Getting off with the nearest genius
Philip Hensher
DIARIES, 1898-1902 by Alma Mahler-Werfel Faber, £25, pp. 493 Set down this issue of The Spectator, telephone the bookshop and beg the nice ladies at the other end to cut short, if nec- essary, their coffee break and send you a copy, without the slightest delay, of Alma Mahler's youthful diaries. It is the most wonderful masterpiece of unconscious humour, one of the very funniest books I have ever read, and the briefest encounter with it will, I am convinced, persuade you that every moment you have thus far spent in ignorance of the matchless way that her writing expresses her own perfect idiocy has been a moment deprived of light and joy and pleasure.
The lady who ended her life as Alma Schindler-Mahler-Gropius-Werfel collect- ed geniuses like winter coats. And the ones that got away — well, Klimt and Zemlinsky come in here. Zemlinsky got the push when Mahler, the great conductor, came along, and gave Alma, it seems, only one moment's pause.
So much irritates me [about Mahler]; his smell, the way he sings, the way he speaks — and what if Alex were to become famous?
And besides, Alma remarks in her charac- teristic manner, 'no Jew can ever under- stand Wagner.' Still, he was famous, the king of the premature ejaculators (he hard- ly seems to manage to turn off the light — 'I can scarcely say how irritating it was' — on p. 467), so that was that. Klimt, being already famous, was much more of a serious prey for Alma than Zemlinsky, and had to overstep the mark fairly spectacular- ly to escape being treated as another cast- ing couch for the drama of Alma's own life.
A cold shiver went through me, my heart missed a beat. He wanted to feel my breasts! Or did he want to see how fast my heart was beating?
Alma is summed up, in a way, in her Christmas presents.
Twenty-eight presents [she notes compla- cently]. A chinchilla fur, a skunk fur, blouses, writing paper, a green handbag, vocal scores of Siegfried, Rheingold and Die GOtter- ddmmerung, six pairs of gloves, books, etc, etc. Really lovely, beautiful things.
Patches, Bibles, billets-doux; in the chaos of Alma's mind, the Siegfried, of which she has already displayed a startlingly sketchy understanding, sits unremarkably next to 'a skunk fur'. All through the diaries, there is a constant concern to present herself as profoundly read in music, deep in thought about its effects — but the result is much more Mme Verdurin than Cosima Wagner. Even when she is talking to herself, Alma isn't particularly interested in saying any- thing concrete. Remember, this isn't a casual dilettante, but a would-be composer writing:
This afternoon: to Coralie Legler. We played Tristan, and were both so fascinated that we fell weeping into each other's arms. Current- ly I'm playing Parsifal and studying it very carefully. I wouldn't want to miss any of its beauties. It's heavenly.
All very well, but Alma was so vague about the music she was listening to and playing that she was under the impression that Brahms's second symphony was in a minor key, and that the `Feuerzauber' occurred in Siegfried. They sound like abstruse points, but these things, over which Alma expressed boundless raptures, make you wonder whether she had been listening at all. Bad as the gushing over other people's music is, it is quickly forgot- ten when we come to Alma's writing about her own overwhelming genius, poor sap: Unfortunately I feel little urge to write an operetta, I strive only for opera. To write an opera and experience its successful first per-
formance — that would be utter bliss. I long for fame and success. Nature! Heart! Life! God! The one and only!!!
The what? And what? All this irresistibly funny self-dramatising reaches the most splendid climax when the most wonderful thought occurs to Alma, deep in her cam- paign of cock-teasing Klimt: What if I were at death's door and were to write to K: You are unworthy of me! Before I die, I want to tell you so openly and honest- ly. I am just as much an artist as you are — and I have the great advantage of having truly loved you, while you merely played with me. I was foolish enough to believe it to be more than a joke, and for that I have been amply punished. In reward for my boundless affection, you surrendered withdut a struggle, betrayed me. All I can bequeath to you now are beautiful memories, for which you have me to thank, and my diaries. Read them, and you will know me better. Farewell — farewell for eternity! Yours, yours, yours, Alma.
She lived until a ripe old age, thank heavens, if, like me, you can hardly wait for the subsequent volumes, if there are any, in this terrible enterprise: buggering up Mahler's reputation by approving various ludicrous 'completions' of his posthumous sketches and generally doing the whole Keeper of the Flame routine for half a cen- tury.
There are those, I understand, who stick up for Alma's compositions, arguing that the fact that no one has ever heard them is due to a massive conspiracy on the part of a male-dominated oligarchy. Why women, at the turn of the century, were able to overcome the great male conspiracy in the fields of visual arts, from which the demands of 'decency' much more obviously debarred them, and not in music, is a ques- tion no one has ever been able to answer. I have, as it happens, heard quite a lot of the compositions of Alma Mahler, and can assure you that you would never have heard of her if she hadn't made a habit of getting off with the nearest genius. Her compositions — 'Kisses', for pianoforte — are a load of unbelievable rubbish, well up with Fanny Mendelssohn and Clara Schu- mann in the confederacy of dunces stakes, and if Gustav Mahler prevented Alma from covering more manuscript paper, that, I must say, is a strong argument for the patriarchal system. Her diaries, on the other hand are worth £25 of anyone's money. They are the expression of a sort of perfect lunacy which has brought hours of joy into a book-reviewer's life. The editor, Antony Beaumont — he is the splendid Busoni scholar, and I cannot imagine what has led him to turn from the heights of Doktor Faust to this bilge — must be praised. With the German scholar, Susanne Rode-Breymann, he has deci- phered Alma's notoriously impenetrable handwriting and cut it down to manageable proportions. I could have read it all day, and everything Beaumont left out, twice, but I can, I suppose, see the point.
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