V

Consolation for a Broken Heart

For the griefs of love, he may be the finest among philosophers:

1788    Arthur Schopenhauer is born in Danzig. In later years, he

looks back on the event with regret: 'We can regard our life as a

uselessly disturbing episode in the blissful repose of nothingness

human existence must be a kind of error,' he specifies, 'it may be

said of it, "It is bad today and every day it will get worse, until the

worst of all happens." ' Schopenhauer's father Heindch, a wealthy

merchant, and his mother Johanna, a dizzy socialite twenty years

her husband's junior, take little interest in their son, who grows

into one of the greatest pessimists in the history of philosophy:

'Even as a child of six, my parents, returning from a walk one

evening, found me in deep despair.'

1803-5 After the apparent suicide of his father (discovered float-

ing in a canal beside the family warehouse), the seventeen-year-old

Schopenhauer is left with a fortune that ensures he will never

have to work. The thought affords no comfort. He later recalls:

'In my seventeenth year, without any learned school education, I

was gripped by the misery of life as Buddha was in his youth

when he saw sickness, old age, pain and death. The truth . . . was

that this world could not have been the work of an all-loving

Being, but rather that of a devil, who had brought creatures into

existence in order to delight in the sight of their sufferings; to

this the data pointed, and the belief that it is so won the upper

hand.'

Schopenhauer is sent to London to learn English at a boarding-

school, Eagle House in Wimbledon. After receiving a letter from

him, his friend Lorenz Meyer replies, r! am sorry that your stay in

England has induced you to hate the entire nation.' Despite the

hatred, he acquires an almost perfect command of the language,

and is often mistaken for an Englishman in conversation.

Schopenhauer travels through France, he visits the city of Nimes, to

which, 1,800 or so years before, Roman engineers had piped water

across the majestic Pont du Card to ensure that citizens would

always have enough water to bathe in. Schopenhauer is unim-

pressed by what he sees of the Roman remains: 'These traces soon

lead one's thoughts to the thousands of long-decomposed humans.'

Schopenhauer's mother complains other son's passion for 'ponder-

ing on human misery'.

1809-1811 Schopenhauer studies at the university of Gotringen

and decides to become a philosopher: 'life is a sorry Business, I

have resolved to spend it reflecting upon it.'

On an excursion to the countryside, a male friend suggests they

should attempt to meet women. Schopenhauer quashes the plan,

arguing that life is so short, questionable and evanescent that it is

not worth the trouble of major effort.'

1813 He visits his mother in Weimar. Johanna Schopenhauer has

befriended the town's most famous resident, Johann Wolfgang

von Goethe, who visits her regularly (and likes talking with

Sophie, Johanna's housemaid, and Adele, Arthurs younger sister).

After an initial meeting, Schopenhauer describes Goethe as

'serene, sociable, obliging, friendly: praised be his name for ever

and ever!'  Goethe reports. Toung Schopenhauer appeared to me

to be a strange and interesting young man/ Arthur's feelings for

the writer are never wholly reciprocated. When the philosopher

leaves Weimar, Goethe composes a couplet for him:

Willst du dich des Lcbensfreuen,

So musst der Welt d\\ Werth verleihen.

If you wish to draw pleasure out of life,

You must attach value to the world.

Schopenhauer is unimpressed, and in his notebook beside Goethe's

tip, appends a quotation from Chamfort: 71 vaut mieux laisser les

hommes pour ec quits sont, que les prendre pour ce qn'ils ne sont pas.'

(Better to accept men for what rhcv are, than to take them to be

what they are not.)

1814-15 Schopenhauer moves to Dresden and writes a thesis (On

the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason). He has few

friends and enters into conversations with reduced expectations:

'Sometimes I speak to men and women just as a little girl speaks to

her doll. She knows, of course, that the doll does not understand

her, but she creates for herself the joy of communication through a

pleasant and conscious self-deception/ He becomes a regular in an

Italian tavern, which serves his favourite meats - Venetian salami,

truffled sausage and Parma ham.

1818 He finishes The World as Will and Representation, which he

knows to be a masterpiece. It explains his lack of friends: 'A man of

genius can hardly be sociable, for what dialogues could indeed be

so intelligent and entertaining as his own monologues?'

