Robert Walser: A Schoolboy's Diary and Other Stories

Perhaps the rebel in the empty field had suffered an injustice, but what will come of anyone who can no longer bear injustice, no longer endure a hard fate? Don’t you agree, dear reader, that they who accept life in good spirits, whatever bad things life might also bring, are blessed?

Words such as those given just above are actually what Hans says, not the author, who indeed would do best just to stay in the background and keep the most scrupulous silence, rather than pressing forward, which doesn’t look good at all.

Tact and discretion are never anything other than attractive. Modestly stepping aside can never be recommended as a continual practice in strong enough terms.

Such severe and merciless dealings with oneself as presented here may admittedly be somewhat strange.

What blatant iron will and manifest adamantine discipline!

Whereupon the forcefully reprimanded writer sits up, although in truth he is rather shy, straight and says, as apologetically as apparently unfortunately rather cockily, that the tempting smell and scent of rösti potatoes with bacon is wafting if he is not grossly mistaken into his nose!

The matter must be looked into with the same promptitude as that with which it is reported that Hans has once again one fine Sunday afternoon, as on so many before, betaken himself on a jaunty and pleasant walk.

It was impossible for him to remember clearly after the fact every particular little detail concerning that lovely afternoon. He knew only that it was warm and nice out, and that the walker sat down first on a boulder in the fields but later for half an hour on the banks of a bluely quietly delightfully flowing stream. A man passing by said: Hello. To our hero, surely more of an idyllic than a dramatic, more of a comic than a tragic hero, it felt wonderful to be able to respond to this polite greeting in a free and natural way, to sit amid the green under a blue sky with just a few clouds, and to gently regard the merry area lying all around him, which, for as far as he could see, was green, yellow, blue, and white, and through which breathed a wafting, childishly gentle, adorable wind from some, Hans himself was not quite sure which, direction.

He felt the urge to stand up and keep walking. Near an old and honorable building, formerly a monastery, he had himself brought across the river. The ferryman struck him as a figure from Dürer. The battles of Grandson and Murten came clearly into his mind, and yet the beautiful, good, calm, and cheerful country gave off the pleasant scent of peace, unremitting love of one’s neighbor, lasting amicable accord, harmony, fidelity, and kindheartedness more than that of tumult, clashing weapons, battle cries, hostilities, and brutal disturbance of tranquillity.

Beautiful, respectable houses and cheerful parks stood and lay peacefully thereabouts. An attractive antiquity enveloped every object. Hans abandoned himself to a dream in which he was once again a little boy gently strolling into the Sunday evening light with his father and mother and brothers and sisters. While he dreamed along these lines, it seemed as though everything around him had turned infinitely soft and lovely, and he found it impossible to suppress a sweet feeling of melancholy.

But soon enough he was cheerful again. Love of humanity and the sorrows thereof, a lust for life and the pain therefrom rose exquisitely up like tall ghostly shapes in the pale, golden air of the summer evening. Softly the figures seemed to wave to him. A scent of river water spread through the region. Later, he was sitting in front of a stately guesthouse where, while couples strolled modestly down immaculate country roads and horse-drawn carts, bicycles, parents with children, and all sorts of other Sunday people passed slowly or rapidly by, he chatted excitedly with the comely hostess.

The calm of Sunday, the joy and calm of evening, ambled softly but majestically past, with wide eyes, as breath, memory, and feeling. From the picturesque village’s chimneys puffed and smiled a bluish dinnertime smoke sighing softly through the still air. Now, in every kitchen, so Hans thought, they were making coffee and rösti, and having said this to himself he felt a most vigorous desire to once again dig in to some rösti himself.

He left the guesthouse. Numerous busy fisherman lined the evening canal. The railroad bridge shimmered silver and pink. What a monstrous wave of enchantment flooded in from everywhere across the whole world and covered everything.

Hans stepped into a village grocery store that was completely full of the smell of rösti, which made him practically perish with cravings, although of course he did not dare to say anything since it was hardly proper to step into a building without so much as a by your leave and help eat dinner.

In any case, he had been able to chat with a guesthouse hostess, which, admittedly, was certainly not much, but surely was also not little. He valued constructive conversations highly.

To secretly relish the beautiful figure of Frau B— (whom he referred to as “the Oriental”) was either not at all or very important to him, depending on whether such behavior seemed pleasant to him at that particular moment. He always gave over a bit of time to suchlike and similar things. In the evening, on the promenade, he would now and then stroll along close behind the abovementioned lady, thinking all the while that it might perhaps be nicer for him if he were arm in arm with her instead, but nonetheless just the enjoyment of her captivating gait as well as the sight of her bewitching back left him fully satisfied. Enthusiasts are happy with little, in fact even often extremely miniscule things. One time, he met her on the lakeshore, where she cast him a fleeting glance that seemed to contain a certain quantity of regard. As a result, Hans flew straight, without in the least pausing to reflect upon whether such a journey was a good idea, to seventh heaven and remained there for a rather long time fully out of his senses.

Early one morning, he stood by the divinely glittering lake, near the landing, where he was witness to an utterly charming and poetic scene, namely by virtue of the fact that a group of schoolgirls was just returning home from their summer field trip in a ship sparkling magnificently in the morning sunshine.

The adorable thing about it was that the children were met by a stately choir or municipal band with lovely, graceful, cheerful melodies, giving them a reception as ceremonious as it was amusing and which looked extraordinarily lovely in the bright, happy landscape. Hans had never seen anything like it before, and just as little would anything nearly as nice subsequently ever come before his eyes again.

The beholder could never forget how the wonderful lake sparkled, everything light blue and light green and fairy white, how the whole surroundings smiled as though with darling, innocent girl’s lips, how all the brightly clad children marched on one after the other to brisk and lively music, strolled along into the city, instantly taking on shape and form at such a charming opportunity and turning as it were into the fluttering of doves, the twittering of swallows, or, better yet, a roundelay of angels dancing in the air, everything seeming so sweet and good and kind and happy and merry, and he impressed it upon his memory far too firmly to ever again be able to let it fall away much less throw it off.

Still, even other than that there were things he saw that he later liked thinking back on.

For example, while standing by the lake in an evening rain shower, he saw people, holding umbrellas open over their heads and their clothes, gondoling comfortably back and forth across the lake deep into the night, a variety of conveyance that gave him a vivid picture of the customs and traditions in China or Japan, although his feet and shoes had never in his life trod upon either the former or the latter, nor had he seen either with his own eyes. On the other hand, a friend who had been there had told him a lot of stories about it.