Tina by Arno Schmidt

 


Arno Schmidt journeys to the afterlife.

That's right – the German author wrote himself into his short novella entitled Tina, or Concerning Immortality, a twenty-pager, where he's given a 36-hour tour of "the continuation of life after death>, in natura."

Although his Virgil informs him (with a pinch of irony) that he'll be visiting the land of Elysium, what Arno encounters isn't so much an abode of ideal bliss as something that looks like a lackluster, kitschy German city constructed for a crowd of lackeys. The operative word here is boring. Everyone (men, women, not too many children, which makes for lots of quiet) is bored to tears. Understandable since the denizens of this gray flannel underworld have been plodding through the same humdrum routine day after day, year after year.  I picture them much like the crowd in the above painting by Australian artist John Brack.      

“Lots of chess gets played; there are movies; fashions change appropriately. “No cars : people have time to spare. And for the rest, people do an honest day's work; and an honest night's love – (It'll all be over in a thousand years> : that's what we always say to cheer ourselves up.”

As a writer, how long can Arno expect to spend in this drab dung-pit? Virgil (his guide turns out he's none other than the first German editor of James Fillmore Cooper - Christian August Fischer) doesn't mind letting him know: “as long as his name still appears, acoustically or optically, on the earth above.” Gulp! Arno realizes this could mean centuries.

Once down in the underworld, one of their first stops is at a gigantic building which is none other than the Commission House. Here the pair study endless lists written in tiny typewriter font, lists displaying author names along with the number of times in the past 24 hours each author has been cited or mentioned, either in print or verbally. The consequence for an author is dire: every time your name appears means more time in this underworld. A nightmare out of Kafka, anyone?

Arno's guide explains that everyone down here receives a salary paid out in bills and can use the bills to purchase goods. Arno asks if anybody ever cheats. Fischer, his guide, replies, “No; no one cheats. In the end, you can't do more than eat your fill and sleep in one bed. The production of goods is absolutely guaranteed, since existence without something to do would be simply intolerable. Besides, keeping accounts is added fun and helps pass the time.”

Ha! Fischer's words, “existence without something to do would be simply intolerable,” point toward a major quandary in the modern West – the loss of the contemplative. Silence and solitude have become the dreaded enemy. A simple meditation practice would be unthinkable. If women and men need mindless busywork to kill time, this speaks to an abysmal lack of spiritual and artistic depth. Is it any surprise that a big favorite in this underworld: the almighty idiot box aka TV.

However, all is not darkness for Arno. He eventually winds up in the bedroom of an attractive young lady (people get to choose what body they want here in the underworld. Nearly all opt for the body they had when in their early 20s). The gal's name is Tina and she informs Arno the first 10 years in this world are mostly spent just having sex. After that, people usually go off to be hermits for awhile before coming back to settle into drinking with loads of ragging and swearing, mostly at immortality, the whole set-up down in this tacky hole.

In case anybody reading this review wonders what place Christianity or any other religion figure into people's lives down here, the answer is zero. Same goes for art, music, dance – this dismal underworld lacks anything approaching the aesthetic dimension.

Perhaps Arno Schmidt left out Christianity since the German author, himself an atheist, had enough of the major religion of his country. After all, he wrote in his short novel, Leviathan: "For the concentration camp was not invented by Stalin or Hitler or in the Boer War, but in the womb of the Holy Inquisition, and in Western culture we owe our first detailed description of the well-equipped concentration camp to the most Christian, perverted fantasy of Dante...the cesspools, the ice-water torture, the forced marches under cracking whips; fiery coffins are at the ready for doubters, and the needlessly curious..."

Wonder of wonders – for some lucky souls, there is an end: the void. Ah, yes, following immortality, sort of, one can be launched into the void where there is simply annihilation akin to a deep dreamless sleep. Compared to what they've been enduring for hundreds or even thousands of years, not a bad solution.

Tina, or Concerning Immortality certainly made for a fun read. I'm sure Arno Schmidt also had fun writing. We can see why Kirkus said what it did about Arno Schmidt: “That rarest of rarities: an experimental writer who's actually fun to read.”

*Note - Tina is one of the ten novellas collected in the Dalkey Archive Press publication, Collected Novellas - Arno Schmidt 

Arno Schmidt, 1913-1979