Jakob von Gunten

by Robert Walser

  Sometimes our gymnastic and dancing classes are very amusing. To have to show skill is not without its dangers. What a fool one can make of oneself. To be sure, we pupils don’t make fun of each other. We don’t? Oh, yes, we do. One laughs with one’s ears, if one isn’t allowed to laugh with one’s mouth. And with one’s eyes. Eyes are very fond of laughing. And to make rules for the eyes, that’s quite possible, to be sure, but pretty difficult. Thus, for example, we aren’t allowed to wink, winking is mocking and therefore to be spurned, but one certainly does wink sometimes. To repress nature completely can’t be done. And yet it can. But even if one has shed nature entirely, there’s always a breath of it left, a remnant, and it shows. Beanpole Peter, for example, finds it very difficult to shed his own most personal nature. Sometimes when he’s supposed to be dancing, moving gracefully and showing how graceful he is, he consists entirely of wood, and wood is Peter’s natural state, like a gift of God. Yet one can’t help laughing at a rafter when it appears in the form of a tall person, one has a glorious inside laugh. Laughter is the opposite of a piece of wood, it’s something inflammatory, something that strikes matches inside you. Matches giggle, exactly like a repressed laugh. I very much like stopping the outburst of laughter. It tickles, marvelously: not letting it go, the thing that so much wants to come shooting out, I like things that aren’t allowed to be, things that have to go down into my inside. It makes these repressed things more awkward, but at the same time more valuable. Yes, yes, I admit I like being repressed. To be sure. No, not always to be sure. On your way, Toby Shaw! What I mean is: if you aren’t allowed to do something, you do it twice as much somewhere else. Nothing’s more insipid than an indifferent, quick, cheap bit of permission. I like earning everything, experiencing everything, and a laugh, for example, also needs to be thoroughly experienced. When inside me I’m bursting with laughter, when I hardly know what to do with all this hissing gunpowder, then I know what laughing is, then I have laughed most laughishly, then I have a complete idea of what was shaking me. So I must firmly suppose and keep it as my strong conviction that rules do gild existence, or at least they silver it, in a word, they make it delectable. For certainly it’s the same with almost all other things and pleasures as it is with the forbidden delectable laugh. Not being allowed to cry, for example, well, that makes crying larger. Doing without love, yes, that means loving. If I oughtn’t to love, I love ten times as much. Everything that’s forbidden lives a hundred times over; thus, if something is supposed to be dead, its life is all the livelier. As in small things, so in big ones. Nicely put, in everyday words, but in everyday things the true truths are found. I’m gabbling somewhat again, aren’t I? I admit that I’m gabbling, but the lines have got to be filled with something. Forbidden fruits, how delectable, how delectable they are!

  Perhaps now between Herr Benjamenta and me, visible to us both, a sort of forbidden fruit is hanging. But neither of us says anything openly, and that is certainly to be approved of. To me, for instance, friendly treatment is unpleasant. I mean generally. Certain people who feel affection for me are repulsive to me, I can’t emphasize this overmuch. Naturally, I’m not averse to gentleness, and to warmth of heart. Who could be so crude as to shun completely all intimacy, all warmish feelings? But I’m always cautious about coming close to people, and I don’t know, but I must have some sort of gift for convincing others, silently, that a closer approach would be unwise, at least I think it’s difficult for anyone to steal into my confidence. And my warmth is precious to me, and anyone who wants to have it must be extremely cautious, and it’s this that the Principal wants now. This Herr Benjamenta, it seems, wants to possess my heart and make friends with me. But for the present I’m treating him very coldly indeed, and who knows: perhaps I don’t want to have anything to do with him.

