Ⅰ

I saw the photo of Nicolas Sombart on the website of Times.

He leans on the davenport with wearing black overcoat, and the yellow silk scarf is in his chest, loosely and exaggeratedly, looks like a blooming gorgeous flower.

You can imagine how handsome he was by glimpsing at his face, even though so much deep wrinkle in his forehead, canthus hangs down as time passed and his white hair seems to be the littery grass blew by wind. There was an unwritten regulation in the herd of his friends in Heidelberg--it must be the most beautiful girl to be his girl friend.

The photo was published on the page of obituary notice on 6th August 2008, announcing Nicolas Sombart has passed away on 14th July. However, his wisdom and grace stay behind through his works.

Beside my hands, it is Time in Heidelberg, recording his memory about a portion of his youth. It was the book's title and plain cover that attracted me so much when I found it two years ago. I didn't know who this Mr. Sombart was, and never thought whether there was a connection between him and that German famous economist Werner Sombart.

But, it evoked me of the reading pleasure I hadn't experienced for a long time.

The memory dates back to 1945, when Germany surrendered due to failure in the war. From North hamburger to South Munich, there were wreckage, lack of food and cloth, the memory of slaughter, defeated mood and soldiers of Russia and America all around in Germany......Lance Corporal, Nicolas Sombart luckily escaped from the fate of being killed or being sent to prisoner camp in Siberia, but as a retired soldier, he came to Heidelberg -- which was a peaceful and brilliant university city, or may be the only city not-bombed--to start his study.

At the beginning, it was Nicolas' writing style of elegance and springiness that arrested me. It was the mixture of cultivation, thinking, ambition, young blood, childishness, gastronomy and a little cynicism.

Those snatches charmed me. Nicolas and his friends, they spent the whole night in talking about books and thoughts, wholeheartedly wanted to establish a magazine can express the voice of their own generation, went to the master's study to listen to their edification, spoke loudly in bistro, crossed over the window to tryst with girl friend sneakily, enjoyed the low moan under the pillow......

The whole history of the world and human being is something to discover for them. They always tried to reach the end by all kinds of way--thought, alcohol, love, friendship, debating and trip......

If without the momentary glimpse of Heidelberg several days before, it should be the end of my understanding to Nicolas Sombart.

Ⅱ

I arrived in Heidelberg at a winter's cold afternoon. "Here is Bismarck Square, and here is Big Cathedral, Old City Zone, Ancient Castle, Path of Philosopher", without my asking, that enthusiastic middle-aged woman took Heidelberg's traveling map from the counter at the train station's visitor center, and then drew the landmark proficiently on the map with ballpoint--she had seen so many strangers like me, repeated the same action over thousand times. Heidelberg has become a famous city for traveling, and the visitors break the former peace, most of who seldom come here in such cold season. 

I saw the white bust of Bismarck in a small square, where so many rails of tramcar are traversing. His bald head is naked in such severe cold weather, his expression is excessively serious, two dense beards are on his upper lip and the dress's frill in his vest is exaggerated. These Junker's dignity and pride in 19th century had been blown away by the wind, just like the leaves on the decayed tree behind him.

Northward from Bismarck Square, Theodor Hughes Bridge which spans over Neckar River will be in your sight, and Path of Philosopher is just on the mountain which is on the other side of the river.  I was patient to wait the traffic light turn to green, like the excessively mannered German. But that old lady beside me who may be 1.4 meter tall crossed the road without no hesitation, with her shaggy, clean and white hair quivering slightly along with her steps. It seemed that time never made her older, but just qualified her to defy the regulations. Maybe she had lived in this small town for eighty years, and she was indifferent to Jaspers, even to Alfred Weber, who knows?

It was easier for people to be hungry in cold weather, after crossing over the yellow Neckar River flowing quietly, I entered a Chinese restaurant run by a couple from Shanghai in the corner of the street, where there were red-skinned sofa and the flavor of eatery of university.

I met Xiao Zhao there. He was seeking seat with a meatball and a bowl of rice in his hands, wearing striped jumper, blue jeans, and childishness of schoolboy of domestic university was in his fleshless face.

I hint at him to have a seat opposite, the meal was just ok, and our chat was simple and plain. His voice was too low to be heard clearly at the beginning, so I had to ask him one question twice. He was born in a small city of Kaili in 1978, which locates the Southeast of Guizhou province and is famous for Xianglu Mountain, Qingshui River and countless villages of Miao nationality. He entered the Physics Department of Guizhou University when he was 20 years old, and got the diploma of bachelor and master. He worked for a law office in Guiyang for three years after his graduation, and then decided to keep learning Physics in Heidelberg University because the living of that Southwest city was too common.

I could feel the boredom and loneliness in his description, behind which I could see one kind of deep aspiration--he wants to seize something make him excited and warm. Then I suggested we take a walk in Philosopher Path, he agreed without any hesitation.

