On the Manufacturing of Ideas as we speak

by Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811)

 

If we want to know something and mere reflection doesn’t get us anywhere, then I advise you to talk about it with the next best person coming your way.

This fellow doesn’t need to be endowed with a keen mind, I also don’t mean to say you should ask his opinion: Oh no! What I expect you to do, is telling him first what you think. The French have a saying “l’apptite vient en mangeant” - the appetite grows with the eating - and this is true even in regard to the mind; one could say: “Ideas grow with speaking.”

I often sit in the office at my desk over the files of a difficult civil case, and search for the proper vantage point, from which it might be possible to achieve a settlement. Or, if the problem is a matter of algebra, I first try to propose an equation with all the given variables in it, from which, after proper reckoning, an easy solution should follow in due course. And lo and behold, if I talk about it to my sister, who uses to sit behind me in the same room and do her needlepoint, then I actually accomplish what on my own I never could achieve, even after hours of brooding.

Not, as if, in some way, my sister would have told me: she neither knows the civil code nor has studied Euler or Kaestner. Nor is it, as if she had directed me to the crucial point with leading questions, although this might actually happen quite often.

But because I do have a dim idea, which, no matter how remote, is connected to the task at hand, the mind, while the conversation moves on, is pressed by the necessity to follow up on the preliminary words and seek a conclusion, and to my own amazement, confused notions become completely clear and present me with a solution the moment I am done with my phrase.

I throw in plenty of inarticulate hawing and hemming, stretch the length of the connectives, may use an apposition where it isn’t really needed and I fish for every trick in the book that may help me to stretch my sentence, if only it gains the necessary time I need for milling my idea on the grindstone of reasoning. And nothing is more effective for this process, than a sudden move of my sister, as if she is about to interrupt. Then, by this attempt to seize from me the possession of the word, my already pressured mind, like a commanding general in the heat of a battle’s changing fortunes, is put even more on the alert. I do indeed believe, that many of the distinguished public speakers, after they open their mouth, have no idea yet what they are going to say next. But confident that circumstance will supply them with all the ideas they need, and resulting from this, a continued agitation of the mind makes them bold, and trusting their good fortune, they venture a beginning.

I recall the “thunderbolt” of Mirabeau, with which on June 23, after the last parliament under the monarchy was about to adjourn their session, he dismissed the Speaker of the King, when the assembly was ordered to disband and leave the premises.

As the members of parliament still tarried to leave, the King’s speaker rose again and asked them, whether they had heard the King’s command? “Yes,” said Mirabeau, “we have heard the King’s command” - I am sure, that he had not the slightest idea yet of the bayonets, when he made this still humble reply - “yes, Sir,” he repeats, “we have heard it” - one can sense, he still has no clue of what he is going to say - “yet, what gives you the right,” - he continues, and now suddenly opens a fountain of immense ideas - “to communicate orders to us? We are the representatives of the nation!” - Now he has what he needs! - “The nation issues orders, it does not take orders!” - he exclaims, and taking a deep breath he is bringing the insolence to a head and says - “And to make myself perfectly clear” - and only now words float to the surface that truly express the sense of defiance filling his soul - “tell your king, that we will not leave our station here other than on the point of bayonets.” After which, satisfied with himself, he fell back on his chair.

If, for a moment, we step into the shoes of the King’s Speaker, we can imagine him being in nothing less than in a mental state of total bankruptcy, quite similar to the law of electricity, according to which a body without charge in the state of zero suddenly is charged when brought in touch with the field of a magnet. And, very much like the charge that amplifies in the electrified body, our speaker’s courage, when seeing his opponent’s devastation, turned to the most reckless enthusiasm. Maybe, in the final analysis, it all came down to a twitch of the upper lip on the face of the Speaker of the King, or his indecisive fiddling with the sleeve cuff, which became the cause for the French Revolution. We read, that, after the Speaker of the King had departed, Mirabeau again rose from his chair and moved for two resolutions: firstly to institute the assembly as the Nation’s Chamber of Deputies, and secondly to establish its constitutional immunity.

Since he had released his charge like an electrical conductor, Mirabeau had returned to his natural state, and, awaking from the spirit of the moment, suddenly was again intimidated by the prospect of prison and so yielded to the voice of prudence. This is a curious coincidence between the events in the world of physics and in the world of morals, which, if we put our mind to it, could be followed all the way down to the mere circumstantial.

 

Heinrich von Kleist (1811)

© - 10/18/2005 – translated and edited by michael sympson,

1,000 words, all rights reserved