Robert Walser - A Schoolboy's Diary and Other Stories

Now I’ve just remembered that once upon a time there lived a poor poet, very oppressed by dark moods, who, since he had seen his fill of God’s great world, decided to put only his imagination into his poems. He sat one evening, afternoon, or morning, at eight, twelve, or two o’clock, in the dark space of his room and he said to the wall the following: Wall, I’ve got you in my head. Don’t try to trick me with your strange and placid visage! From now on, you are the prisoner of my imagination. Thereupon he said the same thing to the window and to the gloomy view it offered him day after day. After which, spurred on by wanderlust, he undertook a walk that led him through fields, forests, meadows, villages, cities, and over rivers and lakes, always under the same beautiful sky. But to these fields, forests, meadows, villages, cities, and rivers he continually repeated: Guys, I’ve got you locked tight in my head. Don’t any of you think any longer that you make an impression on me. He went home, constantly laughing to himself: I have them all, I have them all in my head. And presumably he has them in there still, and they can’t (however much I want to help them do so) get out again. Isn’t this story very full of imagination???

Once there was a poet who loved it in his room so much that he spent the whole day sitting in his easy chair pondering the walls before his eyes. He took the pictures off said walls so as not to have any diverting object disturb him and lead him astray into observing anything other than the small, nasty, grimy wall. Although we cannot in fairness say that he was intentionally studying the room, rather we have to admit: He lay shackled, without a thought in his head, in a pointless daydream, in which his mood was neither happy nor sad, neither cheerful nor melancholy, but rather as cold and indifferent as that of an insane person. He spent three months in this state and on the day that the fourth month was about to begin he could no longer stand up. He was stuck fast. That is an unusual occurrence, and there is a certain implausibility in the storyteller’s pledge that even more unusual occurrences are to follow. But just then a friend of the poet’s went looking for the poet in his room and, as soon as he entered it, fell into the same sad or ridiculous daydreaming as the one the first poet lay caught in. Some time later, the same misfortune befell a third writer of verse or novels who came to look in on his friend; it befell six writers in total, one after the other, all of whom came to see what their friend was up to. Now all seven are sitting in this small, dark, gloomy, unfriendly, cold, bare room and it is snowing outside. They are stuck to their seats and will probably never again undertake another plein-air description. They sit and stare, and the friendly laughter that greets this story is unable to free them from their tragic fate. Good night!

This story, although I have my doubts about its veracity, gave me, when someone told it to me, great pleasure, and I will tell it here as well as I can, but under one condition: that no one interrupt me with yawning before it is over. Once upon a time there were two lyric poets, one of whom, a very high-strung, sensitive young man, called himself Emanuel. The other, a rougher type, was named Hans. Emanuel had discovered a corner of the forest concealed from all the world, where he was in the habit of very happily writing poetry. To this end, he wrote down well-meaning and insignificant verses in a notebook he had inherited from his grandfather, and he seemed supremely satisfied with this profession of his. And really, why wouldn’t he be? The place in the forest was so quiet and pleasant, the sky overhead so cheerful and blue, the clouds so entertaining, the line of trees across from him so various and of such sought-after colors, the grass so soft, the brook irrigating this remote forest glade so refreshing, that our Emanuel would have had to be crazy to feel anything other than happy. The sky smiled down on his innocent versifying as bluely and beautifully as it did on the forest trees; this idyll’s peace seemed so indestructible that the disturbance now about to enter the scene like the accident of the week will necessarily seem very implausible. But here is what happened: I have already mentioned Hans. Hans, the second lyric poet, was wandering in the woods one day, near this solitary place, letting chance take him where it would, and he happened to discover the corner and its occupant, brother Emanuel. At once, although they had never laid eyes on each other before, Hans recognized the poet in Emanuel, the way one bird immediately recognizes another. He crept up behind him and, to make a long story short, gave him a good hard slap in the face, so that Emanuel let out a loud scream and, without stopping to see who had thus maltreated him, leapt to his feet and vanished, so quickly in fact that he was out of sight at that very instant. Hans rejoiced in his triumph! He had every reason to hope that he had driven his rival from the beautiful and productive locale forever, and already he was pondering how best and most effectively he could portray the loveliness of this lonely forest clearing. He too had a notebook with him, full of verses both bad and good that he hoped to publish shortly. He pulled out this book now and began to scribble down all sorts of brainlessnesses, the way lyric poets are wont to do to put themselves into the proper mood. He seemed, however, to have serious difficulty forcing the calm, gentle beauty of his conquered landscape into tender syllables in such a way that even a shimmer of life peeked out of them; and just as he was tormenting himself in this way, a new torment arose before or behind him, of such a sort that it necessarily spoiled for him too this paradise he had, like a yapping dog, driven the other poet out of. A third person appeared on the scene in the form of a poet: a female poet. Hans, who, startled by the noise, had looked up, recognized her immediately as such, lost no time with gallantries, and instead vanished in an instant like his predecessor. — Here the nice little story breaks off and I fully approve and understand its powerlessness to continue since I would be just as little able to continue here, where any continuation would necessarily lead straight into an abyss of pointlessness. For would it not be on the pointless side to run on about the poetess’s behavior here where the fates of the other two poets have already been sung? I will content myself with reporting that she found nothing beautiful in the forest spot’s beauty and nothing rare in its rarity and that she disappeared as noisily as she had showed up. Let the Devil write poetry.

