SCENE: THE BREAKFAST TABLE AT FRAU SCHOPENHAUER’S HOUSE, WEIMAR

conversation between Schopenhauer and his mother

 

Schopenhauer (calm):

You’ll be glad to know, mother, that I have booked on the Friday coach for Berlin. That’s only another three days for us to put up with each other. I assure you I won’t be back in a hurry.

 

Mother (mild annoyance):

That’s for the best Arthur. You know that I will always make you welcome, but you’re very trying. I really think you should show me a bit more consideration. Sometimes I think you’re quite mad, but then I know your behaviour is deliberate. You just want to spoil things for me. I wish you could just keep your opinions to yourself a bit more and not interfere in my life.

 

Schopenhauer (calm):

I don’t want to interfer with you, mother. I have not done anything to interfere. If you mean the events of last night …

 

Mother (buts in, annoyed):

Of course I mean last night. Your behaviour was outrageous, you put everybody out of sorts. And I had planned that dinner for a month. You should feel honoured to be in such company, Arthur, but instead you feel quite entitled to badger and reproach everyone. Who do you think you are?

 

Schopenhauer (defensive):

You take everything personally, mother, that’s typical. Nobody was offended last night. At least nobody should have been offended.

 

Mother (annoyed):

Rubbish. That’s what you would like to think. Why did they leave early? Didn’t you see that Goethe was upset. And quite understandably, when you spend half an hour insulting a good friend of his.

 

Schopenhauer (stern, serious):

You know quite well mother, how much I respect Goethe. And he respects me. We have spent many hours conversing about important things, not about nonsense. It is only out of respect to Goethe that I said what I did about that charlatan Hegel.

 

Mother (excited):

You call him a charlatan! The most respected professor of philosophy in Germany! You know Goethe admires him. You know that he has dined at Goethe’s and that they correspond. You were just uncouth! I suspect you are just envious of Hegel, as you are of me.

 

Schopenhauer (annoyed):

That’s typical of you, mother. With you everything comes back to petty vanities, you don’t understand anything else.

 

Mother (superior tone):

Oh here you go with your superior tone again. I don’t believe that you are quite so free of vanity as you make out. You were quite put out by your failure against Professor Hegel in Berlin, were you not? What presumption it was scheduling your lectures against his! You with three students, Hegel with two hundred! It serves you right for your arrogance. You have never forgiven him for that.

 

Schopenhauer (confident):

The mob always perfers charlatans to the real thing – that did not upset me at all. The day will come when I’ll put Hegel and his ilk in the shade. By the way, I’m doing it again this coming winter, I’m running my lectures at the same hour as his. That’s just to show that I don’t care at all.

 

Mother (emotional):

You! You are not even a professor! You only get tuition fees. You get above yourself Arthur. You make a fool of yourself and you are an embarrassment to me. How am I to put things right with Goethe? Tell me that.

 

Schopenhauer (confident):

There’s nothing to put right. Why don’t you just think about what I was saying last night and not about etiquette all the time? But then you’re not capable of serious thought are you? With all that rubbish you write you quite expose your shallowness. It is me who is embarrassed to have such a scribbler as my mother.

 

Mother (superior tone):

It’s just envy, I know it Arthur. I sell twenty times as many of my books as you do of yours! And it brings me a nice income if I may say so. You couldn’t even exist if it was not for your inheritance! You are quite incapable of making money.

 

Schopenhauer (annoyed):

I wouldn’t mention the inheritance if I were you, mother. You got most of it yourself, totally without deserving it. Father slaved away for twenty-five years for you, and what were you doing all the time? On the social circuit , that’s where you were. And now you’re just wasting what he left you. I have put my inheritance to good use – in the service of philosophy. But you and everything you write will be forgotten fifty years from now.

 

Mother (self-justifying):

And you won’t be I suppose! Look Arthur, why don’t you just content yourself with an ordinary life, instead of chasing fantasies. There’s plenty of scope for happiness in the kind of life I lead, or my friends here in Weimar. Why we have such pleasant dinners – except when you are present – and wonderful excursions, and we’re always at the theatre. What a privilege it is to be at the centre of German culture, and to have Goethe in my house!

