In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

258 CODES
all share the triple conviction that the world of today [see Present vs.
Past] is permeated by fearful confusion, that it therefore urgently needs
to return to a state of order, and that such order can emerge only from
the certainty specific to individual intuitions. Within this emotionally
charged world view, the fear of losing control is even stronger than the
desire for clarity. If Henri de Montherlant praises the art of the
bullfighter as "mastery over events, in the war of everyday life" (Montherlant,
115), he is concerned less with the specific form of this mastery
than with the ability to find and maintain a form at all-a form that
conjures the threat of entropy represented, for Montherlant, by the bull's
physical force. Any Action that displays an identifiable shape must be
preferred over hesitation and irresoluteness. It is less the effect of the
Action that matters than its status as a perceptible form. This explains
why the cult of the Tat always underscores its visibility, and often even
its radiance. The underlying impression of being confronted with a dramatic
alternative between imminent chaos and a decisive opting for form
produces a tension between, on the one hand, reflection, thought, and
language, and, on the other, Action as an implicit affirmation of what
already exists. Quoting from his novella "Tod in Venedig" ("Death in
Venice"), Thomas Mann makes the ability "to leave things where they
are" into an aesthetic principle, and turns it against psychoanalysts'
claim that they provide people with existential orientation in a dizzyingly
complex world: '''But it seems that a noble and active mind blunts itself
against nothing so quickly as the sharp and bitter irritant of knowledge.
And it is certain that the youth's constancy of purpose, no matter how
painfully conscientious, was shallow beside the mature resolution of the
master of his craft, who made an about-face, turned his back on the
realm of knowledge, and passed it by with averted eyes, lest it lame his
will or power of action [die Tat], paralyze his feelings or his passions, or
deprive any of these of their conviction or utility.' This was written with
a strong anti-analytic bias, and was misinterpreted as an example of
suppression; but the unscientific capacity to leave things where they are
is actually the source of that insolence without which the artist cannot
exist" (33). Writing about the problematic relation between direct Action
and thoughts or words, Heinrich Mann agrees with his brother's
skepticism about all intellectual attitudes: "Naturally, the world with its
Taten has no interest whatsoever in the words that a young poet secretly
creates for himself. Would it set itself in motion according to the will of