Father apparently spends a lot of money. He has receipts and expenses, he lives, he strives after gains, he lets live. He even leans a bit toward extravagance and waste. He’s constantly in motion. “Clearly he’s one of those people who find it a pleasure and, yes, even a necessity, to constantly take risks.” At our house there is much said about success and failure. Whoever eats with us and associates with us has attained some form of smaller or greater success in the world. What is the world? A rumor, a topic of conversation? In any case, my father stands in the very middle of this topic of conversation. Perhaps he even directs it, within certain bounds. Papa’s aim, at all events, is to wield power. He attempts to develop, to assert both himself and those people in whom he has an interest. His principle is: He in whom I have no interest damages himself. As a result of this view, Father is always permeated with a healthy sense of his human worth and can step forth, firm and certain, as is fitting. Whoever grants himself no importance feels no qualms about perpetrating bad deeds. What am I talking about? Did I hear Father say that?
Have I the benefit of a good upbringing? I refuse even to doubt it. I have been brought up as a metropolitan lady should be brought up, with familiarity and, at the same time, with a certain measured severity, which permits and, at the same time, commands me to accustom myself to tact. The man who is to marry me must be rich, or he must have substantial prospects of an assured prosperity. Poor? I couldn’t be poor.
It is impossible for me and for creatures like me to suffer pecuniary need. That would be stupid. In other respects, I shall be certain to give simplicity preference in my mode of living. I do not like outward display. Simplicity must be a luxury.
It must shimmer with propriety in every respect, and such refinements of life, brought to perfection, cost money. The amenities are expensive. How energetically I’m talking now! Isn’t it a bit imprudent? Shall I love? What is love? What sorts of strange and wonderful things must yet await me if I find myself so unknowing about things that I’m still too young to understand. What experiences shall I have?
1909
Translated by Harriet Watts
Flower Days
On Cornflower Day, when everyone struts around in blue, it became evident how much the writer of the present scientific treatise feels himself to be a good, innocent child of his times. Indeed, I have participated in each and every nice and nasty cornflower folly with joy, love, and delight, and I must have behaved, I believe, very funnily. Several proud and earnest nonparticipants cast severe looks in my direction, but me, happy me, I was as if intoxicated, and I made a pilgrimage, I must confess, while blushing, from one distillery to the next, while buying, all along the way from Münzstrasse to Motzstrasse, patriotic flowers. Clad in blue from head to foot, I seemed to myself most graceful, but what is more, I felt myself most vividly to be a respectable member of the upper classes. Oh, this sweet feeling, how it befogged me and how happy it makes me, the beautiful, yes perhaps even, depending on circumstances, noble thought that I might fling to left and right, with very graceful gestures, pennies, healthy, true, honest, honorable, well-behaved, good pennies, thereby accomplishing a goodly work. Now come what may, let it happen to me, poor devil that I am: I am pleased with myself, thoroughly so, and a feeling of peace has overcome me, I cannot express it in carefully chosen or unchosen words. In my hand, or fist, I held a thick, huge, and evidently imposing bouquet of freshly picked paper flowers, the fragrance of which captivated me. I discovered, by the way, that such flowers are sold at seven pennies a dozen. A waiter, as honest as he is stupid, who always says “Very well” when he takes an order, told me this in a series of mysterious whispers. I am always on an intimate footing with waiters and suchlike people. That’s just by the way.
As for flower days in general, I would have to be a heartless rascal not to grasp at once the noble purport on which they rest, and therefore I leap forward as rapidly as possible and exclaim aloud: Yes, it is true, flower days are heavenly. They are not comical in the least, but have, to my feeling, a thoroughly noble and earnest character. Among us blokes or fellow beings, of course, there are still a few isolated and, it would seem, obstinate people who would scorn to wear, on a flower day, a day of peace and joy, a pleasure flower in their soul-buttonhole. We might hope that such people may soon learn better and nobler ways. As for me, as I may fortunately declare, I am radiant on flower days, with sheer flowery and flowerish satisfaction, and I am one of the most flower-encrusted persons among all those who are beautified, adorned, and beflowered. In a word, on such a Day of Plants I am like a swaying, tender plant, and on the charming Violet Day that soon is coming I shall, this I know for certain, appear in the world myself as a modest and secluded violet. For some magnanimous purpose I might even be able to transform myself into a daisy. In future, let anyone, I would here heartily plead, stick and wedge his buttercup between his lips, whether they be opened or grimly tight shut. Ears, too, are excellent props for flowers. On Cornflower Day I had stuck a cornflower behind each of my three ears, and it was most becoming. Ravishing, too, are roses, and the Rose Days soon to come. Let them descend upon me, those distinctive days, and I shall embellish my home with roses, and, sure as I’m a modern man and understand my epoch, I shall stick a rose in my nose. I can warm to Daisy Days most animatedly too, since any random fashion, absolutely any, makes of me a servant, a slave, or subject. Yet I am happy so.
Well, even then, such odd people, who lack character, have also to exist. The main thing is: I mean to enjoy my morsel of life as well and as long as I can, and if a person finds it amusing he’ll heartily go along with any kind of nonsense; but now I turn to the most beautiful subject of all — to women. For them, for them alone, the gracious flower days were invented, composed, poeticized. If a man wallows in flowers, it’s a bit unnatural; but in every way it befits a woman to put flowers in her hair and bring flowers to a man. Such a lady or virgin flower has only to make a sign, a gesture, and at once I hurl myself at her feet, ask her, my whole body trembling with joy, how much the flower costs, and I buy it from her. Then all pale in the face I breathe a glowing kiss upon her roguish little hand, and am prepared to surrender my life for her. Yes, indeed, in this manner, and others to match, I do behave on flower days. From time to time, to refresh myself, I plunge, it is true, into a snack hall and gulp down, there and then, a potted-meat sandwich. I adore potted meat, but I adore flowers too. There are now many things that I adore. All the same, one has to do one’s duty as a citizen, nobody should make a face, nobody think he has a right to pass the flower days off with a quiet smile. They are a fact of life; but one should respect facts. Should one really?