1818-19 To celebrate the completion of his book, Schopenhauer

travels to Italy. He delights in art, nature and the climate, though his

mood remains fragile: 'We should always be mindful of the fact that

no man is ever very far from the state in which he would readily

want to seize a sword or poison in order to bring his existence to an

end; and those who are far from believing this could easily be con-

vinced of the opposite by an accident, an illness, a violent change of

fortune - or of the weather/ He visits Florence, Rome, Naples and

Venice and meets a number of attractive women at receptions: r!

was very fond of them - if only they would have had me/ Rejection

helps to inspire a view that: 'Only the male intellect, clouded by the

sexual impulse, could call the undersized, narrow-shouldered,

broad hipped, and short-legged sex the fair sex.'

1819 The World as Will c-nd Representation is published. It sells 230

copies. 'Every life history is a history of suffering'; Tfonly I could

get rid of the illusion ol regarding the generation of vipers and

toads as my equals, it would be a great help to me.'

1820 Schopenhauer attempts to gain a university post in philoso-

phy in Berlin. He offers lectures on The whole of philosophy, i.e.

the theory of the essence of the world and of the human mind.'

Five students attend. In a nearby building, his rival, Hegel, can be

heard lecturing to an audience of 300. Schopenhauer assesses

Hegel's philosophy: '[I]ts fundamental ideas are the absurdest

fancy, a world turned upside down, a philosophical buffoonery .. .

its contents being the hollowest and most senseless display of

"words ever lapped up by blockheads, and its presentation . .. being

the most repulsive and nonsensical gibberish, recalling the rantings

of a bedlamite.' The beginnings of disenchantment with academia:

'That one can be serious about philosophy has as a rule not

occurred to anyone, least of all to a lecturer on philosophy, just as

no one as a rule believes less in Christianity than does the Pope.'

1821 Schopenhauer falls in love with Caroline Medon, a nineteen-

year-old singer. The relationship lasts intermittently for ten years.

but Schopenhauer has no wish to formalize the arrangement: Tc

marry means to do everything possible to become an object of

disgust to each other.' He nevertheless has fond thoughts of

polygamy: 'Of the many advantages of polygamy, one is that the

husband would not come into such close contact with his in-laws,

the fear of which at present prevents innumerable marriages. Ten

mothers-in-law instead of one!'

1822 Travels to Italy for a second time (Milan, Florence, Venice).

Before setting out, he asks his friend Friedrich Osann to look out

for any mention of me in books, journals, literary periodicals and

such like Osann does not find the task time-consuming.

1825 Having failed as an academic, Schopenhauer attempts to

become a translator. But his offers to turn Kant into English and

Tristram Shandy mto German are rejected by publishers. He con-

fides in a letter a melancholy wish to have 'a position in bourgeois

society', though will never attain one. Tf a God has made this

world, then I would not like to be the God; its misery and distress

would break my heart.' Fortunately, he can rely on a comfortable

sense of his own worth in darker moments: 'How often must I

leam ... that in the affairs of everyday life . . . my spirit and mind

are what a telescope is in an opera-house or a cannon at a hare-

hunt?'

1828 Turns forty. 'After his fortieth year/ he consoles himself,

'any man of merit . . . will hardly be free from a certain touch of

misanthropy.'

1831 Now forty-three, living in Berlin, Schopenhauer thinks once

again of getting married. He turns his cittentions to Flora Weiss, a

beautiful, spirited girl who has just turned seventeen. During a

boating parry, in an attempt to charm her, he smiles and offers her

a bunch of white grapes. Flora later confides in her diary: 'I didn't

want them. I felt revolted because old Schopenhauer had touched

them, and so I let them slide, quite gently, into the water behind

me." Schopenhauer leaves Berlin in a hurry: 'life has no genuine

intrinsic worth, but is kept in motion merely by want and illusion/

1833 He settles in a modest apartment in Frankfurt am Main, a

town of some 50,000 inhabitants. He describes the city, the banking

centre of continental Europe, as 'a small, stiff, internally crude,

municipally puffed-up, peasant-proud nation ofAbderites, whom I

do not like to approach'.

