Selected Stories

by Robert Walser

  What I saw was as small and poor as it was large and significant, as modest as it was charming, as near as it was good, and as delightful as it was warm. Two houses which lay close together in the bright sunlight, like lively and kindly neighbors, these I delighted in. One delight followed the other, and in the soft confiding air contentment floated to and fro and trembled as with joy restrained. One of the two subtle little houses was the Bear Inn; the bear was admirably and comically depicted on the inn sign. Chestnut trees overshadowed the delicate and pretty house, which was assuredly inhabited by kind, pleasant, friendly people; it did not seem, like some buildings, to be arrogant, but rather the very image of intimacy and trust. Everywhere the eye looked lay splendid profusion of contented gardens, hovered green tangled profusion of pleasant leaves. The second house, or cottage, in its evident delightfulness and humility, was like a childishly beautiful page out of a picture book, a sweet illustration, so charming and curious did it show itself to be. The vicinity of the cottage seemed entirely beautiful and good. I fell immediately head over heels in love with this pretty little house person, and I would have passionately liked to go into it, in order to make my nest and lodging there and to live in the magic cottage, the jewel, forever and content; but it is unfortunately just the most beautiful houses which are occupied, and the person who looks for a dwelling to suit his presumptuous tastes has a difficult time, because that which is empty and available is often frightful and inspires horror. The pretty cottage was certainly inhabited by a little spinster or grandmother; it had about it just such a smell, just such a look. It being permitted to say so, I report in addition that on the wall of the cottage abounded wall paintings, or noble frescoes, which were divinely subtle and amusing and showed a Swiss alpine landscape in which stood, painted again, another house, to be accurate a Bernese mountain farmhouse. Frankly, the painting was not good at all. It would be impudent to maintain that it was. But, nonetheless, to me it seemed marvelous. Plain and simple as it was, it enchanted me; as a matter of fact, any sort of painting enchants me, however foolish and clumsy it is, because every painting reminds me first of diligence and industry, and second of Holland. Is not all music, even the most niggardly, beautiful to the person who loves the very being and existence of music? Is not almost any human being you please, even the worst and most unpleasant, lovable to the person who is a friend to man? Painted landscape in the middle of real landscape is capricious, piquant. This nobody will contest. The fact that a little old lady may live in the cottage I certainly did not anyway confirm or establish on record, and I have no desire at all to give it as gospel. But I am surprised at myself that I should dare to use the word “fact” here, where everything is, or should be, supple and as full of human nature as the thoughts and feelings of a mother’s heart. Further, the cottage was painted blue-gray and had bright golden-green shutters, which seemed to smile, and all around it in the magic garden was a fragrance of most beautiful flowers. Over the little garden- or summerhouse there bowed and twisted with enchanting grace a rosebush or bouquet full of the loveliest roses.

  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.”

  “A thunderstorm,” I thought as I walked on, “would be beautiful here. I hope I shall have the opportunity to experience one.”

  To a good honest jet-black dog who lay in the road I delivered the following facetious address: “Does it not enter your mind, you apparently quite unschooled and uncultivated fellow, to stand up and offer me your coal-black paw, though you must see from my gait and entire conduct that I am a person who has lived a full seven years at least in the capital of this country and of the world, and who during this time has not one minute, let alone one hour, or one month, or one week, been out of touch or out of pleasant intercourse with exclusively cultured people? Where, ragamuffin, were you brought up? And you do not answer me a word? You lie where you are, look at me calmly, move not a finger, and remain as motionless as a monument? You should be ashamed of yourself!”

  Yet actually I liked the dog, who in the loyal-hearted watchfulness and humorous repose and composure he displayed looked magnificent, uncommonly good, and because his eyes twinkled at me so merrily, I spoke with him, and because he really did not understand a word, I could venture to scold him, which however, as will have been observed from the comic manner of my address, cannot anyway have been meant unkindly.

