There is a boy, I don’t know his name, who is lucky enough to enjoy lessons on the grand piano from a very beautiful and regal piano teacher. Right at this moment he is being instructed in agility on the keys by the most beautiful hands on earth. The lady’s hands glide across the keys like white swans on dark water. They already say very gracefully what later lips will repeat. The boy is wreathed in absent-mindedness, which the teacher does not seem to want to notice. “Play that”—but he plays it indescribably badly. “Play it again”—but he plays it even worse than before. Well, he needs to play it yet again — but he plays badly. “You’re lazy.” He cries, he to whom this is said. She smiles, she who says it. He lays his head down on the piano, he who has to accept this being said of him. She strokes his soft brown hair, she who has had no choice but to say it. Now the boy, awakened from his shame by the soft caress, kisses the loving hand, which is very elegant and white. Now the lady throws her splendid arms, which are very soft and just the right tongs for a hug, around the boy’s neck. Now the lady lets herself kiss him and now the lips of the dear boy succumb to a kiss from the friendly lady. Now the knees of the kissee have nothing more urgent to do than sink down like falling blades of grass, and the arms of the kneeler nothing simpler to do than clasp the respective knees of the lady. The lady’s knees likewise waver, and now both of them, beautiful gracious lady and ordinary poor young man, are a single embrace, a kiss, a tumbling to the floor, a teardrop — and something else, too: an unexpected nasty surprise for someone who at this very moment opens the doors of the room, thereby bringing the sweetness of the love both have now forgotten, and also the story thereof, to an end.
Now I’ve just remembered that once upon a time there lived a poor poet, very oppressed by dark moods, who, since he had seen his fill of God’s great world, decided to put only his imagination into his poems. He sat one evening, afternoon, or morning, at eight, twelve, or two o’clock, in the dark space of his room and he said to the wall the following: Wall, I’ve got you in my head. Don’t try to trick me with your strange and placid visage! From now on, you are the prisoner of my imagination. Thereupon he said the same thing to the window and to the gloomy view it offered him day after day. After which, spurred on by wanderlust, he undertook a walk that led him through fields, forests, meadows, villages, cities, and over rivers and lakes, always under the same beautiful sky. But to these fields, forests, meadows, villages, cities, and rivers he continually repeated: Guys, I’ve got you locked tight in my head. Don’t any of you think any longer that you make an impression on me. He went home, constantly laughing to himself: I have them all, I have them all in my head. And presumably he has them in there still, and they can’t (however much I want to help them do so) get out again. Isn’t this story very full of imagination???
Once there was a poet who loved it in his room so much that he spent the whole day sitting in his easy chair pondering the walls before his eyes. He took the pictures off said walls so as not to have any diverting object disturb him and lead him astray into observing anything other than the small, nasty, grimy wall. Although we cannot in fairness say that he was intentionally studying the room, rather we have to admit: He lay shackled, without a thought in his head, in a pointless daydream, in which his mood was neither happy nor sad, neither cheerful nor melancholy, but rather as cold and indifferent as that of an insane person. He spent three months in this state and on the day that the fourth month was about to begin he could no longer stand up. He was stuck fast. That is an unusual occurrence, and there is a certain implausibility in the storyteller’s pledge that even more unusual occurrences are to follow. But just then a friend of the poet’s went looking for the poet in his room and, as soon as he entered it, fell into the same sad or ridiculous daydreaming as the one the first poet lay caught in. Some time later, the same misfortune befell a third writer of verse or novels who came to look in on his friend; it befell six writers in total, one after the other, all of whom came to see what their friend was up to. Now all seven are sitting in this small, dark, gloomy, unfriendly, cold, bare room and it is snowing outside. They are stuck to their seats and will probably never again undertake another plein-air description. They sit and stare, and the friendly laughter that greets this story is unable to free them from their tragic fate. Good night!
This story, although I have my doubts about its veracity, gave me, when someone told it to me, great pleasure, and I will tell it here as well as I can, but under one condition: that no one interrupt me with yawning before it is over. Once upon a time there were two lyric poets, one of whom, a very high-strung, sensitive young man, called himself Emanuel. The other, a rougher type, was named Hans. Emanuel had discovered a corner of the forest concealed from all the world, where he was in the habit of very happily writing poetry. To this end, he wrote down well-meaning and insignificant verses in a notebook he had inherited from his grandfather, and he seemed supremely satisfied with this profession of his. And really, why wouldn’t he be? The place in the forest was so quiet and pleasant, the sky overhead so cheerful and blue, the clouds so entertaining, the line of trees across from him so various and of such sought-after colors, the grass so soft, the brook irrigating this remote forest glade so refreshing, that our Emanuel would have had to be crazy to feel anything other than happy. The sky smiled down on his innocent versifying as bluely and beautifully as it did on the forest trees; this idyll’s peace seemed so indestructible that the disturbance now about to enter the scene like the accident of the week will necessarily seem very implausible. But here is what happened: I have already mentioned Hans. Hans, the second lyric poet, was wandering in the woods one day, near this solitary place, letting chance take him where it would, and he happened to discover the corner and its occupant, brother Emanuel. At once, although they had never laid eyes on each other before, Hans recognized the poet in Emanuel, the way one bird immediately recognizes another. He crept up behind him and, to make a long story short, gave him a good hard slap in the face, so that Emanuel let out a loud scream and, without stopping to see who had thus maltreated him, leapt to his feet and vanished, so quickly in fact that he was out of sight at that very instant. Hans rejoiced in his triumph! He had every reason to hope that he had driven his rival from the beautiful and productive locale forever, and already he was pondering how best and most effectively he could portray the loveliness of this lonely forest clearing. He too had a notebook with him, full of verses both bad and good that he hoped to publish shortly. He pulled out this book now and began to scribble down all sorts of brainlessnesses, the way lyric poets are wont to do to put themselves into the proper mood. He seemed, however, to have serious difficulty forcing the calm, gentle beauty of his conquered landscape into tender syllables in such a way that even a shimmer of life peeked out of them; and just as he was tormenting himself in this way, a new torment arose before or behind him, of such a sort that it necessarily spoiled for him too this paradise he had, like a yapping dog, driven the other poet out of. A third person appeared on the scene in the form of a poet: a female poet. Hans, who, startled by the noise, had looked up, recognized her immediately as such, lost no time with gallantries, and instead vanished in an instant like his predecessor. — Here the nice little story breaks off and I fully approve and understand its powerlessness to continue since I would be just as little able to continue here, where any continuation would necessarily lead straight into an abyss of pointlessness. For would it not be on the pointless side to run on about the poetess’s behavior here where the fates of the other two poets have already been sung? I will content myself with reporting that she found nothing beautiful in the forest spot’s beauty and nothing rare in its rarity and that she disappeared as noisily as she had showed up. Let the Devil write poetry.