January 1915
(published with next two pieces as
“Three Little Fabulations”)
THE CITY
I REMEMBER how beautiful our city was on spring evenings. The homey, wide old streets glowed in the dim light. Lively as our city is, numerous people no less free than calm and well-bred were walking upon its streets. The pretty shop windows shimmered. One of the streets was completely full of people from every walk of life. I heard the bright, easy chitchat and twittering of young girls. Men strode along or stood silently in casual groups in the middle of the street. Some were smoking pipes. In one of the quiet side streets, a band gave a concert. A large cheerful audience stood around and listened. All the people anyone could see were so peaceful, so charming; all the windows were open to let the mild night air into the dark rooms. It was as though the pretty, cheerful city were especially made for spring, as though there could now not be any spring anywhere else but just there. I was enchanted by everything I saw and everything I heard. All at once I felt ten years younger. The tall trees here and there in the parks were wonderfuclass="underline" majestic old chestnut trees with round, rich, dark crowns, and in other places slim pointed firs, whose tips seemed to instigate a friendship or love affair with the stars and the moon. Everywhere it smelled and murmured and resounded of spring, love, and charming companionableness. The night and the city seemed to me the very expression of harmlessness and carefreeness. I felt very gentle, and at the same time also so quiet. Solitude and sweetness, sincerities and secrecies had joined together into a single bond and sound. The buildings stood there, some pitch black, some brightly lit up by the streetlights, like friendly figures you could converse and associate with. The lights in the whole dear deep dark warm night warbled and whispered and offered up their sweet, tender secrets, and in the thick darkness under low-hanging tree branches I felt wrapped in another way in infinite well-being. Time seemed to stand still because it had to stop and eavesdrop on all the beauty and all the evening magic. Everything dreamed because it was alive, and everything lived because it was permitted to dream. Beautiful noble ladies strolled slowly by on their husband’s or lover’s arm. The whole city was out on a promenade, and huge, wonderful clouds floated in the sky like the beautiful bodies of gods, as though kind hands were resting on a forehead, as though good divinities wanted to protect the city from all evil. The streets looked so dainty in their nightdress, so diverting, so darling. Parents walked with their children and both, the parents as well as the children, felt good.
January 1915
SPRING
THE FRESH spring green looks like a green fire. Blue and green flow together into a single resonating sound. I don’t think I have ever seen the world look so beautiful and felt so content. How good it felt to be able to walk on the craggy stones. The surface of the earth felt like my secret brother. The plants had eyes that cast gazes full of love and friendship. The bushes spoke in a sweet voice and the lovely melancholy-happy birdsong rang out from everywhere. In the evenings, it was mysteriously beautiful in the fir forests — the firs standing there like fantastic creatures, so noble, so majestic, so delicate. Their branches were like arms earnestly pointing this way and that. How nice the sunlight was on cheery, bright mornings, almost too nice. It turned me into a little child again every time, in all that happiness, surrounded by all that color. I almost wanted to fold my hands together into a trusting prayer. “How beautiful the world is,” I said silently to myself again and again. Standing on the hill I looked down at the charmingly shimmering plains, at the city with its pretty buildings and streets, and little figures were moving through the streets: They were my fellow citizens. It was all so peaceful and so charming, so clear and so rich in secrets. Oh, how beautiful it was on the cliffs above the lake, which was like a gentle smile in its color and outline — a smile containing the best will in the world and the most graceful goodness, a smile that can only be smiled by lovers, who always have a certain similarity to children. I always walked along the same path, and every time it seemed entirely new. I never tired of delighting in the same things and glorying in the same things. Is the sky not always the same, are love and goodness not always the same? The beauty met me with such silence. Conspicuous things and inconspicuous things held hands with each other like children of the same mother. What was important melted away, and I devoted undivided attention to the most unimportant things and was very happy doing so. In this way the days, week, months went by and the year ran quickly round, but the new year looked much the same as the previous one and again I felt happy.
January 1915
A SCHOOLBOY’S DIARY
AS A SECONDARY-SCHOOL student it is truly time to think about life a little more seriously. So: That is what I will attempt to do now. One of our teachers is named Wächli. I have to laugh whenever I think about Wächli; he really is too funny. He always boxes our ears, but these strange boxings of the ear do not hurt at all. The man has never learned how to hit in a way you can really feel. He is the most sweet-tempered, jolly person in the world, and how we torment him! It is not gallant. We schoolboys are decidedly not noble creatures; we lack the beautifully proper social graces many times over. Why is it that we overwhelm precisely a Wächli with our jokes? We are cowards; we deserve an Inquisitor to discipline us. If Wächli is happy and contented, just then is when we behave in such a way that his cheerful, satisfied mood has no choice but to depart immediately. Is that good and right? Hardly. If he gets mad we just laugh at him. There are people who are so funny when they get mad! Wächli definitely seems to belong to this category. He makes use of the cane very seldom; he rarely gets so angry that he needs to reach for this vile implement. He is tall and fat in shape and his face is tinted purplish red. What else should I say about this Wächli? In general, I would say, he picked the wrong line of work. He should have been a beekeeper or something along those lines. I feel sorry for him.
Blok (that’s our French teacher’s name) is a tall, scraggly man with an unsympathetic nature. He has thick lips and eyes that one might also call thick and puffy; they look like his lips. He talks cruelly and fluently. I hate that. I am a good student otherwise, but with Blok I have primarily only failures to report. But he’s the one who ruins class for me. You’d have to be a hardy fellow to do well with Blok. He never loses his temper. How painful that is for us schoolboys: to feel that we are totally incapable of annoying this leather satchel of a man in any way. He is like a wax statue and there is something creepy and horrible about that. He must have a deeply hateful character and a ghastly family life. God save a boy from a father like that. My father is a jeweclass="underline" I feel that especially vividly when I look at Blok. How stiffly he always stands there: It is as though he was half made of wood and half made of iron. If you can’t come up with any answers in his class, he makes fun of you. Other teachers would at least get mad. That’s good for a student, since you expect it. Honest fury makes a good impression on a boy. But no, he just stands there coldly, this Blok, and pronounces his praise or blame. His praise is slimy, it doesn’t warm you at all; you have no idea what to do with his criticism, coming as it does from a totally dry and indifferent mouth. In Blok’s class, you curse school. And he’s not a real teacher at all. A teacher who doesn’t understand how to touch people’s souls… But what am I talking about? The fact is, Blok is my French teacher. It’s sad, but it’s a fact.