Chapter 1
From Metropolis - New Translation
This book is not a picture of the present. This book is not a picture of the future. This book is not set anywhere we know. This book serves no political leaning, no class, no party.
This book tells of an event which grows around a realisation - that the mediator between the head and the hands must be the heart.
-Thea von Harbou
The rolls of the great organ now swelled to a roar, which, like a rising giant, braced itself against the vaulted ceiling, in order to burst through.
Freder bent his head backwards; his wide-open, screaming eyes stared unseeingly upwards. His hands formed music from the chaos of the notes, wrestling with the tremor of the tone, and rattling him to the core.
He’d never been so close to tears in his life, and in his blissful helplessness he submitted to the glistening waters that blinded him.
Above him, the vault of heaven in lapis lazuli, and hovering therein, the twelvefold mystery - the Signs of the Zodiac - in gold. Set higher above them, seven crowned figures: the planets. High above all of them, a thousand radiant silver stars: the universe.
Before the dewy eyes of the organist, the stars began their solemn, mighty dance to his music.
The surge of notes dissolved the room into nothingness. In the middle of the sea stood the organ which Freder played.
It was like a reef on which the waves foamed. Carrying crests of froth, they dashed fiercely towards it, and the seventh was always the mightiest.
But high above the sea, which bellowed in the turmoil of the waves, the stars of the heavens danced their solemn, mighty dance.
Rattled to her core, the old Earth woke from her slumber. Her streams dried up; her mountains fell to ruin. From torn-open depths the fire swelled. The Earth burned with everything she bore. The waves of the sea turned to waves of fire. The organ flamed, a booming torch of music. The Earth, the sea and the blazing hymns of the organ crashed into each other and turned to ashes.
But high above the deserts and emptiness to which creation was burned, the stars of the heavens danced their solemn, mighty dance.
Then, from the grey, scattered ashes, with trembling wings, unspeakably beautiful and solitary, rose a bird with jewelled feathers. It uttered a plaintive cry. No bird to ever live on Earth had known how to lament so sweetly and so agonisingly.
It hovered above the ashes of the wholly-destroyed Earth. It hovered hither and thither, not knowing where it should settle. It hovered above the
grave of the sea and above the corpse of the Earth. Not once, since the sinning angels fell from Heaven to Hell, had the air ever heard such a cry of despair.
Then, from the solemn, mighty dance of the stars, one detached itself and approached the dead Earth. Its light was more gentle than moonlight and more commanding than the light of the sun. Amongst the music of the spheres, it was the most heavenly sound. It blanketed the lamenting bird in its loving radiance; it was as strong as a deity and called out: “To me... to me!”
Then the jewelled bird left the grave of sea and Earth and gave its drooping wings to the strong call that carried it. Resting in a cradle of light, it floated upwards, singing, and became a sound of the spheres, vanishing into eternity...
Freder let his fingers slip from the keys. He bent forwards and buried his face in his hands. He squeezed his eyes until he saw the fiery dance of the stars behind his eyelids. Nothing helped him - nothing! Everywhere, everywhere, in an agonising, bliss-filled omnipresence, there stood before his gaze the one - a countenance.
The bitter countenance of the Virgin; the sweet countenance of the Mother, the agony and the desire, which he called and called towards for that one single vision, and for which his tortured heart did not even have a name except the one eternal:
You...
He let his hands sink, and raised his eyes to the heights of the beautifully vaulted room in which his organ stood. From the sea-deep blue of the heavens,
from the slagless gold of the starry shapes, from the mystery-rich twilight around him, the girl looked at him with the deadly rigour of purity, quite maid and mistress - inviolability - and was too, complete and utter graciousness: the beautiful brow in the diadem of goodness, the voice, pity: every word a song. Then, she turned away and went and vanished - no longer to be found - nowhere, nowhere...
"You!" the man cried out. The captive sound struck against the walls, finding no way out.
Now the loneliness was no longer bearable. Freder got up and pushed the double doors apart. In blinding brightness, the studio lay before him. He squeezed his eyelids together and stood still, barely breathing. He felt the presence of the servants, silently standing, awaiting the order that would allow them to become alive.
