I STAND before a carousel. How it spins around its axis! Doesn’t the earth do something similar? Shouldn’t one be in awe, be perplexed for a few minutes? The music is romantic. How enticing it sounds! It affects me almost like opium. I dream and still know perfectly well how unhealthy a luxury this is. Round it merrily goes, again and again, pleasantly and gently. How could one not delight in it? Children, as it’s written on a sign or poster, must pay ten cents. Adults pay more, presumably because they’re heavier. The little horses, adorned with fine saddlery, look valiant. It would appear funny for someone of significance to sit on them. Little houses pirouette around themselves. To sit in one of the chaises must be really pleasurable. A father sits there not for his own sake but for the dear children’s. In every way this coincides with dignity and concurs with the laws of decorum. The carousel is decorated with little flags, many lights, and velvet scarves, and all its splendor is reflected glisteningly on the wet ground. One can’t help but see this. Once a ride ends, the customers descend, while the others wait to take part in the next tour. The carousel has its history. Already our great-grandparents cherished this enchanting invention, which has retained its attraction up to today and will not have lost it tomorrow. I once read that Louis XIV indulged in the pleasure of ring jousting. He must have done so when he was still young. Later he sought and found another pastime, such as the protection of Molière, because he must have deemed him worthy of it. If we gaze at a carousel from a distance, it seems as though we’re looking into a fairy kingdom, so bright does it appear. Truly it deserves our attention. At first I didn’t want to give it a look, but I regretted my haughtiness and congratulated myself on my discretion in casting aside the aforementioned and in holding this nice business establishment in high esteem. I realized, in fact, that this would turn into something of a sketch. As you can see, I guessed right.
(1926)
“UNDERAPPRECIATED POETS AMONG US?”—ANSWER TO A SURVEY
REGARDING myself, I have nothing to complain about being underappreciated. I know people who long for me. Individualities court me. Women of a not-to-be-misunderstood social status are pleased when I am, to even the minutest degree, nice to them. Early each morning, my Daseinslust, or pleasure-in-being, refreshes itself with the finest Dutch cocoa. In my cupboards lie not the best but the most agreeable of wines. In my opinion, poets by and large are appreciated almost too easily and hastily, and as a consequence one tires of them. Me girls invite to tea in the sunny outdoors, introduce to their moms, write flattering letters to, which adorn the drawers of my ornamental tables with their delicatenesses. Everyone goes to the greatest of lengths conceivable on my account. To appear discriminating I act indifferent and seem ungrateful. To the degree that I’m content with my reception I wish my colleagues the same. My publishers tell me they find me enchanting. Incessantly they hope for the best, and I don’t keep them from embellishing the exquisite opinion they’ve formed of me. On the other hand I don’t offer them any support for this either. My poetic products travel friskily, circle endlessly throughout the press. Once in a while a little golden bird flies trustingly from some pale and unknown hand into mine. Every day I’m preoccupied with some problem or other. Generally speaking, I find nothing so healthy as a hearty portion of under-appreciation, which surely has its disadvantages, but by happily handling what is disadvantageous, exquisiteness abounds.
