Robert Walser - Selected Stories

Assuming I am not delirious, but hale and hearty, as I hope and would not like to doubt I am, proceeding gently on my way I passed by a country barbershop, with whose contents and owner, however, I have, it seems to me, no cause to concern myself, because I am of the opinion that it is not yet urgently necessary for me to have my hair cut, though this would be perhaps quite jolly and amusing. Further, I passed by a cobbler’s workshop, which reminded me of the poet Lenz, a genius, but unhappy, who learned to make, and made, shoes while his soul and spirit were unhinged. Did I not also look in passing into a schoolhouse and into a friendly schoolroom, exactly when the schoolmistress was issuing questions and commands? This is a favorable occasion on which to remark how eagerly the walker for an instant wished he might once more be a child and a disobedient, mischievous schoolboy, go to school again and be able to harvest and receive a well-earned thrashing in punishment for naughtinesses and outrages committed. Speaking of thrashings, our opinion might here be mentioned and interlarded that a countryman deserves to be well and truly thrashed, if he is not hesitant to cut down the pride of the landscape and the glory of his own hearth and home, namely his high and ancient nut tree, in order to trade it in for despicable, wicked, foolish money. For I passed by a very lovely farmhouse, with a high, splendid, and luxuriant nut tree; and here the thought of trading and thrashing rose in my mind. “This high majestical tree,” I cried aloud, “which protects and beautifies this house so wonderfully, spinning for it a cage of such serious, joyous homeliness and intimate domesticity, this tree, I say, is a divinity, a holy thing, and a thousand lashes to the unfeeling and impious owner of it if he dare make all this golden, divinely green magic of leaves vanish to gratify his thirst for money, which is the vilest and most contemptible thing on earth. Such cretins should be kicked out of the parish. To Siberia or Tierra del Fuego with such defilers and destroyers of what is beautiful. But, thank God, there are also farmers who have hearts and senses for what is delicate and good.”

As regards the tree, the greed, the countryman, the transportation to Siberia, and the thrashing which the countryman apparently deserves because he fells the tree, I have perhaps gone too far, and I must confess that I let my indignation carry me away. Friends of beautiful trees will nevertheless understand my displeasure, and agree with my so energetically expressed regret. For all I care, the thousand lashes can be returned to me forthwith. To the expression “cretin” I myself deny applause. The expression is coarse, and I dislike it, and I therefore beg the reader’s forgiveness. As I have already had to beg his forgiveness several times, I have become quite a dab hand at self-excuse. “Unfeeling and impious owner” also I had no real need to say. The mind gets overheated, and this ought to be avoided. That is obvious. My grief over the downfall of a beautiful, tall, ancient tree can still stand, and I certainly make the worst of it; nobody can hinder me from that. “Kicked out of the parish” is an improvident phrase, and as for the thirst for money, which I have called vile, I suppose that I have myself at some time or another offended, fallen short, and sinned in this respect, and that certain wretchednesses and vilenesses have not remained utterly alien and unknown to me. These words show that I practice a policy of softheartedness, which has a beauty that is not to be found anywhere else; but I consider this policy to be indispensable. Propriety enjoins us to be careful to deal as severely with ourselves as with others, and to judge others as mildly and gently as we judge ourselves, which latter we do, as is well known, at all times instinctively. It is delicious, is it not, the way I neatly correct my mistakes and smooth over the offenses? In making admissions I prove myself peace-loving, and in rounding off the angles and making soft what is rough I am a subtle, delicate attenuator, show a sense of good tone, and am diplomatic. Of course I have disgraced myself; but I hope that my good will is appreciated.

If anybody still says now that I am indiscreet, imperious, and a despot blundering about at will, then I maintain, that is to say, I dare to hope that I have the right to maintain, that the person who says such a thing is sorely mistaken. With such continual considerateness and gentility, perhaps no other author has ever thought of the reader.

Well, now I can obligingly attend to a château and aristocratic palace, and as follows: I politely play my trump card; for with a half-ruined stately home and patrician house, with an age-gray, park-surrounded, proud knight’s castle and lordly residence such as now enters my view, one can make a great song and dance, excite respect, arouse envy, inspire wonder, and pocket the proceeds. Many a poor but elegant man of letters would live with the greatest of pleasure, the highest satisfaction, in such a castle, or stronghold, with courtyard and drive for haughty carriages embossed with coats-of-arms. Many a poor but pleasure-loving painter dreams of residing temporarily on delicious old-fashioned country estates. Many a city girl, educated but perhaps poor as a church mouse, thinks with melancholy rapture and idealistic fervor of ponds, grottoes, high chambers and placidities, and of herself waited upon by hurrying footmen and noble-minded knights. On the lordly residence I saw here, that is, rather in it than on it, could be read the date 1709, which naturally quickened and intensified my interest. With a certain rapture I looked as a naturalist and antiquary into the dreaming, ancient, curious garden, where, in a pool with a pleasant splashing fountain, I discovered and proved with ease the presence of a most peculiar fish, which was one meter in length; namely, a solitary sheatfish. Likewise I saw and established with romantic bliss the presence of a garden pavilion in Moorish or Arabian style, beautifully and opulently painted in sky-blue, mysterious star-silver, gold, brown, and noble, serious black. I supposed and sensed at once with the most subtle intelligence that the pavilion must date from, and have been erected in, about the year 1858, a deduction, conjecture, and scenting-out which perhaps entitles me sometimes confidently to read with a rather complacent expression on my face, and in a rather self-confident manner, a pertinent paper on the subject in the Town Hall Chambers, before a large and enthusiastic public. Then very probably the press would mention my paper, which could only mean an extreme pleasure for me; since sometimes it mentions all sorts of things with not even one small dying word. As I was studying the Arabian or Persian garden pavilion, it occurred to me to think: “How beautiful it must be here at night, when everything is veiled in an almost impenetrable darkness, when all around it is quiet, black, and soundless, pines gently towering out of the darkness, midnight feelings arrest the solitary wanderer, and now a lamp, which spreads a sweet yellow light, is brought into the pavilion by a beautiful, richly jeweled noblewoman, who then, impelled by her peculiar whim and moved by a curious access of soul, begins, at the piano, with which in this case our summerhouse must naturally be equipped, to play music to which, if the dream be permitted, she sings in a delightfully beautiful, pure voice. How one would listen there, how one would dream, how happy one would be made by this night music!”

But it was not midnight and far and wide neither a courtly Middle Ages nor a year 1500 or 1700, but broad daylight and a working day, and a troupe of people, together with a most uncourtly and unknightly, most crude and most impertinent automobile, which came my way, rudely disturbed me at my wealth of learned and romantic observations, and threw me in a trice out of the domain of castle poetry and reverie on things past, so that I cried out instinctively: “It really is most vulgar the way people impede me here from making my elegant studies and from plunging into the most superb profundities. I could be indignant; but instead I would rather be meek, and suffer, and endure with a good grace. Sweet is thought about beauty and loveliness that are passed away, sweet is the noble, pale image of drowned and perished beauty; but on the world around and on one’s fellow men one has not therefore the right to turn one’s back, and one may not think that one is entitled to resent people and their contrivances because they disregard the state of mind of him who is absorbed in the realms of history and thought.”