VIENNA BRIAN TAYLOR
UNIVERSAL OCTOPUS
Copyright © 2009 Brian F Taylor
Published by Universal Octopus 2017 www.universaloctopus.com ISBN 978-0-9956346-5-7
Goodnight Vienna, You city of a million melodies. Our hearts are thrilling to the strains that you play From dawn till the daylight dies. Maschwitz 1930
Then I came to Vienna. Caught up by the fullness of impressions in the architectonic realm, downcast by the difficulty of my own lot, I did not at first grasp the inner stratification of the people in this gigantic city. I did not see Jews, despite the fact that Vienna already counted two hundred thousand of them among two million people at this time. My eyes and my senses could not keep pace with the flood of values and ideas of the first few weeks. Only when calm gradually returned and the agitated image began to clear did I look at my new world in a more fundamental way and also come upon the Jewish question. Adolf Hitler
If you start to take Vienna - take Vienna. Napoleon
How's the Vienna-Congress going on? It doesn't go, it dances! Prince De Ligne
For Brian
CONTENTS FIN DE SIÈCLE HISTORY THE SIGN WIENER SCHNITZEL KAISERLICHE CHINESISCHE FRAU ROSE BUSH PALAIS PALFFY ECONOMICS HABSBURG STYLE MEASURE FOR MEASURE SCHUBERT HOTEL SACHER EINE SCHÖNE LEICH BEETHOVEN’S APOTHEOSIS BEETHOVEN IN WIENER NEUSTADT THE EMPRESS AND THE GEISHA DEATH OF BUTTERFLY KAISERIN FRIEDENSREICH HUNDERTWASSER PALAIS LIECHTENSTEIN PRINCE EUGÈNE OF SAVOY MADHOUSE IN A MUSEUM OPEN ASYLUM DON GIOVANNI
1 3 4 5 9 11 12 13 15 16 17 19 20 24 26 29 30 33 35 37 41 42 43
FIN DE SIĂˆCLE When the monsoon of golden wealth pours down upon a city, it is quickly channelled into the fortified reservoirs of the rich.
A little escapes to filter through narrow pipes and trickle into ghettos of the poor. This trickle of Christian charity enables the poor to survive and thank their benefactors for keeping them alive by working hard for them under their Protektion.
1
The trickle expired in the suburbs where the poor were packed like sardines in the Mietskasernen.+
Here, those who could afford accommodation, rented out a bed or part of a bed to the nocturnal immigrants++ who could not.
+ “Rented tenements� ++ These were the Bettgeher 2
HISTORY History is written from the selective perspective of those left behind.
In the end no one is left behind.
The perspective then disappears
leaving a note signed by Ozymandias (King of Kings):
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.
3
THE SIGN
In a small lane near the Old University, which was given to the Jesuits in the seventeenth century to help them in their repressive re-education of a Protestant city, is a small sign:
Until everyone is free we are all locked in.+
If this were true, no prisoner could escape except in a mass breakout or general amnesty.
If it is not true, an honest man, dealing justly with his neighbour, would be free already.
+ Bis alle frei sind, sind wir alle eingesperrt
4
WIENER SCHNITZEL
Sigmund Freud, a dull man,
started off conventionally, as dull men do, with cocaine, electrotherapy and hypnosis. Things became more exciting for him though when he moved to the second floor
of Berggasse 19
and had a realisation
rivalling that of St Paul on the road to Damascus.
5
His hierophany was the profound discovery that his dreams represented the fulfilment of his sexual wishes and occurred when his Unconscious
was trying (often unsuccessfully) to masturbate.
He hurried to communicate this deus ex machina, as a scientific principle rivalling Einstein’s, to his stuffy world of the (mostly female) Viennese middle classes. These were only too happy to confirm his wildest dreams. So he founded the Psychoanalytical Society and sat back in his waiting room, in the burgundy-upholstered armchair, for the world to beat a track to his door.
Just as Ralph Waldo Emerson had promised it would to the door of anyone who invented a new razor blade.
6
His comfortable little cult met on Wednesday evenings for coffee and discussion and Guglhupf.
