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(Tr. from the German by Peter Chametzky, Susan Felleman, and Jochen Schindler)
Pulp writers, magicians, and confectioners used to have that secret something, that beautiful sweet which was called nonsense and that brings joy. They dispensed with that unhappiness normally associated in my experience with useful intentions, and revealed the mysteries of roads less travelled by.
As to utility, it can at least be said that its trace could still be found along these routes. As I started to rummage around, it would pop up again like the memory of the worst banalities in a phrase book, which nevertheless have a basic appeal. Strange images were painlessly divested of their actual instructional purpose. Their acuity alone remained. They desired unheard of clarification and granted just enough of themselves to become newly believable to the expectations that had been aroused. This degenerate clarity could certainly be seductive. It could be mimicked and gave the game a whole new aspect. Books were not able to satisfy my curiosity and ambition until one day I was totally taken over by the miracle of magic: the conjurer's arts.
The great magician was surrounded with such splendor and secret knowledge and mastered tricks. What a dazzling mixture of the jejune and mysterious was buried in his instructions and catalogues! And what forms! ? It was worth all my obsessive efforts when, amid the smell of glue and wet plaster, the essence of all that is impressive would take shape and become a real object to be possessed: the bogus Brötchen and the illusionistic mirror box were added to the bloodied thumb and the writing hand. Emil the Poltergeist arose, followed presently by the spheres of India, the mysterious bran jar, the cylinders and the rings, bones, tinctures, and the revoltingly large feet. So much excess required an echo. This surfeit was above all manifest among apprentices, tested in the mildly insidious form which was cultivated in the characteristic manner of American Indian medicine men. Not every day was marked by nervous sweat, and now and then the evil was remedied by a party and distribution of spoils. Spoils were anything colorful and dangerous that through some kind of analogy promised to arouse medicinal communal theft. Their possession meant available danger...