20 December 1937
Light snowfall. Robert stands at the station without an overcoat, but with a furled umbrella that resembles a sausage. He doesn’t appear to be cold. We stroll through St. Gallen and steer into The Lily, where we are the only customers. Later, Robert spoke of the comely waitress with the squinting eyes who bumped into him from behind. “We should have stayed there!” When I, during lunch in the marketplace, remark that the waitress who is serving us now is prettier, and has nicer legs, he says: that doesn’t matter. What matters is the whole person, and above all that person’s nature.
At a clothing store we try on different suits for Robert. The proprietor mistakes Robert for my father. None of the garments fit him well because his back is too rounded. He wants something “Bavarian, not in any way unusual.” In getting measured and having someone fiddling about his person, Robert becomes agitated and his face flushes red, and we take flight without having purchased anything.
Dark Bavarian beer hall. Strong beer. The place pleases him. He ceaselessly lights one Parisienne after another. He asks me with dry irony whether I made a good bargain with the Walser stories published by Rentsch Verlag under the title “Great Small World.” Wieland and Lessing he praises, while Matthias Claudius he calls too naive. He says: “I was never jealous of classical authors. Compared, on the other hand, to secondary talents, such as Wilhelm Raabe and Theodor Storm. Because I was able to write the same kind of cozy, middle-class stories as they did. This coziness annoys me in Raabe particularly.” –I: “So are you also jealous of Gottfried Keller”? –Robert, laughing: “No, he was just a Zuricher!”
I told him that he had received a tribute from the Committee for the Promotion of Bernese Literature. This pleased him.
[trans. Sam]
Sam :: Sep.16.2007 :: Uncategorized :: 1 Comment »
[...] My short intervals lately have been devoted to restarting our little translation project. You’ll note a new chapter has appeared, and the next one is materializing day by day, a sentence or paragraph at a time. Today, Robert tries to buy a suit. [...]