He ruled them with a rod of iron (and Guglhupf). Like his less famous contemporary, Adolf Hitler,
he allowed his cult to develop organically into a group of those who found themselves in need of him, by throwing out all those who disagreed with him.
“My aim is modest,”
he informed the world:
“to turn neurotic misery into common unhappiness.”
7
To achieve this aim, he placed his patients
on a couch, asked them questions
and pressed their foreheads (with his hand, not his rod of iron). He discovered the power in “free association”, encouraging his patients to say whatever came into their minds and to speak for as long as they wanted. His more astute followers benefited greatly from this. They still do, especially those who see the exponential potential in charging by the hour. Before leaving Vienna, he said,
“I can heartily recommend the Gestapo to anyone.”
8
KAISERLICHE CHINESISCHE FRAU
I
NO! (Nein)
AM NOT
an Imperial Chinese Woman! Look at
my
feet.
They make shoes
for
my feet.
They do not shape my feet to fit their shoes. 9
They make schools to educate my mind not to squeeze my mind into their rules.
NOTE:
10
ROSE BUSH Approaching Schรถnbrunn from the east
reveals a rosebush, ablaze.
It has covered the grass around it with a mantle of scarlet and green.
Dora has been the Deva for twenty-five years. Pale gold skin, a fine and open face, a cream and golden robe, shining golden hair.
Previously, I was an old lady who walked the byways and walkways and loved this place.
11
PALAIS PALFFY Outside the Palais Palffy, vans are unloading canvases for an exhibition. On the side of each van, an iron bed with curved head rail. Two circular manacles for the hands, two for the feet. The mattress is stained with blood. It is only a picture. The title is in block capitals:
PSYCHOTHERAPIE.
12
ECONOMICS HABSBURG STYLE In 1670 the Jews were expelled. (Again). As an exceptional condescension, Samuel Oppenheimer was the first to be allowed back to the Court. (He was exceptionally rich.) He financed the Habsburg army for their war with the French. When the Turks laid siege in 1683, he organised the logistics for the defence of Vienna.
The Habsburgs were exceptionally grateful. When Samuel died in 1703, Leopold and the Habsburgs declined to honour their debts. His family went bankrupt. This caused a major European financial crisis (and consolidated the Habsburgs’ wealth).
Moral:
If you can get away with not repaying your mortgage, you can use your home as security for another loan. 13
This is called:
Having your apfelstrudel
and gobbling it all up.
14
MEASURE FOR MEASURE Here they sell their bread by weight; which is why, it is said, it is so heavy on the plate. You get what you pay for, but, more importantly, you pay for what you get.
(We know what we want, but, more importantly, we want what we know.)
15
SCHUBERT Franz was the eleventh child of an impoverished teacher and therefore born with a wooden spoon between his gums; and the need to earn his bread by satisfying the musical tastes of his social superiors in order to balance his sums. His Schubertiaden, with lyrical, fragile songs “I am so happy, so sad by the still lake Erlafsee� * brought him popularity among the Viennese bourgeoisie. This he drank away, discussing revolution and the redistribution of wealth and getting himself arrested by the Austrian secret police. He never had a wife but sacrificed his health sharing the fruits of the Tree of Life with prostitutes.
He died at thirty-one of syphilis and never heard his symphonies performed.
*"Mir ist so wohl, so weh Am stillen Erlafsee"
Lyric by Johann Mayrhofer
16
HOTEL SACHER
OTTO,
the Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s younger brother, once strolled into the hotel lobby naked, except for his sword and the Order of the Golden Fleece around his
neck. Today the most exciting things, among the imperial red and gold, the wood panelling and exaggerated formality of the waiters, are the Sachertorten
NOTE: Sachertorten A chocolate, sponge cake with a layer of apricot jam beneath the icing. 17
and the sight of an aged and eccentric couple, who suddenly burst out with a rollicking rendition of A Hard Day’s Night. Until, forgetting the words, they pause and clap their hands in self applause. This gives the exaggerated formality of the waiters an opportunity to glow like a radium cocktail. +
+ In the early twentieth century, these were believed to lessen constipation, lower blood pressure, cure insomnia by soothing the nerves, and increase sexual activity. At radium cocktail parties the lights were turned out so that the drinks could glow in the dark.
