Robert Walser - A Schoolboy's Diary and Other Stories

Hans was glad he did not live in Sparta, where something like that could happen to him. He definitely preferred Athens.

On one of his multifarious exploratory expeditions, which he naturally was rarely or never in the habit of letting stray beyond his close vicinity, he met on a lonely mountaintop an old farm laborer with whom he formed an extraordinarily suitable, warm, although only fleeting friendship. In the course of their enjoyable conversation it came out that the laborer was an openhearted, poor, truly very poor, and, it bears repeating, poor man. Yes, there are poor, unspeakably laboriously and hardworking people forced to swallow the bitterest fate in this seemingly often so free and rich and happy-go-lucky world.

Moreover, in good time our wanderer, patroller, and reconnaissance marcher got to know a country inn that resembled an aristocratic baronial villa more than what he would have imagined it might resemble. There there were God knows what kind of noble, in many ways probably misunderstood, melancholy-patrician, gentle, exacting goldfish shimmering and wagging their fins back and forth in an utterly strange and peculiar way in grottoes with fountains, which seemed entirely as it should be. Alongside them, of course, there were also other, not particularly interesting fishes, ordinary, banal, occasionally contemptible, astonishingly undistinguished, pathetic.

Elegant ornamental clocks of breathtaking age placed in wonderful rooms were to be found, which were able to make Hans quite simply go insane with wonder, swoon with rapture, and half lose his mind with admiration, which he promptly did, since he was easily amazed and enjoyed being so.

In addition, on the occasion of a nighttime railroad journey he saw sitting next to a happy husband an absolutely not happy, rather, so it seemed, utterly unhappy and thus pitiable wife. Hans might almost have become embroiled in an admittedly perhaps romantic but nonetheless obviously truly very stupid and unnecessary adventure out of sheer precipitous overwhelming pity. Luckily the thought occurred to him in time that in this particular case it might just as plausibly be a question of travel fatigue as inconsolability and marital drama, for which reason he thereupon laughed at himself as happily and heartily as could be.

In addition, he nosed out and discovered occasionally two to three pictures of student life that seemed intended to attest that no one in the world lived lives as jovially and lustily as students did. Furthermore, various effective colored images from the Franco-Prussian War of ’70 were amiably located and superlatively ferreted out by our fact finder, reconnoiterer, and nuncio in a country inn.

An exquisite baroque castle portal of skillfully wrought iron was happily both perceived and afterward attentively inspected again and again.

Additional especially remarkable curiosities included the sign for a pub, depicting a gracious deer, as well as another guesthouse sign, portraying in a style demonstrating certain similarities with Assyrian art a strange lion with its tongue stuck out.

A slender, proud lady dressed in black whom Hans encountered near a fashionable, exclusive grand hotel in the forest, thereby ascertaining that she had penetrating eyes, should also be mentioned.

Let us also tack on here several pieces of marble animal garden statuary, even though marble is harder and more monumental than it is dainty and suitable for tacking on.

On a bright little sunny expedition or gentle march that carried Hans past multiple charming gardens and all sorts of prospering orchards, he arrived at a village church with a weathercock flashing gold on the tip of the spire and magnificent Gothic windows whose merry glass paintings he found charming.

Everything around the church was bright and at the same time dark green; damp and at the same time shimmering in the sun. He entered the church- or graveyard, where he thoughtfully and deliberately read the pale, barely still legible inscriptions on the old gravestones that were darkly ensnared in boxwood and other unusual shrubbery whose leaves and needles were like slender quills and tender hands.

In this contemplative site of the unavoidable end of earthly life, it smelled of and was resplendent with the beauty and happiness of summer. Life and death, blossoming and decay, birdsongs and human graves, blue sky and memorial inscriptions seemed here to have grown deeply intertwined with each other. Hans stayed for a long time in the little village cemetery that contained such a sweet poetry.

Afterward, he saw a parsonage that could just as well have been a fancy gentleman’s house as a modest and pious clergyman’s. The merry sound of piano music poured out of the open window into the happy morning countryside.

“The pastor here seems to be a music-lover, unless by chance this person playing so prettily is a pastoress. Since those who love music are surely always also lovers of humankind, it is unquestionably very fitting for a preacher of God’s word to be a lover and faithful friend of melodies. I truly envy this unknown (to me) clergyman, who can live in such a beautiful, agreeable country house and ardently indulge in early-morning piano reveries. If I did not have to be afraid of coming at an extremely inopportune time, or of seeming to be shameless, impertinent, and cheeky to a clearly high degree, I would be truly happy to enter that stately house in order to pay a passing visit and painstakingly get to know all of the splendors and idiosyncrasies it might contain. Still, being permitted to observe and inspect such a fine building only from without can and should be enough to make me happy, and sincerely so.”

Silently saying this and similar things to himself, the walker walked peacefully on, casting his attentive eyes upon a homey rope-maker’s workshop situated under tall fruit trees. Diverse and sundry rural and rustic beauty and secrets of native intelligence and amicability were everywhere there, calmly and grandly strolling along. The farmland spreading far and wide resembled, in its beautiful, rich fecundity and with its many pleasant faces and things, a folk song or hymn, honest and profound and good in every sense, full of simplicity but nonetheless also full of grandeur.

Attractive houses turned up, sturdy and friendly. One shabby little house on a gently sloping meadow looked in its kindly negligibility like a proclamation of peace, an expression of the enjoyment of existence, an embodiment of unassuming joie de vivre.

Hans saw beehives as well as bees flying about in the bright air, likewise chicken coops as well as clucking chickens, likewise a pussycat luxuriously sunning itself and an additional adorable tiny black-and-white kitten.

Now here, now there he rambled around transfigured, silently enchanted, enraptured, and totally and completely entertained, found himself in a stretch of woods, walked nice and straight back out of it, reached meadows and fields, came upon a crowd of schoolboys, and emerged in a remote village lane where as punishment for his roving around he was extremely frighteningly barked and yapped at by a vigilant dog.

Everywhere he went and looked, he found always one and the same beauty, cheer, and heart. What would have been the point of any variations? Similar things, identical things, must again and again be good and beautiful and lovable enough anew. Without question, one and the same thing remains always the most beautiful and best. Why should it ever change? The same things were always highly surprising for him. Is not one year also like another, and every individual life likewise? Are not repetitions more welcome than oppositions? Calm, gentle, dear equanimity not more desirable than hard, chaotic mayhem and drastic differences? Must something that seems in some way right and just then be violently replaced by something different? Wouldn’t all this goodness and pleasurability be merely interrupted by novelty and change? Does not the reasonable person always heartily welcome the sight of that which was once pleasant and inspiriting in ever new sympathetic similar or very same forms?