Goethe Fail

Yesterday, the sky outside the Wedding Volkshochschule was distractingly beautiful. The overhead lights were off, and as Reinhard, our philosophy teacher, attempted to explain the difference between Trieb (instinct) and Instinkt (instinct), the saturated late-afternoon sunlight melted on the wall of a nearby brick building. The room’s dimness, Reinhard’s soothing voice, and the splendor outside were so mesmerizing I gave up trying to grasp the two words’ separate nuances, and slid into a dazed reverie. I half expected Reinhard to declare “Shivasana,” and order us to lie on the floor, arms slightly away from our sides. The magic abruptly ended when the middle-aged Korean student, who I’ve secretly decided is a Protestant minister, stood and snapped on the overhead lights. Reinhard laughed sadly.

In the harsh fluorescent light, I noticed Reinhard was wearing no less than four shirts. One cotton T-shirt, two polo shirts, and one long-sleeved polo shirt on top, all red or purple. Why not just wear a sweater, I wondered, with one layer underneath, and be done with it? Rather than explain the aesthetics of his attire, Reinhard was explaining the concept of “Mängelwesen,” the imperfection of humans, who cannot rely on natural instincts (or instincts) to guide their behavior, like other animals, but must constantly arrive at new conclusions/approaches. I tried to remember what Reinhard had worn during the previous week. Was his layered look a new one?

I had missed class the previous Tuesday so it was difficult to follow the discussion. I did some half-hearted nodding, an automatic gesture I’ve perfected at German-speaking dinner parties over the last five years in Berlin. It comes in handy during the perilous third hour, waiting on dessert, when I’m tired of trying to follow the rapid-fire German debate on nuclear energy, and am content to let my mind wander without slipping into a glazed bovine look, which can be insulting to the hosts.

I wasn’t the only one spacing out. I glanced over at the Polish guy, who never says a word but always wears an intelligent smirk, as though he were the incarnation of Immanuel Kant, surrounded by adorable imbeciles. His look is one of constant detached bemusement, which could very well be his own dinner party survival strategy. But right now he was staring, rapt, at the lovely 20-something Korean girl taking notes. He regarded her the way I had stared at the sun on the brick building twenty minutes earlier. Then Reinhard loomed over him, like a mountain, to pass out the next reading: an excerpt from Goethe’s Faust.

Reinhard leaned back in his chair as we hunched over the photocopies, our posture collectively slumping as we got hit by words like Gewühle and Gaukelwerk. Tenuously, we began discussing Faust’s world-weary screw-this screw-that diatribe. I liked it. The last line: “Fluch vor allem der Geduld!” (“And above all, screw patience!” *my translation*) was a neat summary of that dinner-party exhaustion, a bold rejection of the unspoken imperative to bow to all shoulds. But the saucy Brazilian girl, whose hair bows always alarmingly match her blouses, went up in flames. “What’s the point?” she exploded. “This old guy’s depressed. He thinks he needs all this crap to make him happy. Why can’t he just be glad to be alive? Is the whole book like this? What’s wrong with Goethe? Why’s he so negative?”

For a second, it seemed like a moment right out of Sister Act 2 or Dead Poet’s Society. I waited for Reinhard to get that fiery Whoopi Goldberg look in his eye or hop up on one of the desks like Robin Williams. But it was 4:45pm on a late October Tuesday. The light outside had faded entirely. Reinhard might have marched in protests in ’68 but he wasn’t about to deliver a stirring speech now. He shrugged. “Why don’t you take a train to Weimar and go tell that to Goethe’s grave?” he said. I resisted the urge to say “Ohhh, Snap,” not sure of the German or the 2013 equivalent, and gave Reinhard my patented nod of half-comprehension.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doAm8xAQmPo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U91Wl2YpkD8