When I returned to the project a few years after the initial work the effort of using the printed dictionary began to exceed its usefulness. Fortunately in the intervening years I had discovered the leo forums and online dictionary in my daily reading and found it very useful, especially their browser toolbars.

Many of the references to people or events would have remained a mystery without German language wikipedia, a trove of obscure information that would be tedious, or impossible, to find elsewhere.

Google sometimes turned up a dictionary page with the word I was seeking, and when it didn't do that the little blurbs that came with with each hit gave examples of its usage, sometimes a synonym, or maybe just allowed a good guess. For food items I got recipes. Then there were the pictures and maps . . .

The Free Dictionary translates between English and 11 other languages.

The dialektwörter site has useful glossary for Swiss dialect. You can find a bärndeutsch lexicon here.

This page has a long list of these and many other dictionaries, glossaries, and grammars.

I have left some German and much of the French and Italian untranslated, when I thought they were easy for most English speakers to understand. This would give the flavor of a conversation with someone who grew up in a bilingual town in a multilingual country.

Draft. 10 August 09 -- 24 September 09
-- removed password
-- numerous dumb mistakes corrected
-- figured out many of Seelig's Swiss dialect transcriptions
-- other words fixed; e.g., "Znüni" is a brand of soft drink.

Put into Movable Type with a password. Late 2005.
-- a few more passes
-- added Table of Contents
-- added a couple of pictures

First few passes. Summer 2005.

Translation Notes

26 July 1936

First Wanderung . . . St. Gallen--Löchlibad . . . Lisa's advice . . Robert's history . . . admiration for Dostoevsky, Keller, Eichendorff, Gotthelf, not for Rilke

St. Gallen--Speicher--Trogen . . . Robert in Zurich, Berlin, and Bern . . . von Kotzebue, Keller, Stifter

St. Gallen--Rehetobel--Heiden--Thal--the Buchberg--Buchen--the Rorschacherberg--Rorschach . . . Robert's nemesis, Hesse . . .Gotthelf . . . C.F.W.

Robert and the haberdasher . . . second-rank writers

Robert's 60th birthday . . . Dagmerselen--Lichtensteig--Wil . . . Robert as a servant . . . Biel, Bern, long distance solo walks

Herisau--Wil--Gossau . . . But drinking? I can only do that with you . . . Robert in Biel

Hundwil--Stein--Teufen . . . dictators . . . publishers . . . Without love we are lost

Gais--Teufen . . . Robert's ancestors . . . Max Dauthendey . . . another epic Wanderung . . . music

Urnäsch--Jakobsbad--Appenzell--Gais--Buehler--St. Gallen . . . Secrets . . . Silence . . . Gotthelf, Goethe, Nietzsche

Urnäsch--Cable car to Saentis--Appenzell--Herisau . . . mountaintop weather man

Herisau--St. Gallen--Heilig Kreuz--St. Peter & Paul Game Preserve--the Bodensee--Rorschach--St. Gallen . . . Robert in Biel, Zurich, Berlin

Robert's 65th birthday . . . His tumor, and his reaction . . . how he spends his time . . . Degersheim--Mogelsberg im Untertoggenburg--Herisau . . . Trouble is the best teacher

Schwellbrunn--St. Peterzell--Herisau . . . Robert's novels . . . poverty . . . Marlitt

St. Gallen--St. Margaretten--Au--Heerbrugg--Balgach--Marbach--Altstätten . . . Kafka, and Robert's Prague clients . . . Robert as calligrapher . . . balloon trip with Cassirer . . . Nestroy

Karl Walser's death, and Robert's reaction . . . bourgeoisie . . . Grüne Heinrich . . . his lack of success . . . The Apprentice . . . mediocre books . . . Seelig's last conversation with Karl Walser

Hölderlin . . . Bombing German cities . . . Gossau--Arnegg--Hauptwil--Bischofszell . . . Lisa on her deathbed . . . Gift of cheroots . . . Bern, Biel, and drinking . . . Novels v. stories and feuilletons

Lisa died in Bern on January 7 . . . Winkeln--Bruggen--St. Georgen--St. Gallen . . . Heinrich Zschokke . . . Tolstoy and Dostoevsky . . . Bombing of Berlin and (enforced) simplicity

Bodensee--Arbon--Rorschach--St. Gallen . . . Dickens, Keller, and Walser . . . Paul Morand . . . Nietzsche . . . Anti-aircraft fire . . . American internees

Cold days in Herisau and Biel . . . Abtwil--the Wienerberg--St. Gallen . . . The good effects of rationing . . . Allies will have difficulty in Germany, says Robert . . . Robert invited to Poland and Turkey . . .Karl's trip to Moscow . . . quiet, inconspicuous folk

Speicherschwendi--Rehetobel--St. Gallen . . . Springtime . . . Aerial combat . . . Music to his ears . . . I want to stay with the people and disappear among them

