The Walk

by Robert Walser

  As for flower days in general, I would have to be a heartless rascal not to grasp at once the noble purport on which they rest, and therefore I leap forward as rapidly as possible and exclaim aloud: Yes, it is true, flower days are heavenly. They are not comical in the least, but have, to my feeling, a thoroughly noble and earnest character. Among us blokes or fellow beings, of course, there are still a few isolated and, it would seem, obstinate people who would scorn to wear, on a flower day, a day of peace and joy, a pleasure flower in their soul-buttonhole. We might hope that such people may soon learn better and nobler ways. As for me, as I may fortunately declare, I am radiant on flower days, with sheer flowery and flowerish satisfaction, and I am one of the most flower-encrusted persons among all those who are beautified, adorned, and beflowered. In a word, on such a Day of Plants I am like a swaying tender plant, and on the charming Violet Day that soon is coming I shall, this I know for certain, appear in the world myself as a modest and secluded violet. For some magnanimous purpose I might even be able to transform myself into a daisy. In future, let anyone, I would here heartily plead, stick and wedge his buttercup between his lips, whether they be opened or grimly tight shut. Ears, too, are excellent props for flowers. On Cornflower Day I had stuck a cornflower behind each of my three ears, and it was most becoming. Ravishing too, are roses, and the Rose Days soon to come. Let them descend upon me, those distinctive days, and I shall embellish my home with roses, and, sure as I’m a modern man and understand my epoch, I shall stick a rose in my nose. I can warm to daisy days most animatedly too, since any random fashion, absolutely any, makes of me a servant, a slave, or subject. Yet I am happy so.

  Well, even then, such odd people, who lack character, have also to exist. The main thing is: I mean to enjoy my morsel of life as well and as long as I can, and if a person finds it amusing he’ll heartily go along with any kind of nonsense; but now I turn to the most beautiful subject of all – to women. For them, for them alone, the gracious flower days were invented, composed, poeticized. If a man wallows in flowers, it’s a bit unnatural; but in every way it befits a woman to put flowers in her hair and bring flowers to a man. Such a lady or virgin flower has only to make a sign, a gesture, and at once I hurl myself at her feet, ask her, my whole body trembling with joy, how much the flower costs, and I buy it from her. Then all pale in the face I breathe a glowing kiss upon her roguish little hand, and am prepared to surrender my life for her. Yes, indeed, in this manner, and others to match, I do behave on flower days. From time to time, to refresh myself, I plunge, it is true, into a snack hall and gulp down, there and then, a potted meat sandwich. I adore potted meat, but I adore flowers too. There are now many things that I adore. All the same, one has to do one’s duty as a citizen, nobody should make a face, nobody think he has a right to pass the flower days off with a quiet smile. They are a fact of life; but one should respect facts. Should one really?

  1911

  Trousers

  I am thrilled to be writing a report on such a delicate subject as trousers, and thus to be licensed to plunge into meditation upon them; even as I write, a desirous grin, I can feel it, is spreading over my entire face. Women are, and always will be, so delicious. Well then, as regards fashion in trousers, tending as it does to excite all hearts and minds, and to quicken every pulse, that fashion must conduct the thought of any earnestly thinking man above all toward that which it accentuates and importantly clothes: the leg. The leg of the woman is thereby, to some extent, moved into a more luminous foreground. Anyone who loves, esteems, and admires women’s legs, as I do, can consequently, it would seem, only concur with such a fashion, and indeed I do concur with it, although I am actually very much in favour of skirts also. A skirt is noble, awe-inspiring, and has a mysterious character. Trousers are incomparably more indelicate and they suffuse the masculine soul, to some extent, with a shudder. Again, on the other hand, why should horror not grip us modern people, slightly? It seems to me that we do very much need to be woken up, to be given a shake.