There was one among them – The Thin Man, with the polite face that never changed expression – who Freder knew of: one word to him, and if the girl with her quietly treading feet still walked the earth, then The Thin Man would find her. But you don’t set a bloodhound on the track of a sacred white hind if you don’t want to be cursed and, for all the rest of your days, a miserable, miserable man.
Freder saw, without looking at him, how The Thin Man’s eyes were taking stock of him. He knew: this silent man, appointed by his father to be his all-mighty protector, was, at the same time, his keeper. In the fever of sleep-deprived nights, in the fever of the studio’s work, in the fever of calling on God when playing the organ, The Thin Man would measure the pulse of the son of his great master. He provided no reports; they were not required. But if the hour ever came when they were demanded of him, he would certainly have a diary of complete perfection to present, in the number of paces through which a tormented person treads, minute by minute, in his loneliness and heavy under foot, all the way up to lowering a brow into propped-up, desire-weary hands.
Could it be possible that this all-knowing man knew nothing of her?
Nothing about him betrayed that he had grasped the upheaval in the mood and being of his young master, since that one day in the Club of The Sons. But never betraying himself was one of the powerful secrets of this slender, quiet man, and, although he had no access to the Club of The Sons, Freder was in no way certain that the plutocratic agent of his father would do an about-turn at the laws of the Club.
He felt exposed, unclothed. A cruel brightness, sparing nothing that was secret, bathed him and everything in his studio, which was almost the highest-situated room in Metropolis.
"I wish to be all alone," he said quietly.
Silently, the servants vanished, The Thin Man went... But all those doors that closed, without a sound, could also, without a sound, be opened again to a slither of a gap.
With grievous eyes, Freder scanned the doors of his studio.
A smile, which held quite a bit of bitterness, pulled down the corners of his mouth. He was a treasure that had to be guarded, like crown jewels had to be guarded. The son of the great Father - and the only son.
Really? The only?
There, his thoughts stopped again at the ending of this cycle, and the vision was there again, and the scene, and the experience…
***
The Club of the Sons was ranked as perhaps the most beautiful building of Metropolis, and that was not surprising. Because fathers, for whom every revolution of a machine-wheel meant gold, had gifted this house to their sons. It was far more of a district than a house. It encompassed a theatre- and picture-palaces, lecture halls, a library - in which every book printed in the five continents was to be found — race tracks, a stadium and the famous Eternal Gardens.
It contained very extensive dwellings for the young sons of provident fathers, and it contained the dwellings of impeccable male servants and beautiful, fully-trained female servants, whose training required more time than the cultivation of new orchids.
Their chief task consisted of nothing except, at all times, to appear invigorating and to be whimsically cheerful, and, with their baffling attire, painted faces and eye-masks, surmounted by snow-white wigs and smelling fragrant like flowers, they resembled delicate dolls of porcelain and brocade, designed with an artist’s hand - not purchasable, instead just pretty presents.
Freder was only a rare guest to the Club of the Sons. He preferred his studio and the chapel of stars where his organ stood. But if, at any one time, he desired to throw himself into the radiant joyousness of the stadium matches, he was the most radiant and joyous of all, and he played from victory to victory with the laugh of a young god.
On that day, too…
Staying suffused in the icy coolness of falling waters, every muscle still twitching in the intoxication of victory, he lay, slenderly outstretched, exhaling, smiling, drunken, wholly besides himself, almost fatuous with happiness. The milk-coloured glass ceiling above the Eternal Gardens was an opal in the light which bathed it. The little, delicate women attended to him, mischievously and jealously waiting, from whose hands, from whose diminutive fingertips he would nibble on whichever fruits he desired.
One stood to the side, mixing him a drink. From hip to knee, he sparkling brocade billowed. Slender, bare legs, nobly closed; she stood like ivory in purple poulaines. Gently from her hips, her pale body rose, which — and she did not know it — quivered in the same rhythm that the man's chest, in outbursts of breath, did. Carefully, the little painted face under the eye-mask watched the work of her careful hands.
