his background. But every life, every existence, belongs to one person and one person only, and no one else has the right to force this life and this existence to one side, to force it out of the way, to force it out of existence. We’ll go by ourselves, as we have the right to do. That’s part of the natural course. At the one moment when I had the chance, namely when both my parents had died, I failed to see that I ought to turn my back on Peiskam as my sister had done; I really ought to have sold it and thus come to my own rescue, but I hadn’t the strength. Years of depression followed my parents’ death and made it impossible for me to take any initiative. I couldn’t even begin to study. I actually started on several courses of study simultaneously, but failed at them all, as I might have foreseen. I talked myself into studying mathematics, then philosophy, but it wasn’t long before I conceived a distaste for mathematics and philosophy, at least for the mathematics taught at the university, as well as for the philosophy that is taught there but in fact can’t be taught at all. Then suddenly I developed an enthusiasm, a true enthusiasm, for music and surrendered myself to it heart and soul. I got up from my armchair and looked at the clock; then I sat down again. I was incapable of doing anything before my departure, and so I at once relapsed into my fantasies. I found the universities repellent. I enrolled at a number of them. This had been the obvious thing for my father to do, but I attended them all only for the briefest spell. I went to Vienna, Innsbruck and finally Graz, a place I’ve loathed all my life, fully intending to begin and to complete a course of study there, but I failed right from the start. The reason was, on the one hand, that the stale intellectual mush that had been served up in universities for centuries at once turned my stomach and sickened my mind, and, on the other, that I found all the towns unendurable — Innsbruck, Graz and — in the end — even Vienna. All these towns, which of course I knew already, though not thoroughly, induced in me the most crushing depression, and in fact they are all, especially Graz, repulsive little provincial towns. Each one regards itself as the navel of the world and thinks it has taken a lease on the intellect. True, but it’s only the absolutely primitive intellect of the petty bourgeoisie; in these towns I became acquainted with the total insipidity of allot-ment-holders who taught philosophy and professed literature, with nothing else, and the stench of crass pedestrianism pervading these Austrian cesspits spoilt my appetite from the very beginning for anything but the briefest possible stay. And I didn’t want to stay in Vienna either for longer than was absolutely necessary. But to be truthful I owe it to Vienna that I learned about music, and in the most perfect way possible, I must add. Much as I despise and condemn the city, and repellent though I find it most of the time, I nevertheless owe to it my access to our composers, to Beethoven, to Mozart, even to Wagner, and naturally to Schubert, whom I admittedly find it difficult to link with the others, and above all I naturally owe the music of modern and recent times to Vienna, which my father always referred to as the most outrageous of cities — Schönberg, Berg, Webern and so on. And my years in Vienna — nearly twenty in all, during which I became thoroughly attuned to city life — finally spoilt me for Peiskam. During these years I lived at first with my sister, then by myself, at first in the inner city, where I occupied a whole house in the Hasenauerstrasse belonging to my uncle who lived in Dobling. These years in Vienna made Peiskam impossible for me. I was never a nature-lover, which one has to be to live at Peiskam. But in the end illhealth forced me out of the concert-halls and back to Peiskam. Because of my lungs I had to part from Vienna, which meant parting from everything that had any value for me at the time. I’ve never got over this parting. But if I’d stayed in Vienna I should have lived only for a very short time longer. Peiskam had been standing empty for almost twenty years since the death of our parents; it had been given over to nature. No one believed anybody could ever move in again. But one day I moved back. I threw open all the windows, letting in fresh air for the first time in years, and in time I made it habitable. But it’s remained an alien place to me, if I’m to be honest, right to the present day, I reflected. I’d had to give up Vienna and all it meant to me — which was literally everything — at the very moment when I believed I was inseparably linked with the city for ever, a city which admittedly I already hated and which I knew I’d always hated, but which I also loved like no other. Today I envy my sister only one thing: that she can live in Vienna. That’s what constantly rouses me to anger against Vienna — envy. It’s envy that prompts me to be so monstrously unjust and even contemptible in my behaviour towards my sister — envy because she can live in Vienna and because I know she leads an extremely pleasant and happy life there, and I don’t. I always think that if there is one place in the world where I would like to live, then that place is Vienna — there’s no other. But.I’ve put up a barrier between myself and Vienna, thus making it impossible for me to live there. I no longer deserve Vienna, I thought. And it was in Vienna that I first heard a piece by Mendelssohn Bartholdy, The Travelling Players, in the concert hall of the Musik-verein. Both the work and the performance had an elemental effect on me. At the time I didn’t know why the work impressed me so deeply, but I do now. It was because of its brilliant imperfection. But at one time I even hit upon the idea of attending the mining college in Leoben, not because I had suddenly