Girlfriends, Ghosts, and Other Stories

by Robert Walser

  POET STORY

  I’M NOT mocking the poet who each evening, to put it bluntly, ate cheese, and at midday, if you like, ingested soup, and led a solid life.

  Derision, in this instance, is the farthest thing from my mind. Only a few old, venerable fir trees, which appeared to be clothed in greatcoats, peered derisively down at the house wherein the one with whom I’m concerned had each year approximately one single idea.

  From time to time the spouse of the fir-tree-surrounded and never-to-abandon-the-study person sat down with him, looked at him with honest concern, and put to him the question of whether he still believed in his poetic profession.

  The one thus imposed upon used to respond that, yes, regarding his mission he was conviction itself.

  The woman, whom I take the liberty to present to the reader here, had a small, delicate mouth only barely adorned with lips and curls of unusual tenderness.

  When the poet achieved a few good, I mean well-rung or balanced lines that in addition he carefully polished, the little birds in the garden where the poet’s house was situated began to sing, tweet, and jubilate.

  Basically the park was a poem of a very respectable type. Every day the gorgeous wife of the poet entered the city employing her adorable little feet that looked as if they were comical and capable of smiling.

  She told the acquaintances she met that her husband was very industrious, which actually wasn’t the case, but she believed herself entitled to say this. She said it to make a favorable impression and especially so that people would think she was as happy with her husband as one could imagine.

  Perhaps she would have welcomed seeing him more active. In his patience and repose he resembled the firs.

  Her I know nothing to compare with, other than this story that has sprouted from me here and which I consider pretty.

  Perhaps this is due to its meager contents.

  (1927–1928)

  Translated with Nicole Köngeter

  THE BELLETRISTIC BOOK

  IT SEEMS the belletristic book has yet to find a form suitable to its time. My belief is that today’s readers often snatch up books written long ago because the current generation of scribes has too little time to write meticulously. If many believe modern tastes definitely require things to be touted, it’s my opinion that it’s all a question of the method of arousal. It seems fairly clear to me that not much can be gained from the desire to pound something in. To excite interest depends in many ways on the circumstances, the situation. It is, then, for the most part, a matter of chance. One can be interesting, and the attention one has temporarily gained, little by little, as it were, drifts off. Society doesn’t like to believe in one and the same personalities for too long. An expert as well as one of little expertise or someone a bit of or a complete klutz can get lucky. In my opinion some authors are equipped with too little dexterity and prolific ones with well-nigh too much. The reading public is pampered as perhaps never before. It won’t be easy to accustom it to fancying itself less pampered. Essayists and suchlike have acquainted it with the finest spiritual fare. Who today among the somewhat cultured would dare be lowbrow? The modest find themselves mocked, indeed looked upon almost as vermin obstructing and opposing development. Regarding subject matter, I believe I may advise novelists to be enchanting beyond words and, as far as technique goes, outrageously sophisticated, yet without in the least behaving as if they knew a lot or as if life had dealt harshly with them, both of which create an impression of disingenuousness. Most male and female readers desire, if possible, to deal with a literature that captivates without disturbing. At any rate, I have exactly as much time left as I need to declare that for me it’s a pleasure of the utmost refined sort to regard appreciatively a woman who lets me understand that she wishes to have nothing to do with me. In such a case my contemplation becomes an adventure, whereby I might be intending to demonstrate that for an educational product disapproval probably proves as beneficial as favor, which is not all that easily ascertained. Just like people, sentences seem dependent upon being content with their fate, and fate lies opaque in the womb of time.

  (1928)

  Translated with Annette Wiesner

  GARDEN ARBOR ESSAY

  I’M WRITING this garden arbor essay at my own discretion. Beautifully clothed imposing women appear garden-arborish standing at some slender, curtain-decorated window and mumbling to themselves, “The splendid lad is causing me immense sorrow.”

  I’m alluding here to novels published in the early editions of The Garden Arbor,* and I do this with pleasure.

  Do I adore The Garden Arbor?

  Yes, I believe I do.

  Sashes rush proudly over cleanly polished floors past the apparitions of cavaliers, who necessarily seem to have to admit to themselves they hadn’t made a sufficient enough impression on a sentimental heart.

