Impressions of Austria [antikvár]

Ví'vvr ! ¦ . ¦ I y.,h . il lii ".!Me M i ¦ ii_r ' Reflections on Austria Sometimes, thinking of Austria, this Austria adroitly concealing her shallows and her banalities with a merciless compliancy and a flirtatious appeal, this Austria to whom I cannot measure up, I remember dates that justify everything contradictory and superficial which Austria produces. These are not those famous dates that help to reproduce the history of a nation, a nation priding herself on having been conceived by victorious battles and subtly worded marriage contracts. They are not dates that call to mind famous campaigns, spectacular dynastic events or even those political tragedies to which Austria is indebted for her questionable fame for occasionally having been an experimental station for the end of the world. Compared with the customary significance of historical dates, those occurring to me are, so to speak, perfectly ordinary. Years of plague, for example. Or years during which the purges of Jews took place. Years of flooding, hunger and inflation. Years of rubble. Years of humiliation. And then the years after, when the surviving Jews returned, the harvests were fruitful again, the plague almost forgotten and life back to normal. Years in which notable buildings were completed. The first performance of a symphony, the premiere of an education act or the abolition of torture. Years, dates, events which perhaps, when added up, say more about this country and its people than all those pretty colour brochures. To reflect upon Austria and from these reflections to shape a text capable of withstanding all those facile attacks by means of which this country catches up with and makes away with its critics —for someone who loves Austria this is an occupation with contradictions. Eyes riveted upon Austria, one imagines one is viewing something bland, commonplace, facile. But unexpected edges appear, abysses open, the banal becomes an event and the facile becomes the obstacle one stumbles over. One is about to describe the Austrian national character in a more or less glib fashion, but whilst searching for the right adjective to express that tolerant good-nahiredness, that sentimental naivety, that devout indifference and that sanguine temperament, one divines or knows that this is not right. Or that it is not right when expressed in plain and simple terms. But, perhaps, in order to describe Austria or what is Austrian, one needs a lighter, less hesitant pen, a more frivolous style, not entirely averse to malicious flippancy. Perhaps one should be able to come out of oneself and be capable of a certain levity, or even laxity, in order to do justice to that which is Austrian, a myth perhaps, anyway. Perhaps those popular descriptions of all that is Austrian — descriptions occurring again and again in certain films, in a certain kind of literature and, of late, in the propaganda used for tourism — really are the only means of dealing with Austria without losing one's composure. Alemannic respectability, Tyrolean riflemen, the cultural grace of Salzburg, the sentimentality of the Austrian southerner, the Vienna of the waltz: terms not merely to be dismissed. No more can that sharp-tongued mawkishness be dismis-