6 - All the Registers of a Soul

Summary

When it comes to describing “not just the artist, but also the person,” there is nothing a biographer wants to avoid more than the common stereotype. The way the artists are all portrayed as extraordinarily sensitive, extremely modest, enraptured, altruistic, serving art and art alone, and ultimately not of this world—and yet, after all (or “on the other hand”)—how they have their feet firmly planted on the ground, are unexpectedly enterprising, only too human, vain, manipulative … the result is nearly always “a complex, multifaceted personality.”

Well, it is no use—Anton Heiller was an extremely complex personality, and a multifaceted one. Especially in his case, it is impossible to describe the person separately from the artist.

Anton Heiller was a torn man. This has been said about many artists, of course. For many who experienced Heiller it will stand in sharp contrast to the natural authority that he emanated throughout his life. However, those who knew him, especially during the last decade of his life, or did not even meet him until that time, would have been aware that divisive forces were at work in Anton Heiller, battling one another and pulling in opposite directions.

These opposing forces have their origin in a number of areas. One has to know a few facts before attempting to understand the disparities.

The divisions within him have their origins in his parents. His father was basically a jovial and happy person; his mother, on the other hand, was silent, like a ghost, “peeping out from behind the door.” The father “a storyteller,” at home in the world of the theater and always ready to show off; the mother inward looking, attending to the daily chores. Drastically simplified: the father was inclined toward the positive, the mother was not. This duality—Hermann Hesse could not have portrayed it more stereotypically—was part of Heiller's genetic makeup. His own description of the situation is like a painful stab: “I did not have a mother, just a woman who raised me.”

Bernhard Heiller relates a comment once made by one of his father's school friends: Toni had displayed a natural authority in the class; he had always been somewhat serious—friendly, but giving the impression of an adult, even as a teenager.