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10 September 1940
Robert's hair keeps getting whiter: on the nape of his neck are little snow-white tufts.
We fortify ourselves with beer and a couple of pieces of käswähe (a sort of quiche). I recommend that we go to Teufen, the town in which he is naturalized. He agreed, and asks "on the country road?"
"You prefer that? But it's pouring rain, Herr Walser!"
"So much the better! One can't always walk in the sun."
We set out via Hundwil and Stein. The rain poured, as though from a watering can. At one point we stopped in a bus stop shelter where we met an old woman who said she had never travelled on a car or train. I talked to her while Robert stayed silent and smoked the Parisiennes I brought for him.
Along the way we talked about maetzenatenfamilie Reinhardt in Winterthur. Alluding to that later, Robert remarked "Today you look so robust [reinhartelig; hartelijk, dutch?]."
"How so?"
"So lordly, full of elegant airs and graces. A little bit odd."
"I'm going to a relative's funeral in St. Gallen this afternoon."
Robert (drily): "Exactly."
His memory for [distant] events is striking. He remembers dozens of names and details from the life of Frederick the Great, Napoleon, Goethe, Gottfried Keller, and others. That Kellner on his 70th birthday chose the Urschweiz as his residence was no accident, he believed. On that day he instinctively wanted to be at the heart of his nation.
Robert: "I have intentionally never written in dialect. I always believed that that was condescending to the masses. The artist must keep a distance from them. They must respect him. It must be a proper [schalpi], if he wants to base his talent on writing more grassroots than the others. The writer should feel compelled to think and act nobly, and to strive for the best."
Our conversation strayed to Walter Hasenclever, who had killed himself in France. Robert notes: "One struggles, not unpunished, against the strength of the father. I've found Hasenclever's play Der Sohn to be an insult to all fathers. To want to struggle against eternal laws is a sign of intellectual immaturity, and there is a risk is that they will revenge themselves."
Robert admires dictators for their sure instinct for purposes of state. Their lack of regret is a law of nature that enables them to say: "since dictators almost always emerge from the lower classes, they know exactly what those people want. So while they fulfill their own wishes, they also fulfill the others' wishes. The people love it that he does something for their sake, that someone now shows father-love and now shows strictness with them. Thus can one win them over to war."
"Have you noticed how every publisher flourished only in one specific era? Frobenius and Froschauer in the Middle Ages; Cotta in the rise of the bourgeoisie; the Cassirers in the dulce jubilo before the war; Sami Fischer in the young Germany, emerging from the Kaiser; the adventurous Ernst Rowohlt in the reckless times after the Great War. Each had the atmosphere he needed for his undertaking, and in which he made a bundle."
At the sanitarium he was asked to write a poem for Dr. Hinrichsen's 70th birthday. "But how could I do that? The best you can do is something like J.V. Widman, and ironic. Look up Goethe and Moericke. There you can learn how to laugh at yourself."
We reached Teufen in three hours and sat down comfortably in a butcher's shop to roasted meat, beans, and noodles. Robert preferred a Fendant to the eastern Swiss wines. Over black coffee we talked about the sanitarium.
I said "Has it occurred to you that it's mostly single men and women who have psychological problems? Perhaps the repressed sensuality has an effect on the brain? Think of Hölderlin, Nietzsche, or Heinrich Leuthold."
"I hadn't thought of that. Perhaps you're right! Without love we are lost."