The atom bomb is invented . . . Gossau--Abtwil . . . Fruitfulness like Eden . . . Goncharov, Dostoevsky, Spitteler, Gotthelf . . . that gemutlich cigar smoker, Churchill

The patient A.D. . . . Flawil--Gossau . . . The Apprentice and Geschwister Tanner . . . Swiss lit, and Keller, Wohlwend, and Meyer

Rorschach--the Buchberg--Staad--Castle Greifenstein--Rheineck--St. Gallen . . . the painter Charles Hug . . . Max Slavogt, Count Leopold von Kalckreuth, and Bruno Cassirer, and Walserish failures

Urnäsch-the Hundwilerhöhe . . . Keller, Hauptmann . . . Laughter or silence

Niederteufen--Speicher . . . Johann Ulrich Walser . . . Robert and Biel . . . His successes . . . Keller

Gossau--Oberbüren--Gossau . . . Thomas Mann . . . Ramuz . . . Robert's recollection of on Keyserling . . . Protestant clergy

Oberberg castle--Abtwil--Engelburg--St. Gallen . . . Sometimes Robert stops and stares, mumbling incomprehensibly . . . the villa in The Apprentice . . . William Penn . . . Zschokke . . . From now on I should only visit on Sundays. On workdays he has a job

Degersheim . . . Brod, Kafka, and Walser . . . Prague, and Jan Neruda . . . Badger hunting . . . Reading proof for Poetenleben by oil lamp . . . French or German speaker?

Ernst Zahn . . . Strindberg . . . Gertrud Eysoldt, who Seelig and Walser have both met . . . St. Gallen-the Freudenberg

Degersheim . . . Robert's 71st birthday . . . We're powerless before nature . . . The demonic in an army buddy . . . Angels are not artists . . . Dostoevsky: I think humanity will, bit by bit, become either angels or devils

suicide of Caesar von Arx . . . Diderot, translated by Goethe . . . the Toggenburg--the Magdenau convent--Bubental--Flawil

in the sanitarium he's now sorting and untying string for the Post . . . People are more proud of their vices than of their virtues, especially when they're young

a gentle air-defense soldier . . . Schwellbrunn . . . Robert takes the side of the North Koreans . . . Seelig relates (but not to us) the death of Heinrich Mann, and the story of the bombing of Dresden as he heard it from Gerhart Hauptmann's widow and her son, Bruno.

Palm Sunday . . . Rorschach--the Bodensee--Buchen--Wienachten--Tobel--Heiden--Buchen--Rorschach--St. Gallen . . . Robert suspicious . . . C. F. Meyer

A rainy Christmas . . . Anna Koch: At the sanitarium they still spoke occasionally about her, whom Robert would not judge . . . Engelberg . . . Rebuilding castles . . . all of Robert's savings have been eaten up by inflation. He has nothing . . . Seelig discovers he has lost a notebook with a great deal of work

During our last wanderung Robert had observed that the trial of Anna Koch would have been a good subject for Kleist or Dostoyevsky; this chapter is the story of her crime and punishment

Robert's 75th birthday, public recognition, his reaction . . . Kleist . . . Frau Fönss . . . Stalin's death

For the first time, Robert gave the impression of an old man with dwindling physical strength . . . Rorschach . . . Max Dauthendey, Frank Wedekind . . . The writing more important than the acting . . . I've found third-rate-staged and acted pieces amusing . . . Oedipus, and Robert's ambiguity

Fünf Länderblickes--Eggersriet--St. Gallen . . . a fantasy painting that his brother Karl had done, using a photo of Robert as a model . . . manuscript of Theodor lost

Appenzell--Gais . . . Snow and sleet . . . Funeral procession . . . Byron's striking similarities with Raphael . . . Spitteler not an admirer of Robert's

Seelig's trip to Venice with Max Picard . . . St. Gallen . . . Sons of famous fathers . . . 1895 (or 1896) had been a good year for Robert

For women we're rejects. We might find that either good or bad . . . For a change, Robert dresses well . . . To a castle above Herisau . . . von Kleist, Thomas Mann, and Goethe . . . Seelig and the headhunters . . . murderers' choir

Robert hit by bacterial infection of the lungs; recovers, but agrees to leisurely pace . . . House of the Dead a mutual favorite . . . Friedrich Gerstaekker and Jules Verne . . . Christopher Middleton translated Robert's stories Spaziergang and Kleist in Thun into English . . . Dr. Steiner says the condition of his heart is such that strenuous exercise could bring on a heart attack

Gossau--St. Margarethen--Walzenhausen--Wolfhalden--Rheineck . . . Tolstoy's Resurrection . . . Their Wanderung cut short by symptoms of Robert's affliction

St. Gallen . . . Kleist, Zschokke,Wieland . . . Halldor Laxness and the Nobel . . . This is the end of my notes on our shared walks . . .

