Literature in OurTime, of the way she had put down everything I had published — or tried to put it down. And when she was not trying to put down my writings herself by publishing vicious articles and defamatory essays about them in her Literature in OurTime, she did not recoil from exploiting others in pursuit of her vendetta, penniless writers who were forced to rely on her, I now thought. But it was ridiculous to get so worked up: by getting myself worked up over something so nonsensical I was making myself ridiculous in my own eyes, and I told myself several times, though in such a way that only I could hear it: You’re making yourself ridiculous, you’re making yourself ridiculous in your own eyes — you’ve made yourself ridiculous in your own eyes. What a disgusting character you are! The words were addressed only to myself — no one else could hear them — and I went on addressing myself, working myself into a state of growing agitation. Youbetrayed Jeannie—she didn’t betray you, I told myself more than once, and I went on repeating it to myself until I was utterly exhausted. It was already half past two in the morning, and we were still sitting in the dining room. The actor was still talking and the others listening: throughout this artistic dinner he was virtually the only person who said anything, because nearly everyone else was much too tired to talk. The only others who made any contribution to the conversation were Jeannie Billroth — who every now and then said something that seemed to me invariably inept or ineffectual, though at times vicious and rude — and the Auersbergers themselves. None of the other guests said a single word — and there were seven or eight of them at this artistic dinner, or perhaps ten or twelve. For a long time I was not sure how many guests there were or whether I knew them all. I did know them all, of course, but I paid no attention to most of them — they were simply part of the scenery, I thought. One actually finds most people uninteresting, I thought, all the time — almost all the people we meet are uninteresting, having nothing to offer us but their collective mediocrity and their collective imbecility, with which they bore us on every occasion, and so naturally we have no time for them. If we look back, I thought, we see that they have quite automatically made themselves ludicrous and uninteresting in their thousands, their tens of thousands, their millions. How tiresome and insignificant celebrities like this Burgtheater actor can be! I now thought as I suddenly saw him yawn, after which the hostess yawned, and then Auersberger yawned. At this point they probably all yawned. Jeannie and I were the only two who did not, and by now we were staring fixedly at each other. The Virginia Woolf of Vienna, who remained simply the wife of Ernstl the chemist, was already as old at sixty as some people become only when they reach seventy or eighty, I thought. I recalled The Wilderness of Youth and all the nonsense she had put into it, in the belief that it was world-class literature, whereas it was only petit bourgeois kitsch. She hates you, I told myself, and you despise her — that’s the truth of it. But she hates you not just because you left her more than twenty years ago — twenty-five years ago in fact — and because you’re a writer, but because you’re ten years her junior. Such women never forgive you for the fact that they are ten years older than you, I thought. She hates me because I left her to go on living with her Ernstl in their apartment in the Second District and went over to Joana, exchanging the writer who was ten years older than myself for the movement artist who was only six years older, and who had a Fritz instead of an Ernstl. All the same Jeannie still has her Ernstl, whereas for the last eighteen years of her life Joana didn’t have her Fritz, I thought. She now hates me with a far greater hatred than twenty-five or twenty years ago, I thought. She hates you with a fundamental hatred, I told myself. No no, if the Auersbergers had said that they were inviting Jeannie to their artistic dinner, I wouldn’t have come to the Gentzgasse, I thought. I always make the mistake of not asking the hosts who else is being invited, I thought. Had they said, We’ve invited Jeannie Billroth too, I would never have come to the Gentzgasse. And so at once I fell into the Gentzgasse trap on two counts, on three or four counts, on a thousand counts, it seemed to me. I ought to have known that Jeannie would obviously be coming to an artistic dinner like this in the Gentzgasse, especially as it was taking place on the day of Joana’s funeral; and it was equally obvious that she would be coming without Ernstl, whom she has never taken to visit her artistic friends, I thought, and who never had any interest in artists or anything to do with artists, who never showed the slightest interest in anything that interested Jeannie, I have to say. Nothing that interested Jeannie was ever of the slightest interest to her Ernstclass="underline" he was interested only in chemistry and Jeannie herself, nothing else — only in his chemistry and the conjugal bed. And this was the one day, I thought, when I ought not to have laid myself open to Jeannie’s malice, for the effect she had on me was not only destructive, but annihilating; what is more, she at once realized this and gave me no quarter. There was no longer any way of escaping her: I might have got up and left, but I was already too weak to do this; on the other hand I thought I would be able to survive this night in the Gentzgasse, as I had survived hundreds of equally intolerable late-night parties there — after all I’ve survived all of them up to now, I thought. The actor from the Burgtheater had settled himself in one of the chairs in the music room. He was naturally the first to take his place; only after he had sat down did the others find themselves places in various parts of the room. Once again I was the last, and as I dragged myself into the music room I thought, Ah yes, no doubt Auersberger’s wife is now going to sing us one or two arias. Auersberger had the Purcell Music Book open in readiness, but as it was now three o’clock I hoped that she would refrain from treating us to a sample of her art. And in fact I was spared having to listen to her singing, though I am bound to say that she always sang with great charm; indeed she had a particularly beautiful voice, I might even say an extremely fine voice, I thought as I took my place in the music room. This too was furnished in the Empire style and full of treasures which no one could afford today, as it had been thirty years ago. Some were heirlooms which Auersberger’s father-in-law had brought to Vienna from Styria, from the family residence in Maria Zaal; others he had acquired in Vienna on highly favorable terms, having been well acquainted, as I happen to know, with an antique dealer in the Third District, who for various reasons preferred to call himself a secondhand dealer, although essentially he dealt only in valuable items. This so-called secondhand dealer had for years done business, on a quid pro quo basis, with Auersberger’s father-in-law, who treated him for his various illnesses and was in return supplied with all kinds of Josephine and Empire furniture, as well as some exquisite Biedermeier pieces, without having to pay a penny for them. Thirty years ago, I thought, I used to love this music room, which I always described as the most beautiful Josephine room I had ever seen. But later I realized that it was simply too beautiful, too perfectly furnished, and hence unbearable. Looking around the room now, I found it merely repugnant, probably because in the intervening years I had ceased to place such a high value on rooms like this which were furnished solely with antiques; my early enthusiasm for old furniture had diminished and turned almost to dislike. People furnish their apartments in an antique style, surrounding themselves with furniture that is centuries old, furniture from an age that does not concern them, and this makes them guilty of a certain kind of mendacity, I thought. Being too feeble to cope with their own age, one might say, they find it necessary, in order to keep themselves above water, to surround themselves with furniture from a bygone age, an age that is dead and gone, I thought. It really is a sign of appalling feebleness, I thought, if people fill their apartments with furniture belonging to past ages rather than their own, the harshness and brutality of which they are unable to endure. What they do, it seems to me, is surround themselves with the softness of the dead past that cannot answer back. The Auersbergers, who have always been credited with what is called taste, have never had any real taste, but only a secondhand surrogate, just as they have no life, no existence of their own, but only a secondhand surrogate. It was not they who were the focal point of their parties, I thought, but their furniture, their