Celan scholarship has sought to elucidate. It is thus a very particular obscurity. As Szondi notes, obscuritas is also a rhetorical figure, one of which, without a doubt, Celanâs poetry makes occasional use. From the dictionary, we learn that obscuritas does not signify complete darkness but, rather, âthe wanly twilight in which the contours of things and beings, after a while, can be made outâ (Walde et al., âObscuritas,â 358). Let us remind ourselves that, as a rhetorical figure, obscuritas intentionally aims at concealment and lack of clarity in speech, not merely to draw the attention of the addressee to the subject matter effectively but also, paradoxically, âto render a specific subject-matter all the clearerâ (363).10 Even though there is thus a rather fluid limit between obscuritas and perspicuitas, the task of reading, as Szondi holds, cannot consist in seeking to explain the intentional obscurity in question completely. Instead, reading has âto note and attempt to characterize this obscurity without losing track of what, both despite and because of this obscurity, is becoming apparent [in Erscheinung tritt]â (Szondi, Celan Studies, 65). Indeed, the Celanian obscurity with which I am concerned is of another order than that of a figure of rhetoric, even that of obscuritas. Let me put it this way: in the so-called obscurity of Celanâs poetry, the meticulous disarticulation of language and its tropological and
rhetorical structure so as to be able to pay attention to minute detail and to possess what is expected of a poem that seeks to reach the Other, namely, precisionâa disarticulation that, as all the good readings of the poems demonstrate, can be reconstructed in equal detailâis what the specific obscurity of his poems offers to understanding. Since all the procedures of such a disarticulation can be identified, the specificity of the obscurity in question consists, paradoxically speaking, in its very intelligibility.
To secure this paradoxical intelligibility of Celanian obscurity, a debunking of all attempts to lift it precipitously, pretending that the poems are about this or that, becomes necessary. This, in my view, is the great accomplishment of Oyarzunâs work. From the first lines of this foreword, I have pointed out that, even though in his speech in Bremen Celan refers to a certain experience only in an extremely discrete and reserved formulation as âwhat happened,â this experience is, for Oyarzun, undoubtedly a major concern of Celanâs poetic writing. But this indelible experience, in view of which one would thus be able to situate or determine his poetry as a variation within the genre of poetry, is not what Celanâs art seeks to verbalize. Rather, it is an experience concerning poetry itself; since, moreover, there is no longer anything as such after the unnamable event that has happened, it is an experience of the poem and, more precisely, an experience of the idiom of the poem.11 Not of a poetry after the unnamable, that is, but rather of a reshapingâafter and in light of âwhat happenedââof poetry in its totality, singularizing the poem and shaping it as an address, thus recasting the idiom of the poem today. For this reason, Celanâs poetry is not simply confessional or testimonial. It cannot simply be explained by âwhat happened.â As Szondi notes, the secret credo or guiding word of his poetry has âan essentially nonconfessional, impersonal characterâ (Szondi, Celan Studies, 74).
If the preposition âofâ is italicized in the expression âthe idiom of the poem,â which I borrow from Szondi, it is not to highlight the double genitive indicating a belonging.12 Rather than thus highlighting the ambiguity of the genitive and the ensuing equality of the subjective and objective, not to speak of an eventual dialectical relation between the two, I wish to bend the expression entirely in the direction of the poem. For Szondi the poem is idiomatic insofar as what it accomplishes âis neither verbal nor discursiveâ (Szondi, Celan Studies, 38). By contrast, by highlighting the âofâ in âthe idiom of the poem,â I wish to emphasize that, as far as its total structure is concerned, the poemââthe poem todayââis not simply predictable in terms of general rules constitutive of what to expect from poetry as a genre.
The poem, in a Celanian sense, is marked by objective idiomaticity; it is in its very existence and its very essence idiomatic, each time unique, and it stands apart from all other poems. As we know from The Meridian, âthe poem is lonelyâ (Celan, Meridian, 34a). It is idios, uniquely itself, and âspeaks always only on its own, its very own behalfâ (31a), and it is by implication separate and alone. However, this aloneness peculiar to the poem without a genre or an epochal variation of a general form that would make it generally meaningful, this (if I may dare say) âmaterialâ idiomaticity that is at the same time the poemâs manner of speaking âexactly on anotherâs behalf â (31b)âthis is, precisely, what needs to be thought.
Compelled by a profound respect for the singularity of Celanâs poetry and for the equally singular understanding that it represents of the poem in all its constitutive datedness and precision, Oyarzun observes a methodological reservation, a profound awe before the very singularity of the Celanian poem and what the poet himself says about it, an awe that is, as I have suggested, manifest in the systematic resistance to all interpretations that presumptuously seek to fix its cause and what it says. This respect for what it is that Celan has âfoundâââpoetry as experience,â to cite the title of Lacoue-Labartheâs commentaryâeven prevents Oyarzun from reducing it to an experience of the Holocaust. Even Oyarzunâs own observations, when they venture forth to make interpretive statements, are almost always modulated by a âperhaps,â consistently seeking to keep open the âbetweenâ and its space of âvacillating opposition.â
Since the dialogue that supposedly took place between Heidegger and Celan has to a large extent shaped the way in which the latterâs thought and poetry have been received, let me now return to the question of dialogue and, more specifically, to this particular dialogue. For reasons to which I have already alluded, there has been, undoubtedly, an exchange between Heidegger and Celan; yet, since it did not occur in a dialogic and discursive fashion, it is also one that is unmistakably still going on between their works. Oyarzunâs study is a case in point. It is an exchange that, as demonstrated by the ongoing Celan scholarship, has not come to a rest and whose form is not dialogical in the ordinary and philosophical sense. In the same way that the poem intervenes in any conversation about art, âsomething does interfere [kommt dazwischen]â in this dialogue; something interrupts it (Celan, Meridian, 1c)ânamely, the resistance of Celanâs poetry, as well as The Meridian, to concerns that might at first glance be misunderstood as indicative of a certain proximity to Heideggerâs philosophy. The Meridian is certainly, in some of its parts, an engagement with Heideggerâs thought.
But Heideggerâs thought is countered here, and it is countered not in an argumentative but, rather, first and foremost in a singular fashion, namely, countered with âthe poem todayâ in all its singularity. In other words, what Celan opposes to the thinkerâs thought is not an argument but, rather, the singular poem or individuated speech, that is, a speaking that does not allow itself to be gathered into oneâinto one unified sense concerning Beingâand that therefore, as a counterword, amounts to barely nothing, to a doit, as it were, incapable in its âabsurdityâ of being sublated and resistant to any meaningful standstill.