From Christmas 1955: "In the dusk of 25 December 1956 . . . A phone call from the assistant medical director that Robert had been found dead early that afternoon on a snowfield, in the very place where we had spent many wonderful hours on Christmas day, 1954, and Good Friday of 1955."

"Today he's tempted by the Rosenberg, where there is a ruin. He's been there before . . . a poet, for whom the winter with its gentle, merry snowfall was an enchantment, a real poet, who longed like a child for a world of rest and purity and love."

He allowed me to visit him. So, early this Sunday morning I went from Zurich to St. Gallen, strolled through the city to the Cathedral, and listened to the sermon on "The Waste of Talent." In Herisau the church bells chimed as I arrived. I reported to the chief physician of the sanitarium, Dr. Otto Hinrichsen, who allowed me to take a walk with Robert.

The 58-year-old writer arrived from an adjoining building accompanied by an attendant. I was astonished by his appearance. A round child's face, looking as though split with a lightning bolt [sic: wie durch einen Blitzschlag gespaltenes] with pink cheeks, blue eyes, and a short blond mustache. The hair at his temples was graying. His collar was frayed and his tie crooked; his teeth were not in the best condition. When Dr. Hinrichsen suggested that Robert close the top button of his vest, Robert declined: "No, it must stay open." He spoke in a melodious Bärndeutsch, as he must have spoken in his boyhood in Biel.

After a rather abrupt leavetaking from the doctor we strode off to the train station and thence to St. Gallen. It was a seasonally warm day. On the way we encountered many churchgoers, who greeted us cheerfully. Robert's older sister Lisa had told me that her brother was unusually mistrustful. What could I do? I remained silent, and so did he. The silence would be the narrow bridge on which we would meet. Sweating profusely, we wandered the countryside, a hilly, human-friendly forest- and meadow-land. Sometimes Robert stopped to light a "Maryland" cigarette and hold it under his nose, sniffing.

Lunch in Löchlibad. Our first thaw came over the blood-red Berneck wine, and beer: Robert said that, while in Zurich, before the turn of the century, he worked for the Schweizerischen Kreditanstalt and the Kantonalbank, though only part-time, so that he could write: a man could not serve two masters. It was at that time that his first book appeared: Fritz Kocher's Aufsätze, published in 1904 by Insel Verlag, with 12 drawings by his brother Karl. He never received any royalties for his work, which was quickly remaindered when sales were poor; he was also damaged financially by his abstention from literary cliques. And the Gothic style popular in many places made him ill: thus is the poet reduced to a shoeshine boy. His time was past, he thought, but that didn't bother him: when one approaches his sixties, he should consider a different life. He wrote his books just like a farmer who sowed and reaped, grafted, fed his animals and mucked out after them. From a sense of duty, and to have something to eat. "It was a job like any other."

The most productive time of his writing life had been the seven years in Berlin [1906-1913] and the following seven years in Biel, when no one pressured or controlled him. Everything had grown as quietly as an apple on the tree. In the human sense, the time after the First World War had been a time of shame for most writers. Their literature had taken on a poisonous, spiteful character. But literature should radiate love, it should be warm. It should not be driven by hate, which is an unproductive element. Back then, among those [sad orgies] the artistic descent would have begun . . . The literature prizes were given to false saviors or random schoolteachers. All right, there was nothing he could do about it. But as long as he lived he'd never bow down to anyone. The cliques and nepotists [Vetterliwesen] could take care of themselves.

This day's conversations also included admiring observations on Dostoyevsky's Idiot, Eichendorff's From the Life of a Good-for-Nothing, and Gottfried Kellers' bold poetry. Rilke, on the other hand, belongs on the nightstand of an old maid. He likes the Uli volumes of Jeremias Gotthelf; much of his other work is, for Robert's taste, too noisy and preachy.

"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."

"So you're also envious of Gottfried Keller?"

Smiling: "No, that was only in Zurich."

I told him that the Commission for Advancing Bernese Literature would be giving him an award. He was pleased.

The best time for him was in Biel. "I didn't socialize much with the natives. I chatted with visitors who dropped in at the Blaue Kreuz, where I rented an attic room. Room 27 cost 20 francs, with full board 90 francs. My neighbors were chambermaids, sweet feminine things with a touch of the French, which I found charming."

"Why did you leave Biel?"

"I was very poor then. Also, the plots and styles I had taken from Biel and its neighborhood were beginning to dry up. Just about then my younger sister Fanny wrote and told me she had a position for me in Bern, with the canton archives. I could not refuse. Unfortunately, after six months there I had a falling-out with the director over a cheeky remark. He let me go, and I resumed the trade of writer. Under the influence of the powerful city I became less the country boy and more manly and began to write more in the international style ["mehr männlich und auf das Internationale gestellt"] than in Biel, where I used an affected and prissy style. The success was that attracted by the reputation of federal Switzerland (sic) many applications and orders arrived for me from foreign papers. There were new subjects and ideas to find."