  Catching sight of an elegant, well-starched gentleman strutting and waddling and prancing toward me, I had the melancholy thought: “And poor little ill-dressed neglected children? Is it possible that such a well-dressed, elaborately groomed, splendidly tailored and upholstered, beringed and jewelbehung, spick-and-span beau of a gentleman does not give a moment’s thought to poor young creatures who go about often enough in rags, show a sad lack of care and attention, and are lamentably neglected? Is the peacock not a little uneasy? Does this Adult Gentleman who goes about so beautifully not feel in any way whatsoever concerned when he sees dirty speckled little children? It seems to me that no mature man ought to want to appear all elegance as long as there are children who have no finery to wear at all.”

  But one might have just as much right to say that nobody ought to go to concerts, or visit the theater, or enjoy any other kind of amusement as long as there are prisons in the world and places of punishment with unhappy prisoners in them. This is of course asking too much. And if anyone were to wait content and enjoying life until finally the world should contain no more poor miserable people, then he would be waiting until the gray impenetrable end of all time, and until the ice-cold empty end of the world, and by then all joy and life itself would in all probability be utterly gone from him.

  A disheveled, discomfited, spent, and tremulous charwoman, extraordinarily weak and weary, and yet hurrying along because she evidently still had many more things to do, reminded me for an instant of spoiled, pampered little girls, or larger girls, who are often ignorant, or seem to know what sort of delicate elegant occupation or diversion to pass the day with, and who perhaps are never thoroughly tired, who consider all day and for weeks on end what they can wear to increase the polish of their appearance, and who have time and to spare for long meditations on the subject, whence continually more and more exaggerated refinements wrap round their persons and sweet confectionlike little forms.

  But I am myself usually a lover and admirer of such amiable, utterly pampered moonbeam maidens, beautiful, delicate, plantlike girls. A charming young thing could command of me whatever might occur to her, I would blindly obey her. Oh, how beautiful beauty is, and how charming is charm!

  Once more I return to the topic of architecture and building, and here a bit, or spot, of art and literature will need consideration.

  But first a note: the cleaning of ancient, noble, dignified, historic places and buildings, with their traceries of ornamental flowers, reveals considerable bad taste. Whoever does this, or causes it to be done, sins against the spirit of dignity and beauty, and injures the lovely remembrance of ancestors, who were as brave as they were noble. Second, never garland and conceal the architecture of fountains with flowers. Of course, flowers in themselves are beautiful; but they do not exist to declarify and erase the noble austerity and austere beauty of images in stone. At any time the predilection for flowers can deteriorate into a foolish mania. Personalities, magistrates, whom this concerns, may make inquiries in the authoritative circles as to whether I am right, and thereafter be kind enough to behave nicely.

  To mention two beautiful and interesting edfices, which powerfully arrested me and claimed my attention to an unusual degree, it may be said that as I followed my road farther I came to a delightful, curious chapel, which I immediately named Brentano’s Chapel, because I saw that it dated from the fantastical, golden-aureoled, half-bright and half-dark age of the Romantics. I recalled Brentano’s great wild, dark, temptestuous novel Godwi. Lofty, slender, arched windows gave this most original and peculiar building a delicate, delightful appearance, and laid upon it the spirit of enchantment, spirit of inwardness and the meditative life. There came to my mind fiery and profound landscape descriptions by the po
et mentioned above, particularly the account of German oak forests. Soon after this I was standing in front of a villa called Terrasse, which reminded me of the painter Karl Stauffer-Bern, who lived and stayed here for a time, and, simultaneously, of certain very superb, noble edifices which lie on the Tiergar-tenstrasse in Berlin, and which, owing to the austere, majestical, and simple classical style to which they give expression, are congenial and worth seeing. To me, Stauffer’s House and Brentano’s Chapel were monuments to two worlds which are to be strictly distinguished from each other, each being in its curious way graceful, entertaining, and significant: here a measured, cool elegance; there the exuberant, deep-minded dream, here something subtle and beautiful, and there something subtle and beautiful, but in substance and structure completely different from the other, although each lies near to the other in point of time. Evening is now gradually beginning to fall upon my walk, and its quiet end, I think, cannot any more be very far away.