So far, it should be clear that Oyarzun, too, resists any attempt to arrest the exchange between Heidegger and Celan and, in particular, such an attempt in the form of a Heideggerian reading of Celan. Yet, by insisting on the fact that Celan âonlyâ counters Heideggerâs thought by way of the poem, this also excludes âcounteracting Heidegger with supposed Celanian thesesâ (Oyarzun, Between Celan and Heidegger, 94).13 The poem opposes the Heideggerian notion of Sprache with a Sprechen that is not that of âlanguageâ but, rather, that of the singular poem. At stake in this controversy is thus language itselfâlanguage and its saying. Although in his talk in Bremen Celan utters confidently that, notwithstanding what happened and in spite of the absence of words for it, language âhad to go through terrifying muteness, through the thousand darknesses of murderous speech,â but was still the only thing that âremained reachable, close and secure amid all lossesâ (Celan, Collected Prose, 34; translation modified), nothingâafter allâis less certain. Rather than the language that, while preceding all singular speech acts, opens within itself the horizon of a world destined for a people, what remained was only the language allowing the poem to speak. With language at stake, however, is Celan not also resisting the very matrix that the gathering essence of language imparts to dialogueâto a dialogue between thought and poetryâeven though it may, as Heideggerâs analyses of Trakl have shown, preserve the singularity of what is gathered into a meaningful whole?
Heideggerâs statement âdie Sprache sprichtâ lies, Oyarzun writes in the bookâs central chapter titled âLanguage,â âin the gravitational center of my reflections . . . ; its powerful force of attraction, it seems to me, should be emphasized if one seeks to discover the relation between Celan and Heideggerâ (Oyarzun, Between Celan and Heidegger, 129n3). If the statement in question occupies the âgravitational centerâ of the bookâs reflections, it is because here the âbetweenâ of a dialogue between Celan and Heidegger is decided. This is the case, first, because a dialogue, strictly speaking, requires that one speak about the same: that Sprache be a self-identical sameness,
xxviii The Idiom of the Poem: A Foreword
that the protagonists of the GesprĂ€ch speak in the same language, and that they are determined to address this one sameness. Yet, the abrupt and disruptive exclamation in The MeridianââBut the poem does speak [Aber das Gedicht spricht ja]!â (Celan, Meridian, 31a)âopens a space of confrontation, a âbetweenâ that is not dialogical. With the claim that it is the poem that speaks, âthe possibility not only of Sprache but also of its sameness . . . is definitively suspended in Celan and Heideggerâs GesprĂ€ch,â Oyarzun avers (Between Celan and Heidegger, 11). With the âbutâ (aber) of the interjection, a partitioning lineâa meridian, perhapsâis drawn, thus opening the space from whence the singular poem speaks, countering and resisting Heideggerâs understanding of language as what speaksâthat is, countering and resisting one of Heideggerâs central thoughts.
Thematically speaking, more than merely one theme is, of course, at stake in the dialogue between Heidegger and Celan. On the basis of The Meridian, it can be shown that topics such asâamong othersâthe relation of art and poetry, the centrality of Hölderlinâs poetry and thought for Heideggerâs understanding of poetry, and the status of âplaceâ with respect to the poem occupy an important place. However, all of these topics converge in that they make gatheringâthe unification of everything in itself and of everything into a meaningful wholeâthe center of Heideggerâs thoughts not only on poetry but on language, as well. The word, or language, is a gathering, one that lets Being appear in beings. Yet, Oyarzun asks, âis the essential experience of [Celanâs] poetry not the wordâs literally unheard-of break, an unsayable break in any of the modes in which saying isâstillâ possible? A break that does not permit the thread that ties thing, word, and world in the word is (es ist)â (Between Celan and Heidegger, 75)? That which resists gathering by the word, or through language, is for Celan something indelibly anterior to the anteriority of gathering, something to be thought as the unthinkable, âthe thought of the raw, knowledge of the rawâ (70), something that cleaves the dialogue, exacerbates the âbetween,â and prevents its poles from losing their distinctness.
This between-space is a space other than that of the medium of languageâof language understood as a mediumâin which some dialogue between Celan and Heidegger could have taken place and could have found its place; it is the space for another way of being-with (Mitsein), where language is the singular way of reaching out to the Other, an encounter that is always only actualized in a punctual and punctuating way, that is, always only in the form of an interrupting interjection resistant to the conventional dimension of language and as âabsurdâ as Lucileâs sudden exclamation,
Another random document with no related content on Scribd:
âO bitte, Tom! Macht nicht so viel Aufhebens davon. Es war gar nicht so schrecklich. Mir ist ja gar nichts Schlimmes passiert. Ich bin nur deshalb ohnmĂ€chtig geworden, weil ich eben die viele Bewegung noch nicht ertragen kann. Ich wollte von Herzen gern fĂŒr jeden von Euch noch viel mehr thun.â
âIch bildete mir immer ein,â fuhr Tom unbekĂŒmmert um Percys Worte fort, âich wĂŒĂte, was ein rechter Junge ist. Unsinn! Nichts wuĂte ich. Jetzt geht mir erst ein Licht auf. O Percy, Percy, wie konntest Du ââ
Schnell erhob sich Percy
âKommt! vorwĂ€rts! Es ist die höchste Zeit! Mir fehlt ja nichts! Ich bin wirklich noch nie so froh gewesen wie jetzt. Ich hĂ€tte nie geglaubt, Euch noch irgendwie nĂŒtzlich sein zu können.â
âDas bist Du aber,â erklĂ€rte Tom bewegt, âund bist es gewesen. Von Dir habe ich mehr gelernt als aus vielen, vielen BĂŒchern.â
âUnd ich,â fĂŒgte Harry bei, dessen Erregung soweit nachgelassen hatte, daĂ er seine Dankbarkeit in Worte kleiden konnte, âich hĂ€tte nie gedacht, ich könnte von Dir auch nur halb so viel lernen, als Du mir in diesen paar Minuten beigebracht hast.â
Eine Pause trat ein. FĂŒr beide Knaben, die, selber edelmĂŒtig und groĂherzig, Percys Opfermut voll und ganz zu wĂŒrdigen verstanden, bedurfte es einiger Ruhe, bis sie ihre Aufmerksamkeit wieder den Forderungen des Augenblicks zuwenden konnten.