"The first day in Heidelberg, I didn't go anywhere but straight to this place." he said when we came to an uprising alley, "it was just here, I was disappointed at the first sight."

Philosopher Path began with a section of narrow uneven blacktop, of which the color of new bitumen was mixed with the old ones'. Two sides of the path stood red wall, there were several four-seated cars beside the wall and many small two-layered buildings inside the wall, and I had no idea about who were living in these buildings. The red stonewalling is the symbol of Heidelberg. It will take time to go up the path due to its steep gradient; philosophers had no time to think if they walked along the path on foot.

"It is our physics institution", which is a small white-painted building, where he calculated and learned before we met each other. Upwards along the path, you would find the gradient became level, houses disappeared and only red stonewalling was still there. There were trees, weeds, grapevines all around, the air got fresh increasingly, and it was so peaceful that you could even hear your breath. We looked backwards when we arrived at the mountainside of Heiligenberg Mountain, the whole city of Heidelberg was quietly lying in the Neckar River which was silently flowing away, the spire of cathedral was standing out from the Baroque buildings of old city, Schloss Castle was majestically standing in a corner of the small city. Red broken bricked wall, intrigue against each other in the castle and romance were submerged as time went by......

The atmosphere of philosophy and thinking was around the corner. Beside the path, I saw the Joseph von Eichendorff's monument, in which there were his handsome portrait and a row of poem I couldn't understand. He always took a walk with another young poet Holderlin here 200 years ago, maybe they all were pale and sensitive, longed for discovering the world's secrets and insisted on one kind of abstract spirit.

We didn't reach the peak, and Xiao Zhao's mood became active as time passed by. Initiatively, he told me how much he ever liked Nietzsche, Borges and Turgenev, which was really shocking in a middle school of Kaili county. He was still a "freak" after he entered university. He was crazy for Physics and confessed himself as the most excellent student, but his examination score was the worst because all the teachers couldn't accept his absence or his original solution to the question. Even he almost didn't get his diploma when the four-year school work came to the end. But during the period of being a graduate student, he delivered two articles in the English magazine of Physics Review Letters by teaching himself, due to which, he got the study allowance offered by Max Planck Fund Foundation. He niftily called it as "MP Fund".

"I am degenerated really", he repeated this words when climbed down the mountain along a maze-like steep stone-step. He mentioned a bosom friend of university, who was indulged in poem and came to him with his new poem everyday. "He kept to writing poem even though he was beaten by me, later then he left school, he maybe is working at Beijing now", he muttered, "however, he still would send new poem to me when he met me in internet."  

I understood what he said, his friend still persisted, but he did not. Never again he put his aspiration to Physics, never again he believed such saying of it contains simple beauty in formula of Physics. It would be rather to escape from that boring life in Guiyang than to long for discovering science for him to come to Heidelberg. But once again he found he was empty when he did. The study and work of institution looked like some habitual actions during 3 months; moreover, it seemed that he didn't prepare for discovering something else. He didn't want to learn local language, hadn't went to other cities, even the broken resplendent ancient castle in that small city. He did come to the homeland of Nietzsche, but he didn't want to read any book of him.

We wandered around in the old city for a whole afternoon, crossed the ancient bridge, felt the brass monkey beside the Karl Gate. He bought me a cup of coffee, and searched for books randomly with me in a bookstore of secondhand English book. "It had been a long time since I read a book last time", he said suddenly when he saw so many books I bought.

There was no one "book" in deed in his room. This house with kitchen and bathroom is a typical dormitory for single student. One bed, one writing table, one bookshelf, two chairs, and no more room left. Your feet could touch the side of cistern of the kitchen if you lay your back on the bed. But then frankly speaking, it is still a good condition for living, and it is not cheap at all to pay 400 Euro for the rent. There were one notebook, many Physics Reviews and the skin of orange on the table, but only two physical teaching materials on the bookshelf.

He insisted on inviting me to his dormitory to let me enjoy his cooking before I left by train, he thought his level was much better than that couple from Shanghai. This was a way to show his goodwill, after all it had been a long time since he talked about Nietzsche and Borges with others.

He was cutting the tomato when I watched the movie of My Wild Girl Friend in his computer. His most favorite movie star is Chang Qi San, who is his ideal lover including her look and figure. When he saw her beautiful overbearing appearance, he seemed to naturally talk about his former love story. At that time, he read The First Love written by Turgenev, and then he began to express his sentiment to the girl who was not in the same class but department with him in a bashful and unalloyed manner. Classical manner ended in modern failure, which so far made him disappointed.....

Ⅲ

In dream they might meet each other,

Just like looking at their home country.

Even not been cheated by its fascination.

----Joseph von Eichendorff

I did forget Nicolas Sombart thoroughly when I talked with Xiao Zhao. Once again I turned over Time in Heidelberg, I saw the poem of Joseph von Eichendorff and I didn't know whether it was that one on the monument.

