Early one morning, he stood by the divinely glittering lake, near the landing, where he was witness to an utterly charming and poetic scene, namely by virtue of the fact that a group of schoolgirls was just returning home from their summer field trip in a ship sparkling magnificently in the morning sunshine.
The adorable thing about it was that the children were met by a stately choir or municipal band with lovely, graceful, cheerful melodies, giving them a reception as ceremonious as it was amusing and which looked extraordinarily lovely in the bright, happy landscape. Hans had never seen anything like it before, and just as little would anything nearly as nice subsequently ever come before his eyes again.
The beholder could never forget how the wonderful lake sparkled, everything light blue and light green and fairy white, how the whole surroundings smiled as though with darling, innocent girl’s lips, how all the brightly clad children marched on one after the other to brisk and lively music, strolled along into the city, instantly taking on shape and form at such a charming opportunity and turning as it were into the fluttering of doves, the twittering of swallows, or, better yet, a roundelay of angels dancing in the air, everything seeming so sweet and good and kind and happy and merry, and he impressed it upon his memory far too firmly to ever again be able to let it fall away much less throw it off.
Still, even other than that there were things he saw that he later liked thinking back on.
For example, while standing by the lake in an evening rain shower, he saw people, holding umbrellas open over their heads and their clothes, gondoling comfortably back and forth across the lake deep into the night, a variety of conveyance that gave him a vivid picture of the customs and traditions in China or Japan, although his feet and shoes had never in his life trod upon either the former or the latter, nor had he seen either with his own eyes. On the other hand, a friend who had been there had told him a lot of stories about it.
A majestic boulevard of chestnut trees leading out to the lake, resembling a high, green hallway, a sap-green convent passageway or church nave, a corridor or a beautiful, sprightly grotto, and then again perhaps bearing some similarity to a long oval sultan’s tent full of greenish decorative paintings and stage scenery, in any case unique and of very probably princely splendor in its way, in fact downright bewitching, just as likely to be found in some castle grounds or somewhere like that as where it actually was in fact to be found, and, incidentally, dating from the era of foreign rule or the time of the French, during which it was said to have been planted on the orders of a general, army corps commander, or imperious conqueror — Hans never stopped admiring or in other words continually admired it anew.
Such a long sentence may well give rise to some amazement. On account of its audacity it does doubtless deserve our notice. How lamentable that writers would rather express themselves simply and easily comprehensibly than capriciously and complicatedly.
Hans loved five to eight nearby communities and localities as dearly as if every single one of these thus-favored villages were his very own homeland and birthplace. He always made sure to dutifully and lovingly alternate the paying of visits to the various villages, perhaps giving slight preference to one or another of them without for all that meaning this partiality all too seriously, since in the end they were all fully equal in his affections.
He kept in living and faithful memory a companionable, gentle, old, good meadow path under the shadow of the tall walnut trees with a sweet, beautiful girl coming home from work who might well have made quite a good match for him as a wife under certain circumstances if she liked him, which he never dared to convince himself she did, since he told himself with rather good reason that such presumption and brazen impertinence would be fresh.
Likewise, a wide country road, swimming, shining in the light of the sunset, completely deluged with liquid yellow or gold, with all sorts of pretty factory girls, whose faces, expressions, gestures, and figures were wonderfully wreathed in the bewitching phosphorescent flames of evening, stuck with him and clung faithfully to him — a sight that gave rise to the thought that he would have truly loved to put his arms around and caress every one of these young, sweet, feminine fellow human beings, which naturally could have proved to be a bold and thus difficult undertaking given their considerable number.
Another time, somewhat later of course, namely already in the middle of the following snowy, foggy winter, he saw on that same road two children standing right next to each other in silence, with the wild gypsyish hair of children surrounding their little faces, looking deeply out into the space before them from strange black eyes.
This and other things came to mind again and again in later years. Again and again it was like seeing each thing again, finding it again. Various and sundry things seen long before would sometimes occur to him new and fresh again, which made him happy.
To see an object again at a later hour purely through mere reflection may perhaps be more beautiful than the moment itself of actual experience and perception, he felt and said.
In general, children deeply moved him and their games delighted him. Was there not, alighting upon the children’s games and children’s groups to be seen here and there on the village streets alongside all the nice, old-fashioned architecturalities, always both the trace of grace and the allure of the poor?
Children are always poor and defenseless, after all, no matter how powerful, prosperous, and defenseful their parents might be. For Hans, every child was beautiful in the entirely unique way children are, he himself sometimes did not know quite why.
“Do I deserve so many pleasures?” he oftentimes asked himself when he found himself particularly well entertained by a lovely view, a good sentiment, or an especially rich feeling. Sometimes the world seemed to him unutterably good, warm, and bright. He had a tendency to stand still before certain beauties of landscape, architecture, or whatever other natural sort, like a painter who starts sketching out hues and outlines in his imagination as soon as he sees. Some of the things he liked to look at reminded him of the strange paintings of Cézanne. Another occasion might bring to mind the magnificent painter Renoir. Upon catching sight of a waving yellow cornfield with a delightful hot summer wind sweeping through it, playing gracefully with the stalks, he could not help but think of van Gogh, who painted such things with a perhaps almost terrifyingly ardent love.
When Hans was standing on a hill one time, from where he could see spread out enticingly before him an extensive rich river region with all sorts of scattered fields, stands of trees, villages, church spires, and castle towers, he said to himself, “This beautiful segment of the globe, so radiant before me, inhabited by friendly human creatures, does it not from this distance look almost like a painting by a Dutch Old Master?” Nature often reminded him of art in this way, which was entirely natural, since after all in the end all art emerges from loving, maternal nature.
The grazing of the cows on the high mountain meadows, along with the charming, melodious tinkling of the bells so delightfully bound up with it; the beautifully free way the peaceful animals stood and lay around; the loafing of a certain, apparently unfortunately entirely useless average or exceptional person who clearly had inordinate amounts of time available for lying in the grass; on the one hand the echoing of and on the other hand the conscientious listening to just these soothing and sanctifying sounds, hearing this high, pure voice of ancient times, the trees and the good blue sky at peace all around, the cliffs, the quiet mountain cabins: all this absolutely refused to leave the memory of an extremely unserviceable but nonetheless still arguably otherwise quite nice, well-mannered, polite and respectable individual, namely Hans, nor did he want it to, since he seized with pleasure and an unquestionably heartfelt delight at all times upon anything beautiful and invigorating.