âWie sollen wir heimkommen, Tom?â fragte endlich Harry. âEr hat sich kaum hierhin zu schleppen vermocht und kann unmöglich denselben Weg noch einmal zurĂŒcklegen.â
âO, ich bin ja noch ganz gut auf den Beinen!â versetzte Percy entschlossen. âNur wegen des Laufens bin ich so mĂŒde geworden. Gehen kann ich ohne MĂŒhe.â
Schweigend schritten sie nun dem Bahnkörper zu.
âWĂ€ren nur Donnel und Keenan hier!â knirschte Tom nach einer Weile und ballte die Faust. âDann gingen wir sicher den andern Weg!â
âEs wird schon merklich kĂ€lter,â sprach Harry âEs giebt eine frostige Nacht. Und wie schneidend kalt der Wind ist! Huuu â denkâ nur, was wir zittern und beben wĂŒrden, wenn wir in diesem linden LĂŒftchen fein ruhig zu liegen hĂ€tten. Und eine ganze Nacht durch! Da verginge es uns schon, am andern Tage auch nur âGuten Morgenâ zu sagen!â
âAuch wenn sie uns kein Schnupftuch in den Mund gestopft hĂ€tten,â ergĂ€nzte Tom.
Percy erzĂ€hlte dann mit schwacher Stimme, wie es ihm gelungen, hinter den abscheulichen Plan zu kommen. Allein unterdessen wurden seine Schritte immer unsicherer, wĂ€hrend zugleich hin und wieder ein Ausdruck des verhaltenen Schmerzes ĂŒber sein Gesicht glitt.
Mittlerweile war es fast halbfĂŒnf geworden, und die Strecke, die sie zurĂŒckgelegt, betrug noch nicht ein Viertel des Heimweges.
âPercy,â sprach Tom, als die ErzĂ€hlung zu Ende war, âDu bist ja fast auĂer stande, weiter zu gehen. Wenn ich Dir doch meine Beine wenigstens fĂŒr einige Zeit abtreten könnte! Die wĂŒrden sich freuen, endlich einmal in anstĂ€ndige Gesellschaft zu kommen.â
âSorge nicht um mich, Tom! Ich bin ja ganz wohl. Allerdings fĂŒhle ich mich etwas gelĂ€hmt, das ist wahr. Es kommt aber nur davon, daĂ ich im Laufen gar keine Ăbung habe.â
âGut, Percy, deshalb wollen Harry und ich Dir von unsern Beinen soviel leihen, als sich machen lĂ€Ăt. â Harry, nimm Du seinen rechten Arm; ich fasse ihn beim linken. Wir können ja denken, wir wĂ€ren Polizisten und sollten diesen Burschen auf die Wache bringen.â
âO, ich wollte nur, ich wĂ€re ein Polizist!â versicherte Harry. âDann hĂ€tte ich bald Hilfe herbeigepfiffen. â Nein, doch nicht! Ich lieĂe niemand helfen, so lange ich selber noch einige KrĂ€fte hĂ€tte.â
Von den Freunden unterstĂŒtzt, ja fast getragen, ging Percy wieder ein Weilchen voran. Doch es entging ihren wachsamen Augen nicht, wie trotz ihrer Hilfe immer hĂ€ufiger ein heftiger Schmerz seinen ganzen Körper erschĂŒtterte.
âUnd alles das fĂŒr mich und Harry!â dachte Tom, wĂ€hrend sich abermals seine Augen heimlich mit ThrĂ€nen fĂŒllten. âWenn wir nicht mehr fĂŒr ihn thun, zieht sich der arme Junge noch einen ernsten Schaden zu. â HĂ€tte er nur von der ganzen Verschwörung nichts gehört! Wir hĂ€tten uns vielleicht doch noch durchgeschlagen. Und wenn nicht â ich wollte lieber die ganze Nacht da liegen, als den guten Percy in diesem Zustande sehen!â
âWir wollen einmal einen Augenblick ausruhen!â fĂŒgte er laut bei.
Sogleich zog er dann seinen Rock aus; Harry verstand ihn und folgte seinem Beispiele. So bereiteten sie fĂŒr Percy auf einem grasbedeckten PlĂ€tzchen ein Lager. Tom setzte sich an dem einen Ende desselben, den RĂŒcken gegen einen Stein gelehnt flach auf den Boden und zwar so, daĂ er das Lager an seiner rechten Seite hatte.
âJetzt, Percy,â sprach er, âlegâ Dich hier nieder! Du bist von Deiner Anstrengung noch zu heiĂ und wĂŒrdest Dich auf dem bloĂen Boden erkĂ€lten. Ein Kissen haben wir leider nicht; deshalb muĂt Du es Dir auf meinem Knie bequem machen.â
Ohne Widerrede that Percy nach Toms Anweisung, indem er beiden dankbar zulÀchelte. Kaum hatte er sich ausgestreckt, als seine Augen auch sofort zufielen, gerade als sÀnke er in eine plötzliche Ohnmacht.
Beide Knaben sahen mit lebhaftester Besorgnis in das ruhige, abgemattete Antlitz, das ihnen in ihrer Angst vorkam wie das Antlitz eines Toten.
âHarry,â sprach endlich Tom im leisesten FlĂŒstertone, âmeinst Du wirklich, Percy könnte schneller gehen, wenn er etwas geschlafen hat?â
âSicher nicht; wir mĂŒssen ihn so ganz langsam heimbringen, wenn wir auch eine Stunde zu spĂ€t kommen.â
âIch will Dir was sagen, Harry. Zu FuĂ kommt er nie nach Haus. Ich bleibe hier und warte, bis er erwacht; dann trage ich ihn, soweit ich komme. â Ach wĂ€re ich doch nur fĂŒr eine Stunde ein Mann! â
Du aber rennst jetzt gleich, was Du rennen kannst, und holst Hilfe, am besten einen Wagen. â Wir wollen beten, daĂ alles gut ablĂ€uft.â
UngesĂ€umt eilte Harry davon, wĂ€hrend Tom geduldig Percys Erwachen abwartete. Ăngstlich lauschte er auf die schwachen AtemzĂŒge des Schlafenden. Da schlug dieser die Augen auf.