(1926)
Translated with Annette Wiesner
DISCUSSION
PERHAPS I’ll procure a book by Marcel Proust, in its original language, of course, not the language of its translatedness. I still don’t know a single syllable by Romain Rolland, which I can conceive as evidence that culturally I’m neither frightened nor curious. In addition, I considered this author still quite young. It grieves me that he’s already sixty. Once a Jewish author wrote from his exile in Paris works that afterwards were eagerly read by many, as well as by the likes of Bismarck, in the Augsburger Abendblätter, and not long ago, while perusing a magazine, there passed before my eyes pictures of the Fuggerhaus in Augsburg. Today I received an aggrieved letter, I mean the sender was out of sorts, not the letter. This Heinrich Heine possesses a flourishing immortality, but still he rhymed about things most immoral, yet fate had marked him out as someone never to be forgotten. Once I loved a woman who had both an illegitimate child and a wealth of enthusiasm for Heine. I was, so to speak, in this woman’s good books. And now someone who had already elaborated on how one should treat books wrote an extensive essay on divine Italian laughter, though it had no air of laughter about it. At one of the occasional meetings of the Berlin Secession, Walther Rathenau once told me how taken he was with Hesse’s Peter Camenzind. I, in turn, shared with a girl that Hesse had married a waitress. The recipient of this news was so kind as to accept this as true. Lies casually served up can garner absolute belief. One can be counted a liar when telling the truth and be deemed well behaved when impudent. In a feverish state of ethical fervor, Tolstoy unleashed an assault against Shakespeare, only to perish afterwards of grief over this outrage, which of course is spoken anecdotally. A few days ago I heard a hurdy-gurdy man playing and a comedian delivering a lecture. The former stood in a landscape, the latter sat at a lectern before a select audience. The reading, like the organ-grinding, was done for money, the only difference being that the organ-grinder’s remuneration was put into a proffered hat while the admission fee was paid at the ticket counter. After that I saw a chair beam with joy to have had the chance to serve as a seat for a young lady. Bread rolls lay unspeakably quiet on the shimmering white plates. Then I found myself in a church where Haydn’s The Seasons was being performed. Two teachers were present who, in the most educated, that is, sophisticated manner, sought to avoid meeting, since they couldn’t stand each other. A singer sang so beautifully, almost to the point of it being sickening, but this is a sickness that heals, and now once again someone spoke to me about an unhappy young poet whose misery it was for an unbridgeable gulf to gape between his desire to live and his desire to figurate. To the bearer of this sensation, I answered that, for proponents of culture, internal dissension had always been the order of the day. Once a very dear, good, refined, elegant, in some respects knotty, unruly, but, as such, otherwise significant book was taken up by a girl. In her girlishly hot little hand the literary product melted away like snow when April comes around. I, too, am one of those who have already read Anatole France. With the request that the present piece not be taken as excessively heavy but rather as light as swan’s down, I grant myself permission to take my leave, though most likely I’ll be back in a bit.
(1926)
GIRLFRIENDS
OPPOSITE my window rises a hill.
The window is open.
On the hill stand two young men.
It’s Sunday morning.
From their position the two men see me writing at the table, and now I write the following:
Once I stood behind a curtain. Alice and Helene were “training.” What did their exercise consist of? Am I about to speak uninhibitedly? Why not? Alice played the sovereign, Helene the devotee, the subservient one—in any case, two essentially different roles. I consider it most beneficial for people to feel the desire to play some kind of part. In this case it was these two nice, pretty girls. Each was pretty in her own way, each had her own special perception of life. In my “position,” from my “lookout,” I kept as still as a mouse. Helene served Alice as a kind of stool; she seemed in every respect pleased about undertaking this “mission.” The one reigning appeared displeased, and actually it’s somehow always like this. It befits those in charge and who give commands to be worried, which the underlings are most pleasantly exempt from. Unfreedom can harbor an enormous amount of freedom; independence can be slavery. Alice was the independent one, and consequently she carried a great responsibility. Responsibility is a weight of pure spirituality. Alice personified strenuousness, dignity, morality, sovereignty, while Helene’s devotion manifest
ed an addiction to oblivious sensuality, sweet as inspired music. Music is essentially something irresponsible, rocking, life-assertive. I looked straight into Alice’s eyes. How big they seemed to me, how demonic! She didn’t see me, even though I kept on observing her. Helene was something like a single grin of joy. She was almost dying from silent satisfaction. Did the one playing the oppressor sacrifice herself to the one playing the suppressed? Quite likely. The superior one had no sense of her own self, but the other one did. Alice had her feet, which were installed in elegant shoes, positioned lightly on the cowering one. Perhaps the one dictating didn’t have many relationships, had no one, and it might indeed be possible that Helene, who formed the stool, was rich in acquaintances, whom, however, one after the other she spurned because they didn’t mean much to her. Perhaps she possessed an adorer of the highest quality, one who was concerned for her welfare, and about the one reigning no one cared, and here in Helene’s company she was the giver, the gifted one, who showered her sister, child of life and society, with pleasure and mirth.
