Robert Walser - A Schoolboy's Diary and Other Stories

What doesn’t a person experience who gets it into his head to write prose pieces and send them off to all kinds of editors in the hope that these pieces might correspond to their wishes and fit their needs? If anyone intending to throw himself into or upon the writing of prose pieces should ask my advice, I would advise against, by telling him that I consider his intention unfortunate.

The day-, night-, comic, tragic, melodramatic, show, farcical, doorical, decorative, and artistic pieces I constantly, hopefully sent out proved to be unusable most of the time, rarely if ever fit the needs, and generally utterly failed to correspond to the wishes.

Did I let these betrayed hopes deter me? Not a chance! Again and again I found the courage to produce and hand in, complete and send out. For ten years I indefatigably stuffed people’s mailboxes, pockets, and warehouses full of material and provisions, which made the Herr Bosses laugh themselves silly.

I filled other people’s gaps with prose pieces. My mind goes numb to think of it. Ministers shook with laughter when they saw my cartloads arrive. I took up whole freight trains with my missives. And whatever I let fly was graciously received.

Where other people had bright heads and were clever right down to their fingertips, I was dumb all the way to the top and another three feet up too. While I went around naked, luxury and prosperity reigned among other doubtless nice people. Whenever I emptied out my own drawer, I felt strange. But in creating a yawning emptiness for myself, I was eagerly ensuring abundance for otherwise nice and charming other people. Oh how the gods and demigods made fun of this humble submitter’s simplemindedness! Many a time they were afraid they would burst with laughter. On the one hand, exuberance; on the other hand, tears. On one side, giants; on the other side, dwarfs. Here masters; there slaves.

Whenever I humbly inquired whether my little children were being well taken care of and were nice and healthy, or even if they were still alive, I would receive the shattering comeback: “None of your business.” So, his own children were no longer any of their father’s business, and the things and thingumajigees produced from the sweat of my own brow were now things about which I did not have the least right to speak.

One time, I was told: “We lost your prose pieces in the chaos and hubbub. Please don’t hold it against us and please send us something new. We would like to lose that too, whereupon you can send in something new yet again. Work hard. Bite back any superfluous ill temper. We do feel bad for you.”

What good would it have done me to cry “Never again shall I write and send in!”? Did it not give additional luster to my reputation as the most gentle-spirited of men for me to squander a few more new and beautiful prose pieces that same day or the one following? As God is my witness, a donkey is piled high with burdens, and as long as there are sheep in this world the wolves will have a field day, but I would rather be humble and keep quiet, and busily, dutifully write more nice little prose pieces. Should anyone intending to fling himself into the sending out of prose pieces ask my advice, I would advise against, by telling him that I find his intention comic.

“Take that! I want to take revenge on you so that you will learn to tremble and beg for forgiveness,” one of the dervishes who dispose over prosperity and indisposition wrote me one day, as though life were a card game.

Once something has finally been made perfect, with trouble and care, and a poor, scrawny, fragile little prose piece begging for mercy appears in print, the author faces new problems, namely the never sufficiently esteemed public. I would rather deal with I don’t know what than with people who take an interest in the products of my pen. Someone said to me, “Aren’t you ashamed to go before the public with such scribbling?” That’s the thanks you get if you try to earn your bread by supplying your fellow man with prose pieces.

I intend to adapt to everything happily, as long as I no longer have to rely on false hopes. Finally I am free, and I rejoice, and if I don’t rejoice then at least I laugh, and if I don’t laugh then at least I take a deep breath, and if I don’t take a deep breath then at least I rub my hands together, and if someone with certain intentions were to ask me for advice, I would advise him against, by telling him what I would tell anyone who sought such information from me in that connection.

It goes without saying that at the first hint of spring I used to write a merry spring piece, in the fall season a brownish autumn piece, and for Christmas a Christmas or snowstorm piece. In future I intend to forego such things and never again do what I have done for ten long years. At last I have drawn a firm line under the truly astoundingly great column of figures and am done with pursuing that for which I am not sufficiently intelligent.

Had I the audacity to send in refractory and unvarnished truths, I would surely have been enlightened with the following words: “Don’t you know that there is mighty little freedom anywhere you look? That everyone conforms damned well to everyone else? Put that in your pipe and smoke it or write it and be glad if you can get away with it.”

Things don’t look good for me. No doubt about that. Earlier it was easy, I used to put an ad in the paper: “Young man seeks occupation.” Today I have to say: “Man alas no longer young but rather already somewhat elderly and worn-down begs for mercy and a refuge.” Times have changed, and the little years flit by like snow in April. I am a poor man, no longer young, with just the ability necessary to turn out prose pieces, like this for example:

“Trot, trot, trot. What’s wrong with me? Am I stupid? What will become of me? An office boy, or what? I am strongly considering the necessity of some such thing. One, two, three and four, five and six. Between sleeping and waking I heard a voice saying that as though it would continue for all eternity. Oh, a cry escaped me then, and more than ever before I was aware of the sum total of my smallness. No, a person is not large, he is weak and helpless. Well that’s that.”

I sent “Trot, Trot, Trot” to twenty-one to thirty-eight editors in the hope that it might fit a need, but twenty-one to thirty-eight times this hope turned out to be false, and this little Gothic piece failed to meet with a favorable reception anywhere.

Thirty to forty superiors refused to take this unquestionably superlative piece. Instead they rejected it as firmly as could be and sent it straight back to me.

One of these dictators wrote to me: “Mon dieu, what are you thinking?” Another opined: “Ach, why don’t you pass along your fairy-tale piece to The Venetian Night , I’m sure they’ll be tremendously happy to get it. As for us, we would ask to be spared any further trot, trot, trotting and five-to-sixeries.”

I sent “Trot, Trot, Trot” to the abovementioned newspaper, which thanked me politely by saying: “Ach, we would much rather you had understood that this charming piece was not quite right for us.”

“If at first you don’t succeed,” I thought, and I sent the piece to Cuba. They don’t seem interested in it at all. I think the best thing for everyone would be for me to sit in the corner and keep quiet.

October 1919

WHEN HANS, somewhat later, after much in his life had changed and he found himself occupied with entirely different things, thought back every now and then to that time, which he had primarily spent sauntering, strolling, and ambling around, the first thing he liked to remember, with a deep inner pleasure, was how one evening, after dinner, when it was just beginning to darken, he went out to the nearby lake where he sat down on a bench provided for such restful sojourns under the finely forking, delicate branches of a willow tree, so that, while in conformity to the gloomy weather it was raining out of the gray summer evening sky into the lake as though crying as if out of tear-filled eyes, he could sit for an hour there and dream.