âO, Gott sei Dank!â rief Tom. âWie fĂŒhlst Du Dich, Percy? Besser?â
Percy gewahrte die ĂŒbergroĂe BekĂŒmmernis seines Freundes.
âO gewiĂ!â sprach er leise, indem er sich bemĂŒhte, frisch und wohlgemut dreinzusehen. âIch glaube, ich komme jetzt bis nach Hause.â
âSehr gut, Percy! Also voran!â
Tom half ihm aufstehen und zog dann seine Jacke an.
âUnd Du kannst wohl Harrys Jacke tragen, Percy.â
âSehr gern, Tom!â
âGut, ich hĂ€nge sie Dir um wie ein KriegsmĂ€ntelchen; das sieht ganz schön aus.â
Percy war zu sehr geschwĂ€cht, um seiner Ăberraschung noch Ausdruck zu verleihen, als ihn Tom jetzt ohne UmstĂ€nde ergriff, aufhob und mit ihm weiter ging, als verstĂ€nde sich das von selbst.
Zum GlĂŒcke fĂŒr Tom war der Leidende, obgleich ein volles Jahr Ă€lter, sehr zart gebaut. Doch blieb er immerhin eine ansehnliche Last fĂŒr den ZwölfjĂ€hrigen. Aber Dankbarkeit und ein gewisser edler Stolz, sich an GroĂmut nicht ĂŒbertreffen zu lassen, schienen Toms KrĂ€fte zu erhöhen.
So schritt er dahin, schnellen und sichern FuĂes. In seinen Mienen trug er eine möglichst groĂe GleichgĂŒltigkeit zur Schau, obwohl er bald anfing hastiger zu atmen.
âKeine Angst, Percy!â sagte er, als dieser ihn einmal sehr besorgt anschaute. âIch werde nicht mĂŒde. Du weiĂt ja, ich war immer darauf aus, meine KrĂ€fte zu ĂŒben. Ich habe schon Schwereres gehoben.
Ich könnte sogar mit Dir laufen, nur fĂŒrchte ich, anzustoĂen und Dich unsanft auf den Boden zu setzen.â
Bald gewahrte er durch die schon tief herabgesunkene DÀmmerung einen Reiter im Galopp heransprengen. Sollte das schon die Hilfe sein, die Harry schickte? Sein Herz schlug freudiger, je nÀher Roà und Reiter kamen.
âHurra!â rief er, als die Gestalt des Helfers einigermaĂen kenntlich geworden. âPercy, hĂ€ttest Du das gedacht? ich glaube, es ist P. Middleton.â
15. Kapitel.
Wie ein Vierter allen zu Hilfe kam. â In
der Infirmerie.
Middleton war es. Ein paar Worte mögen seine Ankunft erklÀren.
P. Scott, der den Trupp SpaziergĂ€nger begleitet hatte, traf kurz vor fĂŒnf Uhr wieder im Pensionate ein, machte aber die Mitteilung, daĂ Kenny, Prescott und etliche andere fehlten. In P. Middleton stieg sofort der Gedanke auf, es könne dieser Streich wohl mit den Ereignissen des Tages in irgend welchem Zusammenhang stehen. Playfair hatte ja Kenny und dessen Gesellen bei der MiĂhandlung des kleinen Granger gestört. Percy Wynn hatte unter den Zeichen gröĂter Aufregung nach Playfair gefragt. Richtig, der Arme war ja ganz gelĂ€hmt, sonst wĂ€re er sicher gar nicht mehr zu Hause gewesen; und doch lief er so eilig hinaus! Wollte er etwa einen Anschlag gegen seinen Freund verhindern?
âWarum habe ich ihn doch nicht weiter ausgefragt? Ich zweifle nicht, daĂ sein ganzes rĂ€tselhaftes Treiben mit dem Ausbleiben dieser Schlingel zusammenhĂ€ngt.â â âP. Scott,â sprach er, âwollen Sie die GĂŒte haben, mich fĂŒr die nĂ€chste Stunde zu vertreten? Ich will sehen, ob ich der Sache nicht gleich auf den Grund kommen kann. Es muĂ etwas Schlimmes im Werke sein. Beten Sie zu den heiligen Schutzengeln!â
Mit diesen Worten entfernte er sich, sattelte das beste Reitpferd, stieg auf und jagte dem Paniflusse zu.
Als er sich dem oft genannten Steinwalle nÀherte, wurde er einiger dunklen Gestalten ansichtig, die sich vor dem Reiter verbergen zu wollen schienen. Er gab seinem Tiere die Sporen und hatte bald das HÀuflein der Wegelagerer erreicht. Es waren genau diejenigen, welche vom Spaziergange nicht mit heimgekommen waren.
âSofort nach Hause!â donnerte er streng. âWer in zwanzig Minuten nicht da ist, kann sich auf eine gehörige Strafe gefaĂt machen. Was Ihr bis jetzt verdient habt, sage ich Euch heute Abend.â
Dann wandte er sein Pferd, lieĂ die verblĂŒfften AttentĂ€ter mit ihrem Schrecken allein und galoppierte dem Bahnkörper zu, wo er seiner Anweisung an Percy zufolge auch noch etwas zu entdecken hoffte. Bald hatte er den Bahndamm in Sicht. Was auf der hohen, scharf abgegrenzten Linie desselben in Bewegung war, lieĂ sich leicht erkennen, da es sich vom Firmamente deutlich abheben muĂte. So brauchte P. Middleton nur ein paar Minuten in der NĂ€he ĂŒber die PrĂ€rie hinzureiten, um den eilenden Harry zu gewahren. In einem Augenblick war er bei ihm.
âO P. Middleton!â rief der hemdĂ€rmelige LĂ€ufer, âGott sei Dank, daĂ Sie kommen! Der arme Percy ist halbtot vor MĂŒdigkeit. Ich bin vorangelaufen, um Hilfe zu holen. Tom ist bei ihm, nur vielleicht zehn Minuten von hier.â
âWarum habt Ihr denn nicht den kĂŒrzeren Weg ĂŒber die PrĂ€rie genommen?â
âWeil â ja, weil Percy das nicht wollte.â
âSo, so, Percy wollte das nicht! â Und wo ist Deine Jacke geblieben?â
âMeine Jacke? Die wird mir Tom wohl mitbringen. Percy hat noch darauf geschlafen, als ich wegging.â
âGut, Harry! Gehâ jetzt zurĂŒck, daĂ Du Deine Jacke wiederbekommst.â
Er verdoppelte seine Eile und war schnell bei Tom, der schon recht unsicher unter seiner BĂŒrde daherschritt.
