The Walk

by Robert Walser

  People say I’m ugly. If they only knew what smiles I feel in my soul, they’d not run from me in fright any more. Yet they don’t see into the interior, they stop at the body, the clothes. Once I was young and pretty, I might say, but that makes it sound as if I pine for the past, and that is not my way. The she-owl, who once practiced growing big endures the course and change of time tranquilly, she finds herself in every present moment.

  They say to me: “Philosophy.” Yet the death that comes before-times cancels the later one. Death is nothing new to the she-owl, she knows it already. It looks as if I’m a lady of learning, wear glasses, and somebody is so interested in me that he pays me a visit now and then. He finds me Harmonious. He tells me I’m somebody who doesn’t disappoint him. Of course, I have never bewitched him either. He studies me profoundly, strokes my wings, brings me candy sometimes, with which to delight, so he believes, the most serious of females, and he’s making no mistake. I am reading a poet whose finesse makes him fit to be digested by owls. There’s something sweet in his ways, something veiled, undefinable, which is to say, he suits me well. Once I was charming, I laughed and twittered jokes into the blue of day, I turned many young men’s heads. Now things look different, the shoes I wear have holes in them, I’m old, I sit and say nothing.

  1921

  Knocking

  I am completely beat, this head hurts me.

  Yesterday, the day before yesterday, the day before the day before yesterday, my landlady knocked.

  “May I know why you are knocking?” I asked her.

  This timid question was turned down with the response: “You are pretentious.”

  Subtle questions are perceived as impertinent.

  One should always make a lot of noise.

  Knocking is a true pleasure, listening to it less so. Knockers don’t hear their knocking; i.e., they hear it, but it doesn’t disturb them. Each thump has something agreeable for the originator. I know that from my own experience. One believes oneself brave when making a racket.

  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

  Titus

  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, kind-heartedness 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 disfavour. 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

  Vladimir

  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.

  Once a girl promised to meet him at such and such a time and then kept him waiting. This came as a surprise to him. Another asserted, “It befits you to be swindled. Do you not have a peculiar predilection for jokes which border on disregard?”

  “You are mistaken,” is all he answered.

  He never bore a person a grudge, because “I, too, have often played unfairly with people.”

  At the ladies’ cafe he was amused by the mimicry and expressions of the customers. By the way, he was no friend of too many diversions, as much as he valued them by way of exception. He thought about everything only to forget it in an instant, was a good reckoner because he did not permit his feelings to have power over his mind.

  The women thought little of him, but not without always becoming interested in him again. They called him timid, but he likewise them. They played with and feared him.

  To one lady, who flaunted her wealth before him in perhaps too clever a manner, he was most courteous, as one is when one feels for that person nothing. He found uncultured girls inspired by their need for instruction and on the other hand also such who have read everything and now wished to be almost ignorant. For injustices suffered he never avenged himself and perhaps avenged himself sufficiently in just this way. Those who did not treat him as he had wished, he let go, dropped; that is to say, he accustomed himself to not thinking about many unpleasant things. That’s how he protected his soul from confusion, his thoughts from unhealthy hardness.

  Music put him in a tender mood, as it does most people. If he saw himself favoured by a girl, it seemed as if she wished to hold him down, and he kept clear of her. He was as suspicious as a southerner, of himself as well as others; frequently jealous but never for long, because his self-respect quickly freed him from the persecution of envy, envy which to him seemed hardly awakened, unfounded, and of no substance.

  Once he lost a friend, and said to himself, “He’s losing as much as I.” He worshipped a woman until she made one error, and it was no longer possible for him to pine for her. A rash remark from her had the result that he laughed at her, and he was happy about it. Feeling sorry for her, he no longer needed to be sorry for himself.

  He stayed young and used his strength for the acquiring and exercise of attention to people who most needed not to be glanced over insensitively, the feeble and the aged. Do we speak too highly of him?

  Sometimes he carries on like a gad-about-town, visits so-called vulgar dives. There are people around who rebuke him for it, but who would themselves gladly be mirthful, which their spheres so seldom allow. He has had imitators, but the original remains himself. Imitation, by the way, is quite natural.

  Copies can also be appealing, but only from the original can great value come.

