A Schoolboy's Diary and Other Stories

by Robert Walser

  1917

  A MODEL STUDENT

  ONE OF my classmates was, even as a boy, frightfully respectable. The rest of us held him in meager esteem; his subservience repelled us. He had hardly any meat on his bones either; he was so thin he seemed transparent, and he walked around like a stick, disgustingly well-behaved and dainty. He was useless at games and jokes. You could laugh at the others, for instance Grüring, who stumbled over the poem “Firdusi,” but this fellow gave no occasion for even the slightest chuckle. As a result, he barely existed, although his lankiness, a field in which he apparently strove for the utmost achievement, was certainly noticeable enough. His parents lived in the new part of town. His father was a notary public; his mother stinted as buoyantly as her exemplar of a son in exhibiting qualities of physical amplitude. The memory of his staidness pains me. Is it permissible for us human creatures to be so uninteresting? The jokes of a schoolboy everyone considered a rascal made us laugh so hard, and his renown therefor did not prevent him from turning into a fine upstanding man. Today he acts as though he had never had a hilarious thought in his life. The other one, meanwhile, was beaten for his lack of flaws. God does not evince much appreciation for human inculpability. Oh, what the so-called dumb kids gave us by way of continual entertainment! Did we thank them for it? No, but we liked them, we respected them without being impressed by them. They were worth something, while this one, the most ambitious of us all, was felt to be a total stranger. How beastly it is to be so irreproachable. Returning after a long absence to the city that had witnessed my childhood, I discovered he had experienced misfortune. His rise went before a fall, and the good opinion he enjoyed in the eyes of his fellow citizens fell with him. Even the most striking can be struck down, no?

  1925

  THE TALE OF THE FOUR HAPPY FELLOWS

  ONCE UPON a time there were four utterly happy fellows. One of them was named Ludwig. He was lowered down on a rope. The rope broke in the process; Ludwig fell and lay on the ground. He wrote a substantial diary about his lying on the ground, in total darkness, and when the other three fellows had pulled him back up again, he showed them what he had accomplished in the meantime. They were amazed at his talent as well as his industriousness, and, as a sign of their regard, hugged him. Ludwig had been through so much while he was missing! And now all of the lines he had written in stillest stillness and darkest darkness were read. The four young fellows were, as mentioned, the happiest of boys, namely because they dwelled with their parents in paradise, a paradise called Severity.

  They had to present their backs or their heads all the time for the receiving of well-aimed blows and they did so with a pleasure that can properly be labeled indescribable. They grew up in this way, among spasms and terrors, and had gotten so used to trembling that they felt it as a kind of loss when they emerged into life and unlearned their sweet trepidation. You cannot possibly imagine how capable and hardworking these four young fellows became. One after another they became generals and fought like lions. They had magnificent hair, and treated their enemies in such a fashion that the latter had good reason to be exceedingly happy when the former chose to forgive them. Who would expect such conduct from boys raised amid such thrashings? Along with the abovementioned name of Ludwig were arrayed such appellations as Hugo, Julius, and Moritz. They grew very timid and afraid of their own capable efficiency.

  Perhaps that is too witty a way to put it. The truth is that they did every honor to their respective whereabouts. At home they had had to give polite thanks for blows received. Their parents considered it advisable to demand that from the scamps—but can we truly speak of scamps when all four of them grew up to be generals who fought like lions? So that the father who had given them all such a solid education would not go to rack and ruin, they sent him money, and so that the dear mama from whom her sons reaped such chastisements might not seem neglected, they carried her, whenever the occasion to do so presented itself, in their arms. Now those are some real model children, they are, don’t you think! Their ears had grown long from erstwhile pullings, yet how could that have done the rascals any harm, but how can we call generals that? What an infraction, oh, oh!