Her mouth was not rouged, but yet was pomegranate red. And she smiled down at the beverage so self-forgetfully that it caused the other girls to laugh aloud.
Infected, Freder too began to laugh. But the glee of the girls swelled to a storm when the drink-mixer, not knowing why they were laughing, had a blush of confusion flow from her pomegranate-coloured mouth down to her pale hips. The raised laughter drew in their friends, who, without reason, only because they were young and carefree, joined in the cheerful racket. Like a heartily ringing rainbow, laugh upon laugh arched itself colourfully above the young people.
Then, suddenly, Freder turned his head. His hands, which rested on the hips of the drink-mixer, let go of her and dropped down as if dead. The laughter ceased. Not one of their friends stirred. Not one of the little, brocaded, bare—legged women moved hand or foot. They stood and looked.
The door of the Eternal Gardens had opened, and through the door came a procession of children. They all held each others hands. They had grey, ancient, dwarven faces. They were little wraith—like skeletons, hung with faded rags and smocks. They had colourless hair and colourless eyes. They walked on haggard bare feet. Quietly they followed their leader.
Their leader was but a girl. The bitter countenance of the Virgin. The sweet countenance of the Mother. She held, in each hand, a child’s lean hand. Now she stood, silently, looking at the young men and women one after another, with the deadly rigour of purity. She was quite maid and mistress - inviolability - and was too, complete and utter sweetness: the beautiful brow in the diadem of goodness, the voice, pity: every word a song.
She let the children go and stretched her hand out and, pointing to the friends, spoke to the children:
"Look, these are your brothers!"
She waited. She stood silently and her gaze rested upon Freder.
Then came the servants and the doormen. Between these walls of marble and glass, under the opal dome of the Eternal Gardens, there was, for a short time, a never-before-witnessed jumble of noise, indignation and embarrassment. The girl appeared, still, to be waiting. And nobody dared to touch her, though she stood so defenceless amongst the grey infant-wraiths. Unrelenting, her eyes rested on Freder.
Then she took her eyes off of him, bent down a little and took the children's hands again, turned around and led the procession back out. The door shut behind her; the servants disappeared with many apologies that they had not been able to prevent the incident. Everyone was blank and speechless. Had not each and every one of them, before whom the girl - with her grey procession of children - had appeared, had such a number of witnesses to their own experience, they would have been tempted to deem it a hallucination.
Near Freder, upon the illuminated mosaic of the floor, the drink-mixer cowered and sobbed in bewilderment.
With a leisurely gesture, Freder tilted towards her and hesitated, like someone who had heard something - and suddenly took, with a fierce yank, the mask - the thin black mask - from her eyes.
The drink-mixer shrieked out, as though she had been caught by surprise in complete nudity. Her hands flew up snatchingly and remained hanging solidly in the air.
A little painted face stared terrified at the man. The eyes, uncovered, were quite dumbfounded, quite empty. Quite unmysterious was the little face from which the charm of the mask had been taken away.
Freder dropped the black piece of cloth. The drink-mixer grasped it hastily, hiding her face. Freder looked around him.
The Eternal Gardens shone. The beautiful beings within it, even if now briefly perturbed, shone in their sleekness, their clear satiety. The odour of freshness, which pervaded everywhere, was like the breath of a dewy garden.
Freder glanced down at himself. He wore, like all the boys in the Club of the Sons, the white silk, which they only ever wore one time, and the supple, soft shoes with the noiseless soles.
He looked at his friends. He saw these people who never wearied, unless from sport, who never sweated, unless from sport, who were never out of breath, unless from sport. The people, who required their jovial competitive games, so that their food and drink might agree with them, so that they could sleep well and digest easily.
The tables from which they had all eaten were laid, as beforehand, with undisturbed dishes. Golden and purple wine, embedded in ice or warmth, offered itself there, in waiting, like the affectionate little women. Now the music was playing again. It had been silenced when the girl’s voice spoke the five soft words:
"Look, these are your brothers!"
And once again, while her eyes rested on Freder:
"Look, these are your brothers!"
Like one suffocating, Freder sprang up. The mask-wearing women stared at him. He ran to the door. He ran through passages and stairwells and came to the entrance.
