Breuer nodded.
“I urge you, then, to consider the implications of eternal recurrence for your life—not abstractly, but now, today, in the most concrete sense!”
“You suggest,” said Breuer, “that every action I make, every pain I experience, will be experienced through all infinity?”
“Yes, eternal recurrence means that every time you choose an action you must be willing to choose it for all eternity. And it is the same for every action not made, every stillborn thought, every choice avoided. And all unlived life will remain bulging inside you, unlived through all eternity. And the unheeded voice of your conscience will cry out to you forever.”
Breuer felt dizzy; it was hard to listen. He tried to concentrate on Nietzsche’s mammoth mustache pounding up and down at each word. Since his mouth and lips were entirely obscured, there was no forewarning of the words to come. Occasionally his glance would catch Nietzsche’s eyes, but they were too sharp, and he shifted his attention down to the fleshy but powerful nose, or up to the heavy overhanging eyebrows which resembled ocular mustaches.
Breuer finally managed a question: “So, as I understand it, eternal recurrence promises a form of immortality?”
“No!” Nietzsche was vehement. “I teach that life should never be modified, or squelched, because of the promise of some other kind of life in the future. What is immortal is this life, this moment. There is no afterlife, no goal toward which this life points, no apocalyptic tribunal or judgment. This moment exists forever, and you, alone, are your only audience.”
Breuer shivered. As the chilling implications of Nietzsche’s proposal grew more clear, he stopped resisting and, instead, entered a state of uncanny concentration.
“So, Josef, once again I say, let this thought take possession of you. Now I have a question for you: Do you hate the idea? Or do you love it?”
“I hate it!” Breuer almost shouted. “To live forever with the sense that I have not lived, have not tasted freedom—the idea fills me with horror.”
“Then, ” Nietzsche exhorted, “live in such a way that you love the idea!”
“All that I love now, Friedrich, is the thought that I have fulfilled my duty toward others.”
“Duty? Can duty take precedence over your love for yourself and for your own quest for unconditional freedom? If you have not attained yourself, then ‘duty’ is merely a euphemism for using others for your own enlargement.”
Breuer summoned the energy for one further rebuttal. “There is such a thing as a duty to others, and I have been faithful to that duty. There, at least, I have the courage of my convictions.”
“Better, Josef, far better, to have the courage to change your convictions. Duty and faithfulness are shams, curtains to hide behind. Self-liberation means a sacred no, even to duty.”
Frightened, Breuer stared at Nietzsche.
“You want to become yourself,” Nietzsche continued. “How often have I heard you say that? How often have you lamented that you have never known your freedom? Your goodness, your duty, your faithfulness—these are the bars of your prison. You will perish from such small virtues. You must learn to know your wickedness. You cannot be partially free: your instincts, too, thirst for freedom; your wild dogs in the cellar—they bark for freedom. Listen harder, can’t you hear them?”
“But I cannot be free,” Breuer implored. “I have made sacred marriage vows. I have a duty to my children, my students, my patients.”
“To build children you must first be built yourself. Otherwise, you’ll seek children out of animal needs, or loneliness, or to patch the holes in yourself. Your task as a parent is to produce not another self, another Josef, but something higher. It’s to produce a creator.
“And your wife?” Nietzsche went on inexorably. “Is she not as imprisoned in this marriage as you? Marriage should be no prison, but a garden in which something higher is cultivated. Perhaps the only way to save your marriage is to give it up.”
“I have made sacred vows of wedlock.”
“Marriage is a something large. It is a large thing to always be two, to remain in love. Yes, wedlock is sacred. And yet. . . ” Nietzsche’s voice trailed off.
“And yet?” Breuer asked.
“Wedlock is sacred. Yet”—Nietzsche’s voice was harsh—“it is better to break wedlock than to be broken by it!”
Breuer closed his eyes and sank into deep thought. Neither man spoke for the remainder of their journey.
