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27 July 1943
Robert's face is emaciated, but ruddy. The olive green suit is frayed, the trouser seams puckered, the shirt patched at the collar edges, the inevitable umbrella on his arm; in welcome, he opines in reference to the latter: "He wants to stroll; besides, umbrellas encourage fair weather."
We take the train from St. Gallen to Altstätten, chatting and lighting up one smoke after another. Robert gazes after the fleeting clouds. "Clouds are my favorites. They seem so sociable, like good, quiet comrades. They make the sky animated, human."
A big breakfast in the train station cafeteria in St. Margaretten after Robert's suggestion on the train: "Don't we want something to eat? A morning meal would suit me well." We were the only guests. A short, chunky waitress served us, almost offended that we interrupted her breakfast. Robert ate quickly, scooping the jelly right out of the bowl. He dunked the bread crusts in his coffee. We began our Wanderung on the paved, almost abandoned Heerstraße. The thirteen kilometers to Altstätten were a stone's throw for us. Robert pointed out that Appenzell is like an island embraced by the canton of Gallen. If he discovered a cozy pub, a handsome farmhouse, or a church with onion domes, he would stop and murmur "How beautiful, how charming." He was intoxicated by the rolling countryside, the solemn quiet of a Sunday: "How pleasant, when people lay their clumsy hands to rest in their laps, and leave everything up to mother nature."
In almost every village, quite contrary to his custom, he would ask a passing cyclist or a farmer in his shirtsleeves tending his garden: "What's the name of this village? And the elevation?" He did this like a tramp, without pausing much in his stride, and even without expecting an answer. Au, Heerbrugg, and Balgach appeared; above, at the top of a hill the restaurant Meldegg observed the countryside.
We considered for minute whether we want to detour through Berneck, dreaming amid its orchards, so that we can go to Reute and then Heiden. Robert said: "We can't have both the top and the bottom. Let's save up some pleasures! We'll enjoy thinking about them during the week."
Great temptation in Marbach to climb to the mansion Weinstein, charmingly situated above a vineyard, and eat there. Robert recommended that we resist all temptation heroically until we reach Altstätten: Through this tactic of denial we earn our meal. It will taste better if the belly is like an empty balloon."
A charming girl rode by on her bike. The fluttering of her dress reveals her thigh. "Girls' legs are a lovely sight," he grinned. "The purest poetry --" And when I looked at him, smiling, he added: "Without having to think of anything underhanded."
From a church we heard the congregation sing "Grosser Gott, wir loben dich!" Robert remarked that it was lifeless, sung without skill. "If Our Lord gets no warmer praise than this, he is certainly impoverished."
Bewildering coincidence: I told him his brother Karl had told me that someone had suggested that Cassirer publish an edition of Robert's and Carl Morgenstern's poems, illustrated by Paul Klee. Morgenstern, at the time an editor at Cassirer, had rejected the proposal because he found Klee's style too mannered. Scarcely a minute after I had spoken the words "Paul Klee" we approached, in Balgach, an empty shop window with the advertisement: "Paul Klee: wood lamp carver".
In the square in Marbach a couple of garish market booths; a carousel; and peddlers' stands with the salesfolk, as calm as if in their own parlors. Wasps swarm about the sweets. I ask a woman: "Do you accept ration coupons?" She nodded and answered almost anxiously, like a mother denying a child's request: 'Was gut is ja -- will's Gott, nomme lang." [Swiss dialect]
As we walked on Robert said "Wasn't that the abundance of life, colorful and innocent? The colorful headscarves, fiery-red currants, sugary syrup, that's what people love! The good old days don't die, they come back again and again, like a lovely call from youth."
In Altstätten we tried the Restaurant zum Heimatmuseum. We are worn out from our hot day's march. In the shady garden sat a few bored officers and sergeants. No civilians. The waitress said she could bring us nothing but meat loaf and potato salad. We had an appetite for a real Sunday meal, however, so on to the Klosterbrau!
Two old men with fruit juice, a crucified savior on the wall. The waiter dragged about. He would ask in the kitchen if there was anything to nibble on. Then he said "Someone's coming." After five minutes we order a vermouth, pay, and leave. No one came to help us with our meal.
Third try in the Frauenhof, an old attractive building. We sat in the garden. A couple of sunspots dancing on our table made Robert nervous: "Excuse us, we prefer the shade." Flaedlisuppe, schnitzel, brussel sprouts and peas, potatoes, pastries, and vanilla ice. A steaming feast for the gods, that prompted Robert to say: "The hot should have been cooler, and the cool warmer." We enjoyed everything and drank a Neuchateler, whose flowery nose pleased Robert greatly.
In scorching heat back to Marbach, to see the activity of the market again. We entered a restaurant next to a piping carousel, and drink coffee, fruit juice, and beer. The voices of the criers, the squeak of the carousel, the sales pitches of the itinerant peddlers ["Billigen Jakobs"], they all spill into the pub. Through the window we see close-shorn children's heads, men's tomato-red skulls, giggling girls.
Robert feels trapped in the noise and [weight] of the fest, and seeks a quiet place. We take the trolley to Heerbrugg, which he finds classy.
On the streets, boys patch their girlfriends' bicycle tires, which inspires Robert to remark "today's troubadors!"
The alcohol has washed away his last inhibitions. Recalling a minister from his youth he says: "He was a proper Schweinehund, close behind the women!" He laughs at that enthusiastically. In Heerbrugg in a shady garden we order more beer. We talk with a teacher who has published sonnets. For Robert, this is a source of great amusement, as he pulls at my arm. "This country boy writes sonnets like the Graf von Platen. It's rich, how a man can go daft. A little schoolmaster wants to be high class and makes a fool of himself for the whole world. Does he think he's Gottfried Keller? How uniquely this guy has understood it, to bind high art to the common and humanize it. But this teacher and his sonnets . . .! Have you ever seen such clownishness?