From this poem, Nicolas Sombart got the real "Heidelberg Spirit" --"it belonged to non-Heidelberg man, was the outcome of thinking which was renewed and confirmed generation by generation. They had characters of marginal men, magically encountered each other in this place. They were alone, and found it was a new place to transcend emotion as a visitor and stranger".

It is a discovering trip for me to reread this charming work. I have been to Ancient Bridge Gate, fountain in Heracles and the market in front of Holy Spirit Hall, all of which are in those quiet black-and-white photographs in the interleaves, and I have taken the breath of peace and clarity of Heidelberg's winter. What new feelings will these lives half-century before bring me?

Besides the romance of youth two years ago, more I have understood are that how the spirit world of every generation to hand down tradition and how they are shaped by the new characters of times. Moreover, by searching in Google, I have found out this man of Nicolas is just the son of that Sombart who are more famous as a economist.

"This generation we belong to maybe is the last generation to naturally understand the world as a whole since we were born." Nicolas Sombart began the chapter of Three Friends with this sentence, then he kept explaining, "Their consciousness are required to reach the high democracy of era they belong to in the layer of mentality, of course, including the opinion about the development of human, step-by-step and towards to development--progressive conception."

This perhaps can explain all the reasons why Nicolas Sombart so attractive. He is a man who lived in two eras. When he was born, he was endowed by his family with a brilliant tradition, which began from Revival of Learning, went through Enlightenment, Great Discovery of Geography, Modern Science Revolution, and then reached the zenith of maturity at the beginning of 20th century. Nicolas must feel a strong and magnificent verve from the people of last generation, including his father, historian Croce, culture scholar Alfred Weber, philosopher Jaspers, even Max Weber who he never met, because the whole history and fate of human were contained in their desks and notebooks. However, at the same time, the seed of decay was buried in this resplendence.

He saw a deep dissimilation from Max Weber. Max Weber was filled with "frustration of intellectual of bourgeoisie", and he had nothing to do but to cover up his inability in politics by using his moral outrage when he witnessed the creativity and wealth of bourgeoisie were suppressed and destroyed by the powerful bureaucracy stratum of which Bismarck was the representative.

When Nicolas Sombart came to Heidelberg, Bismarck's heritage had profoundly destroyed Germany even maybe the whole western world twice, during which that great tradition began to part to pieces. So, the generation of him faced so many multiple challenges.

On the one hand, he attempted to inherit the glorious tradition of intelligence and culture, taking his definition to "intellectual citizen" for example, on the other hand, he continued to question and clean away the awful tradition of politics and bureaucracy, most importantly, he wanted to seek for his own voice in face of this wrecked reality. He liked Metamorphosis full of interest and elegance, and at the same time he was persisting in publish Lost Generation, because the former "judged contemporary situation of thought according to old criteria, but what he pursued was how to "express the fear and hope of the young generation, to define their political conception, reveal bravely their unusual characters, let them not keep silence but say loudly their proposal". Then he found out the support from liberalism, because of which the assertion is to look on the world in an evolutionary way, but not lie on given conclusions.

Nicolas Sombart enjoyed adequate peace and surge of thought in Heidelberg for six years from 1945 to 1951. He figured the spirit world of himself even the generation of him in a huge experiment thought field, which was provided by the ancient tradition of "intellectual citizen" and the reality of restructuring Germany. He had become the most important person in Germany after World War Ⅱ and impacted the whole generation of him when he passed away at June 2008.

When I reread Time in Heidelberg, Xiao Zhao's image peered in my mind. I remember we rushed to train station, and I saw his lonely figure through the closed window of the door.

He came to Heidelberg as a marginal man just like Joseph von Eichendorff 200 years ago. He had so many blazing but sad dreams, which he had to forget on his own initiative because they were deeply harmed by the society where he lived. A nature barrier is built up by language, culture and race in the strange Heidelberg; will the identity as a marginal man liberate and stimulate him, or sharpen his frustration and autism? It seems the small littery apartment is a bad premonition, because it is indigent and short of internal content. I even can imagine many a night he stares at the 15-inched display to kill time of youth. However, trite social custom have a powerful inertia to devour everything. And we have been surrounded with increasing inertia at all times since we grew up. He tried his best to struggle, got little encouragement and response, and then naturally decayed and sympathized himself, and nothing but simple demand left in life. Also I know that a lot of Chinese youth studying in Germany are encountering the same embarrassment--their world are not becoming wider but narrower, so they call themselves as Ostrich Man--a sort of distortion race in dual culture.

But still I remember what he said to me when I left, it was time to read and live with full heart, and to stop this "degeneration". Truly, his time in Heidelberg just begins, I hope he could recite "Even not been cheated by its fascination" when we meet each other once again.