"Brooding damaged my health in the last years in Berne. I was tortured by wild dreams: thunder, screaming, choking, hallucinatory voices, so that I often awoke screaming. Once about two AM I walked to Thun, where I arrived about 6 AM. At noon I was on the Niesen, where I happily polished off a piece of bread and a tin of sardines. That evening I was back in Thun and at midnight in Berne. On foot of course. Another time I walked from Berne to Geneva and back; once I spent the night in Geneva. One of my first [trip descriptions] was Greifensee, which Josef Viktor Widmann published in Bund. I found it damned hard to write good trip descriptions.

"A poem must be like a good suit that complements the buyer."

"Peter Altenberg: a dear Wiener Wurstl (Native of Vienna). But I can't call him a poet."

"The Austrians wouldn't have been overrun by the Nazis if they had put a saucy, charming skirt at the head of the country. Everyone would have slept underneath, even Hitler and Mussolini. Look at Queen Victoria and the Dutch Queen! Women always like to serve diplomats. How skillfully Austrian women mince about!"

"I'd rather read nothing of my contemporaries until I'm healthy. Keeping a distance is the most appropriate."

"What good is an artist's talent if he has no love?"

"Jeremias Gotthelf: for me it's just like the woman in Heinrich Pestalozzi's novel Lienhard and Gertrude' said: De Pfarrer het mi us dr Chile tribe!" (sic. Bärndeutsch?)

Speaking half in anger, half in amusement, of Mrs. A__, whom Robert had known in his youth, and who was now the wife of a well-to-do postal official. Now she dangles him, one minute bombarding him with chocolates, and the next ridiculing him with impertinent letters: "I am still not able to take you seriously." In this matter she found herself in debt to Thomas Mann, for in a letter he has demoted Robert to a "clever boy."

"Then I made a couple of amateurish attempts to take my life, but I couldn't make a proper noose. Finally it reached the point where my sister Lisa took me to the Waldau Institute. I asked her just outside the gate "Are we doing the right thing?" Her silence gave me the answer. What else could I do, but enter?"

"It's madness and cruelty to demand that I continue to write in the sanitarium. The basis of a writer's creativity is freedom. As long as this condition is not met I refuse to write again. So even though I've been given a room, paper and pen, it just hasn't happened." [see 4 January 1937]

I: "I've had the impression that you don't want this freedom."

Robert: "There's no one who has offered it to me. [So it's called waiting.]"

I: "Would you like to leave the Institute?"

Robert (hesitating): "I could try it."

I: "Then where would you like to live?"

Robert: "In Biel, Bern, or Zurich, doesn't matter. Life can be enjoyable anywhere."

I: "Would you take up your writing again?"

Robert: "There is only one reply: that is, no reply."

Recently, Robert has read Robert Seumes' Spaziergang nach Syrakus and his adventurous biography; Gottfried Keller's Romeo and Julia auf dem Dorf; and the novella Goethe and Therese by the Bavarian poet Martin Greif; all with enjoyment.

He says: "The artist must enchant his audience, or torment them. He must bring them to tears or laughter."

I told him that a Swiss schoolmaster has written a novel whose action sometimes takes place in a Paris bordello. Robert's reaction: "It's awful, the things that impotent scribblers speculate about."

Concerning the country: "It seems to me only a philistine would harass the state with moral claims. The state's first duty is to be strong and alert. Morality must remain the concern of the individual."

I: "Should we get a late night snack?"

Robert: "For what? Liver or schnitzel won't perk me up. We should have a drink instead; that will do me some good. I can eat any time, any day. But drinking? I can only do that with you."

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."

"Goethe's instinct for people and his genius for conjuring up the best subjects for study at every stage of life remains extraordinary. It still has no equal. If he was tired of writers he'd study geology or botany, and newly refreshed, the foreign ministry or the theater. He always discovered new ways to rejuvenate himself."

Nietzsche: "He got his revenge for never having been loved by a woman. He himself was loveless. How many philosophical systems are revenge for lost happiness?"

About revolutionaries: "Remember how the French generals, from nothing but suspicion, envy, and ambition mutually ruined one another, so that there was room for Napoleon and a king? It could turn out that way with Hitler and Stalin. Perhaps Russia's digging a grave for both. Georg Büchner depicted this tragedy of the revolutionary in Danton's Tod."

About himself: "Wherever I've been there has always been some sort of plot to avoid vermin like me. The classy and arrogant would always avoid anything that didn't fit in their world: Pushed my way in? I would never even have the courage to peek in there. So I've lived my own life at the edges of bourgeois existence, and wasn't that a good thing? