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30 December 1945
Traveled to Rorschach, where we make our way to the Buchberg through the fishing village of Staad, where the streets still smell of the baking of the day’s bread. In Buchen the congregation’s hymns float out of the church. Empty were the streets, empty the farmstead from whose chimney curled wisps of blue smoke.
When we arrived at the Castle Greifenstein, built on the Buchberg by the 16th century mayor Vadian for his daughter, Robert paused, enchanted. I told him that my friend, the painter Charles Hug, lived in the nearby farmhouse with his wife. I spoke louder than usual in the hope that they might hear us. After a few steps, I looked back, and sure enough Renee was at the window and waved to us. She said Charles was sick; would we like to visit? Robert pushed me along; “No, no, let’s not stop!” How can I overcome his shyness? “Let’s just have a short visit with a sick man! It wouldn’t be polite to pass by without at least shaking his hand.” Robert reluctantly agrees. Charles comes to the door in his robe, his face sallow and wrinkled. I was alarmed at how worn he looked, from a distance looking like Toulouse-Lautrec. He pulled us into the warm parlor, where a Christmas tree dreamed (sic). Renee brought us coffee and warm croissants. We look at Charles’s ink drawings for Flaubert’s Education Sentimentale. Robert’s shyness is driven away by the friendly talk, and he seems greatly interested in Flaubert’s characters. Charles shows us some oils from his studio: gentle renderings of the Bodensee, with dove-gray sky, dove-gray water. You can’t tell where the one ends and the other begins. I think he’s made great progress in using subtle differences in color. We take a last look at the enchanting house, and then take our leave.
When the house was behind us and we were alone again Robert stopped and laughed: “Wasn’t that charming? The warm parlor with the shining tree and candles! The flaky croissants, which could have come straight from Paris!”
I asked him why he hadn’t gone to Paris when he left Berlin: “Paris? Jamais! Where Balzac, Flaubert, Maupassant and Stendahl did such incomparable work? I wouldn’t have the nerve. Never, never! After the Berlin debacle, retreat to my little homeland was my only choice.” He continued after a bit: “I’m not so dumb that I refrain from looking critically at my own skills. Ach, who could understand how to shape things as well as Gottfried Keller? With him there’s nothing extra, everything is set down cleanly and thoughtfully and coherently, just as it should be.”
The Buchberg, lying across the countryside like a beached whale, enthralled Robert with its beautiful vineyards. Heiden and Wolfheiden greet us with with a soft glow. In Rheineck we eat hasenpfeffer in the Hotel Hecht. Sadly no Buchberger—the red Neuenberger that we order wasn’t worth much: “vin federal.”
Robert talked about the time he was with Max Slavogt, Count Leopold von Kalckreuth, and Bruno Cassirer, and when the subject was literary success Slavogt made merry at Walser's expense. Robert should become like Stendahl; readers found his books too tedious. “What could I say? I sat there in my failure and had to concede.”
Shortly thereafter: “One day Albin Zollinger sent me an issue of the magazine he edited, Die Zeit, which contained a review of Der Gehülfe. It didn’t occur to him, but the same issue contained an ode to an insignificant novelist. Was Zollinger trying to say: ‘Don’t take this Walser too seriously. He has never matured. There are many others who are at least as good as he.’ That’s an editor for you! Knowing their power, they wrap themselves around you like a boa constrictor and squeeze and choke when and how they please.”
Ducking down to a gloomy bierkeller in St. Gallen. Robert says: “Amazing how beer and darkness wash away your troubles.” We take our leave in a wild snowstorm.