  1925

  Translated by Tom Whalen and Carol Gehrig

  Parisian Newspapers

  Since I have been reading the Parisian papers, from which the scent of power emanates, I have become so refined that I do not return greetings and, what’s more, this amazes me not at all. With Le Temps in my hand, I appear very elegant to myself. Furthermore, I will no longer even glance at righteous people. To me the Parisian papers are a substitute for the theatre. Also, not even the finest restaurant will I honour with my feet, so subtle have I become. Gulps of beer no longer pass my lips. My ear approves only of the melodiousness of the French language. Once I adored a lady, a true lady; today I find her most clumsy, since Le Figaro has spoiled me. Did Le Matin not drive me half mad? While my colleagues write themselves sick in this modern time of crisis, I grow exuberant through my papers. A trip which I intended to take to Paris I consider completed, I become acquainted with France’s capital by way of reading. It is pleasing to be in good company. The papers of conquerors make the best society. German language products get no more blessings from me. I have forgotten how to speak German; I wonder if there is any harm in that?

  1925

  Translated by Tom Whalen and Carol Gehrig

  The Monkey

  Tenderly yet in some degree hardheartedly should this tale be tackled, which declares that it occurred to a monkey one afternoon to drop into a coffeehouse and idle away the time of day there. Upon his decidedly not unintelligent head he was wearing a hard hat, or it may even have been a slouch hat, and on his hands the most elegant gloves that were ever displayed in a fashion shop for gentlemen. His suit was superb. With one or two curiously executed, featherweight, really remarkable, though slightly revealing leaps he arrived in the tearoom, through which rustled, like whisperings of foliage, an enticing music. The monkey was at a loss regarding where he should sit, in a modest corner, or slap in the middle. He chose the latter since it dawned on him that monkeys, if they behave with decorum, may after all appear in public. Melancholically but also glad, unperturbed and at the same time bashfully, he looked about him, discovering many a pretty maid’s little face, with lips as of cherry juice and with cheeks as of pure whipped or clotted cream. Beautiful eyes and mellifluous melodies were striving for mastery, and I faint with narrative pride and wonder to report that the monkey, speaking the vernacular, asked the waitress who served him whether he might be permitted to scratch? “Of course, if you want to,” she kindly replied, and our cavalier, if he merits the title, made such extensive use of her permission that ladies present partly laughed, partly looked aside so as not to have to join the others in looking at what he made so bold as to do. When an evidently charming woman sat down at his table, he began immediately to entertain her with great wit; he spoke about the weather, and then about books. “What an extraordinary person!” she mused, as he tossed his gloves into the air and deftly caught them again. He curled his lips into an enchanting grimace when he smoked. His cigarette provided a most lively contrast with his austere complexion.

  Preziosa was the name of the young lady who now entered the room, like a romance, or a ballade, accompanied by a pomelo of an aunt, and from this moment there was no more peace for the monkey, who had never known before what it is to love. He knew it now. Suddenly all the nonsense was swept out of his head. With resolute step he approached his heart’s elect and desired her to become his wife; he knew a trick or two to show her what sort of a person he was! The young lady said: “You shall come home with us. I mu
st say you are hardly suitable for a husband. If you behave well, you will receive every day a tap on the nose. You are radiant! I’ll allow you that. You will see to it that I do not get bored.” So saying, she rose up so proudly that a roar of laughter came over the monkey, whereupon she boxed his ears.

  When they got home, the Jewess sat down, having dismissed her aunt with a gesture, upon an expensive golden-footed sofa, and asked the monkey, who was standing before her in picturesque pose, to tell her who he was, to which this quintessence of monkey-hood answered:

  “I once wrote poems on the Zürichberg; these I now submit in print to the object of my devotions. Though your eyes attempt to crush me to the floor, which is impossible, for the sight of you raises me continually up again, formerly indeed I often went into the forest to my lady friends, the pines, looked up at their crests, lay full length on the moss, till I grew weary from my sprightliness, and melancholy from gladness – ”

  “You lazy thing!” interjected Preziosa.

  The family friend, for as such he already ventured to consider himself, continued, and said: “Once I left a dentist’s bill unpaid, believing I would nevertheless succeed in life, and I sat at the feet of women of higher society, who accorded me a quantum of benevolence. Then you might also be informed that in autumn I picked windfall apples, gathered flowers in spring, and for a season lived where a poet named Keller grew up, of whom you will probably not have heard, although you ought to have done – ”