August 1901; 1914

TO YOUR letter, honored Sir, which I found on my table this evening and in which you request that I suggest a place and time where and when we might meet, I feel constrained to reply that I don’t really know what to say to you. Certain misgivings arise in me since I am, you should know, someone not worth being met. I am extremely rude, with practically no manners whatsoever. To give you an opportunity to see me would mean introducing you to a person who cuts off half the rim of his felt hat with scissors to give it a wilder, more bohemian appearance. Is that the kind of strange being you really want to have before you? I was very glad to get your amiable letter. But you must have addressed it wrong. I am not the man who deserves to receive such courtesies. I ask you: Please abandon at once your desire to make my acquaintance. Civility is not welcome, as far as I am concerned, because then I would have to show the corresponding civility to you and that is just what I would prefer to avoid, since I know that well-bred behavior is not my style. Also, I don’t much like to be civil; it bores me. I presume that you have a wife, that your wife is elegant, and that you host something along the lines of a salon. Anyone who makes use of expressions as fine and lovely as yours has a salon. But I am merely a man on the street, in the forests and fields, in the pub and in my own room; I would stand around like a yokel in someone’s salon. I have never been to a salon in my life, I’m afraid of them, and as a man of sound mind I obviously avoid what frightens me. You are most likely a rich man who lets fall rich words. I, on the other hand, am poor, and everything I say sounds like poverty. Either you would put me in a bad mood with what you uttered or I you with what I. You can have no idea of how honestly and sincerely I prefer and love the condition in which I live. As poor as I am, it has never once to this day occurred to me to complain — on the contrary, I value my surroundings so highly that I am constantly eagerly active in preserving them. I live in a dreary old house, a kind of ruin actually. But it makes me happy. The sight of poor people and derelict houses makes me happy, while of course I am also fully aware of how little reason you would have to understand this predilection. I need a certain quantity and amount of dilapidation, deterioration, and squalor around me, otherwise it is painful to breathe. Life would be torture to me if I were fine, elegant, and splendid. Elegance is my enemy, and I would rather try to go three days without eating than entangle myself in daring to undertake performing a bow. Honored Sir, this is said not with pride but rather with a decided sense of harmony and comfort. Why should I be what I am not, and not be what I am? That would be stupid. When I am what I am, I am content, and then everything resonates and is good all around me too. You see, it’s like this: Even a new suit makes me utterly discontent and unhappy, from which I conclude that anything beautiful, fine, and new is something I hate, and anything old, used, and shabby is something I love. It’s not like I love bugs; I certainly wouldn’t want to eat bugs; but bugs don’t bother me. In the house where I live, it is positively crawling with bugs, and still I am happy to live there. It looks like a hovel, something to clasp to one’s heart. If everything in the world were new and neat and clean I would not want to live, I would kill myself. So I am afraid in a way of something when I contemplate being introduced to a distinguished, educated gentleman like yourself. I may well fear that I will only annoy you and bring you no advantage or uplift, but so too do I feel the other, equally vivid fear, namely that, to be perfectly open and frank about it, you too will annoy me and be incapable of being uplifting or agreeable to me. There is a soul in every single human condition, and you must definitely hear, and I must definitely tell you, that I value greatly what I am, however meager and lowly it may be. I consider all envy stupid. Envy is a kind of insanity. Everyone should respect the situation in which he finds himself: It’s better for everybody that way. I also fear the influence you might have over me, that is: I am afraid of the unnecessary inner work that would be required of me to ward off your influence. For that reason, I do not go running around after new friends and acquaintances — cannot, in fact, so run. To meet someone new is, at the very least, always work, and I have already permitted myself the liberty to tell you that I love comfort. What will you think of me? Whatever it is, I can’t let that bother me. I insist on remaining unbothered by that. Nor do I intend to beg your forgiveness for speaking to you in this way. That would be an empty phrase. Anyone who speaks the truth is always rude. I love the stars, and the moon is my secret friend. The sky is over my head. For as long as I live, I will never unlearn looking up at it. I stand upon the earth: that is my standpoint. The hours joke around with me, and I joke around with them, and I could wish for no more delightful entertainment. Day and night are my company. I am on familiar terms with twilight and daybreak. And with that, friendly greetings from