Klaus Heinrich did not understand this; but he said: "I have read your poem repeatedly with great pleasure. It seems to me a complete success, as regards both metre and rhyme. And it entirely expresses the 'Joy of Life.'"
"Your skill," continued Klaus Heinrich, "must be a source of great pleasure to you--an ideal recreation. What is your calling, Herr Martini?"
Herr Martini showed that he did not understand, by describing a note of interrogation with the upper half of his body.
"I mean your main calling. Are you in the Civil Service?"
"No, Royal Highness, I have no calling; I occupy myself exclusively with poetry...."
"None at all.... Oh, I understand. So unusual a gift deserves that a man's whole powers be devoted to it."
"I don't know about that, Royal Highness. Whether it deserves it or not, I don't know. I must own that I had no choice. I have always felt myself entirely unsuited to every other branch of human activity. It seems to me that this undoubted and unconditional unsuitability for everything else is the sole proof and touchstone of the poetical calling--indeed, that a man must not see in poetry any calling, but only the expression and refuge of that unsuitability."
It was a peculiarity with Herr Martini that when he talked tears came into his eyes just like a man who comes out of the cold into a warm room and lets the heat stream through and melt his limbs.
"That's a singular idea," said Klaus Heinrich.
"Not at all, Royal Highness. I beg your pardon, no, not singular at all. It's an idea which is very generally accepted. What I say is nothing new."
"And for how long have you been living only for poetry? I suppose you were once a student?"
"Not exactly, Royal Highness; no, the unsuitability to which I alluded before began to show itself in me at an early age. I couldn't get on at school. I left it without passing my 'final.' I went up to the university with the full intention of taking it later, but I never did. And when my first volume of poems attracted a good deal of attention, it no longer suited my dignity to do so, if I may say so."
"Of course not.... But did your parents then agree to your choice of a career?"
"Oh no, Royal Highness! I must say to my parents' credit that they by no means agreed to it. I come of a good stock: my father was Solicitor to the Treasury. He's dead now, but he was Solicitor to the Treasury. He naturally disliked my choice of a career so much that till his death he would never give me a farthing. I lived at daggers drawn with him, although I had the greatest respect for him because of his strictness."