Robert Walser - Selected Stories

There’s that knocking again.

Apparently it’s a rug being worked on. I envy all those who, thrashing, exercise harmlessly.

An instructor once took several students over his knee and spanked them thoroughly, to impress upon them that bars exist only for adults. I also was among the group beneficially beaten.

Anyone who wants to hang a picture on the wall must first pound in a nail. To this end, one must knock.

“Your knocking disturbs me.”

“That doesn’t concern me.”

“Good, then I shall compliantly see to the removal of this irritation.”

“It won’t hurt you.”

A polite conversation, don’t you agree?

Knocking, knocking! I’d like to stop up my ears.

Also, I once dusted as a servant the Persian carpets for the household of a count. The sound of it echoed through the magnificent landscape.

Clothes, mattresses, etc., are beaten.

So a modern city is full of knocking. Anyone who worries over something inevitable seems a simpleton.

“Go ahead, knock as much as you like.”

“Is that meant ironically?”

“Yes, a little.”

[1923]

Translated by Tom Whalen and Carol Gehrig

DOESN’T it sound like sheer swank to bring to these lips, Titus narrated, that my mother was a princess, and that bandits kidnapped me in order to make me one of them? I say that only for the sake of ornamentation, so that you won’t be bored with me from the very beginning. If someone asked me about my birthplace, I would declare it was Goslar, though with that I would be telling a juicy lie. Never was I spoiled by my mother, for which I should be only too pleased. Goslar, so I read some time ago, is enchanting in its spring raiment, and since I tend to be a trusting soul, I readily accepted the assertion. While with the robbers, I learned to wash, sew, cook, and play Chopin, but I would like to request that you not take this statement too strictly. It seems to me like I am properly fantasizing here, for which I should be granted indulgence. Should the poet not be allowed to play as freely upon the instrument of his imagination as, for example, a musician on the piano? As a lieutenant I had a servant who spoiled me. I came to a city, went through the streets, and searched and found an appropriate job, obtained room and board with a family, whose head was as surly as his wife was indulgent. I taught both their boys the art of cigarette rolling and learned English in the company of a young woman. Tall and pale, like a breathed-upon rose from romanticism, sat, kindheartedness in her eyes, a waitress in her room; she made me, with two words which she did not begrudge me, happy, even though I did not yet rightly know the meaning of bliss. A third tenant, a widow, got so familiar with me that the grumbly one announced that he could not sanction such flirtations in his dwelling. Peace is a difficult problem. I took to writing only to give it up little by little. To the east of an enormous shopping district, I met in a bar a dark-eyed girl enveloped in yellow. Doesn’t that, however, sound like rummaging up memories and couldn’t it easily have the effect of sentimentality in print? For a mediocre type like me it was the same as for those whose main experience is to pass many people by without making contact with them. I am unusual perhaps only in that I lost terribly much time and perceived this fact with pleasure. Instead of older, I grew younger. That I became a bit duller is something I definitely take pride in. I am proud and narrow-minded and I tugged about on my nose so persistently it obtained a charming form, prayed constantly to the dear Lord for a childish appearance, which I also succeeded in getting. My heart is a snake’s nest, it’s no wonder whenever I raise my eyes pleadingly to people who for that reason think me docile, but what kind of sentence-disfiguring improprieties are these! He who does not have the good intention to tell a lie is hopelessly lost. Honesty is seldom respectable. I have a confession to make, I carry about a love that partly troubles me, but that also gives me wings. Required by a cooperative for the promotion of poetry to deliver a new manuscript, I hied, wagged, and ran my way into every coffeehouse where a lady seemed condescending enough to allow me to look up to her. Since then I am both the palest and most ruddy devotee. It’s just a pity that Solomonian songs of love have already been written and exist in the books at hand; how gladly would I steal through the servant’s entrance into the palaces of literature and serve with rapture. Yesterday I went to the country, which was dressed in a kind of early-spring gold, took off my hat to sweet Mama Nature, sat down on a small bench, and cried. In the multiple branching network of the methods of rejuvenescence, tears are, to my experience, a not unimportant point of intersection. People no longer let their fingernails grow. The opposite kind thinks about marriage. Hair must be washed every week. The waves amused themselves at my feet, and throughout the valley, which consisted of gentle hills gently following one another, there was a serenity like that cast in the face of a man who has remained good, who has lived for years without life turning him to disfavor. The oldness and youthfulness of the earth are wonderful. With your permission, I shall speak and sing about a small dancing brook falling down a wall of rock, sparkling silver, laughing and divinely beautiful, solemn and merry as it splashed on the rocks, broke away as a small contribution to the colossus ocean, where in thousand-fathom depths innocent monsters swim eternally around wet and hidden trees, luxury liners decorate the surface, and I shall talk about soft shadows on the meadow, small houses on the incline, and a youth lying down. It would be dreadful if the reader just yawned! With a languishing soul and with eyes opened wide like circles from yearning, I went into a peaceful garden where the sun faintly shone through, listened to the orchestra giving a sympathetic concert here, whereby I apparently behaved bizarrely because out of pity a girl fell over in a death of daggerlike piercing regrets; whoever thinks this possible will be happy for the rest of his life. I let people who take to me build on the structure of their friendship as long as they wish; they never become bothered by me because I notice them not at all. Many incautiously take me to be uncivilized. My most exalted is so beautiful and I worship her with such a holy respect that I attach myself to another and therewith must seize the opportunity to recover from the strain of sleepless nights, to relate to the successor how dear the past one was, to tell her, “I love you just as much.”

[1925]

Translated by Tom Whalen and Carol Gehrig

WE shall call him Vladimir, since it is a rare name and in point of fact he was unique. Those to whom he appeared foolish tried to win a glance, a word from him, which he rarely gave. In inferior clothes he behaved more sanguinely than in elegant ones, and was basically a good person who merely made the mistake of falsely attributing and affixing to himself faults which he did not have. He was hard primarily on himself. Isn’t that inexcusable?

Once he lived with a married couple and was impossible to drive away. “It is time that you left us alone,” was intimated to him; he seemed hardly able to imagine it, saw the woman smiling and the man turn pale. He was chivalry itself. Serving always gave him a lofty notion of the bliss of existence. He could not see pretty women burdened with small boxes, packages, and so on, without springing forth and expressing the wish to be helpful, at which he first always fought back the slightest fear of intruding.

From whence did Vladimir descend? Well, certainly from none other than his parents. It seems peculiar that he admits when down on his luck to having often been happy, when successful to having been morose, and that he says the driving force of his existence is his industriousness. No one ever saw such a satisfied and at the same time dissatisfied man. No one was quicker and in the very next instant more irresolute.