"Who was that girl?"
Awkward shrugs. Apologies. The incident was inexcusable: that the servants knew. There would be dismissals in their droves. The majordomo was pale with anger.
"I do not wish," said Freder, staring into space, "that anyone connected to this incident should come to harm. There should be nobody dismissed... I don’t want that…"
The majordomo bowed silently. He was accustomed to whims in the Club of the Sons.
"And who the girl is, can nobody say?"
No. Nobody. But if the order for an investigation were to be made?
Freder remained silent. He thought of The Thin Man. He shook his head, first gently, then violently. No…
You don’t set a bloodhound on the track of a a sacred, white hind.
"Nobody should investigate her," he said, tonelessly.
He felt the soulless glance of the strange, hired people upon his face. He felt himself poor and besmirched. In an ill-temper, which rendered him wretched as though he had poison in his veins, he left the Club. He walked back home as though going into exile. He shut himself up in his studio and worked away. In the night he clung to his instrument and forced the enormous solitude of Jupiter and Saturn down on to him.
Nothing helped him—nothing! In an agonising blissful omnipresence stood, before his vision, the one – the countenance: the bitter countenance of the Virgin, the sweet countenance of the Mother.
A voice spoke: "Look, these are your brothers!"
And the glory of the heavens was nothing, and the rapture of work was nothing. And the sea-obliterating fires of the organ was incapable of obliterating the soft voice of the girl: "Look, these are your brothers!"
***
With a painful, violent jerk, Freder turned himself around and stepped in front of his machine. Something like salvation passed across his face when he considered this radiant creature, waiting only for him, of which there was not a steel link, not a rivet, not a spring which he had not calculated and created.
The creature was not big, and appeared still more delicate through the vast area and flood of sunlight in which it stood. But the soft lustre of its metal and the noble vibration with which the front part of the body raised itself as if to leap, even when at rest, gave it something of the fair godliness of an utterly beautiful animal that is quite without fear, because it knows itself to be invincible.
Freder stroked the creature. He pressed his head gently on the machine. With an ineffable endearment he felt its cool, supple limbs.
"Tonight," he said, "I will be with you. I will let myself be entirely encompassed by you. I will pour out my life into you and comprehend whether I can bring you to life. I will, perhaps, feel your tremor and the commencement of activity in your controlled body. I will, perhaps, feel the drunkenness with which you throw yourself out into your boundless element, carrying me — me, the man who made you — through the tremendous sea of midnight. The seven stars will be above us, and the sad beauty of the moon. We rise and rise. Gaurishankar will remain: a hill, below us. You will carry me and I will recognise: You carry me as high as I wish…"
He paused, his eyes closing. A shudder, which ran through him, was imparted as a tremor to the silent machine.
"But perhaps," he went on, without raising his voice, "perhaps you also sense, my beloved creature, that you are no longer my only love. Nothing in the world is more vengeful than the jealousy of a machine which believes itself to be neglected. Yes, I know that… You are imperious mistresses… ‘Thou shalt have no other Gods but me’... isn’t it? A thought which strayed from you: you feel it already and become defiant. How could I have kept it hidden from you, that not all my thoughts are with you? I can do nothing about it, creature. I was bewitched, machine. I press my forehead upon you, but my forehead longs for the knees of the girl of whom I know not even her name…"
He became silent and held his breath. He raised his head and listened.
Hundreds and thousands of times had he heard that same sound in the city. But hundreds and thousands of times, it seemed to him, he had not grasped it.
It was, beyond all measure, a glorious and enchanting sound, deep and rumbling and mightier than of any country in the world. The voice of the ocean when it is angry, the voice of falling torrents, in which very close thunderstorms would be miserably drowned out by this behemoth-sound. It penetrated, without being grating, all walls and all things, which, as long as it lasted, made everything appear to oscillate with it. It was omnipresent, coming from the heights and the depths, was beautiful and horrible, and was an irresistible command.
It was high above the city. It was the voice of the city.
Metropolis raised her voice. The machines of Metropolis roared; they wanted to be fed.