  How these four young fellows feared being beaten, and how they turned this fear to good use. Where fear had sat, now sat epaulettes. They who had once submitted and undergone now shrank from no power on earth. Now that is real success, don’t you think? Every time they had been beaten black and blue by Father, they had had to kiss Mother’s hand as a sign of their satisfaction. Now they were directing armies on the battlefield. The hundred thousand commands they issued were obeyed with burning zeal. Isn’t that incredible! I am happy to have been able to tell you about these four happy fellows, and hereby confidently conclude this most sensible, intelligent essay, although you might perhaps not share that opinion of it. Please, sincerely believe in these four young fellows.

  Unpublished, 1925

  SUMMER IN THE COUNTRY

  WHAT DO you do during a summer in the country? Good God man, what do you need to do? You relax. You get up on the late side. Your room is very clean, although the house you occupy barely deserves the name of hut. The village streets are soft and green. Grass covers them like a green carpet. People are friendly. You don’t have to think about anything. Meals are rather big. Breakfast is in a secluded garden arbor shot through with sunlight. The appetizing innkeeper carries the breakfast out in her hands, you need only reach out and take it. Bees hum around your head, which is a real summer-vacation head. Butterflies flutter from flower to flower and a kitten leaps through the grass. A wonderfully pleasant scent fills your nose. Afterward you take a walk on the edge of a little forest, the sea is deep blue and cheery brown sailboats sail over the beautiful water. Everything is beautiful. It all has a winning look. Then comes the hearty lunch, and a game of cards after lunch under the chestnut trees. In the afternoon, swimming in the water park. The waves in the pool refresh and revive you when they beat against you. The sea is now gentle, now rough. In rainstorms it offers you a splendid view. Then come the lovely quiet evenings, when the lamps are lit in the farmhouse rooms and the moon hangs high in the sky. The night is pitch black, barely pierced by any light. You never see anything as deep at that. And so one day follows the next, one night follows the next, in peaceful alternation. Sun, moon, and stars declare their love for you, and likewise you yours for them. The meadow is your girlfriend and you are her boyfriend, you look up at the sky many times in the course of the day and out into the far hazy gentle distance. In the evening, at the appointed hour, the bulls and cows come back to the village, and you just look at them, you lazy bum. Yes, summer vacation is the time for downright colossal lazing, and that’s just what’s great about it.

  1914

  SWIFT AND SLUGGISH

  I ADMIT that the invention of the story I have to tell here has cost me not a little trouble, although readers may perhaps find it somewhat silly. It is the story of a sluggish swift man and a swift sluggish man. Worthy of note herein is that the swift man, with all his squirrely swiftness, fell far behind the sluggish man’s raw sluggishness, which shocked him to no small extent, as one might very well imagine. The curious and remarkable thing about this daft and simple story, which at least is happily not too long and wide in scope, is that the swift man is, fundamentally, the sluggish one and the sluggish man is, fundamentally, the swift one, simply and solely due to the fact that the swift man was alas all too swift and because the sluggish man with the sum total of his sluggishness fortunately, or unfortunately, stood the test brilliantly, by being not at all swift and yet, fundamentally, much swifter than the swiftest of the swift, while, alas, the swift one, with the whole rich treasure of his swiftness and agility, while not in the slightest sluggish, was nonetheless much more sluggish than the most sluggardly sluggard of all, which is, whatever else it may be, deeply regrettable. The swift one surpassed the sluggish one in downright swiftness, naturally, and yet came up short and was left far behind the sl
uggish one, who, unless we are badly mistaken, naturally far surpassed the swift one in sluggishness, since he was, indeed, as sluggish as the very personification of sluggishness itself, although he was not nearly as sluggish and was in fact much swifter than the swift one had thought, whom he left in the dust and mightily vanquished, an extraordinary circumstance which made the poor pitiful swift man practically drop dead in horror. This, dearest reader, is the tale of the swift and the sluggish, or, if you prefer, of the sluggish and the swift, as you wish and as it may please you. Judge it kindly, greet it with laughter, and do not get too fiercely enraged at its author, in whose head it was so firmly lodged that he found himself with no choice but to write it down and thereby free himself of it.

  1917

  FROM MY YOUTH

  THAT EARLY time was certainly wonderful. I lived entirely inwardly, almost all in my mind and own head. Nonetheless, or maybe precisely as a result, everything external had a thoroughly joyful ring to it. Incidentally, life was not in the least easy; I had some very hard times to get through, which was of course almost always my own fault.

