One of the most striking impressions one receives from a reading of Heimito von Doderer’s novels is that most of his characters are somehow incomplete. At the outset of the novels, the physical, intellectual, and emotional circumstances of his personages are usually presented in great detail, and they often appear to be quite commonplace and normal to the reader, yet, by various means, Doderer always manages to convey the notion that they are deficient in some way. Their deficiency often consists of the preponderance of one character trait at the expense of others or of the domination of one part of human nature (such as intellect) over another one (such as emotion). Such one-sidedness results in disharmony between the character concerned and the world around him or her and, in Doderer’s terms, constitutes a deficiency in that character’s humanity.
In the course of the novels, some of his characters achieve a complete integration of the various aspects of their personalities and hence what he considers their true humanity. The successful integration of the characters’ personalities establishes harmony between them and the world, or to use Doderer’s terms, their universality. In Doderer’s view, Homo universalis must be able to come to grips with the rational and irrational forces within and outside him- or herself, with beauty and ugliness, with richness and poverty—in short, he or she must accept life in all of its manifestations and must reconcile all of its extremes. The general theme of Doderer’s novels is humankind’s achievement of its own humanity.
According to Doderer, the universal man must be free in the Schillerian sense; he (or she) should do by inclination that which it is his duty to do. He must, of his own accord, accept life as it is, and he must participate in it to the best of his ability. Having understood Doderer’s standard, one can proceed to the deviations from it that constitute the points of departure for his plots. Anyone who has a fixed notion as to what his life or his environment ought to be or why it does not correspond to his notion, and who consequently attempts to change his life or his environment, is caught in a situation that Doderer calls “the second reality.” He is caught within the confines of ideology, idiosyncrasy, milieu, or whatever the case may be; he sees everything through glasses of a certain tint, his actions are conditioned in a certain manner, and he moves in a reality different from the generally accepted normalcy as postulated by Doderer. One such character is Frau Schubert, a middle-aged servant who wants to get married, even though there is not a chance in a million that she will find a husband. Nevertheless, she makes preparations, quits her job, rents a flat, buys furniture, and finally commits suicide out of desperation about her deceived hopes.
The plots of Doderer’s novels are invariably concerned with the liberation of the protagonist from his or her second reality. The treatment of the subject may at times be comical (as in the character Schlaggenberg’s chronique scandaleuse in The Demons), but the basic problem is Doderer’s most serious concern and directly related to some of the larger issues of the twentieth century. In his epilogue to the novella Das letzte Abenteuer, he differentiates between a pragmatic way of life (“thinking commensurate with life”) and an ideological way of life (“living commensurate with thought”), and he considers the latter doomed to end in doctrinairism, in reformism, and finally in the totalitarian state. Elaborating on this point, Doderer says in the same epilogue that during World War II, he discovered
Every Man a Murderer
The theme of humankind’s achievement of humanity is presented throughout Doderer’s novels with increasing emphasis. Some of his early works could conceivably be read as “stories” (to use E. M. Forster’s term), without an awareness of the theme. This is particularly true of the second half of Every Man a Murderer, which has all the suspense of a whodunit.
Conrad Castiletz, the protagonist of this novel, becomes obsessed with the idea of discovering the murderer of his wife’s sister, whose death occurred eight years earlier. Conrad neglects his wife and starts on a wild-goose chase, searching for the jewelry that the woman in question had carried with her and for the one suspect in the case, whom the police had been compelled to release for want of evidence. In the end, Conrad finds out that he himself, together with a group of students in a train, unintentionally killed the woman. After this discovery, Conrad makes another one—namely, of his wife’s infidelity. The next morning he dies in an explosion. Conrad’s obsession with his wife’s sister constitutes his second reality, which he is unable to leave in spite of several warnings by friends and associates, who admonish him to lead and enjoy his life in the normal “first reality.” When he is finally forced to accept the irrefutable evidence of his own unwitting complicity in his sister-in-law’s death, he cannot live with this knowledge.
Conrad is the only character in Every Man a Murderer that is caught in the second reality. This is typical of Doderer’s early novels, where there are usually only a few characters directly concerned with his central theme. As Doderer develops, the number of characters in his novels increases, as does the complexity of their plots, but his central theme—humankind’s attainment of true humanity—remains paramount.
