Peter Altenberg

IN MUNICH

For several days now I have been in Munich for the first time. I have seen nothing, absolutely nothing, marked out in the guide books, no monuments, no paintings. L am not interested in things that were. I am interested in things that are, that will be! But see! The window displays of fine shops were radiant with the "new art" intended to turn everybody who has become shrivelled in life into a kind of fanatic man-of-art when he looks at it for hours on end back in the lair of his own country. Europeans, where are you tarrying?!? Without inner joy you are still placing Meissen figurines and vases in carved cupboards! You are deceiving only yourselves!

You are living without ties to the magnificent colors and forms of nature itself, you say "ah!" at things that are strange and unappealing to you, you feed on phrases, on history, you buy vases with flowers that never existed! You have eyes that cannot enjoy anything in and of itself but instead are ruled by names and labels! And so, since you make no use of these noblest of organs, you do not extract the treasures of these two rich inexhaustible eyes, you remain miserable, empty, sad, and seek instead to draw on the pleasure of other organs which are and yet already are no longer! Then come long desolate hours which have to be killed with these poisons "drinking," "playing" - -Behold, the new, modern artist wants to unite you with nature and its deep splendors! He wants to make your eyes responsive to the brilliance of life itself as opposed to the deceptive forms of the imagination that have lost their effectiveness! Hear the roar of sources, not cascades! Your eyes should fall in love with things, should celebrate a wedding, a noble union, with them!

But you tarry' in the distance, collecting trash! You see how close nature still is in the boy “who creeps up to the splendid Apollo butterfly on the mountain thistle!?! Or the young girl binding a small bunch of meadow flowers! But later comes life, and makes one blind and empty?! Then they play lawn tennis in the fields, in nature! Lawn tennis! Hot cheeks with cold souls!

Learn from the Japanese! When the cherry blossoms are in bloom, people come Out to see them and for hours at a time stand silently before the rosy-white splendor. No benches or tables are set up for people to stuff themselves and guzzle on. The artistic folk stand silently before the rosy-white splendor, for hours at a time! Rooms are decorated with little bamboo baskets of fine flowers hung on neat, delicate, light-yellow mats. Men and women come in, observe the baskets of flowers, go their way, and quietly resume their daily routine. But what kind of trash do you have on your desks, on your walls?! You have it, that's all there is to it! What is there to look at?! You possess it, but you don't love it!

Why don't you instead place under glass the real works of art of nature, wonderfully exotic beetles or precious mussels in pale colors! These colors of beetles, mussels, butterflies, and stones, the true forms of blossoms and leaves, are now captured for you in arts and crafts by the "new artists." They place them in window displays, present you with magnificent nature, which nobody will ever tire of observing who has just once looked at them with those eyes that are linked to soul and mind, which indeed themselves have become the beholding mind and the observing spirit!

What do you all buy?! Shame on you! Possessions!? God, possessions must be like the possessions of one's skin or one's hands! They belong to me, are indispensable, maintain, as it were, the collective organism, are exquisite parts of it, the exterior covering the epidermis! Whatever stands on my table, on my walls, belongs to me like my skin and my hair. It lives with me, in me, of me. Without it I would be almost a rudimentary, something stunted, poorer. For example: my girl friend, the "dark lady," and Burne-Jones's picture: "A girl is sitting in a garden by the shore, her hands upon an old book, leaning hack. Two angels play music, and her hands upon the old book, leaning back, the girl dreams, in the garden by' the shore, soaring away from book and garden, whither, whither?!" This picture and the "entranced lady" above whose bed it hung were one and the same! Who understood the picture, understood her; who understood her, understood the picture. No other one could hang above her bed. It belonged to her, to her, like her own hands and hair. The lady pricks her ears-whither, whither?!

New people, it is with such things that belong to you, that are a part of your being, that you must surround yourselves! The new artist creates out of his genius the things that are for your souls! That truly appertain to you! Paint your walls just white and place in a corner or against a wall one of those splendid bowls that have the brilliance of flying humming-birds, setting suns, and sea foam!

I saw a vase here, light brown with gold flashes and dark stripes. Then a yellowish one, blanched the color of milk. Then a completely translucent one shaped like a huge honeycomb with cells, wax-yellow in color. And another like the green wings of ephemera. A dark-blue one that changed into the colors of early' morning, from night to morning, and again became darker, nightlike. Then spherical light-brown clumps of glass on glass bamboo stalks, superb creations. Galle glasses; light-brown flowers appear to come nebulously out of the glass its elf and yet not out of it, evaporating.

Do not allow such vases to be forgotten once back in your own lairs! People have the most tender affection for such vases! When they' enter a room, they greet them. And when they depart, they bid them farewell. Intimate pleasures!

Paint your walls white, in all simplicity, and place things there that you can love like a brother or a sister, not cold, strange things! That way you will be wealthy and never lonely!

I have been in Munich now for several days, for the first time, and have seen nothing, absolutely nothing marked out in the guide books, no monuments, no paintings. I am not interested in things that were. I am interested in things that are, that will be! From the window displays of fine shops the "new art" shone to me as I made my solitary way through the streets!

“In München,” 1901. Original text in Was der Tag mir zuträgt: Fünfi£ndsechszig neue Studien (Berlin: S. Fischer Verlag, 1924), 305-9.