  I often compared myself to young girls, who are eternally full of longing. Sometimes I lay stretched out on my bed like a sick man. I had hundreds of strange urges.

  A very learned older gentleman was unusually friendly toward me. He always looked at me with great attention, as though he knew all about the struggles taking place within my nature. No one else saw that in me. I was, from a certain point of view, plucky and bold, and at the same time shy. I went forth into life the way a child goes to school: timidly but not unwillingly.

  I had a crude face and slim red hands. Whenever anyone criticized me I felt soft, but yet cold too, and sensitive, but yet coarse too. I possessed a slight tinge of all sorts of different qualities, a fact which now and then gave me a lot to think about. My activities consisted of the systematic exercise of patience and of scribbling on paper in highly respectable branch offices. Alas, I never did want to wear a formal shirt collar, and when it rained I never did seem to have an umbrella. The hat I wore was always noticeably inappropriate, and yet what I loved was precisely anything that did not look fashionable.

  I put women on an unbelievably high pedestal. Along with them, what I loved with all my soul was winter. Suffering seemed sweet to me. There was probably a lot of Christian feeling in me, although I never thought about it.

  My education was not going well. I went to this or that meeting, listened to this or that lecture, and spent relatively extremely not a little money on books. The bookseller treated me with a mix of familiarity and respect that charmed me.

  Early spring was magnificent. All the houses, trees, and streets gleamed as though they had come from some higher state of being. It was half dream, half fever. I was never sick, just always strangely and seriously infected with a longing for extraordinary things.

  I felt it as a kind of blissful pleasure to stand in the cold, high hall of a train station in thin clothes. I felt deeply that the world was dear to me, and that I loved nature and other people with all my heart. I valued life without being afraid of losing it. Autumn was beautiful, with its brownish melancholy that seemed attractive and happily right to me, while in May the blossoming trees and all the singing and wonderful smells plunged me into sadness.

  That’s how I was back then, more or less. I enjoy thinking back to that time which was so important to me. That was when I started to reflect on what a person needs to do to be a good citizen and stalwart man of the fatherland, and in so doing I honestly and sincerely longed for righteousness. How beautiful it is to long for what is beautiful and good!

  It was also around that time that I began to cover thin strips of paper with little poems. I did so with a calm, craftsmanly intent, and yet there was still something mysterious about it. Maybe I started writing poetry because I was poor and needed a hobby to feel richer.

  Restlessness, uncertainty, and a premonition of a singular fate may have been what led me, in my sequestered isolation, to pick up my quill and attempt to create a reflection of myself.

  I would add that back then I was always full of the most bright and lively gladness. Yes, I had great joys, however quiet and dejected I may have seemed. I say it straight out.

  September 1919

  ALL RIGHT THEN

  A CHARMING, distinguished bourgeois family, who one morning, around 4 a.m., in the enchanting moonlight, while outside the window the bright sunshine was smiling, where unfortunately it was raining cats and dogs, sat contentedly at their tea, at their what? Their tea!, and drinking what on this happy occasion? Gadzooks, tea! If the countless dainty little families while sitting at tea like that were drinking anything other than drinking tea then may the devil come and whisk me away, and if those selfsame thoroughly delightful families while slurping their tea were sitting at anything other than sitting at tea then let me no longer be counted among the sensible and intelligent members of the human race, among whom, thank God, I have to this day always continued to be counted.

  Hey, writer! Jesus! What’s wrong with you? Are you insane?

  What’s wrong with me? Nothing at all, nothing at all. Please! And I am not in the least insane. I beg a thousand pardons but may I dare maintain that I am completely fine. I am totally normal and reliable in every respect, only just today, as a rare exception, I may perhaps not be in the most writerish mood, the mood I otherwise always make an effort to be in and in tune with. Today I most atypically may be a little hmm hmm and la-di-da. Otherwise I am in perfect health, I can assure you of that. One crucial component of writerliness is humor, and today precisely that, whatever it is that people call humor, seems to be regrettably so to speak somewhat lacking in me.