18
EINE SCHÖNE LEICH Dead Habsburgs had their faces smashed to make them appear more humble in the sight of God. As a precaution, a bell was installed inside the coffin for the dead to ring if they came back to life. Presumably, if they made use of this bell, they would appear more humble in the sight of the living. Packets of undertakers’ cigarettes were sold (though not for the dead) which carried an implied health warning. On the side of them it said, Rauchen sichert Arbeitsplätze
“Smoking guarantees work.” “I wish you joy of the worm!”
The Duchess of Malfi ,16
NOTE: + EINE SCHÖNE LEICH : A beautiful funeral (literally corpse.) 19
BEETHOVEN’S APOTHEOSIS On a hill among the Vienna Woods overlooking Baden is a rotunda with a green oxidised dome.
This is Beethoven’s Temple; surrounded by trees and roses, surmounted by a car park. The ceiling has two painted frescoes: in one, Adam and Eve, expelled from Eden, cast themselves on the earth near a green snake in a withered tree.
20
Opposite them, Prometheus raises his eyes and gazes across at the banished pair, cast out from their former paradise, while above him, the eagle that comes to tear his immortal flesh, menaces.
Beethoven’s responses to the frailty and the Fall of man in these encounters with the Deity are written on the wall.
“Something higher there is not than to approach the Godhead and, from here, its rays among mankind to spread.” + +*Höheres gibt es nicht als der Gottheit sich nähern und von hier aus ihre Strahlen unter das Menschengeschlecht erbreiten.” 21
“Daedalus invented wings, which lifted him up and away into the air. And I also will find these wings.” +
The rotunda is silent. There is no lingering murmur of the majestic symphony by which Beethoven contrived to build a bridge between the Deity and the Fallen Being he felt himself to be:
“Deaf, unfriendly, peevish, even misanthropic.” An die Freude
+*Dädalus erfand die Flügel, die ihn oben hinaus in die Luft emporhoben und auch ich werde sie finden, diese Flügel.
22
Rose-lined pathways lead us down from Temple to Casino. Those downward-spiralling stairs of red plush, glass and gold in which Mammon sets out wares with which he tempts the wandering spirit only too well to a solitary Descent into his solitary Hell.
23
BEETHOVEN IN WIENER NEUSTADT A Genius, smashing keys, breaking piano strings, freak, scruffy, smelly, swearing, syphilitic. A local woman, frightened at his apparition, calls the police.
“I am Beethoven!”
The constable is not impressed,
“You are a tramp!”
“Beethoven doesn’t look like that!” 24
The constable orders his arrest. Later that night, the Town’s musical director is called out to identify him. The mayor then sends him back to Baden in the state coach.
25
THE EMPRESS AND THE GEISHA In the Staatsoper,
Madame Butterfly,
at the age of fifteen, is marrying Lieutenant Pinkerton, American gunnery officer. As he explains to the American Consul, “I can unmarry her tomorrow.�
In the Augustinian Church,
the Archduchess Elisabeth
at the age of sixteen, is marrying Emperor Franz Joseph, Apostolic King of Hungary, King of Bohemia, Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia, Galicia, Lodomeria, Illyria, Jerusalem, Archduke of Austria, Grand-Prince of Transylvania, Grand Duke of Tuscany and Krakow, Duke of Lorraine, Salzburg, Styria, Carinthia and Carniola. 26
Pinkerton makes Butterfly pregnant and deserts her for “a real American wife.” Franz Joseph makes Sissy pregnant and deserts her for a brothel. Madame Butterfly, with her child, after three years of waiting, clings to her faith in him and sings,
Un bel di. “One beautiful day, we will see a puff of smoke on the far horizon. Then a ship will appear and enter the harbour. I will not go down to meet him but will wait on the hill for him to come. After a long time, I will see in the far distance a man, starting to walk out of the city and up the hill. When he arrives he will call “Butterfly!” from a distance. But I will not answer, partly for fun and partly so as not to die from the excitement of the first meeting. Then he will speak the names he used to call me: “Little one. Dear wife. Orange blossom.” Kaiserin Elisabeth, after fourteen days of marriage,
“I have awakened in a dungeon With chains on my hands And my longing ever stronger. Freedom, you have turned from me! I have awakened from rapture, Which held my spirit captive. And vainly do I curse this exchange In which I gambled you, Freedom, away.” 27
Later she tells her daughter,
“Marriage is an absurd institution. At the age of fifteen you are sold. You make a vow you do not understand and you regret for thirty years or more that you cannot break it.� She builds a palace in Corfu She makes of her body a Temple to Aphrodite and labours to keep it ever young. She has a private train and ever travels. She learns Hungarian. She learns ancient and modern Greek. She writes poetry. She shares the treasure of her tears with French Riviera, Lake Geneva, Portugal, Spain, Morocco, England, Ireland, Algeria, Malta, Greece, Turkey and Egypt. Journeying on becomes the meaning of her life. In losing herself in her life she will end up losing both life and meaning.