  Yet, if the world went all my way, as is fortunately not yet the case, to my great gratification (for what then should I do, poor man that I am!), trousers would be significantly tighter, so that against the soft, rounded flesh of the leg their material would press very closely, or, to phrase it with more elegance, nestle. For me that would be fashion’s triumph, and I would die of delight, or at least hit the floor in a swoon, if ever such a transformation occurred in the domain where ladies’ clothing is the question. All the same, it seems to me that this is the limit to which we have come, and, as for us discarded and regrettable lords of creation, we are entitled to anticipate excitedly what is still to come. I imagine that something is to come. A change is now on the way, no question; we men have obviously lost the edge, so the women are taking it over, and indeed, they have already begun, in trousers which still provisionally, to be sure, resemble skirts, to trample around before our very eyes. Knickerbockers! There’s something Asiatic about them, something Turkish, something, I must confess, without charm. Turks’ trousers and Turks’ turbans possess little charm for me. But still I think we may have in store for us a flowering and perfection of trousers. Trousers are still not quite trousers enough. The way they now are, they signify mere silliness. They are essentially too reticent, too embarrassed. O womenfolk, listen, you must: If you really want to impress us men, be more saucy, brazen, and complete in your trouserish, trouserly, and trouserful demands! Sweet ladies! Surely on the streets and in the city squares they will trouser around one day quite differently.

  To resume: it is a shame that skirts should now propose to disappear, and that our cultural feelings should be outraged. What’s this? one asks. Has Paris run out of midriff ideas? As regards ideas, Paris seems to have become poverty-stricken. It’s a terrible shame, the demise of that wondrous Paris of the Senses and of the Dreams. Paris is no more. For that is the whole point. The trouser fashion knows nothing of the midriff. If ever there was something about a woman that was beautiful and captivating to the senses, it was the midriff, uniquely; and precisely this most delicious feature is now absent. To trousers, unconditionally, a midriff must appertain. Something must go through me like a knife, and what’s more, it must expand upward and downward. There must be tension in it. At present, women no longer have backs. The wonderful, tumescent, as it were smoothed, back of woman has vanished. This is deplorable. Form! Women no longer have a healthy will to form; they no longer desire to display anything, and the desistence of this desire is the plainest proof that they are in rebellion, that they despise us lords and masters. Anybody whom I try and strive to please is felt by me to be my master. It is too obvious. Of such and similar matters consists the secret of the trouser-skirt: rebellion, dissent, compromise, and insistence on a position to be held. Oh, deplorable, a pitiful situation. Men, men, what a disgraceful defeat you have suffered.

  Yet – just a whisper in your ear: into that defeat the woman is also dragged, the trouseress, and this great umbrageous defeat of both sexes means – a lessening of mutual attraction! The women want to make themselves miserable by compelling men to see them as comrades, as trouser-buddies. That’s how it is, and it is very sad, the heart informs us. What’s more, trouser-dom impinges closely upon the problem of the political activation of women. In trousers the poor dears can stride much more comfortably to the voting booth. They are deceived, ah, the poor dears, if only they knew how heartrendingly boring it is to have the vote. They want to assassinate themselves. So be it. For a chivalrous man there’s nothing left to do but bury his head desperately in his hands and wish that the blow might fall upon him. This is the quintessence and the consequence of trousers. Frightful!

  1911

  Two Strange Stories

  The Man with the Pumpkin Head

  Once there was a man and on his shoulders he had, instead of a head, a hollow pumpkin. This was no great help to him. Yet he still wanted to be Number One. That’s the sort of person he was. For a tongue he h
ad an oak leaf hanging from his mouth, and his teeth were cut out with a knife. Instead of eyes, he had just two round holes. Back of the holes, two candle stumps flickered. Those were his eyes. They didn’t help him see far. And yet he said his eyes were better than anyone’s, the braggart. On his pumpkin head he wore a tall hat; used to take it off when anyone spoke to him, he was so polite. Once this man went for a walk. But the wind blew so hard that his eyes went out. He wanted to light them up again, but he had no matches. He started to cry with his candle ends, because he couldn’t find his way home. So now he sat there, held his pumpkin head between his hands, and wanted to die. But dying didn’t come to him so easily. First there had to come a June bug, which ate the oak leaf from his mouth; there had to come a bird, which pecked a hole in his pumpkin skull; there had to come a child, who took away the two candle stumps. Then he could die. The bug is still eating the leaf, the bird is pecking still, and the child is playing with the candle stumps.