His closest relationships are now with a succession of poodles,

who he feels have a gentleness and humility humans lack: 'The

sight of any animal immediately gives me pleasure and gladdens

my heart.' He lavishes affection on these poodles, addressing them

as 'Sir', and takes a keen interest in animal welfare: The highly

intelligent dog, man's truest and most faithful friend, is put on a

chain by him! Never do I see such a dog without feelings of the

deepest sympathy for him and of profound indignation against his

master. I think with satisfaction of a case, reported some years ago

in The Times, where Lord X kept a large dog on a chain. One day as

he was walking through the yard, he took it into his head to go and

pat the dog, whereupon the animal tore his arm open from top

to bottom, and quite right, too! What he meant by this was: "You

are not my master, but my devi] who makes a hell of my brief

existence!" May this happen to all who chain up dogs.'

The philosopher adopts a rigid daily routine. He writes for three

hours in the morning, plays the flute (Rossmi) for an hour, then

dresses in white tie for lunch in the Englischer Hot on the

Rossmarkt. He has an enormous appetite, and tucks a large white

napkin into his collar. He refuses to acknowledge other diners

when eating, but occasionally enters into conversation over Coffee.

One of them describes him as 'comically disgruntled, but in fact

harmless and good-nature dly gruff'.

Another reports that Schopenhauer frequently boasts of the excel-

lent condition of his teeth as evidence that he is superior to other

people, or as he puts it, superior to the 'common biped'.

After lunch, Schopenhauer retires to the library of his club, the

nearby Casino Society, where he reads The Times - the newspaper

which he feels will best inform him of the miseries of the world.

In mid-afternoon, he takes a two-hour walk with his dog along

the banks of the Main, muttering under his breath. In the evening,

he visits the opera or the theatre, where he is often enraged by the

noise of late-comers, shufflers and coughers - and writes to the

authorities urging strict measures against them. Though he has

read and much admires Seneca, he does not agree with the Roman

philosopher's verdict on noise; 'I have for a long time been of the

opinion that the quantity of noise anyone can comfortably endure

is in inverse proportion to his menial powers . . . The man who

habitually siams doors instead of shutting them with the hand ... is

not merely ill-mannered, but also coarse and narrow-minded . . .

We shall be quite civilized only when ... it is no longer anyone's

right to cut through the consciousness of every thinking being . . .

by means of whistling, howling, bellowing, hammering, whip-

cracking ... and so on.'

1840 He acquires a new white poodle and names her Atma, after

the world-soul of the Brahmins. He is attracted to Eastern religions

in general and Brahmanism in particular (he reads a few pages

of the Upanishads every night). He describes Brahmins as, 'the

noblest and oldest of people', and threatens to sack his cleaning

Jady, Margaretha Schnepp, when she disregards orders not to dust

the Buddha in his study.

He spends increasing amounts of time alone. His mother wor-

ries about him: 'Two months in your room without seeing a single

person, that is not good, my son, and saddens me, a man cannot

and should not isolate himself in that manner.' He takes to sleeping

for extended periods during the day: Tflifc and existence were an

enjoyable state, then everyone would reluctantly approach the

unconscious state of sleep and would gladly rise from it again. But

the very opposite is the case, for everyone very willingly goes to

sleep and unwillingly gets up again.' He justifies his appetite for

sleep by comparing himself to two of his favourite thinkers:

'Human beings require more sleep the more developed .. . and the

more active their brain is. Montaigne relates of himself that he had

always been a heavy sleeper; that he had spent a large part of his

life in sleeping; and that at an advanced age he still slept from eight

to nine hours at a stretch. It is also reported of Descartes that he

slept a great deal.'

1843 Schopenhauer moves to a new house in Frankfurt, number

17 Schone Aussicht, near the river Main in the centre of town

(English translation: Pretty view). He is to live in the street for the

rest of his life, though in 1859, he moves to number 16 after a quar-

rel with his landlord over his dog.

1844 He publishes a second edition and a further volume of The

World as Will and. Representation. He remarks in the preface: 'Not to

my contemporaries or my compatriots, but to mankind I consign

my now complete work, confident that it will not be without value

to humanity, even if this value should be recognized only tardily,

as is the inevitable fate of the good in whatever form/ The work

sells under 300 copies: 'Our greatest pleasure consists in being

admired; but the admirers, even if there is every cause, are not

very keen to express their admiration. And so the happiest man

is he who has managed sincerely to admire himself, no matter

how.'

1850 Atma dies. He buys a brown poodle called Butz, who

becomes his favourite poodle. When a regimental band passes his

house, Schopenhauer is known to stand up in the middle of conver-

sations and put a seat by the window from which Butz can look

out. The creature is referred to by the children of the neighbour-

hood •^ 'young Schopenhauer'.