Strange inner fates there are, and countless, never perceived, guiding destinies.
Girlfriends, let us praise the unwithering possibilities of life.
(1926)
THE YOUNG WOMAN IN THE COUNTRY HOUSE
SURE ENOUGH, a shot was fired one night near the country house on the edge of a forest, regarding the significance of which no one is clear. For a long time it was spoken about in the mornings and evenings over breakfast and dinner, and the expression of opinions regarding the situation, which gazed wide-eyed, as it were, like a riddle out of dark incomprehensibility, resembled swaying stems on whose flower tips velvet-winged butterflies of pensive tranquillity had fastened. In the villa, situated on a grassy hillside, dwelled a certain Miss Beanstraw who played host to a visiting cavalier with a lively interest in wasp nests. So hastily did the grapes begin to ripen that the flesh almost burst out of its skin, and the apples, pears, and plums, growing quietly in the orchard, glowed with a vivacious particularity. Miss Beanstraw seemed to be smartness itself. In vain she longed for a bit or snippet of unintelligence, as she was and remained an unmistakable European whose finery swept through an indescribably harmonious suite of rooms, whereby it should be mentioned that the cavalier lovied up to the maidservants, meeting them sometimes in the barn, sometimes in the laundry, until on one occasion the inhabitant of the villa told him to justify his behavior as best he could, and with the bearing of a troubadour he placed himself before her and silk-ribbonishly executed an aria in which he devotedly elevated the one deep in thought.
After noting his poetic art and at first carefully refraining from any criticism, she had the horses yoked to a small wagon that resembled a rococo maison de plaisance, got into it, and drove to the town nearby for afternoon tea and conversation, which served in particular as a rejuvenating cure for her propensity to imagine herself already on the path of de-youthification, about which, fortunately, she was mistaken.
The kind ones have no idea how graceful they are.
(1926–1927)
THE BOB
ABOUT this, it seems to me, still-relevant question, a lot of ink has already flowed. The bob reminds me of the early Italian Renaissance. In any case it’s the fashion and regarding which it’s essential to maintain the necessary reserve. If there are those to whom the bob is somewhat plain, I believe I may assess it to be sophisticated. Sometimes the bob looks pageboyish. Possibly this bob rage will lead us into the realm of Egyptology. By the way, every fashion always has something sobering connected to it. Weren’t there already in old Babylon shapes like the bob? Neither dismissing nor enthusiastically welcoming the object currently under consideration, I find that with the bob the neck is strongly accentuated. Bobbed-hair essay, you seem to be turning out splendidly! The tiniest bit funny to me is the fact that at the sight of a bob I think of the women’s rights furor that once billowed up such wonderful waves and, with the kindest permission, since has calmed, that is to say, as it were, availed itself of the goddess of Reason. Years ago I visited an assembly that vigorously advocated the rights of which I just spoke. Was the bob supposed to be an attempt at compromise? Does it constitute a bridge toward an understanding between the two sexes? Of course one can’t be exact to a hair about this. What imposing hair contours towered up in the rococo era. In the Biedermeier period kiss curls were found becoming.
I imagine, for my own pleasure, how the bob came to be as follows: From a girl in the possession of a glorious wealth of hair, a man, the girl’s lover, desired that she sever herself from that which adorned her, and lo and behold she fulfilled this request conscientiously, and there, full-fledged, stood the first bob. It seems clear to me that with the bob coiffure an illusion of youthfulness and happiness wants to be aroused. One may, therefore, call this fashion a healthy one. Furthermore, it flirts, up to a certain point perhaps, with an unattainableness, that is to say with freedom, which without doubt is something enchanting. I am of the opinion that it is in every way appropriate to long for this beauty. Perhaps one might have the opportunity to admit that I have intensively immersed myself in my article, wherein I assert that the bob cut, strictly speaking I mean, is best suited for very rich, talented, elegant, independent specimens of women—for example, goddesses.