âBravo, Tom! Bravo! Du bist ja selbst schon mĂŒde zum Umfallen. Ist Percy bewuĂtlos?â
âO, ich bin ganz wohl, Pater!â rief Percy, so laut die kraftlose Stimme noch rufen konnte. âGuten Abend, Pater!â
âKannst Du ihn mir heraufreichen, Tom?â
âGewiĂ,â sprach der kleine TrĂ€ger und keuchte heran. âEr ist gar nicht besonders schwer.â
P. Middleton nahm ihn vor sich und setzte ihn, so gut es ging, zurecht.
âArmes Kind!â sprach er mitleidig. âUnd ich selbst trage noch die Schuld daran. Es hĂ€tte mir doch einfallen mĂŒssen, daĂ Du schon so mĂŒde warest. Ich hĂ€tte Dich nicht sollen gehen lassen.â
âO, Sie konnten mir nichts Lieberes thun, Pater, als mich gehen lassen. Um keinen Preis möchte ich diesen Gang missen.â
âTom,â fuhr der PrĂ€fekt fort, âDu gehst jetzt zu Harry, der gerade so mĂŒde ist wie Du. Ihr braucht nicht rasch zu gehen. Percy und ich sind vor Euch zu Hause und wollen sorgen, daĂ noch ein gutes Abendessen fĂŒr Euch bereit steht. Nicht wahr, Percy?â
Percy lÀchelte schwach.
âWenn Ihr anlangt, begebt Ihr Euch gleich zur Infirmerie. Der Krankenbruder soll Euch heute zu Gast haben. LaĂt es Euch nur ordentlich schmecken! â Ah, Harrys Jacke! Da, gieb sie ihm!â
Dann sprengte er in einem sanfteren Schritt, der seinem leidenden GefĂ€hrten nicht unangenehm war, zum Kolleg zurĂŒck. Dort lenkte er zur ThĂŒre der Infirmerie, stieg ab und trug seinen SchĂŒtzling in die Abteilung, welche fĂŒr die Kleinen bestimmt war.
âBruder, hier ist ein Junge, der mal probieren wollte, wie weit er laufen könnte, ohne sich umzubringen.â Dabei legte P. Middleton den Knaben sanft auf ein Bett nieder. âSie sehen, er ist sehr schwach und bedarf etwas, um wieder auf die Beine zu kommen.â
Der Bruder begab sich in seine Apotheke und kehrte mit einem Glase Wein zurĂŒck.
âNimm das, Kleiner, dann wird es gleich besser. â Es freut mich ĂŒbrigens, daĂ Du kommst,â fuhr er fort, wĂ€hrend Percy langsam den stĂ€rkenden Trank zu sich nahm. âSeit vierzehn Tagen ist niemand mehr hier gewesen, und es wird mir beinahe langweilig.â
âDiesen Abend wirdâs Ihnen nun jedenfalls nicht langweilig werden, Bruder,â sprach P. Middleton. âIch habe noch zwei andere hierher bestellt: Quip und Playfair. Sie haben Percy brav geholfen und sind fast so mĂŒde wie er. Sie hoffen bei Ihnen bis morgen Kost und Obdach zu finden. FĂŒr diese GĂ€ste dĂŒrfen Sie heute auch etwas mehr aufwenden.â
âO, natĂŒrlich, Pater,â erwiderte der Bruder herzlich und rieb sich die HĂ€nde. âEin Abendessen sollen sie haben, wie noch niemals, seit sie in Maurach sind.â
âGut also. Ich habe noch einige wichtige Sachen in Ordnung zu bringen, Bruder. Deshalb will ich mich zurĂŒckziehen und Ihnen alles Weitere ĂŒberlassen. â Gute Nacht, Percy!â
âGute Nacht, P. Middleton. Meine Schwestern hĂ€tten nicht gĂŒtiger sein können, als Sie gewesen sind, ja nicht einmal meine Mutter.â
Der Pater lÀchelte, als er sich ohne weitere Entgegnung rasch entfernte. Ich vermute, er beeilte sich deshalb so sehr, weil er ein Erröten sich nicht wollte anmerken lassen.
Die Zöglinge hatten den Speisesaal schon wieder verlassen und spielten auf dem Hofe.
P. Middleton ging jedoch nicht zu ihnen, sondern in sein Zimmer, und lieĂ Kenny zu sich rufen.
Nachdenklich setzte er sich an seinen Tisch, stĂŒtzte den Kopf auf beide HĂ€nde und suchte nach dem Faden, der die Ereignisse dieses
bewegten Tages verknĂŒpfte.
âWas weiĂ ich nun eigentlich?â sprach er zu sich selbst. âHeute Morgen platzt Tom mit diesen nĂ€mlichen Jungen zusammen â dann sehe ich die verdĂ€chtige Munkelei im Hofe â es muĂ sich um etwas ungewöhnlich Niedriges gehandelt haben, sonst hĂ€tte sich Skipper nicht von ihnen losgesagt, und Skipper war auch am Nachmittag nicht mit dabei â dann Percy mit seinem rĂ€tselhaften Unterfangen, das ihn nahezu ruiniert, â und zu welchem Zweck? damit die beiden nicht auf dem vorgehabten Wege heimkehren â ich treffe die Bande an einer Stelle, wo Playfair und Quip vorbeigekommen wĂ€ren, wenn Percy sie nicht gewarnt hĂ€tte â man hat auf sie gelauert â aber was sollte ihnen wohl geschehen â und wer ist das eigentliche Haupt der Verschwörung â doch vielleicht erfahre ich das jetzt.â
Es klopfte.
âHerein!â
Kenny, totenblaĂ, betrat das Zimmer.
âAh, da ist er! Das ist eine saubere Geschichte, Kenny. P. Scott hat Euch diesen Morgen Euer Betragen schon vorgerĂŒckt. Ich glaube aber, von der Wirklichkeit hatte er gar keine Ahnung. â Was kannst Du zu Deiner Verteidigung vorbringen?â
âDer Anschlag geht ganz gewiĂ nicht von mir aus, Pater,â beteuerte Kenny, der mit Recht fĂŒrchtete, man werde ohne weiteres ihn in erster Linie verantwortlich machen. âIch schĂ€me mich fĂŒrchterlich, Pater, daĂ ich nachgab. Aber ich hatte nicht vorausgesehen, daĂ eine so schrecklich kalte Nacht folgen wĂŒrde.â
âOho, kalte Nacht!â sprach der PrĂ€fekt zu sich selbst. âPlayfair sollte also drauĂen die Nacht zubringen. Gar nicht ĂŒbel, das! Aber wie?â Mit lauter Stimme fuhr er fort: âDaran hĂ€ttest Du aber denken m ĂŒ s s e n . Die beiden hĂ€tten sich ja eine schwere Krankheit zuziehen können!â
âIch habe das auch immer entgegen gehalten und habe gesagt, man sollte ihnen wenigstens den Mund nicht verstopfen. Aber Prescott wollte nichts davon wissen. Er sagte, sie machten dann einen solchen LĂ€rm, daĂ alles in die BrĂŒche ginge.â
âSo?â P Middleton wuĂte genug. âIch will mir den Fall weiter ĂŒberlegen. Du kannst gehen.â
âAber, Pater, seien Sie ĂŒberzeugt, daĂ ich mich bessern will. Haben Sie noch einmal Geduld mit mir! Ich weiĂ, daĂ ich mich bessern kann, wenn ich will. O, bitte, Pater, sorgen Sie doch, daĂ ich nicht weggejagt werde! O, ich hĂ€tte nie gedacht, daĂ es so weit mit mir kommen wĂŒrde. Ich versichere Sie, es soll anders werden.â
âNun ja,â erwiderte P. Middleton, bewegt durch die Reue und die Angst, welche aus des Knaben ZĂŒgen sprach. âIch will versuchen, ob sich etwas fĂŒr Dich thun lĂ€Ăt; versprechen kann ich Dir freilich nichts, denn alles hĂ€ngt von jemand anders ab. Morgen gebe ich Dir Nachricht, und ich hoffe, gute.â
âO, ich danke Ihnen, Pater! Ich will Ihnen in Zukunft folgsamer sein, als bis jetzt.â
âHabâ mirâs doch gedacht!â fuhr P. Middleton bei sich selber fort, als Kenny das Zimmer verlassen hatte. âPrescott ist der Hauptschelm; Kenny war nur die Tatze, die er vorstreckte. Wahrscheinlich hat er seinen Leuten eingeredet, es werde niemand fortgeschickt, weil ihrer zu viele seien. Er muĂ einen groĂen EinfluĂ auf sie besitzen, sonst hĂ€tten sie sich zu dieser Gemeinheit nicht hergegeben. Sein Hiersein ist eine stĂ€ndige Gefahr fĂŒr den guten Geist unserer Kinder. â Mein Gott! so weit ich denke und gehört habe, ist ein Ă€hnlicher Fall doch noch nie in einem unserer Pensionate vorgekommen.â
Unterdessen begingen die drei Freunde in der Infirmerie, wie Harry sich auszudrĂŒcken beliebte, eine âhochfein altehrwĂŒrdige Zeitâ. Tom und Harry hatten einen gar nicht zu verachtenden Appetit von ihrer Exkursion mitgebracht, und was ihnen vorgesetzt wurde, war ebenfalls nicht zu verachten. Wie der Toast verschwand! und die Eier und der Schinken! Man darf nicht weiter davon reden, um die Braven nicht in ĂŒblen Geruch zu bringen. Percy allerdings war zu sehr ermĂŒdet, um dem Mahle Gerechtigkeit widerfahren zu lassen. Sein Geist jedoch war ganz frisch und mit gewohnter Lebhaftigkeit nahm er, in einem groĂen Lehnstuhle sitzend, an der Unterhaltung teil.
Der gute Krankenbruder hatte die Geschichte dieses Nachmittags bereits von Percy vernommen, zwang aber nichtsdestoweniger Tom, sie noch einmal zu erzĂ€hlen. Endlich bewog er Harry, noch eine dritte Auflage zu veranstalten. Das wurde freilich keine verbesserte â die erste war die beste gewesen â aber eine ganz bedeutend vermehrte. Harrys Phantasie offenbarte eine staunenswerte Fruchtbarkeit. Eine ganze Reihe von Einzelheiten, von denen Tom und Percy nichts erlebt hatten, erfand er fröhlich dazu und erzĂ€hlte sie so haarklein, als ob er wirklich mit dabei gewesen wĂ€re Tom und Percy wuĂten ihrem Staunen keinen Rat und hatten alle MĂŒhe, ihn bei den Thatsachen zu halten, wodurch natĂŒrlich das VergnĂŒgen des Bruders nur um so gröĂer wurde.
âDie Geschichte ist so gut, als stĂ€nde sie in einem Buche,â sprach er zuletzt. âUnd hĂ€tte ich Zeit, ich wĂŒrde sie aufschreiben, herausgeben und viel Geld damit verdienen.â
Harry Quip war ĂŒberhaupt heute so lustig wie noch nie. Eine Schnurre nach der anderen fiel ihm ein, so daĂ der Saal von dem heitern Lachen der kleinen Gesellschaft fortwĂ€hrend widerhallte.
Endlich jedoch wurde die Unterhaltung stiller.
âWiĂt Ihr auch,â fragte Percy ernst, âdaĂ ich dies als eine Strafe meiner Eitelkeit ansehe?â
âMeinst Du Dein Essen?â warf Quip mit schelmischem Blicke ein.
âNein, Harry! Du scherzest; ich meine die Schmerzen in meinen Beinen!â
âWarum denn?â
âWeil ich frĂŒher, wenn ich mit meinen Schwestern tanzte, auf meine Geschicklichkeit sehr eitel zu sein pflegte. Aber jetzt werde ich mir,â fĂŒgte er schmerzlich bei, ânie wieder etwas auf meine Beine einbilden.â
âNach dieser reuevollen Bemerkung,â erklĂ€rte der Bruder, âdĂŒrft Ihr ganz passend zu Bette gehen.â
Die ĂŒbrigen Zöglinge saĂen wieder im Studiersaal hinter ihren BĂŒchern. Allein ein rechter Eifer war offenbar nicht vorhanden. Eine
gewisse Unruhe herrschte im ganzen Saale, und war fĂŒr jeden, der zu schlieĂen verstand, ein Zeichen, daĂ irgend ein peinlicher Vorfall sich ereignet habe und noch seines Ausganges harre.