 

Schopenhauer (confident & annoyed):

You call it happiness, but actually it’s misery. You’re just deluded mother. You’re chasing a mirage. Look, you can’t bear to be alone for just one day, you’re always running off to some tea party or trying to get yourself invited to Goethe’s. And your constant card-playing! That just proves your emptiness! Can’t you give some time to reflection? The most you do is your wretched scribbling. My mother an author of cheap romance novels! If only father could see what has become of you! Really your only happiness is thinking about what your next novel will bring in. And it’s never enough, not with your lifestyle.

 

Mother (stern):

People have a right to happiness, Arthur. You just can’t accept that. You’re just depressed and negative. Don’t talk to me of your philosophical pessimism! Hegel is a philosopher and he’s not a pessimist!

 

Schopenhauer (confident):

Because he’s just a charlatan, a fraud and nothing more. He plays up to the public and fools them with his incomprehensible language. As for happiness, mother, you don’t continue to live because you are happy. The will to live is within you as an inborn drive; you just make up reasons afterwards to convince yourself that the whole thing is worth it. If you were to take a balance of happiness or suffering in your life, it would come out the wrong way. You cannot help but live, and that’s all the worse for you.

 

Mother (emotional):

Oh yes, I know all that, I’ve heard it all before! “It would be better not to be!”. What a philosophy! And you think to become immortal through that teaching! If people followed your advice, they would all go out and hang themselves. The human race hangs itself and thus triumphs the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer. Your father would turn in his grave! Or he would die again laughing!

 

 

 

Schopenhauer (confident):

I only say my philosophy is true, mother, not that it is pleasant, especially for ears like yours. Besides, I don’t say that everyone should hang themselves – that’s unnatural. Most people would be better off dead, that’s what I say, or they would be better off if they had never been born, that’s more to the point. But happiness is possible, only not in the way you think. Do you want proof? Well just look at yourself. You’ve tried your way for more than fifty years and you’re still miserable!

 

Mother (angry):

No I’m not! How dare you Arthur, to tell me whether I’m happy! The main thing that makes me unhappy is you. But at least you will be out of my way on Friday.

 

Schopenhauer (serious):

People don’t know whether or not they’re happy. That’s the will to life. What would become of life if people were able to objectively decide on whether they were happy, and then act accordingly? Most people would hang themselves. But life has given people little delusions, little hopes and mirages and little stupidities, just so they don’t throw in the game. What a miserable thing hope is! How many people have been kept going by hope, only to see everthing come to naught. Hope must be the gift of the devil, certainly not of God!

 

Mother (disbelieving, shaking head):

And God’s gift is the hangman’s noose I suppose. Praise the Lord, for he is the good hangman! What rubbish Arthur! Not so long ago you would have ended up on the scaffold yourself for that kind of talk!

 

Schopenhauer (confident):

There is another way out mother, besides the hangman’s noose. We can kill off our egos instead of our bodily selves. You know what I say about that – it’s the same as the old wisdom of India. But then you can’t understand any of that can you? And that’s because you’re pure ego. To give up all your vanities would be equivalent to death for you.

 

Mother (worn out):

You call everything vanity, Arthur. For my part I don’t relish a life sitting cross legged and staring at my navel. What rubbish! What does it prove if you walk over hot coals? Or spend thirty years without uttering a word to anyone. That’s just madness.

 

Schopenhauer (frustrated):

You’re distorting what I say, mother, and you are insulting the sages of the East. You are not qualified to comment, you’re just an ignoramus. It’s not a matter of cross leggedness and hot coals, but of contemplation and meditation. It’s a matter of detachment. It’s a matter of killing off the hungry ego with all its desires. You don’t have to be an Indian to do this. And you don’t have to do it in an Indian way. Plato achieved something like this. You can achieve this kind of state by philosophical contemplation, and also by the contemplation of beauty. It’s all about not being a slave to the passions and desires.