  “You’re young,” the Principal says to me, “you’re bursting with prospects. Wait a moment, was there something else I forgot to say? You must realize, Jakob, that I’ve got a lot of things to say to you, and yet you can have forgotten the best and deepest things before you know where you are. And you yourself, you look like good fresh memory itself, whereas my memory is getting old now. My mind, Jakob, is dying. Forgive me if I’m saying things that are too weak, too intimate. It’s a laugh. So I ask you to forgive me, whereas I could give you a good beating if I thought it necessary. What stern looks you’re giving me. Well, well, I could throw you against that wall there, so hard you’d never see or hear anything again. I don’t know what’s happened to make me lose all my authority over you. Probably you laugh at me, secretly. But between ourselves: watch out. You must realize that wild feelings seize me sometimes and before I can stop myself I forget what I’m doing. O my little lad, no, don’t be afraid. It would be so completely impossible, completely, to do you any harm, but—well, now, what was it I meant to say to you? Tell me, are you just a little frightened? And you’re young and you’ve got hopes, and soon you want to find a position. Isn’t that so? Yes, that’s it. Yes, that’s it and I’m sorry, for just think, sometimes I feel that you’re my young brother or something near as nature to me, you seem so related to me, with your gestures, talk, mouth, everything, in short, yourself. I’m a king who’s been deposed. You’re smiling? I find it simply delightful, you know, that precisely when I’m talking about kings deposed and deprived of their thrones a smile escapes you, such a mischievous smile. You have intelligence, Jakob. Oh, it’s so nice to be talking to you. It’s a delightful prickly feeling to behave with you in a rather weak sort of way and more softly than usual. Yes, you really do provoke easy going, loosening up, the sacrifice of dignity. One attributes to you—do you believe me?—a nobility of mind, and this tempts one very strongly to indulge, when you are there, in fine and helpful explanations and confessions, as I do, for example, your master, confessing to you, my poor young worm, whom I could utterly crush if I chose to. Give me your hand. Good! Let me tell you that you’ve managed to make me feel respect for you. I respect you highly, and—I—don’t mind—telling you. And now I want to ask you something: will you be my friend, the small sharer of my confidences? I ask you, please do. But I’ll give you time to think it over, you may go now. Please go, leave me alone.” That’s the way my Principal speaks to me, the man who, as he says himself, could utterly crush me just when he chooses. I don’t bow to him any more, it would hurt his feelings. What was that he was saying about deposed kings? I’ll waste no time thinking about all this, as he recommends, but I shall simply carry on maintaining the formalities. In any case, it means I must watch out. He talks about wildness? Well, I must say, that’s very disturbing. I’m much too good to be squashed against a wall. Shall I tell the Fräulein? Good heavens, no. I’ve got enough courage to keep silent about something that’s strange, and enough intelligence to cope with something dubious alone. Perhaps Herr Benjamenta is mad. In any case, he’s like the lion, but I’m the mouse. A nice state of affairs in the Institute now. Only I -mustn’t tell anyone. Sometimes a thing that’s kept hidden is an advantage gained. It’s all quite silly. Basta!

  What strange imaginings I sometimes have! They’re almost quite absurd. Suddenly, without my being able to stop it, I had become a commander in the war around the year 1400, no, a bit later, at the time of the Milan campaigns. I and my officers, we were having dinner. It was after a victory in battle, and our fame would be spreading throughout Europe during the next few days. We were drinking and making merry. We were dining not in a room, no, but out of doors. The sun was just setting, then before my eyes, whose ray meant the start of battle and victory in arms, a creature was brought, a poor devil, a captured traitor. The unhappy man bowed his head and was trembling, knowing that he had no right to look at the commander-in-chief. I looked at him, quite fleetingly, then I looked just as lightly and fleetingly at the men who had brought him along, then I devoted myself to the full glass of wine before me, and these three movements meant: “Take him away and hang him!” At once the people seized him, and then the
poor fellow screamed in desperation, worse, as if he was being torn apart, torn apart already by a thousand dreadful martyrs’ deaths. My ears had heard all kinds of sounds in the fights and battles that filled my life, and my eyes were more than accustomed to the sight of terrible and painful things, but strangely enough, this was something I couldn’t endure. Once more I turned to the condemned man, also I gestured to the soldiers. “Let him go,” I said, the glass at my lips, to make it short. Then something at once moving and repulsive happened. The man to whom I had given back his life, his criminal’s and traitor’s life, plunged madly to my feet and kissed the dust on my shoes. I thrust him away. I was overcome with disgust and horror. I was stirred by the power at my command, the power with which I could freely play, as the gale plays with leaves, stirred so that it hurt, so I laughed and ordered the man to go away. He was almost out of his mind. A bestial joy gushed from eyes and mouth, he babbled thanks, thanks, and crawled away. Until late in the night we others gave ourselves up to wild drinking and revelry, and early in the morning, as we still sat at the table, I received with a dignity, a grandeur that nearly made even me smile, the emissaries of the Pope. I was the hero, the master of the day. On my whim, my satisfaction, depended the peace of half of Europe. Yet for the diplomatic gentlemen I played the fool, the kind fool, it suited me that way, I was a bit tired, I wanted to go home. I allowed the advantages won in war to be taken away from me. Naturally I was later made a Count, then I got married, and now I have sunk so low that I’m not troubled at all to be a humble little pupil at the Benjamenta Institute, and to have friends like Kraus, Schacht, and Schilinski. Throw me naked on the cold street and perhaps I’ll imagine that I’m the all-embracing Lord God. It’s time I laid down my pen.

