The Walk

by Robert Walser

  It was now meet to conquer, master, surprise, and abash in his unshakable convictions an obstinate, recalcitrant tailor, or marchand tailleur, a person obviously in every respect convinced of the infallibility of his doubtless eminent skill, and completely saturated with a sense of his own efficiency. The crippling of a master tailor’s fixity of mind must be considered one of the most difficult and hazardous tasks which courage can undertake and daredevil determination determine to carry forward. Of tailors and their opinions I have a comprehensive, constant, and intense fear; I am not at all ashamed of this sad admission; for fear is, in this instance, explicable and understandable. I was, then, prepared for trouble, perhaps even for trouble of the worst and most terrible kind, and I armed myself for this highly perilous attack with qualities such as courage, scorn, wrath, indignation, disdain, even the disdain of death; and with these indubitably very appreciable weapons I hoped to advance, successfully and victoriously, against biting irony and mockery lurking under a simulation of friendliness. It turned out otherwise; but I will be silent on this point till later, particularly as first I still have to dispatch a letter. For I have just decided to go first to the post office, then to the tailor, and only after this to pay my taxes. Besides, the post office, a tasteful building, lay right in front of my nose; and I blithely went in and besought the responsible post office official for a stamp, which I stuck upon the envelope. While I then circumspectly slipped the same down into the letter box, I examined and weighed pensively, in my mind, what I had written. As I very well knew, the contents were as follows:

  Most respectable Sir,

  The curious form of address should bring you the assurance that the writer confronts you quite coldly. I know that respect of myself is not to be expected from you, nor from any persons of your sort; for you and persons of your sort have an exorbitant opinion of themselves, which hinders them from achieving understanding and discretion. I know with certainty that you are one of those people who seem to themselves important because they are inconsiderate and discourteous, who think themselves powerful because they enjoy protection, and believe themselves wise because the little word “wise” happens to occur to them. People like you are so bold as to be hard, impudent, coarse, and violent with regard to people who are poor and unprotected. People like you possess the extraordinary wit to believe that it is necessary to be everywhere on top, to keep everywhere the ascendancy, and to triumph at every moment of the day. People like you do not observe that this is foolish, that it neither lies within the bounds of possibility nor is in any way to be desired. People like you are snobs and are ready at all times industriously to serve brutality. People like you are exceedingly courageous in the evasion of any sort of genuine courage, because they know that this true courage promises to injure them; and they are courageous in demonstrating with an uncommon degree of pleasure and an uncommon degree of zeal their right to set up as the good and the beautiful. People like you respect neither old age nor merit, and certainly not hard work. People like you respect money, and your respect of money obstructs any higher estimation of other things. He who works honestly, and diligently exerts himself, is in the eyes of people like you an outspoken ass. I do not err; for my little finger can tell me that I am right. I dare tell you to your face that you abuse your position because you know full well how many complications and annoyances would be entailed if anyone were to rap your knuckles; but in the grace and favour which you enjoy, ensconced in your privileged prescriptive position, you are still wide open to attack; for you feel without a doubt how insecure you are. You betray confidence, do not keep your word, injure without a second thought the virtues and reputations of those who have to deal with you; you rob unsparingly where you pretend to institute beneficence, impose upon the services and denigrate the person of every willing servant, you are exceedingly fickle and unreliable, and show qualities which one might willingly pardon in a girl, but not in a man. Forgive me that I should have allowed myself to think you very weak, and accept, with the candid assurance that I consider it advisable to avoid any future contact with you in my affairs, the required measure and the established degree of respect from a person upon whom devolved the distinction and inevitably moderate pleasure of having made your acquaintance.

  I almost regretted now that I had entrusted to the post for dispatch and delivery this cutthroat’s letter, for as such it now subsequently appeared to me: indeed, to no less than a leading, influential personality I had in such an ideal manner proclaimed, thus conjuring up a furious state of war, the rupture of diplomatic or, better, economic relations. Still, I unleashed my challenge, while I consoled myself with the reflection that this personality, or most respectable sir, would perhaps never even read my communication, because, on perusing and relishing even the second or third word of it, he would probably have had quite enough, and he would presumably hurl the blazing effusion, without losing much time or energy about it, into his all-devouring, all-accommodating wastepaper basket. “Besides, in the course of nature, a thing like this is forgotten in six or three months,” I concluded and philosophized and marched, bravement, to my tailor.