Die Strudlhofstiege and The Demons
In Die Strudlhofstiege, Doderer presents this theme by means of a vast and complex array of characters. It is true that the protagonist (Lieutenant Melzer) is the only character who is involved in all the essential events of the novel, but the events do not take place solely because of him or for the sake of his development. The process of Melzer’s complete humanization serves as a basis for comparison and contrast to various other characters whose humanization is achieved only partially or not at all.
Die Strudlhofstiege is in many ways a precursor of The Demons: Many of the characters of the earlier novel reappear in the later one. The German title of Doderer’s novel, Die Dämonen, was adopted from the identical German title of the work by Fyodor Dostoevski, which is known in English as The Possessed or Devils.
There are several thematic and structural similarities between Dostoevski’s and Doderer’s works. The main difference on the thematic level lies in the nature of the characters who are caught in the second reality, of those who are possessed. In Dostoevski’s work, the primary concern is with a group of fanatical ideologists whose ill-defined political pursuits bring harm to the lives of others. In Doderer’s novel, all the major characters are possessed or, to use his terminology, have entered a second reality. Only those characters whose illusions and activities are on a political plane, however, bring permanent misfortune and doom upon themselves and others.
In The Demons, the theme of humankind’s attainment of true humanity is presented by means of a multitude of interrelated actions involving a total of 142 characters. While most of the principal characters are members of the upper middle class and professionals, the scope of the novel also includes members of the highest ranks of the aristocracy as well as criminals and prostitutes. The main events of the novel take place between the fall of 1926 and July 15, 1927, the day of the general strike and the burning of the Palace of Justice in Vienna. Most of the many strands of the action, both private and political, are parts of the tissue of a conventional, almost classical, plot centered on the unveiling of the origin of a natural daughter and the bringing to light of a previously suppressed last will.
A synopsis of the plot of so long a novel (1,345 pages) must necessarily be incomplete and selective. For the sake of the present discussion, the fates, actions, and developments of seven key characters have been chosen for a detailed examination: Georg von Geyrenhoff; René von Stangeler and his fiancé, Grete Siebenschein; Kajetan von Schlaggenberg and his supposed sister, Charlotte; and Leonhard Kakabsa and his beloved, Mary K.
Geyrenhoff, a bachelor and a high-ranking civil servant, has recently regained a considerable sum of money that had been deposited in England and was thus inaccessible during World War I and for some time thereafter. Because of his financial independence and because of his dissatisfaction with his work, he retires prematurely from the civil service and devotes himself to the writing of a chronicle about the activities of a group of friends who are usually referred to as Our Crowd. At first, he stands aloof from the lives of his friends and simply observes and records them, but soon he becomes intellectually and emotionally involved in their affairs; it is he who is responsible for bringing to light the suppressed last will, and in the end he marries Friederike Ruthmayr, the rich widow of Charlotte’s father.
Stangeler, a recently graduated historian, at first is seen as struggling for intellectual, personal, and financial independence. He does not want a regular appointment (such as a professorship), and he does not want to be tied to the woman he loves, Siebenschein. Siebenschein, on the other hand, has to contend with her solidly middle-class family, as well as with her own often ruffled pride and self-respect. Their relationship and their lives change for the better when Stangeler is offered a job as a consultant by Jan Herzka, a businessman who inherits a castle in Carinthia. This job leads to a permanent position as librarian and book buyer for Herzka; it also helps to establish Stangeler’s scholarly reputation because of his excellent critical edition of an original medieval manuscript that he discovers in the castle. Now that he feels financially and professionally independent and secure, Stangeler has much more self-assurance in his dealings with Siebenschein and her family, and at the end of the book he refers to her as his fiancé.
Kajetan and Camy von Schlaggenberg’s marriage has been a failure because of a fundamental emotional incompatibility. At the beginning of the novel, their definite separation has just taken place, and Kajetan suffers great emotional pain that impairs his creativity as a novelist. In addition, he has pecuniary problems and is forced to waste much time on journalistic hackwork. After he receives some financially important commissions from a large newspaper concern, he is in a position to pursue his theory of sexuality—that of the Fat Females. According to this theory, only experienced, rather abundantly endowed middle-aged women who have no ambitions regarding marriage and family life are suitable mates for men of the postwar generation. He unfolds a great flurry of activity and wastes much money on this project until he eventually realizes how foolish and ridiculous it is.