  Even as a boy I buried myself eagerly in such pieces. A certain preference for conscientiously educated, sophisticated young men, as well as for fastidious young beauties who are aloofness itself, has in no sense waned, is as alive in me as ever. A reputable person conveys to a snoozer regarding his earnings, etc., that he’s being ignored, while elsewhere a delicate one, a chastely loving one, settles for her revivifying piano playing. Somewhere an enthusiast presses the leaves of a bush to his mouth, in the delusion that his lady had touched them with the hem of her dress or with her hand, which to him is holy. In the novels that today have, as it were, faded, it happens that a housewife shouts into the kitchen in a relatively imperious tone, “Hey, what are you doing? Hurry up and bring the coffee!” “Leave immediately!” are words that might be spoken disdainfully by a sincere, self-respecting woman, while outside the extensive fields look like insouciance itself offering numerous opportunities for strolling.

  In the course of time many pretty eyes have rested on the printed pages and illustrations that serve as an intelligence-inducing basis for the present attempt to say something pleasant.

  Before they go to breakfast, the daughters of administrators of estates, their braids falling naively down their backs, inspect themselves in the mirror with a care that always affords them the same unshattered pleasure.

  Tutors and horses are, subject to the requirements or circumstances, restrained. Little doves flutter. Lackeys stand at attention.

  Has a more successful journal ever been published? Coming up with the title alone was ingenious; its endearing concept is what prompted this assignment.

  (1928)

  *Die Gartenlaube (The Garden Arbor) was a highly popular illustrated family weekly, founded in Leipzig in 1853, which ran well into the twentieth century.—TW

  GHOSTS

  I DON’T know if it can be to my advantage to review a kind of dime novel in which, as far as I can remember, there stood in a pretty little town a haunted tower.

  In my opinion ghosts are very modern. It seems to me it’s become fashionable to believe, with a certain persistent willfulness, in inexplicable appearances.

  One must admit this takes courage. As for me, I lived temporarily, if I dare say so straight out, in a bright, wide, two-windowed room. One night I awoke in bed and saw, on one of the armchairs or stools that came with the room, someone sitting.

  Something nonexistent was existent, for when I had gone nearer to inspect or examine the place, the something (undoubtedly I was dealing with a ghost here) had evaporated.

  To return to my little booklet in which, among other things, a young woman danced: it’s been quite some time since I perused this work, which dealt mainly with an ingenious Hans who, in all innocence and innocuousness, pulled off, as it were, a stroke of genius.

  The landscape seemed to me delightfully sketched; the subject matter revolved as much around money as around love. A little river that stretched around the town the author had charmingly entrusted to blab mysterious things. The brooklet in this regard proved to be immensely talented, since it busily burbled and babbled night and day.

  Attentive
ly I listened in on the engaging story. Roles were swapped, young sophisticated girls sat in the pleasing interiors of music stores, into which one glanced in passing.

  Hans proved to be a complications-disentangler.

  I like to imagine my up-to-the-minute diction as tabloidish. I hope this will be judged kindly.

  A beautiful woman sat interestingly ghostlike, I mean conspicuously thin, thus in fashion, at a window. Hans bestowed upon her his interest. In his eyes lay so much justifiable or baseless melancholy that the woman leapt up in bewilderment.

  These and similar events occurred in the little volume whose author I don’t name because he hardly wishes it. There are little books we read as if we’re eating something delicious. We quickly forget them. After a certain amount of time, perhaps we recall them again. They’re like people we’re capable of loving because they’re not difficult. I also wish this for what I have written here.

  (1928–1929)