28
DEATH OF BUTTERFLY She kneels before the statue of Buddha and prays to her ancestral gods. She takes down her father’s dagger and reads the inscription:
“Who cannot live with honour must die with honour.” She kisses the blade. Her child comes in. She tells him not to sorrow but to remember his mother’s face.
She stabs herself.
29
KAISERIN
In May 1896
Elisabeth
looks down on Vienna from the heights of Leopoldsberg,
where, in 1683, the Papal Legate and Jan Sobieski celebrated Mass.
The Christian forces drew up in line of battle on the south-eastern slopes of the Wiener Wald and looked down on the massed enemy camp. From here, the Polish king led his army down, routed 150,000 Turks and broke the Siege of Vienna. "Venimus, Vidimus, Deus vicit!�
30
Two years later, as she was about to board a steamer for lunch with Baroness Rothschild, she was stabbed by an anarchist,
Luigi Luccheni, with a sharpened file.
This was the end.
In her beginning, she had played in the forests around Possenhofen Castle, ridden her horses for hours, kept rabbits, guinea pigs and canaries, dogs, hamsters and lambs, 31
discussed poetry and painting with her father, the Archduke, and breathed in happiness.
“When we cannot be happy in the way that we desire, there is nothing for it but to fall in love
with our sorrows.�
32
FRIEDENSREICH HUNDERTWASSER
Wittgenstein said:
“Everything is what it is and not another thing.”
Hundredwaters said:
“The straight line is godless.” Wittgenstein redefined philosophy and made it out of date by saying,
“Whatever can be said can be said clearly, and that of which one cannot speak, one must remain silent about.” Since when, Philosophy has never managed to be in date again. Hundertwasser designed buildings in which the crooked line is a work of genius. His floors undulate.
33
His architecture disorientates. He has a miniature tiered water fountain In which the water flows uphill.
NOTE: Born Friedrich Stowasser, he extended his name to mean:
Kingdom of Freedom Hundred Waters.
34
PALAIS LIECHTENSTEIN In 1968, Günter Brus
presented Kunst und Revolution+ at the University of Vienna.
“I hope to reveal the still fascist essence of the nation.” To achieve this and unlock the gate to the Heavens of Free Will, he appeared before his audience naked. He urinated into a glass and dipped his penis into a foaming beer mug. He covered his body in his own excrement. He sang the Austrian National Anthem while masturbating. Finally, he drank his own urine and vomited. This attempt to liberate his country’s political consciousness led to a sentence of six months in prison for Degrading Austrian symbols. In 1997, he was belatedly rewarded for his efforts to Enlighten the toiling masses of Austria with the Grand Austrian State Prize.
+ Art and Revolution 35
His relics are in rooms K and L, with Yoko Ono’s White Chess Set and the Big Blood Painting of Hermann Nitsch. These are,
relatively,
small beer!
And no longer Foaming.
Kunst macht Gunst: Art causes goodwill.