  For such small and humble people as us pupils there is nothing comic. Without dignity, one takes everything in a serious way, but also lightly, almost frivolously. For me our classes in dancing, propriety, gymnastics, seem like public life itself, large, important, and then before my eyes the schoolroom is transformed into a splendid drawing room, into a street full of people, into a castle with old long corridors, into an official chamber, into a scholar’s study, into a lady’s reception room, it just depends, it can be anything. We must enter, make formal greeting, bow, speak, deal with imaginary business matters or tasks, carry out orders, then suddenly we’re at table and dining in a metropolitan manner and servants are waiting on us. Schacht, or perhaps even Kraus, pretends to be a lady of the high aristocracy, and I undertake to entertain her. Then we are all cavaliers, not excluding Beanpole Peter, who always feels that he’s a cavalier anyway. Then we dance. We hop around, followed by the laughing gaze of the instructress, and suddenly we rush to the aid of a casualty. He has been run over on the street. We give some small charity to a beggar, write letters, bellow at our valets, go to meetings, visit places where French is spoken, practice doffing our hats, talk about hunting, finance, and art, submissively kiss the five outstretched pretty fingers of ladies whom we want to feel fond of us, loaf like lay-abouts, quaff coffee, eat hams cooked in Burgundy, sleep in imaginary beds, get up again apparently early in the morning, say, “Good day, Judge,” fight with one another, for that happens in life too, and simply do all the things that occur in life. If we get tired of all of these follies, the Fräulein taps her cane on the edge of her desk and says: “Allons, come on, boys! Work!” Then we work at it again. We cruise around the room like wasps. It’s quite hard to describe, and if we get tired again, the instructress calls: “What? Are you sick of public life already? Get on with it! Show how life is. It’s easy, but you must be brisk, or life will tread on you.” And briskly off we go again. We travel, and our servants do silly things. We sit in libraries and study. We are soldiers, genuine recruits, and we must lie down and shoot. We walk into shops, to buy things, into swimming places, to swim, into churches, to pray: “Lord, lead us not into temptation.” And the next moment we are slap in the middle of the crassest error, and committing sins. “Stop. Enough for today,” the instructress then says, when it’s time. Then life is extinguished and the dream called human life takes another course. Usually then I go for half an hour’s walk. A girl always meets me in the park, where I sit on a bench. She seems to be a shopgirl. She always cranes her neck around and gives me a long look. She’s always swooning. It happens that she thinks I’m a gentleman earning a monthly salary. I look so good, like the right sort of thing. She’s wrong, and that’s why I ignore her.

  Now and again we also act plays, comedies, to be precise, which deteriorate into farce, until the instructress signals us to stop. The Mother: “I cannot give you my daughter for a wife, you are too poor.” The Hero: “Poverty is no disgrace.” The Mother: “Fiddlesticks! That’s empty talk. What are your prospects?” The Loving Girl: “Mamma, I must ask you, with all due respect, to speak more politely to the man whom I love.” The Mother: “Silence! One day you’ll be grateful to me for treating him with ruthless severity. Now, sir, tell me, where did you do your studies?” The Hero (he is Polish, and is played by Schilinski): “I graduated at the Benjamenta Institute, gracious lady. Forgive me for the pride with which I speak these words.” The Daughter: “Ah, Mamma, just see how well he behaves. What refined manners.” The Mother (severely): “Don’t talk to me about manners. Aristocratic behavior doesn’t matter a fig nowadays. You, sir, please would you tell me this: What did you learn at the Bagnamenta Institute?” The Hero: “Forgive me, but the Institute is called Benjamenta, not Bagnamenta. What did I learn? Well, of course, I must confess that I learned very little there. But learning a lot doesn’t matter a fig nowadays. You yourself must admit that.” The Daughter: “You heard what he said, Mamma dear?” The Mother: “Don’t talk to me, you little wretch, about hearing such nonsense or even taking it seriously. Now, my pretty young gentleman, you would do me a favor if you removed yourself from my sight, once and for all.” The Hero: “What’s this you venture to offer me? Oh, well, so be it. Adieu, I’m going.” Exit, et cetera. The content of our little dramas always relates to the school and the pupils. A pupil experiences all kinds of mixed and various fates, bad and good. He has success in the world, or total failure. A play always ends with a glorification and tableau of humble service. Happiness serves: that is the lesson of our dramatic literature. Our Fräulein usually represents, during the performance, the world of the spectators. She sits, as it were, in her box and gazes through her eyeglasses down upon the stage, that’s to say, upon us actors. Kraus is the worst actor. Acting doesn’t suit him at all. The best is definitely Beanpole Peter. Heinrich, too, is charming on the stage.

  I have the somewhat unpleasant feeling that I shall always have something to eat in the world. I’m healthy, and shall remain so, and people will always be able to make use of me somehow. I shall never be a burden to my nation, or my community. To think this, that’s to say, to think that as a humble person one will always have one’s daily bread to eat, would deeply wound me if I were the earlier Jakob von Gunten, if I were still the descendant, scion of the house, but I have become a quite quite different person, I have become an ordinary person, and I have to thank the Benjamentas for my becoming ordinary, and this fills me with a confidence beyond words, that shines with the dew of contentment. I’ve changed my pride, my kinds of honor. How have I come to be degenerate so young? But is this degeneration? To some extent it is, in other ways it’s the preservation of my kind of being. Perhaps I shall remain, lost and forgotten somewhere else in life, a purer and prouder von Gunten than if I were to have stayed at home, pecking at the family tree, rotting, heartless, ossified. Well, be that as it may. I have made the choice and there it is. There’s a strange energy in me, an urge to learn life from the roots, and an irrepressible desire to provoke people and things into revealing themselves to me. This makes me think of Herr Benjamenta. But I want to think of something else, that’s to say, I don’t want to think of anything.