Freder pushed open the glass doors. He felt them tremble like strings under strokes of a bow. He stepped out on to the narrow balcony which ran around this house - almost the highest of Metropolis. The roaring sound received him, swamped him, never-ending.
So grand was Metropolis: in all four corners of the city, this roared command was equally strong and tremendously audible.
Freder looked out across the city, at the building known to the world as the New Tower of Babel.
In the brain-box of this Tower of Babel lived the man who was the brain of Metropolis.
For as long as the man over there, who was nothing but work, despising sleep, eating and drinking mechanically, left his fingertips rested on the blue metal plate, which apart from himself, no man had ever touched, the voice of the machine-city of Metropolis roared for fodder, for fodder, for fodder…
She wanted living men for fodder.
Then the living fodder pushed itself along in masses. Down the street it came, down its own street which never crossed with other streets of people. It rolled onwards, broad, an endless stream. Twelve members deep the stream was. They walked in even strides. Men, men, men — all in the same uniform, from neck to ankle in dark blue linen, bare feet in the same hard shoes, hair firmly enclosed by the same black caps.
And they all had the same faces. And they all appeared to be of the same age. They walked stretched-out, but not upright. They did not raise their heads: they pushed them forward. They put their feet forward, but they did not walk. The open gates of the New Tower of Babel, the machine-centre of Metropolis, gulped the masses down.
Coming towards them, but passing them, another procession dragged itself along: the used-up shift. It rolled onwards, broad, an endless stream. Twelve members deep the stream was. They walked in even strides. Men, men, men — all in the same uniform, from neck to ankle in dark blue linen, bare feet in the same hard shoes, hair firmly enclosed by the same black caps.
And they all had the same faces. And they all seemed to be ten-thousand years old. They walked with hanging fists, they walked with hanging heads. No, they put their feet forward but they did not walk. The open gates of the New Tower of Babel, the machine-centre of Metropolis, threw up the masses like it gulped them down.
When the fresh living fodder had disappeared through the gates, the roaring voice silenced at last. And the never-ceasing, throbbing hum of the great Metropolis became perceptible again, now seeming like silence, like a deep relief. The man, who was the great brain in the brain-box of Metropolis, had detached his fingertips from the blue metal plate.
In ten hours he would let the machine-beast roar anew. And in another ten hours, again. And so on, and so on, without ever loosening the ten-hour clamp.
Metropolis did not know what Sunday was. Metropolis knew neither festivities nor holidays. Metropolis had the most heavenly cathedral in the world, richly adorned with Gothic decoration. In times, of which only the chronicles knew, the star-crowned Virgin, like a mother, used to smile from its tower, from out her golden mantle, deep, deep down, upon the pious red rooves, and the only company to her graciousness had been the doves which used to nest in the grimacing mouths of the gargoyles, and the bells, named after the four archangels, of which Saint Michael was the most magnificent.
It was said that the Master who cast it became evil because of it, for he stole consecrated and unconsecrated silver, like a raven, and cast it into the metal body of the bell. To pay for his deed he suffered a dreadful death at the place of his execution, under the wheel of pain. But, it was said, he died exceedingly happy, for the Archangel Michael rang to him, so wonderfully touchingly, on his way to death that everyone agreed the Saints must have forgiven the sinner already, since the heavenly bells rung for his reception.
Indeed, the archangels still rang with their old voices of ore, but when Metropolis roared, Saint Michael itself was hoarse. The New Tower of Babel and its accompanying houses stretched their sombre heights high above the cathedral’s spire, so that the young girls in the workrooms and radio stations gazed down from the thirtieth story windows on the star-crowned virgin, just as deep as she, in bygone days, had looked down on the pious red rooves. But, in place of doves, flying machines swarmed over the cathedral and the city, nesting on the rooves, from which, at night, brightly-iridescent pillars and circles indicated the direction of travel and landing points.
The Master of Metropolis had already considered, more than once, allowing the cathedral – which was pointless and an obstruction to traffic in the city of fifty million - to be demolished.