On the way home we're quiet between stations. Just once pointing at a hill in the forest Robert whispered "Don't we return home richer than we left?" Wasn't it a wonderful day?" I slip a gift in his pocket. When we separate his tragic face suddenly terrifies me. This long handshake . . .
Several discussions of this Sunday: "I prepared the first poems just as they appeared, as a clerk on the Zurichberg, often cold and hungry, and secluded as a monk. I've written poems since then, in Biel and Bern. Even in the sanitarium in Waldau, where I wrote almost a hundred. But the German papers didn't want to know about them. The Prager Press and the Prager Tageblatt, with Otto Pick and your friend Max Brod, bought pieces. Occasionally Kurt Wolff printed a few in his yearbook." I told him that he owed his popularity in Prague to Franz Kafka, who in particular enjoyed the Berliner Impressionen and Jakob von Gunten. But Robert waved it off; he scarcely knew Kafka's work.
"In Stuttgart I wrote a clever note to the director of the Hoftheater to see if he might offer me a free pass. He allowed me to visit, gave me a brief examination (I hadn't published anything yet), and summoned the high-mindendness to offer me a pass for the entire season."
"For that you had your calligrapher's handwriting to thank."
"Perhaps. It's done me good service many times. Even as a schoolboy I was famous for it."
Robert: "Der Gehülfe is a completely biographical novel. I invented almost none of it. My life did that for me." He discounted my guess that he loved the wife of the engineer Tobler. "All thoughts of romance novels lay quite far from me."
He spoke of an art dealer A. whom he came to know in Biel, and who in Berlin earned a great fortune, but just as quickly gambled it away. When Robert was a clerk in Zurich he ran into A. and his friend Maria Slavona, the impressionist-influenced painter, who had been a student of Karl Stauffer-Bern. He describes an evening they spent on a bench by the Zurichsee; he greatly admired the delicate feet of the voluptuous Slavona.
He mentioned his acquaintance with the painter Ernst Morgenthaler during which he fell in love with Hedi, the blonde and pigtailed servant girl. Later on he wroter her. She had been so tender--young and naive. The sculptor Hermann Hubacher and his wife are dear childhood friends from Biel. At their vacation home in Faulensee, near Speiz, he often caught his breath like a horse at the manger when he ran from Bern to Thun and further.
He held forth graphically in his description of a balloon trip to which he'd been invited by the publisher Paul Cassirer before World War I. They set off from Bitterfeld at dusk, well-provisioned with food and drink, floated quietly over the sleepy earth, and landed the next day by the Ostsee. He wrote a small feuilleton about this romantic trip. He was a remarkable man, this Paul Cassirer, a mix of hedonism and melancholy, at whose celebrations the Walser brothers gained the reputation of great eaters.
We talked about Nestroy for a long time. Robert listened with interest how he, in 1855, sent a letter to an unknown beauty in Vienna. He told her that he was so fascinated by a glimpse of her in a suburban theater that she was the object of his most ardent wishes. He had not been able to approach her, as he was a "marriage cripple" [i.e., handicapped because he was sitting with his wife]. He had been able to have a servant follow her and learn her name and address. He then offered himself as a discrete friend, even if she was married. A secret friend could even be useful during a honeymoon.
Since he found the attempt to speak directly too common, he recommended the following solution: on a designated day at 1:30 PM the two parties would set out on the Prater-Hauptallee travelling in opposing directions, so that they must meet on the way, perhaps in the vicinity of the Rondeau. And so that Nestroy can recognize the beauty's carriage from a distance she should trail her handkerchief out the right window. This would be the sign that she deemed their secret liaison worthwhile. He would make himself recognizable on the boulevard by wearing a light gray cloak with red trim, and the next day would himself give the handkerchief signal to confirm the next step of the longed-for friendship.
After this description Robert held forth on the gallantry of previous generation. He thought, however, that Nestroy's letter had been let the clown peek through and showed himself inexperienced in love. "For women who aren't prostitutes think love should be taken in the most serious way. Thus Nestroy, when he called himself a "marriage cripple" had shown little tact. The unknown lady would thus think that she would not want to have such an ungallant husband for a friend."
I said: "Do you know about the scornful letters that Nestroy hurled at the arrogant critic Saphir? Saphir remarked that in Nestroy's comedy "Der Schutzling there were only four clever ideas, and they were all Saphir's. Nestroy replied by saying that, if he thought he had to steal ideas, he certainly wouldn't turn to Saphir, because it would be be better to get them second hand rather than third."
Robert: "The accusation of plagiarism stems from envy that he has to scrape together from others what has been denied to him. Why shouldn't genius be able to help itself to new ideas? It might be that they only get meaning, form, and life when he plays with them. In games with ideas Nestroy is a master juggler. Do you remember the line from the farce: Das Volk is a giant in the cradle who awakes, stands up, stumbles about, crushes everything underfoot, and finally where it falls is worse off than in the cradle? Such folksy pictures are as thick about him as turnips in a vegetable garden."
I said: "Did you know that Nestroy was a fanatical Prussia-hater, who from the stage has opined that the Austrians should free themselves from the Prussians?"
Robert: "Yes, writers often have long snouts that they use to reach into the future. They can sniff out coming events like pigs sniff out mushrooms [sic]."