Essays in Idleness

A beautiful German girl — a very beautiful German girl to whom it was quite impossible to give only half-attention — once patiently explained to me the word and concept of Sitzfleisch. It might be translated into English as “sit-flesh,” but as the reader may guess this conveys an incomplete understanding. It implies sitting still, and peacefully, while using one’s soul to some purpose. A person who has this quality is blessed with a certain productive capacity; with “productivity” in reality, rather than as a pose. He is reliable, perhaps in the extreme. He does not require excitement, and can even endure boredom. He has command of himself. He is not frivolous, except by intention. I think perhaps this German maiden was recommending this quality, specifically to me.

But I, as a consequence of my adolescent Weltschmerz,  the disagreeable product of Halbbildung, could not master Sitzfleish. That is to say, the half-educated are afflicted not only with superficiality, but with a painful “awareness” of the insufficiency of the world, that masks an insufficiency in us. We are not only ignorant, but sad. Of course, we consider ourselves to be over-educated, and by current standards we probably are. Inevitably, we lack Sitzfleisch.

At the age of fifteen, “Diotima” (as I called her) already knew what I might someday learn; or should have learnt already, were my mind not constantly wandering away.