developed an interest in minerals, but because Leoben, being situated in the Styrian mountains, was well-known still for the purity of its air — which of course is now just as polluted as the air anywhere else. For even before I was twenty I had been seriously advised by doctors to lead a country life and not an urban life, but at that time I’d rather have died immediately in the town, no matter of what, than gone to live in the country. The idea of studying in Leoben only cropped up once. However, I paid a visit to the town to learn a bit more than I knew already about the possibilities of the study of mining, but I was put off by the place as soon as I got off the train. In a place like this you can only die, but not exist for a day longer than necessary, I told myself at the time, and in fact I didn’t need to spend even one day in Leoben, but went back the same day to Vienna, from where I’d set out to look at Leoben. Even as the train was crossing the Semmering I was seized by an oppressive sensation in my head and in my whole body. How can there be people who find it possible to exist in little towns like Leoben, I wondered at the time; and after all there are a few hundred thousand people in our country alone who exist in little places like Leoben without raising any objection. But the idea of starting a course of study in Leoben in the first place was not mine, but my maternal grandfather’s. He had once studied mining himself, admittedly not in Leoben, but in Padua, which is certainly an immense difference. And I’d considered going to England, possibly Oxford or Cambridge, I’d thought, thus at once associating myself with a number of our most brilliant minds, some of the most illustrious of whom had indeed studied in England, that is in Oxford and Cambridge, and gone on to teach there. And since I had no difficulty whatever with the English language, I thought that the way to England was the right way for me. But I hadn’t bargained with the English climate, at least not with the climate in Oxford and Cambridge, which is even more disastrous in its effect on sick people like me and frustrates any effort they make in any direction. I spent only ten days in England, having parted from my parents for at least six months, and even today I can recall the full weight of the despondency I suffered on my return to Peiskam, only ten days after leaving for England. I’d really made myself look ridiculous, but even then my sickness was to blame; it was already building up in me, though it had not yet broken out. After this reverse, which had left me with a somewhat mistaken view of England and London, I gave up all possibilities of studying abroad and concentrated on those which remained open to me at home, but these possibilities — with the alternatives of Vienna on the one hand and Innsbruck on the other — were entirely unacceptable. Since I didn’t fancy myself in the role of a seedy student, a role to which people like me and with my background are often attracted, I decided in favour of what seemed to me the best possibility open to me, that is not to study at all, at any rate not at a place of learning, believing myself to have enough strength and enough character to develop myself intellectually on my own. Moreover I had suddenly realised that the only thing in the world that fascinated me was music, and that apart from music everything else was worthless. This explains my years spent in Vienna. And where music is concerned, from the moment when I discovered it for myself I was the most receptive student. At one time I could have joined the editorial staff of the Presse, thanks to my acquaintance with an editor who was a friend of my father, but I had quite a sound instinct which prevented me from doing anything so perverse. While I lived with my sister on the Stubenring I used to spend my days visiting every possible library and meeting those people who would be useful to me in my studies and hence musically educated. I soon had little difficulty in making contact with such people, who gradually became indispensable for my research. In this way I became acquainted not only with the most important books and articles on musical theory, but also with a number of the authors who had written them, and from all this I derived the greatest possible advantage. At the same time I took an interest in the artistic productions of the Viennese in general, going to concerts or operas nearly every day. I had soon attained such a high degree of musical self-sufficiency that I was able to cut down on my visits first to the opera and then to concerts. The programmes always contained too many repeats of the same works: that has always been a characteristic of Vienna — that it very soon has nothing more to offer to anyone in search of what is new and therefore really interesting. It was also no longer the case in my time, as it had been earlier, that many different orchestras from all over the world could be heard every day. It was always the same orchestras, and good though they were — and are — I always had the impression — and still have — that the same orchestras always play the same things, even though in fact they always played different things — and still do. But of course a person who has opted for music still has his place in Vienna even today. The trouble is that the atmosphere of the city can’t be endured for any length of time, and quite apart from this the doctors had told me early on that for me Vienna had the most harmful climate of all. All in all I spent over twenty years in Vienna, and my only company was music. Suddenly I’d had enough and returned to Peiskam. Naturally this was a step which led me into the impasse to which these notes bear witness. At two o’clock in the afternoon, when the car came to collect me, it was still eleven degrees below zero in Peiskam, but on my arrival in