Conclusion - The Earthquake Observers - page 262

argue against “prudishness” with respect to children's interest in sexual mat-
ters. But consider the story from another angle. Perhaps Little Anna's curios-
ity about earthquakes was no less natural than her interest in sex. Perhaps
she was just as clever to doubt her parents when they claimed that earth-
quakes were caused by volcanoes as when they claimed that her brother was
brought by a stork. “Fear is the expression of converted libido,” wrote Jung,
implying that the child could not genuinely be afraid of earthquakes. 32 Per-
haps, in Jung's denial of this possibility, we have met with a resistance that
requires its own interpretation.
The tendency of modernist thought in the human sciences is to peer
behind allusions to natural disasters for what is presumed to be the hidden
source of anxiety, whether it be sexual, socio-economic, or political. Fear of
an unmasterable, external threat is recast as a diffuse “anxiety,” requiring
therapy to identify its true origin. 33 As in the case of Little Anna, the disas-
ter itself is quickly made to “vanish” from the story. Too quickly. It seems
that we have stumbled on a mighty defense mechanism—and behind it,
a profound anxiety about nature out of control. 34 It falls to the historian
to probe the background to stories like Jung's. The pat answers that adults
offered his daughter about the earthquake masked their own ignorance.
This topic has tried to reveal the processes by which earthquakes were alter-
nately confronted and displaced in the modernist age, a process much like
the rapid awakening and extinction of Little Anna's “scientific interest” in
earthquakes. It falls to the historian to follow the clues back to the scene of
knowledge in the making.
Enlightenment
On 11 May 1910, a light tremor shook Vienna. Among the eyewitness re-
ports published in the papers the next day was that of a bank clerk: “At the
start of the earthquake, before I could form a judgment of the nature of the
phenomenon, I already saw how my wife, with jerky motions and a terri-
fied expression, threw her head to the side and gripped at her heart. . . . She
whispered just one word: earthquake. Only with this utterance did I find en-
lightenment [ Erst durch diese Äußerung bin ich aufgeklärt worden ].” The sharp
eyes of Karl Kraus seized on the word aufgeklärt —literally, “enlightened.”
He mocked the clerk's scientific ambitions: “In the event of the world's de-
struction, the learned professions must immediately form a judgment of the
nature of the phenomenon, this they have learned from the newspapers.”
Kraus feigned wonder at the clerk's observation that the earthquake had
“begun with an explosive sound, during which I felt a vertical shock from