...You're a stupid and destructive person, and you're not even ashamed of it, he said, and then fell silent. I have to own that the actor's attack on Jeannie gave me great delight, for I had seldom seen anybody say such things to her face or requite her with such asperity for one of her impertinences. Although I still found the Burgtheater actor repugnant, he had momentarily earned my esteem. Never before has Jeannie Billroth been told how lacking in decency she really is, I thought. Nobody's ever told her that for a long time she's been utterly incompetent in discussing ideas, I thought. Nobody's ever told Jeannie to her face that she's rude, even vulgar, as the actor just has. We feel a great delight when somebody is getting his just desserts, so to speak, by being reproached with his own rudeness and shamelessness, his own stupidity and incompetence, I thought, especially when we've waited years to see it happen. Jeannie's never before been told that she's basically a common little woman and a low character, but the actor from the Burgtheater has just spelled it out. I had the impression that everyone who witnessed the actor's outburst felt not only a certain momentary pleasure, but a satisfaction that would last rather longer than that. Naturally they did not express what they felt: they had no occasion to do so, nor could they have afforded to. The actor could afford to, however, just as I could afford, if only by my silence, to endorse everything he had said about Jeannie. For years, perhaps for decades, we may have wanted to tell someone the truth to his face, the truth that he has never heard because no one has dared to tell it to him to his face, and then at last someone does it for us. And I reflected that by telling Jeannie the truth to her face, whatever that truth may or may not have been, the actor had made it worthwhile for me to have accepted the invitation to the artistic dinner after all...
[Woodcutters, Bernhard, T.]
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