1907
Cowshed
I went to see Bonn. I beheld him in his famous checked Sherlock Holmes suit. The sight of his tawny leather spats devastated me. But it is far from my intention to make so bold as to speak of Bonn, whom I also learned to admire as Edmund Kean in the play by Dumas. Today, with the kind reader’s permission, I wish to speak of the Cowshed, an artistic singsong and jinglejangle establishment that lies in the northern reaches of our beloved city, Berlin. At the Cowshed, among other things, I met and learned to revere beyond all measure a Swiss girl who figured as a waitress there. There are figures galore at the Cowshed. I myself am a not unpopular, at times even celebrated regular. When I set foot on the premises, which are redolent of an aging, half-dead elegance, the publican gets up from his seat where he is keeping watch and greets me with great amicability by making a thoroughly courteous, suave bow, the significance of which is that I should buy a round of cognac. Oh, the conduct I display here at the Cowshed. It resembles the conduct of a Prince Dolgoroucki, a Count Osten-Sacken, a Prince Poniatowski. I always treat the artistes assembled upon the small triangular stage, which is stuck in a corner as if lost in indeterminacy and incertitude, to a boot. The significance of the term “boot” in localities such as the Cowshed is no doubt unfamiliar to most ladies and gentlemen of a literary bent. A boot of this sort is quite simply a tankard of beer shaped like a lady’s boot, made of glass and holding nearly two liters. The music made at the Cowshed is often ear-rending; nonetheless I do adore it and dream of divinely beautiful things whenever it creeps into my ear to ensnare me with melodies. Invariably I have some refreshment placed upon the fortepiano of the bushy-haired, gasconading lout of a band leader. This amenity, which he loses no time in appreciating and, as for the rest, most artfully guzzling, ah pardon, I mean drinking, consists in nothing other than various glasses of beer. Yes, I do have to say that quite a lot of money exits my pockets at the Cowshed. Excellent interest accrues on the capital thus invested, and this interest takes the form of merriments that give me no end of pleasure. For the most part I am a most cleverly respectable fellow, but at times, at times … when the mood happens to strike …
1911 (?)
An Actor
The Abyssinian lion at the Zoological Garden is most interesting. He’s performing in a tragedy, one that shows him simultaneously languishing and growing fat. He despairs (a nameless despair) and at the same time keeps himself nice and round. He thrives and at the same time is slowly tormenting himself to death. And all of this plays out before the eyes of the assembled spectators. I myself stood for a long time before his cage, utterly incapable of tearing my eyes away from this kingly drama. On a side note, incidentally: I should like to change professions, if this might be done expeditiously and with little effort, and become a painter of animals. I’d be able to paint my fill just of this caged-in lion. Has the esteemed literary reader ever looked closely and with proper attentiveness at the eye of an elephant? It sparkles with primordial grandeur. But hark! What’s that roaring? Ah, it’s our dramatist. He’s his own playwright and his own player. Although he sometimes appears to be quite beside himself, he never loses his composure, for his dignity is inborn. Dignity, then, and at the same time wildness. Just think how beautiful and majestic it is when he sleeps. But let’s have a look at him when he senses the approach of feeding time. He descends to the level of an impatient child, in love with the vision of the approaching feast. Then at least he has something to do: he can tear at fresh meat. He’s so good at eating. How oddly a caged animal like this must know — and to some extent love — his keeper. At rest, how divine he is. He appears to be in mourning, appears to be entertaining quite particular thoughts, and I am tempted to swear that the thoughts he is immersed in are beautiful and sublime. Have you ever let him have a good look at you? Try it, attract his attention sometime. His gaze is the gaze of a god. And then what is he like when he grows uneasy and strides up and down in his prison cell, pressing his princely strength against the walls of his cage. Always up and down. Up and down. For hours on end. What a scene! Up and down, and his powerful tail thrashes the ground.
1910
Berlin Life
Berlin and the Artist
Elsewhere, in the quiet provinces, the artist can easily find himself surrounded by melancholias. Lost in thought, he sits at the secluded window of his medieval digs, a strange twilight flowing all about him, and without so much as stirring he sends his daydreams out into the sweeping landscape. No one comes. Nothing disturbs his reverie. An inexpressible silence rules the surrounds. In the capital, on the other hand, there is no dearth of disturbances, it’s like a lively warehouse of good cheer, and naturally this is something our man finds beneficial. The souls of artists must always be woken a little from the magic spell in which they lie fettered. Inside almost every artist — certainly in every true one — lies a fairy-tale realm. In the land of fairy tales, however, a great deal of slumbering occurs. One doesn’t stir much. Are not today’s German provinces much like a dreaming, slumbering fairy tale? Magdeburg, for instance. Does Magdeburg possess its own self-sufficient and self-assured intellectual life? Not particularly. That’s the problem.
Berlin, by comparison — how splendid! A city like Berlin is an ill-mannered, impertinent, intelligent scoundrel, constantly affirming the things that suit him and tossing aside everything he tires of. Here in the big city you can definitely feel the waves of intellect washing over the life of Berlin society like a sort of bath. An artist here has no choice but to pay attention. Elsewhere he is permitted to stop up his ears and sink into willful ignorance. Here this is not allowed. Rather, he must constantly pull himself together as a human being, and this compulsion encircling him redounds to his advantage. But there are yet other things as well.
Berlin never rests, and this is glorious. Each dawning day brings with it a new, agreeably disagreeable attack on complacency, and this does the general sense of indolence good. An artist possesses, much like a child, an inborn propensity for beautiful, noble sluggardizing. Well, this slug-a-beddishness, this kingdom, is constantly being buffeted by fresh storm-winds of inspiration. The refined, silent creature is suddenly blustered full of something coarse, loud, and unrefined. There is an incessant blurring together of various things, and this is good, this is Berlin, and Berlin is outstanding.
The excellent gentleman from the provinces, however, should by no means imagine that here in the city there are not lonelinesses as well. The metropolis contains lonelinesses of the most frightful sort, and anyone who wishes to sample this exquisite dish can eat his fill of it here. He can experience what it means to live in deserts and wastes. The metropolitan artist has no dearth of opportunities to see and speak to no one at all. All he has to do is make himself unpopular among certain arbiters of taste or else consistently fixate on failures, and in no time he’ll have sunk into the most splendid, most blossoming of abandonments.