Mehrere Zöglinge, die wir sehr wohl kennen, fehlten. Der Aufsicht fĂŒhrende Pater wollte vorschriftsmĂ€Ăig eben ihre Namen notieren, als die ThĂŒre sich öffnete und P. Middleton eintrat. Leise ging er zu dem Pater hin und fragte in flĂŒsterndem Tone:
âIst Martin Prescott hier?â
âNein. Sehen Sie dort: sein Platz ist unbesetzt.â
Wo war Prescott geblieben?
Um das zu erforschen, mĂŒssen wir zurĂŒckkehren zu der Zeit, da Kenny von P. Middleton schied, wĂ€hrend die Zöglinge noch im Hofe spielten.
16. Kapitel.
Percys Pult.
enny hatte das Zimmer seines PrĂ€fekten als ein ganz anderer Mensch verlassen. Jetzt endlich war es ihm sonnenklar, daĂ der Weg, den er in dieser Anstalt bis jetzt gewandelt, sehr schnell bergab fĂŒhre. Bei dem Lichte, das ihm die heutigen Ereignisse gebracht, erschrak er wieder und wieder ĂŒber die Tiefe, in die er bereits gesunken.
Da er keine Lust hatte, zu seinen spielenden Kameraden zu gehen, so trat er in den leeren Studiersaal, um hier das Ende der Erholung abzuwarten.
Als er eben die Schwelle ĂŒberschritt, störte ihn das Klappen eines Pultdeckels aus seinen Gedanken auf. Er erhob die Augen und gewahrte Prescott, der neben Percy Wynns Pulte stand und sehr verwirrt aussah.
âIch suche meine lateinische Grammatik,â sprach Prescott. âEs muĂ sie mir jemand gestohlen haben.â
âPrescott, ich fĂŒrchte, Dir geht es schlimm,â erwiderte Kenny, ohne auf diese Worte einzugehen. âIch wollte Dich eigentlich nicht anzeigen; aber ich war so voll Angst, daĂ ich glaube, ich habe alles ausgeschwĂ€tzt. Du thust mir leid, aber was mir am meisten leid thut, ist, daĂ ich mich ĂŒberhaupt mit Dir abgegeben. Ich wollte, ich hĂ€tte Dich nie gekannt.â
âSo,â versetzte Prescott mit einem befremdlichen, ja unnatĂŒrlichen Tone. âIch sehe mich dann wĂ€hrend des Studiums nach meiner Grammatik um.â
Und mit einem sonderbaren kalten Ausdruck im Gesicht, einem Ausdrucke, den Kenny erst nach den Begebenheiten, die wir jetzt sehen werden, ganz verstand, eilte Prescott aus dem Saale fort.
Kenny sah ihn wĂ€hrend des Studiums nicht. Da fielen ihm seine Worte bezĂŒglich der lateinischen Grammatik wieder ein und lieĂen einen schrecklichen Verdacht in seiner Seele aufsteigen.
Jetzt trat P. Middleton ein und sprach mit dem Pater jene Worte, die den SchluĂ des letzten Kapitels bilden. Dann ging er auf Kennys Platz zu.
âWeiĂt Du etwas von Prescott?â flĂŒsterte er.
âNein. Aber als ich gerade aus Ihrem Zimmer kam, sah ich ihn hier. Er behauptete, es mĂŒsse ihm jemand seine lateinische Grammatik gestohlen haben; die suche er jetzt.â
âSuchte er in den Pulten anderer?â
âJa. So schien es mir wenigstens. Er hatte gerade eines wieder geschlossen.â
P. Middleton begab sich ruhig zu Prescotts Pult, öffnete es und ĂŒbersah die BĂŒcher: die lateinische Grammatik war da. UnverĂ€ndert blieb das Gesicht des PrĂ€fekten. Er wuĂte ja, das jegliches Auge im ganzen Saale auf ihn gerichtet sei.
Er kehrte zu Kenny zurĂŒck.
âWessen Pult schloĂ Prescott, als Du ihn sahest?â
âDas von Percy Wynn.â
âGut. Jetzt, Karl, gehâ hinaus und erwarte mich auf dem Gange. Ich komme bald und habe Dir dann höchstwahrscheinlich etwas zu sagen. â Du brauchst keine Angst zu haben,â fĂŒgte er bei, als er bemerkte, daĂ Kenny böse Kunde befĂŒrchtete. âIch habe Deinetwegen schon mit dem hochwĂŒrdigen P. Rektor gesprochen. Es geht alles gut.â
Er ging jetzt zu Percys Pult. Percy besaĂ, wie die meisten Mauracher Zöglinge, ein schönes, verschlieĂbares KĂ€stchen aus Metall zur Aufbewahrung von Briefen, Geld und etwaigen kleineren Wertsachen. Dieses KĂ€stchen stand offen, es war aufgebrochen worden. Ein Blick zeigte, daĂ die Briefe nicht berĂŒhrt waren, aber eine Anzahl Photographien lag da zerrissen â die Photographien von Percys Eltern und Schwestern.
âDas arme Kind!â dachte P. Middleton. âDiese GefĂŒhllosigkeit ist ihm bitterer als der Verlust von noch so viel Geld. GĂ€be es doch ein Mittel, ihm diese traurige Entdeckung zu ersparen! â Vielleicht ist ihm aber auch Geld gestohlen! Richtig! heute Morgen sprach er ja von dem Taschengeld, das er noch in seinem Pulte habe. Und hier ist nichts mehr.â
Er schloĂ das Pult und verlieĂ den Saal.
âWir mĂŒssen den Verdacht hegen,â sprach er zu dem drauĂen harrenden Kenny, âdaĂ Prescott zu einem ganz andern Zwecke hier im Saale war, als er vorgab. Er ist weggelaufen, wie Du wahrscheinlich auch schon vermutet hast. ErzĂ€hle das niemanden! Sage, er sei aus der Anstalt ausgeschlossen, was vor einer Viertelstunde wirklich geschehen ist. Auch daĂ Du ihn hier gesehen, darf nicht bekannt werden. Jetzt gehâ nur zu Deinen BĂŒchern zurĂŒck!â
Nach einem kurzen Besuche beim Rektor verfĂŒgte sich P Middleton wieder auf sein Zimmer, um nachzusinnen, wie er Percy Wynn vor einem herben Schmerze bewahren könne. Endlich glaubte er einen Ausweg gefunden zu haben. Er ergriff die Feder und schrieb folgenden Brief:
S e h r g e e h r t e r H e r r W y n n !