  The same sat happily, and with what seemed the clearest conscience in the world, in his elegant fashion salon or workshop, which was stuffed and crammed with subtly fragrant rolls and remnants of cloth. In an aviary, or cage, blustered, to complete the idyllic scene, a bird, and a keen crafty apprentice was nicely occupied with cutting out. Herr Dünn the master tailor rose as he caught sight of me most courteously from his seat, upon which he had been diligently fencing with his needle, to bid the visitor a friendly welcome. “You have come about your suit, an unquestionably impeccable fit, which is soon to be delivered complete and finished by my firm,” he said, as he tendered me, perhaps a little too companionably, his hand, which I nevertheless was not in the least hesitant vigorously to shake. “I have come,” I parried, “to proceed dauntlessly and full of hope to the fitting, though I have my fears.”

  Herr Dünn said that he considered all my fears to be superfluous and that he guaranteed both the fit and the cut, and, as he was saying this, he accompanied me into an adjoining room, from which he himself at once withdrew. He guaranteed and protested repeatedly, and this did not really quite please me. The fitting, and the disappointment which was so intimately connected with it, was soon complete. I shouted, attempting meanwhile to fight back an overflowing chagrin, loudly and energetically for Herr Dünn, at whom, with the greatest possible composure and genteel dissatisfaction, I flung the annihilating outburst: “It’s exactly as I thought!”

  “My dear and most esteemed sir, it is useless to excite yourself!”

  Laboriously enough I brought out: “Here’s cause enough and plenty to spare that I should get excited and be inconsolable. Keep your highly inept attempts at appeasement to yourself and be so kind as to upset me no longer; for what you have done in the way of making a faultless suit is in the highest degree upsetting. All the delicate or indelicate fears that arose in me have been justified, and my worst expectations have been fulfilled. How can you dare to guarantee a faultless cut and fit, and how is it possible that you have the audacity to assure me that you are a master in your craft, when you must confess, even with only a very sparse measure of honesty and with only the smallest degree of honourable dealing and perceptiveness, that I am entirely displeased and that the faultless suit to be delivered to me by your esteemed and excellent firm is completely botched?”

  “I must courteously disallow the term ‘botched’.”

  “I will control my feelings, Herr Dünn.”

  “I thank you and am cordially delighted by this most pleasant resolve.”

  “You will allow me to expect of you that you make considerable alterations to this suit, which, as evidenced by the recent fitting, reveals multitudes of mistakes, defects, and blemishes.”

  “I might.”

  “The dissatisfaction, the displeasure, and the grief I feel, force me to inform you that you have vexe
d me.”

  “I swear to you that I am sorry.”

  “The assiduity with which you choose to swear that you are sorry to have vexed me and put me in the worst possible humour does not in the least modify the defectiveness of the suit, to which I refuse to accord even the smallest degree of recognition, and acceptance of which I vigorously reject, since there can be no question of any approbation and applause. As regards the jacket, I clearly feel that it makes me a hunchback, and therefore hideous, a deformation with which I can under no circumstances admit myself to concur. On the contrary, I do really feel obliged to protest against such a wicked extravagance and addition to my body. The sleeves suffer from an objectionable surfeit of length, and the waistcoat is eminently distinguished in that it creates the impression and evokes the unpleasant semblance of my being the bearer of a fat stomach. The trousers, or trouserings, are absolutely disgusting. The design and scheme of these trousers inspire me with a genuine feeling of horror. Where this miserable, idiotic, and ridiculous work of trouserly art should possess a certain width, it exhibits a very strait-laced narrowness, and where it should be narrow, it is more than wide. Your execution, Herr Dünn, is in sum unimaginative, and your work manifests an absence of intelligence. There adheres to this suit something despicable, something petty-minded, something inane, something homemade, something ridiculous, and something fearful. The man who made it can certainly not be counted among men of spirit. Regrettable indeed is such an absolute absence of talent.”

  Herr Dünn had the imperturbability to reply: “I do not understand your indignation, nor shall I ever be persuaded to understand you. The numerous violent reproofs which you feel obliged to heap upon me are incomprehensible to me, and will very probably remain incomprehensible. The suit fits you very well. Nobody can make me think otherwise. My conviction that you appear uncommonly to your advantage in it, I declare to be unshakable. To certain distinguishing features and peculiarities of it you will soon become accustomed. Very high-up state officials order their estimable requirements from me; graciously likewise do Justices of the Peace send me their commissions. This assuredly striking proof of my capability should satisfy you. For exaggerated expectations and imaginings I cannot cater, and master tailor Dünn does not admit any arrogant demands. Better situated persons and more eminent gentlemen than you have been in every respect satisfied with my proficiency and skill. The insinuation of my claim should disarm you.”

