1914
THE MOUNTAIN
WITHOUT subjecting yourself to a certain amount of physical exertion you will not, of course, reach the top of the beautiful mountain. And yet, I feel, you will not shy away from the task of climbing. It is a bright, warm — even hot — cheerful early morning — perhaps late morning — in summer and the world, as far as your eye can see, consists of a lake and a river, a haze of blue and green. Oftentimes you stop and stand for a while to catch your breath, wipe the sweat from your brow, and look down into the valley. And now you will permit me to imagine that you have arrived happy and merry on the soft, green, broad mountain ridge, where the cool pure mountain air at once swirls around you, which you breathe in with delight, so that your lungs expand and your heart too. Standing on the heights you have ascended feels divinely beautiful to you, dear friend, and you feel about to drown in the enjoyment of this sweet, high, mountain freedom. Exactly as though drowned in the sea of delicious air and the sea of the joy of the mountain climber, that is how you seem to yourself. You feel blessed to be able to look down at the world lying at your feet like a bright and jolly painting down there and resounding and smelling like a song, like a poem, like a mirage. Slowly you walk on through the pasture, under fir branches and charming beech leaves which smile at you with their fresh, godlike color as though with a child’s smile, and then you lie blissfully, without a thought in your head, on the ground for a half or perhaps a whole hour; you stand up again and continue walking through the whole sweet hot melody of blue and green spread all around. The green is so succulent and lush that you feel it as a flood in which you wade, bathe, wallow. It is a reveling, a walking wreathed in pleasure, a pleasurable stroll in Arcadia. Greece is no more noble and beautiful, Japan with its princely gardens could be no more inundated with pleasure and joy. Gently and softly the distant sounds of busy daily life rise up from the depths of the populated plains to your listening ear, while your eyes drink in the blindingly beautiful dear white of a cloud floating in the blue sky like a fairy-tale ship. Sweet cooing and roaring, sweet humming and whispering airs, and there you stand under all that light, in all that light, among all those colors, and you look across to the nearby mountains reaching up into the air silently, big and shrouded in mist, like figures in a dream, and you greet them like friends — you are their friend, they are your friends. You are the whole world’s friend; you want to fall into its arms, the arms of this wonderful friend. She holds you in her arms and you hold her. You understand her, you love her, and she you.
1914
A CURIOUS CITY
ONCE THERE was a city. The people there were all puppets. But they walked and talked, they had movement and feeling and were very polite. They not only said: Good morning, or: Good night, they meant it too, and with all their hearts. These people had heart. At the same time they were consummate city people. They had shaken off, indignantly as it were, everything rough and bespeaking the countryside. The cut of both their clothes and their behavior was the finest that any judge of human nature or professional tailor could imagine. Shabby, old clothes hanging loose on the body were worn by no one. Good taste had worked its way into every single individual, there was no so-called rabble, they were all completely equal in manners and education, without, nonetheless, being similar to each other, which would have been boring. Thus none but lovely, elegant people with free and noble deportments were to be seen on the street. They knew how to wield, steer, rein in, and preserve their freedom in the most subtle ways. As a result, it never came to outrages with regard to public decency. Just as little were there offenses against good manners. The women especially were magnificent. Their clothes were as charming as they were practical, as beautiful as they were enticing, as respectable as they were pretty. What was moral was enticing! The young men strolled along in the evening behind these enticing creatures, slowly, as though dreaming, without falling into hasty, greedy movements. The women wore a kind of pants, mostly white or light-blue lace culminating at the top in a narrow cinched waist. Their shoes were colorful, high, and of the finest leather. It was lovely how their shoes nestled up against their feet and then their legs, and how their legs could feel themselves surrounded by something precious, and how the men could feel how the women’s legs felt that! The fact that the women wore pants was good in that they put their spirit and language into their stride, which, hidden under a dress, would feel less watched and judged. In general, everything was a single feeling. The businesses were booming since the people were lively, busy, and upstanding. Upstanding by education and also by innate delicacy. To make one another’s easy, beautiful lives contentious — that they did not want. There was enough money around and enough for everyone, because they were all intelligent enough to take care of the necessities first, and also because everyone made it easy for everyone else to come into a nice amount of money. There were no Sundays, just as little was there religion of any sort, which could have given rise to conflicts about its rules and covenants. The churches were places of entertainment where the people gathered for services. Pleasure was a deep and sacred thing for these people. That you stayed pure in your pleasures was a given, for after all everyone has need of them. There were no poets. A poet would not have known how to say anything edifying or new to such people. In fact there were no professional artists at all, since facility at all kinds of art was universally widespread. It is good when people do not need artists to give them the gift of awakening them to art. They were already so gifted because they had learned to protect their senses as something precious and use them as such as well. They did not need to look up phrases and sayings in books because they had fine, continual, alert, and quivering sensibilities of their own. They spoke beautifully, when they had reason to speak; they had a mastery of language, without knowing how it had happened that they had come to acquire it. There were many things that entertained and occupied them, but everything took place in relation to love for beautiful women. All was brought into delicate, dreamy relation with everything else. They spoke and thought about everything with feeling. They knew how to discuss business matters more sensitively, nobly, and simply than we do today. There were no so-called higher things. Even to imagine anything fitting that description would have been disagreeable to these people, who took everything that existed as beautiful. Everything that happened, happened gaily. Really? Is that true? What an idiot I am! No, everything I’ve said about this city and these people is total nonsense. It’s all made up. It is all plucked from thin air. Get lost, kid!
Then the kid went for a walk and sat down on a park bench. It was midday. The sun was shining through the trees and making splotches on the path, on the faces of the strolling people, on the ladies’ hats, on the grass, that rascally sun. The sparrows hopped nimbly around and nannies rolled their little prams. It was like a dream, a mere game, a picture. The kid rested his head on his elbows and was absorbed in the picture. Suddenly he stood up and left. Well, it’s his business. Then the rain started falling and it washed away the picture.
January 1905; 1914