Percy besaĂ, wie Ihnen ohne Zweifel bewuĂt ist, eine Anzahl Photographien seiner Lieben. Diese Photographien sind ihm nun zerrissen worden, und zwar von einem Knaben, der ich schĂ€me mich, es zu sagen bis vor einer Viertelstunde Zögling dieser Anstalt war. Percy selbst weiĂ es noch nicht. Ich fĂŒrchte aber, die Entdeckung dieser Roheit wĂŒrde dem gefĂŒhlvollen Kinde sehr zu Herzen gehen. Deshalb sende ich Ihnen die StĂŒcke zu mit der Bitte, die Photographien neu herstellen und a n m i c h abschicken zu lassen. Auf diese Weise braucht Percy
nie zu erfahren, daĂ dieses teure Andenken an ein glĂŒckliches Familienleben so grausam miĂhandelt worden ist.
Mit vorzĂŒglicher Hochachtung
A . M i d d l e t o n , S. J.
Als der Brief vollendet war, schellte es zu einer kurzen Unterbrechung der Studien. P. Middleton eilte hinaus, und als der letzte Zögling den Saal verlassen, trat er an Percys Pult, nahm das KĂ€stchen heraus und trug es in sein Zimmer. Allein die Zöglinge waren heute gegen ihre sonstige Gewohnheit sehr still, und in Gruppen beisammen stehend flĂŒsterten sie geheimnisvoll miteinander.
Gegen Ende der kleinen Erholungsfrist nĂ€herte sich Donnel mit etwa fĂŒnf andern dem PrĂ€fekten.
âIst es wahr, Pater, daĂ Prescott geschaĂt ist?â
âDas ist wahr, Johann. Ich hoffe, er ist auch der letzte, der dieses Jahr fort muĂ.â
Er zog seine Schelle hervor und gab das Zeichen zum Schlusse der Erholung.
âIch denke,â fuhr Johann Donnel fort, âer wird bei diesem herrlichen Wetter nicht auf der Plattform stehen, sondern sich fein im Wagen halten. Puh, welch ein kalter Wind diese Nacht pfeift! â Er hat doch den Sieben-Uhr-Zug genommen, Pater, nicht wahr?â
âLauf, Donnel, es ist Zeit!â war die Antwort des PrĂ€fekten.
Aber Donnels Frage wollte ihm nicht aus dem Sinne. Sollte Prescott wirklich den bezeichneten Zug benutzt haben?
Nach dem Diebstahl hatte er sich aus Furcht vor Entdeckung jedenfalls nicht fĂŒr die gewöhnliche Art der Reise entschieden; er war schlau genug, um zu vermuten, daĂ ihm ein Telegramm vorauseilen, und daĂ auf der nĂ€chsten Station schon ein Polizist zu seinem Empfange bereit stehen könne.
Viel mehr Wahrscheinlichkeit hatte es fĂŒr sich, daĂ er zu FuĂ nach Sykesville gegangen war, einem Orte, der nicht ganz zwei Stunden von Maurach entfernt lag. Das Kolleg muĂte er etwa um
viertel vor sieben verlassen haben, konnte also viertel vor neun in Sykesville sein.
âWenn er es so gemacht hat,â sprach P Middleton zu sich selbst, wĂ€hrend er auf die Uhr sah, âso ist er jetzt da. Wenn aber das nicht â was wird dann der arme Junge wohl bei dieser Witterung zu leiden haben?â
Er begab sich in die Infirmerie, wo die drei Freunde zum Abendgebete neben ihren Betten knieten. Percy stand auf, als er bemerkte, daĂ der Pater mit ihm reden wolle.
âWie viel Geld hattest Du in Deinem KĂ€stchen, Percy?â
âFĂŒnfzehn Dollars.â
âIch fĂŒrchte, Percy, Du bist bestohlen worden.â
âO! wirklich? Der Dieb ist doch wohl kein Zögling?â
âLeider scheint es doch der Fall zu sein. Ich vermute Prescott. Er ist weggelaufen, nachdem er Dein KĂ€stchen erbrochen und das Geld genommen hat.â
âO, der Arme! Er thut mir so leid! Welch ein trauriges Leben muĂ er doch gefĂŒhrt haben, daĂ er eine solche SĂŒnde begehen konnte!â
âFreilich, Percy. Aber das Geld! Dein Geld!â
âO Pater, an dem Gelde liegt mir nichts. Mein Vater schickt mir Geld wieder, wenn ich ihn nur bitte. Aber der arme, arme Junge thut mir so leid. Wie unglĂŒcklich muĂ er sich jetzt fĂŒhlen!â
âErzĂ€hle dies jetzt niemanden, Percy! Auch daĂ er weggelaufen ist, darf niemand erfahren. Er ist aber zugleich geschaĂt worden, und das weiĂ man unter den Zöglingen. Im ĂŒbrigen wollen wir seinen Ruf schonen, soviel es noch möglich ist.â
âP. Middleton, das gleicht Ihnen nun so ganz. Sie nehmen stets RĂŒcksicht auf andere. Ich hĂ€tte hieran gar nicht gedacht. Ich wĂ€re hingegangen und hĂ€tte jedem in die Ohren gerufen, Prescott sei ein Dieb und ein AusreiĂer. Ich danke Ihnen sehr, Pater. Sie haben mir durch Ihr Beispiel eine heilsame Lehre gegeben.â
HĂ€tte unser kleiner Freund gewuĂt, was fĂŒr ein Brief an seinen Vater noch auf P. Middletons Tische lag, er wĂŒrde die aufmerksame RĂŒcksichtnahme seines PrĂ€fekten noch dankbarer bewundert haben.
âNoch eines, Percy. Dein KĂ€stchen habe ich mit in mein Zimmer genommen. Das SchloĂ war ja erbrochen, und auch sonst war es arg beschĂ€digt. Hast Du etwas dagegen, daĂ ich es Dir erst zurĂŒckstelle, wenn alles wieder in Ordnung ist?â
âO gar nichts, Pater! Behalten Sie es, so lange Sie wollen, eine Woche, einen Monat, behalten Sie es nur ganz.â
Mit einem LĂ€cheln wĂŒnschte P. Middleton seinem braven Zögling gute Nacht.
