Kurt Tucholsky: Zur soziologischen Psychologie der Löcher - English Translation

On the Sociological Psychology of Holes (Kurt Tucholsky 1931)

(translated into English)

A hole is where something is not.

A hole is the eternal companion of the non-hole: a hole by itself does not occur, much as I regret it. If there were something everywhere, there would be no hole — but also no philosophy, and certainly no religion, both of which arise from the hole.

A mouse could not live without it, nor could man: it is the last refuge of both when matter presses in on them. A hole is always good.

When people hear the word “hole,” they form associations: some think of a fuse hole, some of a buttonhole, and some of Goebbels.

The hole is the cornerstone of this social order — and so it is as well. Workers live in a dark one, are always forced to give way, and when they protest, they are shown where the carpenter left it. They are thrown into holes, and in the end they survey the whole row of them and whistle on the last one.

The strangest thing about a hole is its edge. It still belongs to something, yet constantly looks into nothingness — a border guard of matter. Nothingness has no border guards. While the molecules at the edge of a hole grow dizzy from staring into it, the molecules of the hole itself feel... steady? There is no word for it. Our language was made by the people of “something”; the people of the hole speak their own language.

A hole is static; holes do not travel. Almost never.

When holes marry, they become one — one of the strangest processes imaginable. Remove the dividing wall between two holes: does the right edge belong to the left hole? Or the left edge to the right? Or each to itself? Or both to both? May I never have such worries.

When a hole is plugged up — where does it go? Does it squeeze sideways into matter? Or run off to another hole to complain of its fate? Nobody knows. Here our knowledge itself has a hole.

Where one thing is, another cannot be. But where there is already one hole — can there still be another?

And why are there no half-holes?

Some objects are ruined by a single tiny hole: because at one point something is missing from them, everything else suddenly becomes worthless as well. Examples: a train ticket, a virgin, and a balloon.

The thing-in-itself still has to be sought; the hole already exists in itself. Whoever stood with one leg in the hole and the other among us — only that person would be truly wise. Yet apparently no one has managed it.

Megalomaniacs claim that the hole is something negative. That is incorrect: man is a non-hole, and the hole is primary.

Do not resist the hole; it is the only foretaste of paradise available down here.

When you are dead, only then will you realize what living was.

Forgive this section; I merely wanted to fill a hole between the previous piece and the next.