Robert Walser - Berlin Stories

1911 (?)

The Abyssinian lion at the Zoological Garden is most interesting. He’s performing in a tragedy, one that shows him simultaneously languishing and growing fat. He despairs (a nameless despair) and at the same time keeps himself nice and round. He thrives and at the same time is slowly tormenting himself to death. And all of this plays out before the eyes of the assembled spectators. I myself stood for a long time before his cage, utterly incapable of tearing my eyes away from this kingly drama. On a side note, incidentally: I should like to change professions, if this might be done expeditiously and with little effort, and become a painter of animals. I’d be able to paint my fill just of this caged-in lion. Has the esteemed literary reader ever looked closely and with proper attentiveness at the eye of an elephant? It sparkles with primordial grandeur. But hark! What’s that roaring? Ah, it’s our dramatist. He’s his own playwright and his own player. Although he sometimes appears to be quite beside himself, he never loses his composure, for his dignity is inborn. Dignity, then, and at the same time wildness. Just think how beautiful and majestic it is when he sleeps. But let’s have a look at him when he senses the approach of feeding time. He descends to the level of an impatient child, in love with the vision of the approaching feast. Then at least he has something to do: he can tear at fresh meat. He’s so good at eating. How oddly a caged animal like this must know — and to some extent love — his keeper. At rest, how divine he is. He appears to be in mourning, appears to be entertaining quite particular thoughts, and I am tempted to swear that the thoughts he is immersed in are beautiful and sublime. Have you ever let him have a good look at you? Try it, attract his attention sometime. His gaze is the gaze of a god. And then what is he like when he grows uneasy and strides up and down in his prison cell, pressing his princely strength against the walls of his cage. Always up and down. Up and down. For hours on end. What a scene! Up and down, and his powerful tail thrashes the ground.

1910

Elsewhere, in the quiet provinces, the artist can easily find himself surrounded by melancholias. Lost in thought, he sits at the secluded window of his medieval digs, a strange twilight flowing all about him, and without so much as stirring he sends his daydreams out into the sweeping landscape. No one comes. Nothing disturbs his reverie. An inexpressible silence rules the surrounds. In the capital, on the other hand, there is no dearth of disturbances, it’s like a lively warehouse of good cheer, and naturally this is something our man finds beneficial. The souls of artists must always be woken a little from the magic spell in which they lie fettered. Inside almost every artist — certainly in every true one — lies a fairy-tale realm. In the land of fairy tales, however, a great deal of slumbering occurs. One doesn’t stir much. Are not today’s German provinces much like a dreaming, slumbering fairy tale? Magdeburg, for instance. Does Magdeburg possess its own self-sufficient and self-assured intellectual life? Not particularly. That’s the problem.

Berlin, by comparison — how splendid! A city like Berlin is an ill-mannered, impertinent, intelligent scoundrel, constantly affirming the things that suit him and tossing aside everything he tires of. Here in the big city you can definitely feel the waves of intellect washing over the life of Berlin society like a sort of bath. An artist here has no choice but to pay attention. Elsewhere he is permitted to stop up his ears and sink into willful ignorance. Here this is not allowed. Rather, he must constantly pull himself together as a human being, and this compulsion encircling him redounds to his advantage. But there are yet other things as well.

Berlin never rests, and this is glorious. Each dawning day brings with it a new, agreeably disagreeable attack on complacency, and this does the general sense of indolence good. An artist possesses, much like a child, an inborn propensity for beautiful, noble sluggardizing. Well, this slug-a-beddishness, this kingdom, is constantly being buffeted by fresh storm-winds of inspiration. The refined, silent creature is suddenly blustered full of something coarse, loud, and unrefined. There is an incessant blurring together of various things, and this is good, this is Berlin, and Berlin is outstanding.

The excellent gentleman from the provinces, however, should by no means imagine that here in the city there are not lonelinesses as well. The metropolis contains lonelinesses of the most frightful sort, and anyone who wishes to sample this exquisite dish can eat his fill of it here. He can experience what it means to live in deserts and wastes. The metropolitan artist has no dearth of opportunities to see and speak to no one at all. All he has to do is make himself unpopular among certain arbiters of taste or else consistently fixate on failures, and in no time he’ll have sunk into the most splendid, most blossoming of abandonments.

The artist who is crowned with success lives in the metropolis as if in an enchanting Oriental dream. He hastens from one elegant household to the affluent next, sits down unhesitatingly at the opulently laden dining tables, and while chewing and slurping provides the entertainment. He passes his days in a virtual state of intoxication. And his talent? Does an artist such as this neglect his talent? What a question! As if one might cast off one’s gifts without so much as a by-your-leave. On the contrary. Talent unconsciously grows stronger when one throws oneself into life. You mustn’t be constantly tending and coddling it like a sickly something. It shrivels up when it’s too timidly cared for.

The artistic individual is nonetheless permitted to pace up and down, like a tiger, in his cave of artistic creation, mad with desire and worry over achieving some output of beauty. As no one sees this, there is no one to hold it against him. In company, he should be as breezy, affable, and charming as he can manage, neither too self-important nor too unimportant either. One thing he must never forget: he is all but required to pay court to beautiful, wealthy women at least a little.

After approximately five or six years have passed, the artist — even if he comes from peasant stock — will feel at home in the metropolis. His parents would appear to have lived and given birth to him here. He feels indebted, bound, and beholden to this strange rattling, clattering racket. All the scurrying and fluttering about now seem to him a sort of nebulous, beloved maternal figure. He no longer thinks of ever leaving again. Whether things go well with him or poorly, whether he comes down in the world or flourishes, no matter, it “has” him, he is forever under its spell, and it would be impossible for him to bid this magnificent restlessness adieu.

1910

Of kutsch it is known that he has three unfinished plays in his armoire, besides which he’s at work on a fourth, using material borrowed from Maupassant.

Hey there, Kutsch!

Kutsch finds it distasteful to be so flippantly addressed, he’s distrustful and perhaps has good cause for this, as he is striving for ultimate greatness, and all who strive for greatness aren’t so keen on rubbing shoulders with their fellow man.

People of this sort are always envisioning a certain far-off something. Such individuals find themselves constantly faced with the necessity that whispers to them: Evolve! — Kutsch needs to evolve, it’s at the top of his list, and this same uncanny force is always tormenting him a little, making him prick up his ears and commanding that he assume a stricken, nervous facial expression.