In Stendhal’s novel “The Charterhouse of Parma”, the very young hero gets caught up in the battle of Waterloo. For him it breaks down into a collection of details: there are stories about the purchase of a horse, the requisition of breakfast, a seductive sutler, a leg amputation seen out of the corner of my eye and one glass of brandy too much, which causes the young man to see the passing Kaiser Napoleon does not see because he is concentrating on not falling off his horse. He was at the center of world history in the early nineteenth century. But until the end of his adventure he is not sure whether what he experienced and survived – perceiving this and that – was actually a battle.
Konrad Paul Liessmann, emeritus professor of philosophy in Vienna and long-time head of the Austrian Philosophicum Lech, quotes this famous passage in the introduction to a volume of columns that he wrote for daily newspapers between 2016 and 2022. He sees Stendhal’s description of the battle as proof that contemporaries have difficulties understanding themselves. On the other hand, he sets his own columns the task of “concluding the spirit of the time from striking events, recognizing the signatures of the epoch in some news items”.
Evidence for already established opinions
However, the further one follows his texts into the book – often with agreement with his opinions and admiration for brilliantly pointed sentences – the more irrefutable becomes the suspicion that Liessmann’s claim to capture the “spirit of the time” just missed the chance of knowledge, which is actually in the essayistic form of the column he chose. If you look around at the masters of such a form – you could reach for Franz Hessel, Max Beerbohm, Michaelrutschky, but also Virginia Woolf from “Evening over Sussex: Reflections in a Motor Car” or the explicitly political columns by the American Walter Lippmann – then one sees that the insights lie hidden in precisely the scattered details of the kind that had made the hero in Stendhal’s novel doubtful that they represented anything at all.
Konrad Paul Liessmann: “Lots of lies”.
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Bild: Zsolnay Verlag
Liessmann, on the other hand, seems to know too much and too much too soon. The news and details that he reports about are, from the outset, evidence for already established opinions. His enthusiasm for expressing opinions leaves no room for the details. “Modern man,” Liessmann begins a section, for example, “is not particularly fond of rituals.” How does he know? What odd – maybe even interesting, funny or touching – detail led him to this supposed signature of the time? We don’t find out; what we learn is that he already knows about rituals and modern man
Refugee Crisis, Wokeness, Corona
Anyone who expects the punchlines of the texts to emerge from the ephemeral will be disappointed. All too often, Liessmann blurts it out right at the beginning – and then doesn’t let it out of his hands until the end. His views – as mentioned, they are often extremely thought-provoking, reasonable, even original and selective – are always already explained; Details, messages, details only have a chance as an illustration, and actually he no longer needs them.
Perhaps the reason for the overwhelming predominance of opinion in these columns can be explained by the time of their inception, which was one of the most acrimonious controversies. The refugee crisis and its aftermath; the import of identity-political wokeness from the American humanities departments; Corona and “lateral thinking”; the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It was important to take a decisive position, especially as a columnist. But in the meantime one wishes that an educated, clever and articulate author like Liessmann would dwell longer on the ephemeral without immediately communicating signatures of the present.
To stay with Stendhal and the Battle of Waterloo, one wants to read more of horse purchases, breakfasts, glasses of brandy and sutlers. We would even put up with it if we didn’t get to see the “world spirit on horseback” clearly and in good time.
Konrad Paul Liessmann: “Lots of lies”. Zsolnay Verlag, Vienna 2023. 256 pp., hardcover, €26.