But the small, raging sect of Gothics, whose leader - half monk, half enraptured - was Desertus, had made the solemn vow: If one hand of the wicked city of Metropolis would dare to touch just one stone of the cathedral, then they would not repose and would not rest until the wicked city of Metropolis lay, as a heap of rubble, at the foot of the cathedral.
The Master of Metropolis despised the threats, which constituted one sixth of his daily mail. But he preferred not to fight with opponents to whom he wished to provide a favour through the destruction of their beliefs. That great brain, to whom the sacrifice of lust was alien, estimated the incalculable power which the sacrificed and the martyrs showered upon their followers to be too high rather than too low. As well, the question of demolishing the cathedral was not yet so burning that it had already become the subject of a cost-estimate. But if the point in time came, the cost of tearing down this structure would exceed that of the construction of Metropolis. The Gothics were ascetics, and the Master of Metropolis knew from experience that a multi-millionaire was cheaper to buy than an ascetic.
Freder contemplated, not without a strange feeling of bitterness, how many more times the great Master of Metropolis would still grant him the spectacle which the cathedral offered on every rainless day. When the sun sank into the back of Metropolis, so that the houses turned to mountains and the streets to valleys; when the streams of a light, which seemed to crackle in coldness, broke forth from all windows, from the walls of the houses, from the rooves and from the belly of the city; when the silent clamour of electric advertisements arose; when the spotlights, in all colours of the rainbow, began to play around the New Tower of Babel; when the motor buses turned to chains of light-spitting monsters, the little motor cars to scurrying, luminous fishes in a waterless deep-sea, while, from the invisible harbour of the underground railways, an ever-equal, magical shimmer penetrated and became consumed in the waves of hasty shadows — then the cathedral would stand there, in this boundless ocean of light, which dissolved all forms through outshining them as the only dark object, black and persistent, seeming, in its absence of light, to free itself from the earth, and rising higher and ever higher, and seeming, in this maelstrom of tumultuous light, to be the sole reposeful and masterful thing.
Yet, the Virgin at the top of the tower’s spire seemed to have her own gentle starlight, and hovered, uncoupled from the blackness of the stone, on the sickle of the silver moon above the cathedral.
Freder had never seen the countenance of the Virgin, and yet he knew it so well he could have drawn it: the bitter countenance of the Virgin, the sweet countenance of the mother...
He bent down, clasping the palms of his hands around the iron railing.
"Look at me, Virgin!" he begged, "Mother, look at me!"
The spear of a spotlight flew into his eyes, causing him to close them angrily. A whistling rocket whizzed through the sky, into the pale twilight of the late afternoon, leaving behind the word that dripped downwards: Yoshiwara…
Oddly white, and with penetrating beams, there hovered, over a house which he did not see, the word that towered high: Cinema.
All the seven colours of the rainbow flared, cold and eerie, in silently swinging circles. The enormous clock face on the New Tower of Babel was bathed in the glaring cross-fire of the spotlights. And over and over again, from the pale, unreal—looking sky, dripped the word: Yoshiwara…
Freder's eyes hung on the clock of the New Tower of Babel, where the seconds, like sparks of breathing lightning, flashed off and faded away, relentless in their coming as in their going. He calculated the time which had passed since the voice of Metropolis had roared - for fodder, for fodder, for fodder. He knew: behind the raging flashes of seconds on the New Tower of Babel, there was a wide, bare room, with narrow, floor-to-ceiling windows, switchboards everywhere, and right in the centre, the table: the most ingenious instrument which the Master of Metropolis had created, on which to play as solitary master.
On the plain chair before it, the embodiment of the great brain: the Master of Metropolis. Near his right hand, the sensitive blue metal plate, to which he would stretch out his hand, with the infallible certainty of a healthy machine, when enough seconds had flared themselves off into eternity, in order to let Metropolis roar once more — for fodder, for fodder, for fodder...
In this moment Freder had the inescapable idea that he would lose his wits if he had to hear the voice of Metropolis once more, roaring for fodder. And, already convinced of the pointlessness of his proposal, he turned from the image of the light-mad city and went to seek out the Master of Metropolis, whose name was Joh Fredersen and who was his father.