  The Maid

  A rich lady had a maid and this maid had to look after her child. The child was as delicate as a moonbeam, pure as freshly fallen snow, and as lovable as the sun. The maid loved the child as much as she loved the moon, the sun, almost as much as her own dear God Himself. But one day the child got lost, nobody knew how, and so the maid went looking for it, looked for it everywhere in the world, in all the cities and countries, even Persia. Over there in Persia the maid came one night to a broad dark tower, it stood by a broad dark river. But high up in the tower a red light was burning, and the faithful maid asked this light: Can you tell me where my child is? It got lost and for ten years I have been looking for it. Then go on looking for another ten years, said the light, and it went out. So the maid looked for the child another ten years, in all the parts and on all the bypaths of the earth, even in France. In France there is a great and splendid city, called Paris, and to this city she came. One evening she stood by the entrance to a beautiful garden, wept, because she could not find the child, and took out her red handkerchief to wipe her eyes. Then suddenly the garden opened and her child came out. She saw it and died of joy. Why did she die? Did that do her any good? Yet she was old now and could not endure so much any more. The child is now a grand and beautiful lady. If you should ever meet her, give her my best regards.

  1913

  Balloon Journey

  The three people, the captain, a gentleman, and a young girl, climb into the basket, the anchoring cords are loosed, and the strange house flies, slowly, as if it had first to ponder something, upward. “Bon voyage,” shout the people gathered below, waving hats and handkerchiefs. It is ten o’clock in the evening. The captain pulls a map from a case and asks the gentleman if he would like to do the map reading. The map can be read, comparisons made, everything to be seen can be clearly seen. Everything has an almost brownish clarity. The beautiful moonlit night seems to gather the splendid balloon into invisible arms, gently and quietly the roundish flying body ascends, and now, hardly so that one might notice, subtle winds propel it northward. The map-reading gentleman tosses, from time to time, as directed by the captain, a handful of ballast into the depth below. There are five sacks of sand on board, and they must be used sparingly. How beautiful it is, the round, pale, dark depth below. The moonlight, tender and evocative, picks the rivers out, silver. One can see houses down there, so small, like innocuous toys. The forests seem to be chanting sombre and ancient songs, but this chanting strikes one as being more like a noble silent knowledge. The earth’s image has the features of a huge sleeping man, at least that is what the youthful girl dreams; she lets her bewitching hand hang indolently over the rim of the basket. Obeying a whim, the cavalier is wearing a medieval plumed hat, but is otherwise dressed in a modern way. How quiet the earth is! One can see everything distinctly, the particular people in the village streets, the church spires; tired after a long day’s work, the labourers trampling across the farmyard; the ghostly railroad streaking by, the dazzling long, white turnpike. Human sorrow, familiar or unknown, seems to send murmurs up from below. The loneliness of remote regions has a special tone, such that one believes one ought to understand and even see this special thing that slips away from thought. Wondrously now the three people are dazzled as they see in the glory of its colours the luminous course of the Elbe. The nocturnal river draws from the girl a low cry of longing. What might she be thinking of? From a posy she has brought along with her she pulls a dark rose, in full bloom, and throws it into the sparkling water. How sadly her eyes shine as she does so! It is as if the young woman had just now forever shed a painful conflict. It is a very painful thing, having to part company with what torments you. And how mute the world is! Far off, the lights of a major town are glittering; the canny captain pronounces its name. Beautiful, enticing depth! Countless areas of field and forest are now behind them, it is midnight. Somewhere on the solid ground now a thief prowls, hunting for swag, there is a burglary, and all these people down there, in their beds, this great sleep slept by millions. An entire earth is dreaming now, and a people rests from its labours. The girl smiles. And how warm it is, as if one were sitting in a room, just like home, with mother, aunt, sister, brother, or with one’s lover, lamplit, and reading from a beautiful but rather monotonous long story. The girl wants to sleep; looking at things has made her quite tired now. The two men standing in the basket gaze silently but resolutely into the night. Remarkably white, polished-looking, plateaus alternate with gardens and small wildernesses of bush. One peers down into regions where one’s feet would never, never have trod, because in certain regions, indeed in most, one has no purpose whatever. How big and unknown to us the earth is, thinks the feather-hatted gentleman. Yes, your own country does finally become intelligible from up here, looking down. You feel how unexplored and powerful it is. Two provinces they have now crossed, and the dawn is coming. Below in the villages human life wakens again. “What’s the name of this place?” the leader shouts downward. A boy’s clear voice replies. And still the two men are gazing; now, too, the girl is awake again. Colours appear and things become more distinct. One sees lakes inside their drawn contours, wondrously secluded among forests; one glimpses ruins of old bastions towering up through old foliage; hills rise almost imperceptibly, one sees swans trembling and pale on waters, and the human voices become pleasantly audible, and onward one flies, onward, and finally the glorious sun appears, and, attracted by this proud star, the balloon soars upward into a magical dizzy height. The girl shrieks with fear. The men laugh.

