Ludwig Hohl and me

“The conversion before the Fish

This is about an experience I had about a year ago (in my thirtieth year) and was exactly the opposite of Lenin’s when he sat through one of Beethoven’s sonatas. – It was a small tropical fish in an aquarium in a zoo, of the most unheard of, unnameable colors. Colors, at the sight of which I could have howled, I mean, given my life – and that each time made me understand, that I would always forget everything before such glory. – Lenin, at the time, said about his sonata, this sonata is glorious – and it is not for us – for us right now, it is a question of knocking together heads (i.e., broadening a way on which many persons could find a way to this beautiful entrance). Bur here, standing before the fish (and similar to the fish had I felt the same many times before certain visions of Balzac: the Grenadiere, Colonel Chabert, the Medecin de Campagne), I believed that I knew, down to my deepest foundation, that I could never my whole life long become political (that is, overwhelmingly so). Not for instance that I deluded myself into thinking I was thereby assuming a higher standpoint! It was simply a question of belonging, conditioned through the person. One cannot be more and will as Lenin, only other and other.” – Ludwig Hohl