 

Mother (jumping in):

Ha! Passions and desires! I remind you Arthur of the maidservant at your prior Berlin lodgings. If I were you I would not get on a high horse about such things. I don’t like to dwell on that unsavoury affair, but you force me.

 

Schopenhauer (angry):

Enough of that mother! Have you no shame? I am not a character in one of your rubbishy romances.  I admit to an occasional weakness. What of it? It’s besides the point.

 

Mother (smugly):

Yes let’s not speak of it Arthur. It makes you look too ridiculous I agree. But the thing is, you like good food and wine too, isn’t that so? And you hardly live in a hovel. You take lunch at the English Club every day. You go to the theatre. So I say you’re a bit of a hypocrite.

 

 

Schopenhauer (irritated):

You miss the point mother. That comes from too much time immersed in romance novels and similar trash. I don’t live for food or drink. It doesn’t matter if you don’t live like an Indian ascetic. That’s not the point. All those things – food, drink, and if you insist the other thing as well – are just means, not ends, just necessaries for life. I live for philosophy and that’s why in the end what I do is worth something and will be worth something to coming generations. But you just cater to people’s lower instincts with your romances and your parties and gossip and card-playing, and so you will not be anything in future times.

 

Mother (persistent):

Oh Arthur, you talk about lower instincts as if you didn’t have any! What about your temper! You’re still paying that other woman off, aren’t you? Because of your temper tantrum. Really – throwing her down the stairs like that! Well at least its costing you.

 

Schopenhauer (fed up):

What are you getting at mother? You know that’s all a fraud. Or you should know, if you trusted your son more than those scheming lawyers in Berlin. Why only the other day that terrible woman was seen scurrying around the central markets. She is fit enough for athletics, I’ll tell you that! And then she turns up hobbling to her doctors and lawyers. I never pushed her down any stairs; there are no witnesses to say I did. The court just took her word for it and its all because of those wretched lawyers. She set the whole thing up when she found out I had money. To think that I have to pay her compensation for so many years! It’s outrageous. But at least it confirms my philosophy, which says that most people are mean and dishonest.

 

Mother (after short hesitation, breathes out):

I just want you to apologize to Goethe. Really you should apologize to them all. I hardly think it is good behaviour, Arthur, to lecture my dinner guests about how life is not worth living and how they are all so miserable. Just go to Goethe’s and apologize. Be sure to do it before you leave for Berlin.

 

Schopenhauer (exasperated):

Really, mother, what are you worried about? Are you afraid Goethe won’t come next time you invite him? I must say I can’t understand why he bothers to come at all. But he’s too serious to have taken offense at what I said. Actually I’m seeing him tomorrow, but we won’t be discussing your little worries. He has agreed to talk over some points of my philosophy.

 

Mother (somewhat reassured):

Well let’s hope you get through that meeting without insulting him or his friends, that’s all I can say. You might mention I am having a card evening next Sunday, gentlemen are invited, I’m also reopening our billiards room. The magistrate has already promised to come with his wife. And the parson too, he’s broadminded enough for cards. He has such an elegant wife. She was educated in France, you know.

 

Schopenhauer (stubborn):

Don’t involve me in all that. Send one of the servants around with the invitation. We’re discussing serious things.

 

Mother (tired, exasperated):

Someone like you, Arthur, will never make good. When people know what you’re like they don’t want to read your books.

 

Schopenhauer (proudly):

They will read me when I am dead. I’m one of those posthumous people, who only come to life when they are dead.

 

Mother (dismissive):

Well let posterity judge that. I’m sure nobody will have heard of you, in, say, the year 2000. But people will still be reading my novels then ….

 

(suddenly, starting up, hearing noise outside the house, getting up)

Oh I hear the carriage outside – that must be the ladies, we have an excursion today

 

Schopenhauer (smugly):

Enjoy yourself mother, if you can!

 

 

 

End