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قراءة كتاب Rada A Belgian Christmas Eve
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class="smcap">Rada).
You should read Schopenhauer, my dear, and learn to estimate these emotions at their true value. You would then be able to laugh at these feelings which seem to you now so important. It is the mark of Kultur to be able to laugh at all sentiments. Isn’t it?
Nanko.
The priests, I suppose, are still balancing themselves on the tight-rope, over the jaws of the crowd. The poor old Pope did his best for his Master, when the Emperor asked him for a blessing on the war. “I bless Peace,” said the Pope; but nobody listened. I composed a little poem about that. I called it St. Peter’s Christmas. It went like this:—
Yes, though His friends may watch from far—
And who is this at His right hand,
This Rock in the red surf of war?
And turned and wept and turned again.
Last night before an Emperor’s pride
He stood and blotted out that stain.
And bade him bless. He stood alone.
Alone in all the world, his word
Confessed—and blessed—a loftier throne.
In widening waves till Time shall cease,
The Power that breathed from Rome last night
His infinite whisper—I bless Peace.
(Tarrasch and Brander applaud ironically.)
Tarrasch.
Excellent! Excellent! (To Rada) You should have seen our brave soldiers laughing—do you remember, Brander—at a little village near Termonde. They made the old vicar and his cook dance naked round the dead body of his wife, who had connived at the escape of her daughter from a Prussian officer.
Nanko.
Ah, that was reality, wasn’t it? None of your provincial respectability about that, none of your shallow conventionality! That’s what the age wants—realism!
Tarrasch.
It was brutal, I confess; but better than British hypocrisy, eh? There was something great about it, like the neighing of the satyrs in the Venusberg music.
Rada (sinking on her knees by the couch and sobbing).
God! God!
Tarrasch.
They were beginning to find out the provincialism of their creeds in England. The pessimism of Schopenhauer had taught them much; and if it had not been for this last treachery, this last ridiculous outburst of the middle-class mind on behalf of what they call honour, we should have continued to tolerate (if not to enjoy), in Berlin, those plays by Irishmen which expose so wittily the inferior Kultur, the shrinking from reality, of their (for the most part) not intellectual people. I have the honour, madam, to request that you should no longer make this unpleasant sound of weeping. You irritate my nerves. Have you not two men quartered upon you instead of one? And are they not university students? If your husband and the rest of the villagers had not resisted our advance, they might have been alive, too. In any case, your change is for the better. Isn’t it?
(He lights a cigar.)
Nanko.
Exactly! Exactly! You remember, Rada, I used to be a schoolmaster myself in the old days; and if you knew what I know, you wouldn’t cry, my dear. You’d understand that it’s entirely a question of the survival of the fittest. A biological necessity, that’s what it is. And Haeckel himself has told us that, though we may resign our hopes of immortality, and the grave is the only future for our beloved ones, yet there is infinite consolation to be found in examining a piece of moss or looking at a beetle. That’s what the Germans call the male intellect.
Tarrasch.
Is this man attempting to be insolent?
(He rises as if to strike Nanko.)
Brander (tapping his forehead).
Take no notice of him. He’s only a resident patient. He was not calling you a beetle. He has delusions. He thinks it is always Christmas Eve. That’s his little tree in the corner. As Goethe should have said—
He had a little tree.
Up came a Superman
And cracked him, like a flea.
Tarrasch (laughing).
Very good! You should send that to the Tageblatt, Brander.
Well, Rada, or whatever your name is, you’d better find something for us to eat. I’m sick of this whimpering.
Wouldn’t your Belgian swine have massacred us all, if we’d given them the chance? We’ve thousands of women and children at home snivelling and saying, “Oh! my God! Oh! my God!” just like you.
Rada (rising to her feet in a fury of contempt).
Is it the husks and chaff that the swine eat,
Or is it simply butchery?
(They stare at her in silence, over-mastered for a moment by her passion. Then, her grief welling up again, she casts herself down on the couch, and buries her face in her hands, sobbing.)
Brander.
Don’t you trouble about God. What can He do when both sides go down on their marrow-bones? He can’t make both sides win, can He?
Nanko.
That’s how the intellectuals prove He doesn’t exist. Either He is not almighty, they say, or else He is unjust enough not to make both sides win. But all those anthropomorphic conceptions are out of date now, even in England, as this