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4 January 1937
Rambling through St. Gallen and Speicher to Trogen, which I know well from my school days there. Lunch in the Schaefli. To honor my maternal ancestors, who for centuries owned vines on the Buchberg in the Rheintal, I ordered a hearty bottle of Buchberger. As an unwanted extra, a Swabisch comedy blaring on the radio.
The afternoon with melancholy [Schneestimmung] on the Glabris, where I had cut a comical figure as a cadet lieutenant, carrying a saber lent by the village doctor. Sometimes a sharp east wind; Robert without an overcoat. On the return in the train: his face with a ghostly light like a burning torch. Deep, sad grooves from the wings of his nose to the downturned red, fleshy mouth.
The train station platform in St. Gallen sparkled with little gravel stones. Robert has tears in his eyes. Fierce, rapid handshake.
Items from our conversations: His stay in Zurich lasted, with interruptions, from autumn of 1896 until early 1903; he had digs on the Zurichberg, on the Spiegelgaße, and on the Shipfe and Außersihl. He lived 7 years (1906-1913) in Berlin; and a further 7 years during his second stay in Biel. He has noted frequently how the number 7 recurs periodically in his life.
In Berlin-Charlottenburg he lived in a two-room apartment, first with his brother Karl, then alone. Eventually the publisher Bruno Cassirer ended his financial assistance. Replacing Cassirer, a noble-hearted woman cared for him for the next 2 years. After her death in 1913, out of poverty he returned to Switzerland. He frequently recalls the quiet beauty of the borderland [märkischen] forests. In Bern, where he lived from 1921 to 1929, the traditional proved good for his writing productivity; the temptation of drink and good times worked against him.
"In Bern much of the time I was like a man possessed. I searched like a hunter in the wood for the poetic theme. What proved to be most fruitful were walks in city streets and long Wanderungen in the surrounding countryside, whose yield in ideas I put on paper. Every good piece, including the smallest, required inspiration. It seems obvious that the business of the writer can flourish only in freedom. My most productive work times were morning and night: the hours between noon and night found me stupid. My best customer in those days was the Czech government-financed Prager Presse, whose feuilleton editor, Otto Pick, accepted everything I sent, even poetry, that returned like boomerangs from other papers. Earlier, I had toiled frequently for Simplicissimus which usually returned my submissions because they didn't find them humorous enough. But for what they accepted they paid well. At least 50 marks a story-a small fortune in my pocket."
I suggested that the sanitarium and its patients might supply him with ideas for a novel. "I can't imagine that. I wouldn't be able to build it while I myself was sitting in it. Dr. Hinrichsen has placed a room for writing at my disposal. [sic; see 23 April 1939] But I sit there as though nailed down, and produce nothing. Perhaps I would have a breakthrough if I could live outside the sanitarium for 2 or 3 years."
"How much money would you need to be able to live as a free writer?"
(After some thought): "About 1800 francs a year."
"No more?"
"No, that would suffice. How often when I was younger I made do with less! One can live quite well without material goods. I could not tie myself to a paper or a publisher. I wouldn't want to make any promises that I couldn't keep. Things can only grow from me unforced."
Robert: "If I could return to my thirtieth year, I wouldn't prattle on anymore like a romantic, frivolous and eccentric and without a care. You can't ignore society, you must live in it and be for it or against it. That's the mistake in my fictions. They are personal, too much a reflex, the planning careless. Ignoring the artistic laws, I just improvised. Before the new edition of Geschwister Tanner I would have liked the chance to cut 70 or 80 pages. It seems to me now that you shouldn't air your personal opinions of your siblings in public."
"I just read your Jakob von Gunten with great excitement. Where was that written?"
"In Berlin. For the most part it's fantasy. A bit daring, yes? It's my favorite, among all my books." After a pause: "The less the action and the smaller the geographical region a writer uses, the more important is his talent. I am immediately suspicious of novelists who excel in plot and use the whole world as their character. Everyday events are beautiful and rich enough that a writer can strike sparks from them."
Discussion of the playwright August von Kotzebue, whose gracefulness and suavity amazed Robert. He recalled that Kotzebue had been deported to Siberia for a year at the beginning of the 19th century, and wrote a two-volume memoir of the experience. His death was quite dramatic: he was murdered by the hyperpatriotic student activist Karl Ludwig Sand. In regard to Goethe and Schiller, Kotzebue was a reactionary obstacle.
Robert believed that there was no chance for the advancement of Swiss literature as long as it was mired in the rural. It must become sophisticated and open to the world, without the narrow-chested, back-to-the-soil tendency toward the small farm. He praises Uli Braeker, the poor man of Toggenburg, and his Shakespeare essays. What different and greater ideals than contemporary writers Gottfried Keller had! Robert recites his Es Wanderte eine Schoene Sage from beginning to end. His Grüner Heinrich would forever remain a readable and lovable and wonderfully educational book.
"A woman on the staff of the sanitarium wanted to force Stifter's Witiko on me, but I told her I'd have nothing to do with an overweight novel. Stifter's Naturstudien are satisfying: incomparable, affectionate observations in which he has inserted humans in a well-balanced way. But what do you say about the pot belly of Thomas Mann's Joseph trilogy? How can one dare to stuff in bible-rooted material like that?"
About revolutions: "It's nonsense to try to direct a revolution outside a city. Who doesn't control the cities doesn't control the heart of the people. All successful revolutions work from the cities outward. It seems certain to me that in the Spanish civil war the government will eventually win."
"The Wilhelmine era obliged artists to act bohemian and flamboyant. Yes, the eccentric were spoiled. Artists must fit in with the ordinary. They must not become clowns."