  FEMALE PORTRAIT

  SHE THOUGHT she was ridiculous. What a bold beginning! My intention is to dance with words. She believed herself to be somewhat obsolete, marginalized, so to speak, by the times in which she lived. Without any rhyme or reason she felt she was a relic, historical, though she wore, as it were, fur. Did she live too lavishly? Perhaps I’ve posed this question somewhat carelessly, incautiously. Yet, now that the question has already been raised, I’ll try to answer it as firmly and elegantly as I can. Having possibly adopted the daily habit of imploring her husband to “Eat, my dear,” she probably helped herself too much to this herself. Her feet were pretty, her head in its daintiness a flower head. She would have preferred her hands a bit paler. In general she constantly thought she looked too wholesome, not sophisticated enough. To assess your own worth requires practice in desiring the possibility of being mistaken and the determination to place trust in having certain abilities. One might say, that is, hold the opinion, that she had never taken the trouble to make enough of an effort to love herself. For example, she still didn’t know if she respected herself at all. She had a page whom she permitted to edify her with his poetic skills by allowing him now and then to sit on a stool at her feet. May I ask that you put your confidence in this prose piece? I’d like to point out the fact that I’m thought capable of performing only for those anxiously willing to discover the possibility of appreciating more or less what’s being offered. Those who fail to see my industriousness for what it is naturally consider me indolent. Occasionally she wished her page didn’t poeticize, that he was just a page, and her wish was justified in that everyone who writes poetry is a bit discourteous, directing his courtesies to poeticizing and neglecting all sorts of other things. By the way, I declare that the page mentioned here is my very own invention and not the servant of some other Mr. Author. The woman often asked the page, less by setting her lips in motion than with her eyes, “Can I be content with myself?” Thanks to his independent spirit, the page replied, “Only you can be the judge of this! To me you’re beautiful. One can hardly expect me to know whether or not you are beautiful to yourself.” Thus she had to rely on her own self when it came to matters of her soul and its reassurance. If haughtily she sulked quietly over herself for a spell, she was soon reconciled again with her moodiness. She always reproached herself for something that perhaps she should have refrained from doing. Among other things she reproached herself for reproaching herself. Is that right? Really? Now she was expecting someone. I’d like to glide over depicting the room’s decorations, since I’d have to bestow praise and it can’t always be appropriate to delight in things.

  “I put enormous constraints upon myself. Do you know what I’m trying to say?” Such were the words spoken by the woman who had just arrived.

  She had always considered her perfectly happy. For a long time she had been envious of the one who had come to see her and still was. “I’m not as I would like to be,” I heard her say.

  “How nice of you to complain. I thought you were always happy and thus almost feared you. Now you’ve put me at ease,” she said and sighed.

  Her sigh was genuine, I mean it was sighed with thorough originality. It was not a sigh often sighed otherwise. Each sigh is always different, that is, unique.

  In an age when much is in doubt, such observations seem to me permissible, if not perhaps even necessary.

  (1928–1929)

  Translated with Nicole Köngeter

  A MAN OF THE WORLD

  HE WAS told he suffered, but he never believed it. Once he had kissed the golden shoes of an artiste. This gold didn’t shimmer, instead it simply lay pale, as if applied like a thin, vacuous coating of varnish. For a time his eyes had something of a flickering blaze in them; he didn’t know whence that came. Others behaved towards him as if he were a child; he gladly considered himself a lad. The lineaments of aging didn’t prevent him from this kind of make-believe. He saw a girl crying, and with the most agile effortlessness believed she was crying because of him. Never had he made anyone laugh, since he acted like a poor sinner, and in people who consented to deal with him, he instilled the chilling impression he was heartless. His sveltenesses entitled him to entertain cheerful and conceivably candid relations with a very modest parlormaid of a manor, who fancied he had never been unhappy or done anything unpleasant. To her he seemed unsmart because he smiled prettily, which he accomplished due in part to her drollery, in part to his having sporadically read certain amusing works. With a novelistic coherence he told her stories she fell for word for word. A thousand conquered aggravations clothed him like a garment of frivolousness and elegance, as if wistfulness lay over his manners and mode of being, as if he didn’t know what to do with his brio. His resiliencies resulted from his finding boredom not unbearable but always somewhat useful or edifying. Something about his kindnesses encouraged fawning. In winter he went sledding, he went snowballing; life’s summer he seemed never to have known; in the spring little flowers moved gracefully, tremblingly into his autumn, the autumn that he perhaps always was. Only once in the course of his life did a woman treat him as if he were a perfect gentleman, an event that remained forever in his memory.

  By the way, he never tried to be a man of the world.

