15 April 1938
Robert Walser’s sixtieth birthday. I know he would bristle at any congratulations. We are reunited at the buffet at the Herisau train station, with a hot cheese tart and an open half pint before us, about which Robert remarks: “I haven’t had a glass of good cheer since the New Year!”
At a brisk pace we set out for Lichtensteig, the seat of the Toggenburg district, some thirty kilometers away. We travel narrow, lonely side roads, where a few church-goers are all we meet. Robert often stops to admire the beauty of a hilltop, the tranquility of an inn, the blue sky of this Easter day, the neat seclusion of a section of landscape or a green-brown clearing.
He sneezed innumerable times, a result of a cold he had caught one week ago. Degersheim, a tidy village. Over a hill to Lichtensteig, where we arrive after four hours. A lengthy lunch near the village square; afterwards a pastry shop, from which we emerged each with a sack of Biberli to take home. Return trip via train to Herisau, beer in the station, after sparkling Neuchatel in the “Eidgenoessische Kreuz,” where Robert feels at ease. He praises the day as delightful and rewarding and already makes plans for our next meeting. A walk to Wil seems to him worthwhile.
At the station I finally congratulate him on his birthday. He shakes my hand several times, trots alongside my train, and is still waving when we disappear around the corner.
From the conversation:
In Berlin, Robert attended a month-long school for domestic servants. He recalled that the servants were like medieval pages in the refinement of their manners. The valet at the school found him an engagement in the household of a count in Upper Silesia, at a castle on a hill. Below: the village. Robert was obliged to clean rooms, polish the silver serving spoons, beat rugs, and, as “Monsieur Robert,” serve in a tailcoat. He remained there for six months. The servant school was depicted later in Jakob von Gunten, transformed into a boy’s school. “But ultimately my Swiss clumsiness didn’t suit a servant.” One visit that created a sensation at the castle was that of Baroness Elizabeth von Heyking, author of the then-fashionable book, Letters That Never Reached Him.
Back in Berlin after his servant episode, Robert was introduced by his painter-brother Karl to the publishers Samuel Fischer and Bruno Cassirer; Karl was well-known at that time because of his various stage designs for Max Reinhard, particularly those he created for Tales of Hoffman and Carmen. With Max Liebermann, Karl traveled to Holland and the Baltic Sea to paint. Bruno Cassirer encouraged Robert to write a novel. Thus came The Tanners, which was not particularly to Cassirer’s liking. One critic opined that this Walser novel was nothing more than a collection of footnotes.
Talk then turns to Maximilian Harden, whose journal Die Zukunft (The Future), Robert wrote for now and then. He lauds Harden’s aristocratic nature and his ability to capture in brilliant articles the spirit of the times. So too Ludwig Borne, whose voice he considers the most important among journalists in the German language, and Heine, whose rascal nature suited the journalist’s profession. He describes Harden’s decline, which began logically enough with Germany’s debacle in the First World War.
In Zurich, Robert worked for a few weeks in the offices of Escher-Wyss engineering works, and also for a time as a servant to a Jewish matron. But his time in Biel was his happiest.
“With the Bielers themselves I rarely circulated. I chatted instead with foreigners at the “Blue Cross,” where I made my lodging in a garret. Room No. 17 was available for twenty francs, the full board ninety francs. My neighbors were girls, lots of women with a slight French accent, which was dear to me.”
“Why did you leave Biel?”
“At that time, I was very poor. I had begun to exhaust the themes and settings I had found in Biel and its environs. Then my younger sister Fanny wrote me that she knew of a position in Berne. At the cantonal archives. It was impossible to say no. Unfortunately, I fell out with the director after six months because of a cheeky remark I made. He dismissed me, and I renewed my writing efforts. I started now, under the influence of a large, vital city, to write in a less infantile manner, more masculine and more international, than I did in Biel, where my style was somewhat fussy. Fortunately, attracted by the name of the Swiss capital city, many requests from foreign papers came my way. There were new ideas and subjects to be discovered. However, all this contemplation ultimately harmed my health. My last year in Berne was tortured with bad dreams: thunder, screaming, strangling hands, hallucinatory voices, so much so that I often awoke shouting.
“One time I walked from Berne to Thun, leaving about two o’clock and arriving the next day at six o’clock. At noon, I was at Niesen, where I happily polished off a piece of bread and a tin of sardines. That evening, I was back in Thun and around midnight in Berne; of course, the whole time on foot.
“On another day, I walked from Berne to Geneva and back, even staying overnight in Geneva. One of my earliest travelogues was “Lake Griefen,” which was published by Josef Viktor Widmann in the Der Bund. I found it damned hard to write a good travelogue in those days.”
“A work of poetry must be like a beautiful suit of clothes that flatters the buyer.”
“Peter Altenberg: A nice, little Vienna sausage. But I wouldn’t go so far as to call him a poet.”
“The Austrians would never have been taken by the Nazis if they had an attractive, charming woman as head of state. Everyone would be cut out, including Hitler and Mussolini. Think of Queen Victoria and the Dutch queens regnant! Diplomats always serve women happily. How bravely they’d fawn over an Austrian woman!”
“I like nothing better than to read contemporary authors, as long as I’m situated here among invalids.”
“Jeremias Gotthelf: with him I’m just like the woman in Heinrich Pestalozzi’s novel Leonard and Gertrude, who says ‘The pastor’s sermons send a chill down my spine.’”
Half-annoyed and half-amused, a certain Frau A., known from his youth and now the wife of a well-respected postal official, related that he had bombarded her with chocolates with one hand, and with sharply impertinent letters with the other: “I can never quite take you seriously!” She had an ally in Thomas Mann, who in a letter had summarily dismissed him as an “clever child.”
[trans. Sam]
Sam :: Sep.24.2007 :: Uncategorized :: 1 Comment »
[...] our little translation are completed, this time out of order just to keep you guessing. They are: April 15, 1938, and, courtesy of my colleagues Rösi and Smyth, August 30, 1953. In the latter, we find Robert [...]