My companion is now urging me on, he’s cold, and both of us are meanwhile convinced that we are hungry for a nice supper. We leave, but keep turning around to look back again. The yellow, red, glowing entity behind us is still alive, displaying frightful vitality, still speaking this same fierce, furious language, still feeling the same indestructible incendiary sentiments. But my companion declares it’s getting tedious to watch the flames for so long. I concede the point. It is one of my possibly bad habits that I am constantly conceding points to my fellow man.
1908
Something About the Railway
How nice it is to stand about in train stations and in a leisurely fashion observe the travelers who are arriving and going off again. Many a poor, destitute devil enjoys this pastime, for it is an amusement that costs nothing at all. Nor does it require any formalities or rules; you merely stand there, your hands possibly in your trouser pockets, a cigarette or cigar stump in your mouth, almost indecorously, and yet without attracting any particular notice, and in this way you may enjoy the liveliest and loveliest spectacle in the world, for this is a train station. Train stations in the countryside can be downright ravishing with their gardens and the little stands of trees that tend to be situated beside such buildings, but in the train stations of royal seats and capitals there’s more going on, and all this mobility is sometimes far more beautiful than all beautiful, peaceful landscapes. For the unemployed and all the various sorts of idlers that today’s industrial, artistic, and commercial life and activity at times sets out on the street, train stations and the sight of the departing and arriving trains are ideal. The ne’er-do-well has plenty of time at his disposal, and as a result he observes practically everything, he walks slowly up and down the smooth platforms, measuring out steps of noble elegance, and lets his eyes wander everywhere. What a great massing and intermingling! At the ticket windows there are often veritable public assemblies and imperiously demanding mobs, as though we found ourselves in a year of passionate revolution. Everyone wants to receive his ticket as quickly as possible, but usually he has failed to sort out the exact change in advance as admonished by the station’s solicitous management. The idler is better off: he need not run and need not fear that the express train will pull out right under his nose. “I was just about to get on when, so help me God, that black devil of a train took off right past my hat.” This is the sort of thing uttered by travelers with boarding intentions, but not by the person whose aim it is to blithely, quietly observe. What a pushing, pressing, shoving, racing mayhem! Ah, here’s an important train pulling in, and you stand there watching how they throw their arms about each other’s necks, how kisses are distributed left and right, how hats are waved about, how the charming heads of women blush, how hands and arms are held out to receive, how eyes light up, how servants awaiting their masters stand to attention as they catch sight of them and then swiftly relieve them of their little suitcases, packages, and all sorts of silly items.
After two or three minutes the hubbub generally dies down, and the idler takes up position somewhere else. There is always something happening everywhere in a train station, he’s quite aware of this, and so he is not at all concerned he might have cause to suffer tedium. Not a bit of it. He goes into the third-, fourth-, sixth-, or, as far as he cares, fourteenth-class restaurant, where there are always people sitting about on the benches or chairs or at tables. He’s already accustomed to the unsavory odors to be found in such establishments, and so nothing could possibly shrink or incinerate his pleasure. The twine he’s used to bind his enjoyment to this spectacle holds firm, and now perhaps he drinks a glass of beer and converses with an honest traveling journeyman who’s sitting on his suitcase as though he were afraid someone might come along and rob him of all he owns. From time to time the loiterer might venture into the first- and second-class waiting rooms so as to pay a visit, if only a brief and rather conspicuous one, to the elegance and luxury that has settled itself here in lordly comfort. Sometimes he’s chased off by a stern official wearing a railway uniform, but this does him no harm, after all, he has once again beheld something beautiful with his eyes! If he is well-dressed, he might secretly sit down here among the aristocracy and the bankers’ guild and order a cognac which he will drink intelligently and with pensive dignity while striking up a conversation with a pretty waitress clad in a folksy Oberland costume. “Express train departing for Milan in four minutes,” a by all appearances courteous employee announces; our man rises to his feet, pays his tab, and strolls casually out to have a look at this Milan departure. What excellent grooming, what ensembles! Many of the ladies boarding the train wear white veils on their hats, and their cavaliers assist them with greater or lesser degrees of skill as they get in. The train chugs off, a few handkerchiefs are waved about like little flags, the ne’er-do-well is himself departing in his thoughts, in other words he imagines sitting in an empty compartment, reading a newspaper.
But for the moment begone with this loitering observer, whose experiences in the end are after all rather one-sided. All at once we really are sitting in one of the many trains as an actual and not just imaginary traveler, experiencing journeys that last entire days and nights. Landscapes fly past the window like movable stage sets at the theater being spun around on the revolving stage. If agreeable company is present, conversation ensues, and if not, one feels a bit vexed and proceeds to light a cigar — to the annoyance of an all too sensitive fellow traveler — and produces great quantities of smoke. Or else one has a book and would like to read a bit of it, but one cannot quite, until in the end one can. The rectangle of window keeps displaying fresh new images. You watch vineyard-covered hillsides slowly falling away, houses sinking down, trees suddenly shooting up out of the earth. Clouds and meadows alternate amicably, meaningfully. “Might you give me a light from your fire there?” someone accosts you, but given your good breeding you willingly tolerate this interruption and reply “Why, of course!” and with pleasure distribute some of the superfluous embers. What a flying, rattling, rustling. Entire towns and villages are left behind on both sides as though they were lifeless images, and yet in these places human beings respire, horses whinny, a metalworker hammers away, a factory spins its wheel, a steer bellows, a child is crying, a person is consumed by bitter despair, two lovers secretly rejoice, boys are heading off to school, a midday meal is cooked in someone’s kitchen, a pair of unfortunate invalids lie in bed, or two men exchange blows in some wretched altercation. But the railway keeps on flying down its precisely predetermined, prearranged path and lets all the rest of human life and activity be human life and activity. At each tidy station, people get out and in, those getting out are generally received by a mother, father, brother, son, or daughter, or else by acquaintances, and those who get in nicely say “Good day” or “Good evening,” depending on where, for example, the hour hand has gotten to. And then the journey continues, crossing plains, passing by thick fir forests and splendid little garden-encircled huts for the level-crossing attendants, then passing a woodcutter on the shore of a brightly glittering lake. What lake is that, people are asking in the car. Onward. Many sit silently in their seats, surrendering to a melancholy thought or memory, a few laugh and jest, most are now eating something they have extracted from paper wrappers and boxes, and one or the other takes railway-car friendliness to the point of offering his neighbor something to eat with the calmest demeanor in the world. Thank you! But no one is even expecting to be thanked. Traveling inspires camaraderie. And how marvelous it is to ride the train in winter! Snow everywhere, snow-covered rooftops, villages, people, fields, and forests; on rainy days: dampness everywhere, fog and darkly veiled views; in the sunny springtime: blue, green, and yellow everywhere, and white blossoms. The meadows are yellow and green, sweet sunlight shimmers through the beech forest, high up in the blue sky float the gayest, whitest clouds, and in the gardens and fields there is such a blossoming, humming, and splendor that one is tempted at every station to get out and lose oneself in all this warmth, color, and beauty. And in the fall, and in the middle of summery, languid, humid high season, and again in the frosty clear winter — no, one shouldn’t be so cocky as to try to cram all of this into the brief space of a newspaper article.