Friedrich Nietzsche’s Notes on Dr. Breuer, 16 December 1882
A stroll that began in sunlight and ended darkly. Perhaps we journeyed too far into the graveyard. Should we have turned back earlier? Have I given him too powerful a thought? Eternal recurrence is a mighty hammer. It will break those who are not yet ready for it.
No! A psychologist, an unriddler of souls, needs hardness more than anyone. Else he will bloat with pity. And his student drown in shallow water.
Yet at the end of our walk, Josef seemed sorely pressed, barely able to converse. Some are not born hard. A true psychologist, like an artist, must love his palette. Perhaps more kindness, more patience was needed. Do I strip before teaching how to weave new clothing? Have I taught him “freedom from” without teaching “freedom for”?
No, a guide must be a railing by the torrent, but he must not be a crutch. The guide must lay bare the trails that lie before the student. But he must not choose the path.
“Become my teacher, ” he asks. “Help me overcome despair. ” Shall I conceal my wisdom? And the student’s responsibility? He must harden himself to the cold, his fingers must grip the railing, he must lose himself many times on wrong paths before finding the right one.
In the mountains alone, I travel the shortest way—from peak to peak. But students lose their way when I walk too far ahead. I must learn to shorten my stride. Today, we may have traveled too fast. I unraveled a dream, separated one Bertha from another, reburied the dead, and taught dying at the right time. And all of this was but the overture to the mighty theme of recurrence.
Have I pushed him too deep into misery? Often he seemed too upset to hear me. Yet what did I challenge? What destroy? Only empty values and tottering beliefs! That which is tottering, one should also push!
Today I understood that the best teacher is one who learns from his student. Perhaps he is right about my father. How different my life would be had I not lost him! Can it be true that I hammer so hard because I hate him for dying? And hammer so loud because I still crave an audience?
I worry about his silence at the end. His eyes were open, but he seemed not to see. He scarcely breathed.
Yet I know the dew falls heaviest when the night is most silent.
CHAPTER 21
RELEASING THE PIGEONS was almost as hard as saying farewell to his family. Breuer wept as he unclasped the wire doors and hoisted the cages up to the open window. At first the pigeons seemed not to understand. They looked up from the golden grain in their food dish and stared uncomprehendingly at Breuer, whose gesticulating arms enjoined them to fly for their freedom.
It was only when he jostled and banged their cages that the pigeons fluttered through the open jaws of their prison and, without once looking back at their keeper, flew into the blood-streaked early morning sky. Breuer watched their flight with sorrow: every silver-blue wing flap signified the ending of his scientific research career.
Long after the sky had emptied, he continued to stare out the window. It had been the most painful day of his life, and he was still numb from his confrontation with Mathilde earlier that morning. Again and again, he repeated the scene in his mind and searched for more graceful and painless ways he might have informed her that he was leaving.
“Mathilde,” he had told her, “there is no way to say this but simply to say it: I must have my freedom. I feel trapped—not by you, but by destiny. And a destiny not of my choosing.”
Astonished and frightened, Mathilde had merely stared at him.
He had
continued. “Suddenly I am old. I find myself an old man entombed in a life—a profession, a career, a family, a culture. Everything has been assigned to me. I chose nothing. I must give myself a chance! I must have an opportunity to find myself.”
“A chance?” Mathilde replied. “Find yourself? Josef, what are you saying? I don’t understand. What is it you ask?”
“I ask nothing from you! I ask something of myself. I have to change my life! Otherwise, I shall face my death without ever feeling I have lived.”
“Josef, this is madness!” Mathilde’s voice rose. Her eyes grew wide with fear. “What has happened to you? Since when is there a your life and a my life? We share a life; we made a covenant to combine our lives.”
“But how could I give something before it was mine to give?”
“I don’t understand you any longer. ‘Freedom,’ ‘finding yourself,’ ‘never having lived’—your words make no sense to me. What is happening to you, Josef? To us?” Mathilde could speak no further. She crammed both fists into her mouth, whirled away from him, and began to sob.