36
PRINCE EUGÈNE OF SAVOY
“He was never good looking,”
wrote the Duchess of Orleans
“It is true that his eyes are not ugly, but his nose ruins his face and he has two large teeth which are visible at all times.” His mother was Olympia Mancini, Countess of Soissons, an early lover of Louis XIV.
Wishing to entice the king back to her, she became the confidante of a sorceress who practised hand reading, face reading, witchcraft and black magic. The bones of toads, the teeth of moles, iron filings, human blood, the dust of human remains and the crushed powder of emerald green beetles were among the ingredients 37
of her love powders. She also sold “Inheritance Powders.” If you gave these to your rich relative you would inherit his money
sooner than if you let him grow old and die naturally.
The sorceress was convicted of witchcraft and burned in public in the Place de Grève in Paris. Fearing for his life, Louis banished the Countess to Spain. She left her son behind. He shared in his mother’s disgrace and could not find entry into a military career. Eugène applied directly to the king for command of a company in the service of France. The king was unsympathetic
and refused him out of hand.
38
“The request was modest, not so the petitioner. No one else ever presumed to stare me out so insolently." The offence was slight, not so the consequences. The Sun King was never so severely punished for a trifle. Eugène offered his services to the Habsburg Austrian Emperor who was happy to welcome him. At twenty-two he was a Major-General. At twenty-five he was a Lieutenant-General. At thirty he became a Field-Marshal. He drove the moslem Turks out of central Europe. He drove the Bourbon French back towards the frontiers of France. With Marlborough, 'Twin constellations in glory', he humbled Louis’ armies at Blenheim and Malplaquet. The man rejected by Louis became the greatest European general of his time.
In this city of palaces,
the palace Eugène built for himself is the finest. 39
The Sun King was never so severely punished for a trifle.
40
MADHOUSE IN A MUSEUM Walking late at night from the Staatsoper
through the Hofburg’s silent squares, deserted courtyards, giant arches, palaces topped with moonlit statues on the rooflines, past the Spanish Riding School,
outside which Hercules, set in marble, performs his Labours, one is walking through a Museum set out to please the Gods. One is a solitary animation without companions. Everyone avoids the Hofburg’s Mausoleum by moonlight in favour of Weinstuben, Kaffeehaüser and parks.
41
OPEN ASYLUM Here the lunatics are free. They walk the streets confined within their minds, and peer out through the blinds and the visors of their faces to see a world outside their continent of cells. It shines out: the cunning, sensuality and terror and that strange, otherworldly grin of the damned world locked within.
42
DON GIOVANNI The set is beautifully arranged, the costumes superb, the music magnificent. The story hasn’t changed. Our hero behaves appallingly for three hours, with chauvinistic condescension; a libido inviting Dr Freud’s personal attention and morals to provoke the Infernal Powers. Possessor of a palace, with no need to seek employment, he devotes himself with malice to promiscuous enjoyment.
He kills, seduces, entertains, traduces.
The number of his conquests increases by the hour. His servant, Leporello, keeps the score and reveals it to Elvira in a scene of buena comedia. "Madamina, il catalogo è questo.” He fuels her deepest indignations by giving her numbers and geographical locations. 43
“640 in Italy,
231 in Germany,
100 in France,
(The list is neverendo…….!)
91 in Turkey
and (crescendo)
1,003 in
44
SPAIN!”
The victims’ tragedy is the seducer’s comedy and an entertainment for his audience.
Life is a tragedy for those who feel, a comedy for those who think. *
But Fate is mirror-like in its precision and its simplicity needs no revision; Good breeds Good and Evil has its price. Virtue is its own reward and so is Vice.
Dragged down to Hell, unrepentant, by the victim of his own sword, Il dissoluto punito ossia, the rake is punished.
“Questo è il fin…” “Such is the end of the evildoer, through his own misdeed: the death of a sinner always reflects his life." A pious comment on a career of sin with which, no doubt, the pious audience agreed.
*La vie est une tragédie pour celui qui sent, une comédie pour celui qui pense. Jean de La Bruyère 45
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ST STEPHEN’S CHURCH founded in 1137 on the site of an Ancient Roman Cemetery
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