Nowadays anywhere there is nature, trains are also found. Soon there will no longer be a single colossus of a mountain that people have not yet begun to pierce for the sake of transport, civilization, and pleasure. There is no shortage of cable cars, and all of this is good, for it sets hands and minds in beneficial motion. To be sure, traveling by train for pleasure or business can also be quite perilous, as recent accidents have taught us; bridges can collapse, tracks can suddenly jut up in a fury and fling the train about, two trains can, owing perhaps to an oversight on the part of a single responsible official in the middle of a forest where no human habitations can be found far and wide, crash into each other — what horrific things! Or a fire can suddenly break out within a flying train, or else the train can — in holy Russia for example — be attacked by bandits. These are things that, it appears to me, display a blanched, solemn visage, but at least occurrences of this sort are met with only very rarely. Mankind cannot, after all, abandon something so advantageous just because of certain dangers, and the steam locomotive with all the cars hanging on behind does represent an unmistakable advantage. Many a person has already been liberated from torments, worries, and annoyances by his peaceful journey in a quiet compartment, using the railway to put his pressing plans and thoughts more or less in order in the course of long, possibly nocturnal journeys. Here the foolishnesses and pettinesses of quotidian life fall silent, triumph as they may in their usual milieu. Today one can rest while completing a journey. But one can also easily experience the most tender adventures, above all on express trains. How? This is something every person must discover on his own. I now come to a close, looking forward to the train trip I shall soon be making. To be honest, I don’t travel much, and this is why the thought of travel fills me with such longing.
1907
What Became of Me
I am, by birth, a child of my country, by trade I am poor, my social status is that of human being, my character that of a young man, and by profession I am the author of the present autobiographical sketch. My upbringing went like this: From time to time my beloved Papa sent me out to Ridau. Ridau is a charming, ancient little town with only a single street — though a nice wide one to be sure — and a towering Gothic castle.
Ridau is home to Herr Baumgartner. I would go running off to Ridau so as swiftly to pass on to Herr Baumgartner Papa’s greetings and best regards. Such was my upbringing.
My schooling and education took the form of attending a Progymnasium or junior high school. The Progymnasium is a classical seat of learning, for it was established under Napoleon the Great and First, or at least under his influence. After this, harsh Life flung me upon the path of a practicing feuilletonist. Oh, if only I had never written a feuilleton.
But Fate, which remains perpetually inscrutable, willed it thus, and would appear to have made of me a perfumed and mincing know-it-all and write-it-all, and all the oh so precious innermost cores of my being that pluck at the heartstrings of my patriotic sentiment have had — as I lament with weeping eyes and deep within my hollowed-out soul — to go by the wayside. What a cruel fate I am bound to!
And yet everything can take a turn for the better, and naïve rusticality will perhaps, who knows, return to me someday, and then I shall once more be allowed to wring my hands in isolation. For the time being, however, I appear to be sunk deep in the Gomorrah of simpering, capering correspondenthood, and very little hope persists — possibly none at all — that I shall ever again in all my days be capable of emitting a yodel such as, for example, the literarily so enterprising and worldly Ernst Zahn lets rip in so splendid and earthy a manner. Ernst Zahn and other equally shrewd individuals are champions at underscoring that they love their homeland.
Such manufacture has always eluded me. The world is wide, and human beings are a mystery, and Napoleon was a great man, and Ridau is a delightful little town, and the core of a human being never goes entirely by the wayside. What silly bigotry, these Old Auntie gossipings from the South. Berlin is such a lovely city, and its inhabitants are such hardworking, upright, and courteous human beings.
1912
Food for Thought
How uncertain, how difficult people make one another’s lives! How they belittle each other and are at pains to suspect and dishonor. How everything takes place merely for the sake of triumph. When they leave things undone, this occurs because of external exigencies, and when they err, it is never they who are at fault. Their fellow men always appear to them as obstacles, while their own person is always the highest and most noble of creatures. What efforts people make to disguise themselves with the intention of causing harm. How often we long for open, honest rudeness. At least during a fit of rage the heart chimes in. It’s strange how quick people are to dismiss one another, to invoke a scornful tone, trifling with what is most noble, precious, and meaningful. And how they never grow weary of finding fault, how it never occurs to them simply to hope there might be greatness, goodness, and honesty on earth. The notion that the earth itself is honorable is something they cannot quite grasp, obvious as it appears. Only their own trifling concerns seem to them deserving of the respect that in fact they owe the world, this majestic church. How seriously they take their own sins, and how convinced they’ve been throughout their adult lives that nothing more refined or heed-worthy than they can possibly exist. How they persist in worshiping something utterly undeserving of worship, the ancient golden calf, the expressionless monstrosity, how industriously they believe in the unbelievable. The stars mean nothing to them: in their opinion, stars are for children; and yet what are they themselves if not unruly children intent on doing what should not be done. How good they are at spreading fearfulness all around them, well aware that they themselves are constantly beset by dark, dull, foolish fears. How fervently they long never to do anything foolish, and yet this ignoble longing is itself the most foolish thing that can be felt under the sun. They wish to be the cleverest of people, but they’re the most miserable ones imaginable. A thief has done something, he’s been seduced into doing something illicit and bad — but these people have never done anything at all, neither something base and heinous nor something tenderhearted and good, and they firmly resolve never to do anything that could possibly arouse attention. Indeed, they give us something to think about.