The word is old. It smells a little of the Bible and of forgotten sermons; and precisely for that reason it has become sympathetic to me while writing this epilogue. For our time has, for the good, too many words that either sound like advertising (Wellness, Selfcare, Longevity) or like duty (optimization, performance, discipline). Strangely enough, we lack a word for the good that neither sells nor commands. “Erquicklich” could be one: not the perfect, not the maximized, but that which refreshes – which invigorates, strengthens, lifts up without whipping.
Erquicklich is, in a first, very simple sense: rest that does not arise through numbing. Not “coming down” in the sense of dampening, but becoming still in the sense of an order that does not come from outside, but from within. It is erquicklich when the ring – this little priest – for once has nothing to report, not because it is taken off, but because, for a moment, it becomes irrelevant. It is erquicklich when a person does not sleep because they have done “everything right”, but because their inner self is tired enough to surrender.
Erquicklich is also: truth that is not cruel. A number that does not threaten, but informs. A logbook that does not control, but remembers. “Measure what matters” – yes; but this sentence only becomes erquicklich when one also has the grace not to measure everything that is possible. Erquicklich is that System 2 exists at all: this slow, exhausting thinker in us who does not react automatically, but decides; who does not strike immediately, but asks: Is it worth it? Do I really have to say this now? Do I really have to let myself be drawn into this argument? The lion in the fable, as unerquicklich as he appears as king of condescension, is right on one point: it is illogical to waste time on the donkey.
Erquicklich is: strength. Not as vanity, but as ability. It is erquicklich when the body can once again do something it could no longer do; when the staircase in the hotel is not just decor, but a decision; when walking is not just a number, but movement. Erquicklich is the moment after the king set, when the person, burning and exhausted, simultaneously feels: I am not just a spectator of my life, I am an agent. And erquicklich is, paradoxical enough, also the effort itself – not because it would be pleasant (it rarely is), but because it pulls us out of that modern, flabby unerquicklichkeit in which everything is soft and yet nothing is good.
Erquicklich is: boundaries. This is a point that the novel – through Morgenstern – formulates almost more quietly, but perhaps more clearly than all the values and rings. Respect, compassion, responsibility, safety, partnership: these are not “soft skills”, these are protective walls around the lilies. And lilies – I described them in the text as flowers of dubious politeness – are in truth the most sensitive beings: they do not proclaim, they need protection. Erquicklich is to recognize leeches, not out of hardness, but out of love. Erquicklich is to no longer allow oneself to be exploited – not because one wants to appear “stronger”, but because otherwise one constantly lets the best one has drain away into small, pointless battles.
Erquicklich is: the right measure of lingering. I know, that sounds like the saying I already examined in the prologue; and yes, I admit, I cannot escape this sentence, because it carries the entire dialectic of this book in three lines: Joy to him who comes. Peace to him who lingers. Joy to him who goes. In my novel I omitted the peace because I – seduced by The Magic Mountain, unerquicklich ambitious – had to tint the house that calmed me with unrest in order to be able to tell a story at all. But in an epilogue one may say it: peace is not boredom. Peace is not standstill. Peace is that quality of time in which one does not flee, but also does not cling; in which one stays without sinking; in which one goes without deserting.
And finally – and this is perhaps the actual, literary erquicklichkeit – erquicklich is: the ability to see oneself without despising oneself. Hans Castorp learned that masks are not only put on, but also not taken off. While writing I learned that words can do the same: they can be mask or gaze. “Unerquicklich” was often a mask, an ironic cloth over an embarrassing truth. “Erquicklich” is meant to be, if I succeed, a gaze: an attempt to name the good without kitsching it up.
So if I am to distill, esteemed reader, dear reader, from this novel – from its rings and lifebuoys, its domes and cameras, its tunnels and lilies, its cubes and lagoons, its blue grass and red water – in a few sentences what I find erquicklich for a long, healthy, happy life, then perhaps like this:
It is erquicklich not to treat the truth about oneself as a judgment, but as material.
It is erquicklich to allow oneself boundaries: against the noise, against the quarrel, against the leeches, against one’s own temptation to stay too long.
It is erquicklich not to use the body as a project of vanity, but as a vessel of freedom: so that one can go when one must go, and can stay when one wants to stay.
It is erquicklich not to misunderstand beauty as possession, but as encounter: look, give thanks, move on before it becomes an addiction.
It is erquicklich to use language in such a way that it does not hurt, does not shame, does not prick ironically where tenderness would be needed – and that it nevertheless remains true.
Or also, in the spirit of Tonio, in the sense of creation, and yet now in an erquicklich way different:
It is erquicklich to create bestforming as a transition state of optimization, but also self-care and reflection that can be repeated when needed.
It is erquicklich to manage in life, without a signet ring, to concentrate on one’s own lilies.