  1913

  Kleist in Thun

  Kleist found board and lodging in a villa near Thun, on an island in the river Aare. It can be said today, after more than a hundred years, with no certainty of course, but I think he must have walked across a tiny bridge, ten meters in length, and have pulled a bell rope. Thereupon somebody must have come sliding lizardlike down the stairs inside, to see who was there. “Have you a room to let?” Briefly then Kleist made himself comfortable in the three rooms which, at an astonishingly low price, were assigned to him. “A charming local Bernese girl keeps house for me.” A beautiful poem, a child, a heroic deed; these three things occupy his mind. Moreover, he is somewhat unwell. “Lord knows what is wrong. What is the matter with me? It is so beautiful here.”

  He writes, of course. From time to time he takes the coach to Berne, meets literary friends, and reads to them whatever he has written. Naturally they praise him to the skies, yet find his whole person rather peculiar. He writes The Broken Jug. But why all the fuss? Spring has come. Around Thun the fields are thick with flowers, fragrance everywhere, hum of bees, work, sounds fall, one idles about; in the heat of the sun you could go mad. It is as if radiant red stupefying waves rise up in his head whenever he sits at his table and tries to write. He curses his craft. He had intended to become a farmer when he came to Switzerland. Nice idea, that. Easy to think up, in Potsdam. Poets anyway think up such things easily enough. Often he sits at the window.

  Possibly about ten
o’clock in the morning. He is so much alone. He wishes there was a voice beside him; what sort of voice? A hand; well, and? A body? But what for? Out there lies the lake, veiled and lost in white fragrance, framed by the bewitching unnatural mountains. How it all dazzles and disturbs. The whole countryside down to the water is sheer garden, it seems to seethe and sag in the bluish air with bridges full of flowers and terraces full of fragrance. Birds sing so faintly under all the sun, all the light. They are blissful, and full of sleep. His elbow on the windowsill, Kleist props his head on his hand, stares and stares and wants to forget himself. The image of his distant northern home enters his mind, his mother’s face he can see clearly, old voices, damn it all – he has leapt up and run out into the garden. There he gets into a skiff and rows out over the clear morning lake. The kiss of the sun is indivisible, unabating. Not a breath. Hardly a stir. The mountains are the artifice of a clever scene painter, or look like it; it is as if the whole region were an album, the mountains drawn on a blank page by an adroit dilettante for the lady who owns the album, as a souvenir, with a line of verse. The album has pale green covers. Which is appropriate. The foothills at the lake’s edge are so half-and-half green, so high, so fragrant. La la la! He has undressed and plunges into the water. How inexpressibly lovely this is to him. He swims and hears the laughter of women on the shore. The boat shifts sluggishly on the greenish, bluish water. The world around is like one vast embrace. What rapture this is, but what an agony it can also be.