Josef had watched her body heave. He moved closer to her. She fought for breath, her head bent down on the sofa arm, her tears falling to her lap, her breasts rippling with her sobs. Wishing to console her, he placed his hand on her shoulder—only to feel her recoil. It was then, at that moment, that he realized he had come to a fork in the course of his life. He had turned off, away from the crowd. He had made the break. His wife’s shoulder, her back, her breasts, were no longer his; he had relinquished the right to touch her, and now he would have to face the world without the shelter of her flesh.
“It’s best if I go immediately, Mathilde. I can’t tell you where I’m going. It’s better if I don’t know myself. I shall leave instructions for all business matters with Max. I leave you everything and shall take nothing with me except the clothes on my back, a small valise, and enough money to feed myself.”
Mathilde continued to cry. She seemed unable to respond. Had she even heard his words?
“When I know where I am, I’ll contact you.”
Still no response.
“I must go away. I must make a change and take control of my life. I think that when I am able to choose my destiny, we will both be better off. Perhaps I will choose the same life, but it has to be a choice, my choice.”
Still there had been no response from the weeping Mathilde. Breuer had left the room in a daze.
The whole conversation had been a cruel mistake, he thought, as he closed the pigeon cages and carried them back to his laboratory shelf. There remained in one cage four pigeons unable to fly because surgical experiments had damaged their equilibrium. He knew he should sacrifice them before he left, but he wanted no more responsibility for anyone or anything. Instead, he replenished their water and food and left them to their fate.
No, I should never have talked to her about freedom, choice, entrapment, destiny, finding myself. How could she understand me? I scarcely understand myself. When Friedrich first spoke to me in that language, I couldn’t comprehend him. Other words would have been better—perhaps “brief sabbatical,” “professional exhaustion,” “an extended visit to a North African spa.” Words she could understand. And she could offer them as explanation to the family, to the community.
My God, what will she say to everyone? In what kind of position is she left? No, stop! That’s her responsibility! Not mine. To annex the responsibility of others—that way lies entrapment, for me and for them.
Breuer’s meditations were interrupted by the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs. Mathilde flung the door open, slamming it against the wall. She looked ghastly, her face pale, her hair hanging down in disarray, her eyes inflamed.
“I’ve stopped crying, Josef. And now I shall answer you. There is something wrong, something evil, in what you just said to me. And something simple-minded, too. Freedom! Freedom! You speak of freedom. What a cruel joke to me! I wish I had had your freedom—the freedom of a man to obtain an education, to choose a profession. Never before have I wished so hard for an education—I wish I had the vocabulary, the logic, to demonstrate to you just how foolish you sound!”
Mathilde stopped and pulled a chair away from the desk. Refusing Breuer’s help, she sat silently for a moment to catch her breath.
“You want to leave? You want to make new life choices? Have you forgotten the choices you have already made? You chose to marry me. And do you truly not understand that you chose to commit yourself—to me, to us? What is choice if you refuse to honor it? I don’t know what it is—maybe whim or impulse, but it is not choice.”
It was frightening to see Mathilde like this. But Breuer knew he had to stand his ground. “I should have become an ‘I’ before I became a ‘we.’ I made choices before I was formed enough to make choices.”
“Then that, too, is a choice,” Mathilde snapped back. “Who is this ‘I’ that didn’t become an I? A year from now you’ll say this ‘I’ of today wasn’t yet formed, and that the choices you make today don’t count. This is just self-trickery, a way to weasel out of responsibility for your choices. At our wedding, when we said yes to the rabbi, we said no to other choices. I could have married others. Easily! There were many who desired me. Wasn’t it you who said I was the most beautiful woman in Vienna?”
“I still say it.”
Mathilde hesitated for a moment. Then, brushing away his statement, she continued. “Don’t you understand that you cannot enter a covenant with me and then suddenly say, ‘No, I take it back, I’m not sure after all.’ That’s immoral. Evil.”