  (1928–1929)

  SOMETHING ABOUT WRITING

  IF I’M not mistaken, Balzac, for example, wrote novels nonstop until the moment that pulled him out of the practice of his profession. Let us just try and roughly imagine the extent of such a faculty for fantasizing. For Dostoyevsky, as I believe I should know, it may have been the same. After publishing a string of comparatively very worthwhile novellas, Gottfried Keller entered the civil service, which for the next fifteen years kept him from any further continuous literary work. Adalbert Stifter, who possessed a lively talent for narrative like an effervescent spring upon which he drew to his heart’s content, held a civil service post in education. Goethe, this giant, as his life history displays, poeticized himself into, as it were, a courtlike, that is, administrative position through works that soared into the ranks of the imperishable. The existence of a writer is determined by neither success nor acclaim, but rather depends on his desire or power to fabulate anew again and again. Balzac apparently did this constantly, Keller not, and undoubtedly there were reasons why he didn’t. I believe the causes as to why some continue to write on and on and others at times cease their poetic endeavors are, under certain circumstances, too subtle to be easily defined. External events are capable of giving a career a certain direction; for example, the character or incidents in the region of the heart may be worthy of serious consideration. Some writers present their best work at the beginning of their strivings only to succumb afterwards to their proclivity, bit by bit, to flatten out, while we know of quite a few others who strike us as curious because they happen to start inconspicuously or uncertainly, but nevertheless precisely for this reason acquire in the course of time more certitude, superior vision, etc. To which type one gives preference is left to necessity. Every writer is an agg
regate of two people, the citizen and the artist, to which he, more or less fortunately, resigns himself.

  (1930)

  TOLSTOY AND HUTTEN

  IN ONE of his thoughtfully rendered narratives, Tolstoy, who achieved excellence in his field, draws our attention to a docile young man, who, alas, only too willingly and lightheartedly let things go as they would, called himself Nekhludov and lost a fortune playing billiards, after which, according to a previous agreement, he felt compelled to crawl on all fours under the billiard table. This unfortunate reminds me of the beautifully situated island Ufenau on Lake Zurich where, after he had studied and loved, fought and suffered, Ulrich von Hutten once found a kind of refuge, whose pleasantness he no doubt abundantly deserved, in that he promoted the development of education and knowledge. Ulrich von Hutten wore a coat of mail, which pinched and cramped him, while Nekhludov was covered in a suit of modern dress, which possibly wasn’t hard to wear. Many who are unsuccessful in their profession or tumble down from the hill of their good fortune often betake themselves to the calm of any kind of refuge. Others besides Hutten searched out and found a Ufenau murmuring all round with grace and merriment, where they were afforded the opportunity to reflect on causes and effects. Tolstoy lived and wrote on a country estate. Over me a very pretty, capricious maid ruled who encouraged me to refrain from the composition of capacious books encompassing extensive interconnectivities, and instead content myself with sketches. Enclosed is a specimen thereof.

  (1930)

  THE WOMAN NOVELIST

  WHAT TODAY’S extant and efficacious woman novelist is like, I freely admit might be of less interest to me here than how yesterday’s and those in former times fared, who, in clothes then in style, that is, at the time she wrote her works and diligently fabulated away, sat in a petite and comic room embellished with all sorts of bric-a-brac, and just then perhaps finding herself busy with the description of a spring landscape. Not giving a single answer to the enraptured questions of a teenager gushing over the profession she practiced and the prominence she epitomized, she scribbled with a persistence as though she had been given wings. But what was it I wanted to say? So far I’ve definitely not succeeded in painting her portrait. When enchanting little slip-ons covered her little feet and these little shoes softly rejoiced in the office they were allowed to administer and like joyous little bells seemed to be satisfied, the woman novelist of earlier times composed poems about lordly estates wherein, on meticulously well-tended paths gently strewn with sand, a woman walked up and down thinking of the respectable one she loved, yet who had fallen from grace due to conduct neither she nor hers could condone. In that she scribbled this, an exercise that sounded like the feeping of a little sparrow, the female poet knew that she herself from time to time experienced something human. Into her fantasy realm entered incredibly proud, graceful, and demanding females, or representatives of classes who since have practically vanished, which might well be a pity. But who can stay with their hand or the aid of their own personal will the course of life? How pretty and beautiful the petiteness of the apartment of the woman novelist of the past must have been! Glancing out the window, she was already thinking of a new chapter. Her breaths she took to be inspiration. It’s possible she once wrote a book entitled Overcoming the Irrepressible. Committing these lines in front of me to the joyful hope that they might bear a resemblance to forget-me-nots and that they might flow and whisper with the gentleness of a rivulet, I entrust them to the friendly benevolence of today’s reading public, both male and female. Are there still eyes romantically tinged?