Thomas Hürlimann

I have gladly come to you, ladies and gentlemen – not only because the musical event shines beyond all borders, I have another reason. Appenzell belongs to my childhood country, which I wandered through hill and dale with my uncle in the years before elementary school. We wore the same clothes. On the head, as sun protection, a napkin lined at the corners, knickerbockers, nail shoes, backpack, walking stick. My stick had been shortened by my uncle to half its length; in his face smoked a Rössli stump, in mine burst from time to time the red bubble of a bazooka gum. So we went from “Säntisblick” to “Säntisblick”, my uncle would take a drink every time, and often his passion for introducing me to the secrets of mathematics took on threatening forms in the course of the long day’s hike. At that time, I taught myself to read by means of an illustrated Robinson book and with the gentle help of my grandmother; I was enthusiastic about adventurous sea voyages and had no use for the “sacred clarity of mathematics,” as my uncle invoked it with glazed eyes.

One afternoon it was a matter of probability theory. According to their laws, claimed the uncle, we would meet here, on the country road to Gontenbad, only in the “most unlikely case” an automobile with a Zug license plate. My pride in my homeland hurt, I shouted indignantly, “That’s not true!”

At first, the uncle got angry, but then he said confidently: “You can rely on mathematics. If a Zug car really does come by, you’ll get a nickel.”

After anxious minutes of waiting, a column of three distinguished convertibles crept up, all with sporty costumed crews, whitewall tires, and the foremost car with a clearly visible license plate: ZG, Zug, the blue-and-white crest. Before the uncle had recovered from his fright, the second car passed: ZG, train, the blue-white crest, just behind it car number three: ZG, train, the blue-white crest, and believe me, more important than the fortune won was the experience of the player, who was plunged into pure happiness by his hit.

*

Many years later, I had failed in my studies, I had lost everything playing poker in a gloomy pub at the Stuttgart train station. Hungry, thirsty, desperate, I threw myself on the mattress in the shabby boarding house where I had rented a room but not yet paid for it, took the dusty Bible from the nightstand, opened it above me – and down fluttered a whole bundle of beautiful green dollar bills. I suppressed the impulse to report my find, as well as the temptation to return to the poker game. Instead, I got myself some beer and cigarettes and immersed myself in the Old Testament, in the books of the prophets. Just as a gambler bets on luck, I told myself, the prophet bets on misfortune. So there had to be some kind of relationship, and since Isaiah, Amos and Habakkuk had an amazing hit rate, there was certainly something to learn from them. Now I was not so naive to seriously believe that by studying the Bible I would become a super gambler who knows in advance on which number the roulette ball would click. If this were possible, the casinos would probably be teeming with rabbis and pastors who were constantly breaking the bank. No, it didn’t work out that way. But what gave a simple shepherd like Jeremiah the vision to see beyond the edge of the present? What was his secret, his trick?

One afternoon he was grazing his flock under a piercing sun. Grumpy mood of dogs and sheep. The ground was sandy, only a few thorny bushes on which they nibbled their muzzles bloody. That the Lord was above them was beyond doubt, after all they were in His creation, but could it be, Jeremiah asked himself, that the Lord was asleep? And behold, the moment he thought this thought, a juniper branch showed itself to him. Thus was revealed to Jeremiah: God is awake.

*

Gambling, as every gambler knows, is unreasonable. As unreasonable as my assertion that a Zug automobile would appear on the road to Gontenbad, as unreasonable as the prophet’s saying that it would soon rain sulfur on Sodom. “What is, is reasonable”, Hegel holds against it, and all functionaries of this world might share his view. The unreasonable prophet and the unreasonable gambler, however, adhere to the cantata text you just heard: “Silence, silence, reeling reason! Speak not.”

Reason, Kant expresses it most clearly, covers only that part of reality which it has created itself. This applies to large parts of our thinking, including that of the planet, and in the field of natural science, where calculation, measurement, analysis, dissection are involved, the method is appropriate. “Man’s true being,” says Hegel, “is his deed.” Tat-logic, reason-determined. The juniper branch alone would never be recognized in this way. It is a beckoning coming from other dimensions. Aletheia, truth, Heidegger defines as that which “unbirches.” What reveals itself to us. As a doer, one has no chance there. In the grasping hand the branch would wither; it is a manifestation of the absolute, it blossoms in the wondering eye. The gambler experiences something similar when he bets against every mathematical probability and gets a full load from Fortuna’s cornucopia. Then the true being of man is not activity, but amazement. To accept. Accepting. Sinking humbly and gratefully to one’s knees when the blessing of money descends from the opened Bible. Or when the third convertible with the license plate ZG, Zug, blue-white coat of arms, purrs past. Reason has nothing more to say. It staggers off into the ditch, stunned.

*

Soon after Stuttgart, I freed myself from my passion for plays by outsourcing it to the stage. For years I occupied myself with Nestroy, in whom the fairy godmother represents the highest dramaturgical principle, but I never succeeded in transferring his tricks from Biedermeier to our thoroughly rationalized times. I was also unsuccessful when I let epiphanic moments flow into prose texts. Most of the time they fell victim to censorship in the final version, the censorship of my reason.

So I am aware that it is almost impossible to penetrate with words into areas which have not been colonized by reason. Sure, in the dreams this happens every night, but evenly, there formations appear to us which burst in the awakening like my bubble gum bubble at that time. Nevertheless, I would like to take the risk, because the mysterious door, which the cantata author and Bach evoke at the end of the tenor aria, is familiar to me – not from music, from the hospital.

It was the night before a life-defining operation. I was lying in sweaty pillows, hooked up to tubes, staring spellbound into the darkness. There, through the wide door, they would roll me out tomorrow and take me down in the goods lift, into the operating room. Last exit? A journey of no return? My fingers were clawed into the sheet, my heart was pounding up to my throat – and strangely, all of a sudden I became calm. How it happened, I don’t know, I can only say that it happened. It. It happened. It happened. The sickroom was suddenly the hall of a museum, and the only picture depicted a door in perfect beauty. It was the door I had just been staring at, but it no longer enclosed me in the confines of my fear, but opened up an unknown space. I was overcome by happiness, as I had been on the road to Gontenbad. Or like in the Stuttgart boarding house room when the blessing of dollars fell on me. I was now all gambler and all prophet, knowing: You have won, one way or the other. Either you will return to this room after the operation and a few days in intensive care, or behind the door of doors the timeless will receive you.

This text has been translated with DeepL (www.deepl.com).