Meanwhile, his supposed sister, Charlotte, is in dire financial straits as she practices her violin, preparing for a career as a soloist. During her first important audition, the insurmountable tremor of her hands (of which she had been aware all along) becomes evident once more, and the conductor for whom she auditions persuades her to abandon her goal. Upon returning to her home, she finds a letter informing her of a legacy of 250,000 schillings, which, however, is only a fraction of the fortune that she will eventually inherit. Even though she learns shortly afterward that she is not Kajetan’s sister, she gives him a considerable sum of money. Kajetan is thus able to take a trip to London, where he has one last brief encounter with his wife. After this painful experience, he begins to devote himself to his real literary work. Charlotte marries Géza von Orkay, a Hungarian diplomat who is Geyrenhoff’s cousin.
Kakabsa, a simple worker, one day follows an impulse to buy a Latin grammar. He begins to study Latin and in the course of his studies develops a very keen understanding of grammar, which leads him in turn to master standard German diction. At first, he applies this diction only in his thoughts, nourished by the Greek classics, which he reads in German translations. He cultivates an acquaintance with several young persons, some of whom attend the Gymnasium (college-preparatory secondary school). One of them introduces him to her mother, Mary K. This strikingly beautiful widow has managed to overcome the effects of an accident in which one of her legs was cut off above the knee. She does not hobble about with her artificial leg but has learned to control it completely, and thus she continues not only to appear but also be graceful and poised. Her physical victory and Leonhard’s intellectual victory at once point to an affinity in spirit. They are attracted to each other, fall in love, and accept this love, with all of its implications.
In The Demons, the theme of humanization is presented by means of one main motif that pervades the entire novel and involves all the major characters. This motif is humankind’s passage from its self-constructed second reality into the factual, everyday reality. Motifs from Doderer’s earlier novels, such as confinement and freedom, or imperceptiveness and perceptiveness, are all present in The Demons, but they are integrated or submerged in the main motif. While the various characters are in their second reality, they are represented as being confined, as being unable to lead their own lives, and as being imperceptive in the sense that they have no understanding of their own afflictions or of their unsatisfactory relationships with others. At the end of their development—that is, once they have attained humanity in Doderer’s sense—they understand and accept their own personalities and their positions in the world. Once they have attained this understanding and acceptance, they become sovereign masters of their own lives.
The main characters of the novel could well be categorized with respect to the amount of imagination they possess and the measure in which they are involved in a second reality: The spectrum would range from Camy von Schlaggenberg, who is represented as completely matter-of-fact and self-contained, to Alois Gach, an instinctively integrated personality, to Leonhard Kakabsa, whose initial mania for independence and noninvolvement is already somewhat akin to a second reality, to René, Geyrenhoff, Charlotte, Kajetan, and Jan Herzka, not to speak of the political agitators or of Achaz von Neudegg, the medieval witch hunter and sex pervert. One cannot but agree with H. M. Waidson when he says that “the really interesting people in the novel are those whom the second reality has invaded, but who are capable, even if only with great effort, of focusing the double vision into one, subduing the imagination within its limits.”
The question arises how the author conveys the idea that a given character has reached the turning point, that he or she has managed to “focus the double vision into one.” There are several instances in the novel where choral characters make general philosophical statements on behalf of the author. These abstract statements, however, are outweighed by the all-pervading patterns of imagery that Doderer uses in applying his theory to particular characters and situations. The existence of a given character within a second reality, his realization of being in this state, and his eventual attainment of true humanity—that is, his acceptance of factual reality—these phases of his development are indicated by means of telltale images, thoughts, and occurrences. In this manner, a certain rhythm is established that is very helpful for purposes of orientation within the many different strands of action in this long and complex novel.
At the end of the novel, all the major characters, with the sole exception of the political fanatics, have entered or reentered factual reality. They have learned to accept life as it is; they have attained true humanity. This affirmation of life is expressed in an almost ritualistic manner through the many marriages that conclude the novel.