“You must be able to see the world and go to it”

“You must be able to see the world and go to it” is a maxim about perception joined to movement. Told through the red-bearded man’s account of Stefan Zannovich, it proposes that a person advances not by intelligence alone but by reading other people and acting on what the world makes possible. Franz Biberkopf remembers its emphasis on eyes and feet as he leaves, but his departure turns the maxim into an unresolved test rather than a promise of reform.

The maxim in Zannovich’s story

The red-bearded man introduces the principle while defending Zannovich’s rise against Franz’s assumption that the young man must simply have been clever. The story instead stresses his ability to see how others imagined him and to go where those expectations could be used. In Montenegro, he appeared as a fine gentleman, surrounded by coaches, horses, and servants; people addressed him as a count and prince. Rather than correct them about his village origins, he presented himself as a nobleman from Padua, and later accepted the identity of Baron Warta when others took him for a rich Pole.

Zannovich’s performance then grows with the audience’s expectations. He claims descent from Skanderbeg, the celebrated Albanian hero, and presents himself as Prince Castriota of Albania. People give him money to live as befits that supposed lineage, while the story describes him as giving them pleasure in return. The examples make the maxim practical: seeing means recognizing the identities and fantasies other people are ready to accept; going to the world means entering those roles and acting upon that recognition.

A lesson delivered through confrontation

The maxim emerges from a strained encounter, not a detached lecture. After Franz calls the storyteller an ape, the red-bearded man refuses the insult’s hierarchy: even an ape, he replies, may know more than many a human being. He then broadens his defense, asking Franz to consider the gifts animals provide and the bitter fate of apes made to perform tricks in chains. The account of Zannovich becomes part of that rebuke, redirecting attention from contempt toward the capacities and conditions of others.

The speaker says he never knew Zannovich, and that neither did his father; the listener is asked to imagine him through the story. That qualification makes the anecdote less a claim of personal witness than an example offered for Franz to interpret. Its central lesson is nevertheless stated plainly: eyes and feet matter most in a person—the ability to perceive the world and go out into it.

Franz carries the lesson outside

When the two men escort him to the door, the red-bearded man asks whether Franz can walk on his own. Franz answers by recalling what he has been told about hands, feet, and eyes, insisting that he still has them and that nobody has taken them from him. The exchange gives the maxim a concrete sequel: Franz rises, pushes the air away with both arms, and walks upright across the cluttered yard, stepping over a puddle of petrol.

His movement does not settle what he will do with the lesson. Outside, with his bowler pulled over his face, he mutters about the petrol as poison, looks for brandy, and threatens to hit anyone who comes near him. The contrast keeps the maxim from becoming a simple declaration of recovery: Franz can walk back into the world, but the scene leaves his next actions shadowed by anger and drink. The story’s injunction to see and go thus becomes a measure of agency whose meaning remains open in the moment of departure.