  Since I had to agree that it was impossible to accomplish anything, and since I had to consider that my perhaps excessively fiery and impetuous onslaught had been transformed into a painful and ignominious defeat, I withdrew my troops from this unfortunate engagement, broke feebly off, and flew the field in shame. In such manner was concluded the audacious adventure with the tailor. Without another glance about me, I sped to the municipal treasury, or revenue office, to settle my taxes; but here I must correct a gross error.

  It was, that is to say, a question not of payment, as it now subsequently occurs to me, but merely, for the time being, of a personal discussion with the President of the laudable Commission for Revenues, and of the handing in, or handing over, of a solemn declaration. May my readers not hold this error against me, but listen generously to what I have to say in this connection. As adequately as the resolute and unshakable master tailor Dünn promised and guaranteed faultlessness, so do I promise and guarantee, with regard to the declaration to be rendered, exactitude and completeness, as well as concision and brevity.

  With a bound I enter the charming situation in question. “Permit me to inform you,” I said frankly and freely to the tax man – or high revenue official – who gave me his governmental ear in order to follow with appropriate attentiveness the report I was about to deliver, “that I enjoy, as a poor writer and pen-pusher or homme de lettres, a very dubious income. Naturally you will not see or find in my case the smallest trace of an amassed fortune. I affirm this with deep regret, without, however, despair or any tears over the lamentable fact. I get along as best I can, as they say. I dispense with all luxuries: this, a single glance at my person should tell you. The food I eat can be described as sufficient and frugal. It occurred to you to consider that I might be lord and master of many sources of income; but I am compelled to oppose, courteously but decisively, this belief and all such suppositions, and to tell the simple unadorned truth, and this truth is that I am extremely free from wealth, but, on the other hand, laden with every sort of poverty, as you might be so kind as to write in your notebook. On Sundays I may not allow myself to be seen on the streets, for I have no Sunday clothes. In my steady and thrifty way of life I am like a field mouse. A sparrow has better prospects of prosperity than this deliverer of a report and taxpayer you see before you. I have written books, which the public unfortunately does not like, and the consequences of this oppress my heart. I do not for a moment doubt that you understand this, and that you consequently realize my financial situation. Ordinary civil status and civil esteem I do not possess; that’s as clear as daylight. There seems to be no sense of obligation toward men such as myself. Exceedingly few persons profess a lively interest in literature, and the pitiless criticism of our work, which any manjack assumes he can practice and foster, constitutes yet another abundant source of hurt, and, like a drag chain, drags down the aspirant accomplisher of a state of modest well-being. Of course there exist amicable patrons and friendly patronesses, who subsidize me most nobly from time to time; but a gift is no income, and a subsidy is no fortune. For all these self-explanatory and I hope convincing reasons, most honoured sir, I would request you to overlook all the increases in taxation which you have communicated to me, and I must ask, if not implore you, in my case to set your rate of taxation at as low a level as possible.”

  The superintendent or inspector of taxes said: “But you’re always to be seen out for a walk!”

