Robert Walser - A Schoolboy's Diary and Other Stories

They had to present their backs or their heads all the time for the receiving of well-aimed blows and they did so with a pleasure that can properly be labeled indescribable. They grew up in this way, among spasms and terrors, and had gotten so used to trembling that they felt it as a kind of loss when they emerged into life and unlearned their sweet trepidation. You cannot possibly imagine how capable and hardworking these four young fellows became. One after another they became generals and fought like lions. They had magnificent hair, and treated their enemies in such a fashion that the latter had good reason to be exceedingly happy when the former chose to forgive them. Who would expect such conduct from boys raised amid such thrashings? Along with the abovementioned name of Ludwig were arrayed such appellations as Hugo, Julius, and Moritz. They grew very timid and afraid of their own capable efficiency.

Perhaps that is too witty a way to put it. The truth is that they did every honor to their respective whereabouts. At home they had had to give polite thanks for blows received. Their parents considered it advisable to demand that from the scamps — but can we truly speak of scamps when all four of them grew up to be generals who fought like lions? So that the father who had given them all such a solid education would not go to rack and ruin, they sent him money, and so that the dear mama from whom her sons reaped such chastisements might not seem neglected, they carried her, whenever the occasion to do so presented itself, in their arms. Now those are some real model children, they are, don’t you think! Their ears had grown long from erstwhile pullings, yet how could that have done the rascals any harm, but how can we call generals that? What an infraction, oh, oh!

How these four young fellows feared being beaten, and how they turned this fear to good use. Where fear had sat, now sat epaulettes. They who had once submitted and undergone now shrank from no power on earth. Now that is real success, don’t you think? Every time they had been beaten black and blue by Father, they had had to kiss Mother’s hand as a sign of their satisfaction. Now they were directing armies on the battlefield. The hundred thousand commands they issued were obeyed with burning zeal. Isn’t that incredible! I am happy to have been able to tell you about these four happy fellows, and hereby confidently conclude this most sensible, intelligent essay, although you might perhaps not share that opinion of it. Please, sincerely believe in these four young fellows.

Unpublished, 1925

WHAT DO you do during a summer in the country? Good God man, what do you need to do? You relax. You get up on the late side. Your room is very clean, although the house you occupy barely deserves the name of hut. The village streets are soft and green. Grass covers them like a green carpet. People are friendly. You don’t have to think about anything. Meals are rather big. Breakfast is in a secluded garden arbor shot through with sunlight. The appetizing innkeeper carries the breakfast out in her hands, you need only reach out and take it. Bees hum around your head, which is a real summer-vacation head. Butterflies flutter from flower to flower and a kitten leaps through the grass. A wonderfully pleasant scent fills your nose. Afterward you take a walk on the edge of a little forest, the sea is deep blue and cheery brown sailboats sail over the beautiful water. Everything is beautiful. It all has a winning look. Then comes the hearty lunch, and a game of cards after lunch under the chestnut trees. In the afternoon, swimming in the water park. The waves in the pool refresh and revive you when they beat against you. The sea is now gentle, now rough. In rainstorms it offers you a splendid view. Then come the lovely quiet evenings, when the lamps are lit in the farmhouse rooms and the moon hangs high in the sky. The night is pitch black, barely pierced by any light. You never see anything as deep at that. And so one day follows the next, one night follows the next, in peaceful alternation. Sun, moon, and stars declare their love for you, and likewise you yours for them. The meadow is your girlfriend and you are her boyfriend, you look up at the sky many times in the course of the day and out into the far hazy gentle distance. In the evening, at the appointed hour, the bulls and cows come back to the village, and you just look at them, you lazy bum. Yes, summer vacation is the time for downright colossal lazing, and that’s just what’s great about it.

1914

I ADMIT that the invention of the story I have to tell here has cost me not a little trouble, although readers may perhaps find it somewhat silly. It is the story of a sluggish swift man and a swift sluggish man. Worthy of note herein is that the swift man, with all his squirrely swiftness, fell far behind the sluggish man’s raw sluggishness, which shocked him to no small extent, as one might very well imagine. The curious and remarkable thing about this daft and simple story, which at least is happily not too long and wide in scope, is that the swift man is, fundamentally, the sluggish one and the sluggish man is, fundamentally, the swift one, simply and solely due to the fact that the swift man was alas all too swift and because the sluggish man with the sum total of his sluggishness fortunately, or unfortunately, stood the test brilliantly, by being not at all swift and yet, fundamentally, much swifter than the swiftest of the swift, while, alas, the swift one, with the whole rich treasure of his swiftness and agility, while not in the slightest sluggish, was nonetheless much more sluggish than the most sluggardly sluggard of all, which is, whatever else it may be, deeply regrettable. The swift one surpassed the sluggish one in downright swiftness, naturally, and yet came up short and was left far behind the sluggish one, who, unless we are badly mistaken, naturally far surpassed the swift one in sluggishness, since he was, indeed, as sluggish as the very personification of sluggishness itself, although he was not nearly as sluggish and was in fact much swifter than the swift one had thought, whom he left in the dust and mightily vanquished, an extraordinary circumstance which made the poor pitiful swift man practically drop dead in horror. This, dearest reader, is the tale of the swift and the sluggish, or, if you prefer, of the sluggish and the swift, as you wish and as it may please you. Judge it kindly, greet it with laughter, and do not get too fiercely enraged at its author, in whose head it was so firmly lodged that he found himself with no choice but to write it down and thereby free himself of it.

1917

THAT EARLY time was certainly wonderful. I lived entirely inwardly, almost all in my mind and own head. Nonetheless, or maybe precisely as a result, everything external had a thoroughly joyful ring to it. Incidentally, life was not in the least easy; I had some very hard times to get through, which was of course almost always my own fault.

I often compared myself to young girls, who are eternally full of longing. Sometimes I lay stretched out on my bed like a sick man. I had hundreds of strange urges.

A very learned older gentleman was unusually friendly toward me. He always looked at me with great attention, as though he knew all about the struggles taking place within my nature. No one else saw that in me. I was, from a certain point of view, plucky and bold, and at the same time shy. I went forth into life the way a child goes to school: timidly but not unwillingly.

I had a crude face and slim red hands. Whenever anyone criticized me I felt soft, but yet cold too, and sensitive, but yet coarse too. I possessed a slight tinge of all sorts of different qualities, a fact which now and then gave me a lot to think about. My activities consisted of the systematic exercise of patience and of scribbling on paper in highly respectable branch offices. Alas, I never did want to wear a formal shirt collar, and when it rained I never did seem to have an umbrella. The hat I wore was always noticeably inappropriate, and yet what I loved was precisely anything that did not look fashionable.