  Odol mouthwash belongs on every modern washstand. Anyone who does not treasure Odol mouthwash does not treasure himself. Without Odol, civilization itself is unthinkable. If you see yourself as, and wish to be taken for, not a barbarian but a cultivated person, you must arrange to get a hold of some Odol as promptly as can be. Odol is the most priceless compound there is and the result of combining the most delicate imaginable substances. Authorities, on the basis of their strictly scientific investigations, hesitate not one moment before ranking Odol as an accomplishment of the very first order and a good deed for humanity. Individual persons or entire tribes or other peoples who refuse Odol must and shall be driven at once to rouse themselves up to the recognition and frequent use of Odol. Odol takes the place of every good human quality in every respect. Ladies of the uppermost middle class and the aristocracy use massive quantities of Odol, because they seem to feel how deeply they need it. High dignitaries have for years or decades doused their highly honored pharynxes with Odol regularly. Odol fills every human gullet or mouth with a long-lasting pleasant fragrance for hours, and the fact cannot be gainsaid that pleasant fragrances are without a doubt, whenever and wherever they may be, preferable to nasty odors and smells. Grocery speculators, elite spies, railroad and oil barons, reigning kings and queens, admirals and commanders, elected representatives of every party, and many additional highly esteemed persons and personages hurl as much Odol as is in any way possible down their honorable and without question highly respectable throats to their great personal advantage. The nation that has accustomed itself to Odol marches in the vanguard of all nations, with respect to spirit, progress, and nobility of mind and heart, and such a nation, we can surely say with certainty, will fulfill the historically inevitable law of dictating laws to all the other peoples of the globe and ruling with absolute might over the entire world sphere.

  Hell’s bells, you say, are you completely wee-oo wee-oo?

  Ladies and Gentlemen, Darling Children, for God’s sake, kindly calm down and don’t get worked up, since we know that whoever gets worked up wastes valuable energy since he has to get worked back down again, and that is a shame, since energy is valuable and valuables are expensive and what’s expensive must always be scrupulously protected against squandering and misus
e. Now does this sentence, clearly perfectly sensible and reasonable in and of itself, sound anything like hoo-hoo? I’ve already told you, have I not, that today as a rare exception however I do seem to be a little hmm hmm and la-di-da and perhaps a little hoo-hoo and wee-oo wee-oo as well. That surely is completely enough for now, and at the moment I hardly believe it necessary to add anything further.

  All European governments evince at all times the absolutely requisite quantity of trust for their corn-pad-using citizens, because whoever uses a pad on his corns thereby makes himself quite rightly beloved everywhere as a harmless subject.

  Right! Now once and for all it is really over between us and you. Get out of my house. Understand? Be so kind as to pack up your authorial materials and hand tools at once and leave this instant this room that is intended solely for respectable people.

  What room? And why work yourself up and lose valuable energy, when I have after all given you my calm assurance that I am completely fine, that I today as a rare exception however do seem to be a little hmm hmm and la-di-da and perhaps a little hoo-hoo and wee-oo wee-oo as well. Calm down, calm down. Time heals all wounds, you have to hope for the best, and we know that whoever gets worked up only has to get worked back down. So please you’re welcome and most humble servant!

  I went to the Herrenfeld Brothers theater, where, I must admit, I had a great time. Afterwards I sat, if I am not mistaken, in the Kaffeehaus des Westens café, on the corner of the Ku’damm, and who should I see come in after a while? None other than Wulff, 100% German, recalling the aurochs, the primeval forests, the clang of swords, the pelt of bears. His full beard reached down to the tips of his toes. On his arm was a full-bosomed, voluptuous, firm, and juicy capitalist lady. Don’t get worked up! I already said loud and clear that today I’m apparently a little hmm hmm and la-di-da and okay a bit hoo-hoo and maybe also a little wee-oo wee-oo. Is that so terrible? All right then! And with that I wish you good day or good night and my best and dearest regards, for I have done my duty and am finished for now and can once again go for a walk.