  “Walk,” was my answer, “I definitely must, to invigorate myself and to maintain contact with the living world, without perceiving which I could not write the half of one more single word, or produce the tiniest poem in verse or prose. Without walking, I would be dead, and my profession, which I love passionately, would be destroyed. Also, without walking and gathering reports, I would not be able to render one single further report, or the tiniest of essays, let alone a real, long story. Without walking, I would not be able to make any observations or any studies at all. Such a clever and enlightened man as you may and will understand this at once. On a lovely and far-wandering walk a thousand usable and useful thoughts occur to me. Shut in at home, I would miserably decay and dry up. Walking is for me not only healthy and lovely, it is also of service and useful. A walk advances me professionally and provides me at the same time also with amusement and joy; it refreshes and comforts and delights me, is a pleasure for me, and simultaneously, it has the peculiarity that it allures me and spurs me on to further creation, since it offers me as material numerous small and large objectivities upon which I later work at home, diligently and industriously. A walk is always filled with significant phenomena, which are valuable to see and to feel. A pleasant walk most often teems with imageries and living poems, with enchantments and natural beauties, be they ever so small. The lore of nature and the lore of the country are revealed, charming and graceful, to the sense and eyes of the observant walker, who must of course walk not with downcast but with open and unclouded eyes, if the lovely significance and the gay, noble idea of the walk are to dawn on him. Consider how the poet must grow impoverished and run sadly to ruin if that maternal and paternal and, in beauty childlike, beautiful nature does not ever and again refresh him from the source of the good and of the beautiful. Consider the great unabating importance for the poet of the instruction and golden holy teaching which he derives out there in the play of the open air. Without walking and the contemplation of nature which is connected with it, without this equally delicious and admonishing search, I deem myself lost, and I am lost. With the utmost love and attention the man wh
o walks must study and observe every smallest living thing, be it a child, a dog, a fly, a butterfly, a sparrow, a worm, a flower, a man, a house, a tree, a hedge, a snail, a mouse, a cloud, a hill, a leaf, or no more than a poor discarded scrap of paper on which, perhaps, a dear good child at school has written his first clumsy letters. The highest and the lowest, the most serious and the most hilarious things are to him equally beloved, beautiful, and valuable. He must bring with him no sort of sentimentally sensitive self-love or quickness to take offense. Unselfish and unegoistic, he must let his careful eye wander and stroll where it will; only he must be continuously able in the contemplation and observation of things to efface himself, and to put behind him, little consider, and forget like a brave, zealous, and joyfully self-immolating front-line soldier, himself, his private complaints, needs, wants, and sacrifices. If he does not, then he walks only half attentive, with only half his spirit, and that is worth nothing. He must at all times be capable of compassion, of sympathy, and of enthusiasm, and it is hoped that he is. He must be able to bow down and sink into the deepest and smallest everyday thing, and it is probable that he can. Faithful, devoted self-effacement and self-surrender among objects, and zealous love for all phenomena and things, make him happy in this, however, just as every performance of duty make that man happy and rich in his inmost being who is aware of his duty. Spirit, devotion, and faithfulness bless him and raise him high up above his own inconspicuous walking self, which has only too often a name and evil reputation for vagabondage and vagrancy. His manifold studies enrich and hearten, appease and ennoble him, and moreover, however improbable it may sound, they touch the fringes of exact science, a thing of which nobody would think the apparently frivolous wanderer capable. Do you realize that I am working obstinately and tenaciously with my brain, and am often in the best sense active when I present the appearance of a heedless and out-of-work, negligent, dreamy, and idle pickpocket, lost out in the blue, or in the green, making the worst impression, seeming a frivolous man devoid of any sense of responsibility? Mysterious and secretly there prowl at the walker’s heels all kinds of beautiful subtle walker’s thoughts, such as make him stand in his ardent and regardless tracks and listen, so that he will again and again be confused and startled by curious impressions and bewitchings of spirit power, and he has the feeling that he must sink all of a sudden into the earth, or that before his dazzled, bewildered thinker’s and poet’s eyes an abyss has opened. His head wants to fall off, and his otherwise so lively arms and legs are as benumbed. Countryside and people, sounds and colours, faces and farms, clouds and sunlight swirl all around him like diagrams, and he must ask himself: ‘Where am I?’ Earth and heaven suddenly stream together and collide, rocking interlocked one upon the other into a flashing, shimmering, obscure nebular imagery; chaos begins, and the orders vanish. Convulsed, he laboriously tries to retain his normal state of mind; he succeeds, and he walks on, full of confidence. Do you think it quite impossible that on a gentle and patient walk I should meet giants, have the privilege of seeing professors, do business in passing with booksellers and bank officials, converse with budding, youthful songstresses and former actresses, dine at noon with intelligent ladies, stroll through woods, dispatch dangerous letters, and come to wild blows with spiteful, ironic master tailors? All this can happen, and I believe it actually did happen. There accompanies the walker always something remarkable, some food for thought, something fantastic, and he would be foolish if he did not notice this spiritual side, or even thrust it away; rather, he welcomes all curious and peculiar phenomena, becomes their friend and brother, because they delight him; he makes them into formed and substantial bodies, gives them structure and soul just as they for their part instruct and inspire him. In a word, by thinking, pondering, drilling, digging, speculating, writing, investigating, researching, and walking, I earn my daily bread with as much sweat on my brow as anybody. Although I may cut a most carefree figure, I am highly serious and conscientious, and though I seem to be no more than delicate and dreamy, I am a solid technician! I hope that all these meticulous explanations convince you that my endeavours are honourable, and satisfy you completely.”