Breuer did not answer. He held his breath and imagined flattening his ears, like Robert’s kitten. He knew Mathilde was right. And he knew Mathilde was wrong.
“You want to be able to choose and, at the same time, keep all choices open. You asked me to give up my freedom, what little I had, at least the freedom to choose a husband, and yet you want to keep your precious freedom open—open to satisfy your lust with a twenty-one-year-old patient.”
Josef flushed. “So that’s what you think? No, this does not involve Bertha or any other woman.”
“Your words say one thing, your face another. I have no education, Josef—through no choice of mine. But I’m not a fool!”
“Mathilde, don’t belittle my struggle. I’m grappling with the meaning of my Whole life. A man has a duty to others, but he has a higher one to himself. He———”
“And a woman? What about her meaning, her freedom?”
“I don’t mean men, I mean person—men and women—each of us has to choose.”
“I’m not like you. I can’t choose freedom when my choice enslaves others. Have you thought about what your freedom means for me? What kind of choices does a widow, or a deserted wife, have?”
“You are free, just like me. You are young, rich, attractive, healthy.”
“Free? Where is your head today, Josef? Think about it! Where is a woman’s freedom? I was not permitted an education. I went from my father’s house to your house. I had to fight my mother and grandmother even for the freedom to choose my rugs and furniture.”
“Mathilde, it’s not reality, but only your attitude toward your culture that imprisons you! A couple of weeks ago I saw a young Russian woman in consultation. Russian women have no greater independence than Viennese women, yet this young woman has claimed her freedom: she defies her family, she demands an education, she exercises her right to choose the life she wants. And so can you! You’re free to do anything you want. You’re rich! You can change your name and move to Italy!”
“Words, words, words! A thirty-six-year-old Jewess traveling free. Josef, you talk like a fool! Wake up! Live in reality, not in words! What about the children? Change my name! Shall each of them, too, choose a new name?”
“Remember, Mathilde, you wanted nothing more than to have children, as soon as we were married. Children and more children. I pleaded with you to wait.”
She held back her angr
y words and turned her head away from him.
“I can’t tell you how to be free, Mathilde. I can’t design your path for you because then it would no longer be your path. But, if you have the courage, I know you can find the way.”
She rose and walked to the door. Turning to face him, she spoke in measured terms: “Listen to me, Josef! You want to find freedom and make choices? Then know that this very moment is a choice. You tell me that you need to choose your life—and that, in time, you may choose to resume your life here.
“But Josef, I choose my life, too. And I choose to say to you there is no return. You can never resume your life with me as your wife because when you walk out of this house today I will no longer be your wife. You cannot choose to return to this home because it will no longer be your home!”
Josef closed his eyes and bowed his head. The next sounds he heard were the door slamming and Mathilde’s steps descending the stairs. He felt staggered by the blows he had absorbed, but also strangely exhilarated. Mathilde’s words were terrible. But she was right! This decision had to be irreversible.
Now it is done, he thought. Something is finally happening to me, something real, not just thoughts, but something in the real world. Over and over, I’ve envisioned this scene. Now I feel it! Now I know what it’s like to take control of my destiny. It is terrible, and wonderful.
He finished his packing, then kissed each of his sleeping children, and softly whispered goodbye to them. Only Robert stirred, murmuring, “Where are you going, Father?” but immediately fell back to sleep. How strangely painless it was! Breuer marveled at the way he had numbed his feelings to protect himself. He lifted his valise and descended the stairs to his office, where he spent the remainder of the morning writing long notes of instruction to Frau Becker and to the three physicians to whom he would turn over his patients.
Should he write letters of explanation to his friends? He wavered. Wasn’t this the time to break all ties with his former life? Nietzsche had said that a new self has to be built on the ashes of his old life. But then he recalled that Nietzsche himself had continued to correspond with a few old friends. If even Nietzsche could not cope with complete isolation, why should he ask more of himself?