As you see, I have a superb understanding of the bob.
(1927)
Translated with Annette Wiesner
THE RED LEATHER POUCH
SHE WAS, confidentially speaking, a spy. In certain times certain persons are entrusted with a mission. The spy had been assigned by such and such government to pry from certain hands a little pouch with letters, sketches, etc. What backstairs-intriguishness I’m bringing into this!
In her beauty and innocent appearance the spy resembled a dream, a dove, and thus it was almost inevitable that the proprietor, owner, and possessor of the little pouch was seized with a love for her. His love exalted him to the point of his becoming a kind of child. The little pouch was made of red leather.
The respective government waited anxiously to hear what kind of news the spy would convey to them. The absence of news lasted a long time. Various emissaries returned disappointed from whence they had come. The one assigned apparently seemed to take her assignment quite casually. Certain people considered her inept. A writer ridiculed her, but one often ridicules what one loves.
Several ministers already had had to give up the ghost, but still the bag was in the possession of this most peculiar individual. This individual represented, as it were, a certain sort of power. The scoundrel, with his heart full of love for the spy, and the government in question waged, so to speak, a secret war with each other. The state continued to place its highest trust in the spy.
For his part the owner of the little leather pouch from time to time wrote articles—received in part disparagingly, in part with applause—for national newspapers and ones from neighboring countries, so one might assume he was a journalist. In addition, he played the piano unusually lovingly, sweetly, and beautifully.
For her part the spy was constantly shadowed by an escort. Its members carried revolvers capable of going off at any moment.
All these gentlemen often passed closely by the pouch carrier. Had the abovementioned government suspected how the spy became more and more afraid of the scoundrel, it would hardly have bethought itself to withdraw her. The spy shivered at the thought of his detecting what she was, for she liked him.
The villain knew exactly what the villainess was after, she whose attire was appalling and at the same time fabulously beautiful. The government still had trust in the spy. The escort trembled with agitation. The country abounded with perplexed faces.
(1927)
Translated with Nicole Köngeter
DETECTIVE NOVEL
HE PRETENDED to possess technical expertise. Anyway, the title seemed quite brilliant. I resolved to learn more and started reading him, but he left much to be desired. Both he and his author lacked
a certain finesse. He seemed to have no place to call home. How can I cuddle up to someone who isn’t comfortable with himself? His sentences were laborious paths for those who tread on them. I remember far more beautiful rambles and gladly admit this, since I gain by this admission. He was viewed quite kindly. An attempt to create interesting situations was discovered with delight. Already the first chapter stretched out to the most accommodating length imaginable. Each paragraph elicited from me a grateful yawn. By the way, I think the time of the detective novel is over. The puzzling disappearance of refined, charming people doesn’t seem very fresh these days. Authors have operated more than enough with chemicals and the like. I did my best to succumb to his charms, but alas I failed in this endeavor. Perhaps I lack the openness, I said, smiling at one of those persons (I mean myself) unsympathetic to some new releases. In fact, I find it aggravating to say yes to everything. In the course of the events he let me gaze into a Russian female. It may be that I’m expressing myself a bit sloppily here. All in all, for what he was, I found him unable to live up to himself. I hold his father responsible that I’m pained by his existence. My contemporaries may note his innocuousness. But can a detective novel be innocuous? Doesn’t he fail when, instead of arousing suspense, he allows us to be bored in his presence? Ambitious lackey, it would be best if you vanished. That you were published was your misfortune. Whoever reads you pities you. Whoever investigates you has to laugh at you, though, alas, alas, you’re innocent! In any case, you’re not what you should be. What you could be if things had turned out right you aren’t, because things didn’t turn out right. Fare thee well, unwarranted detective novel.
(1927)
Girlfriends, Ghosts, and Other Stories Page 9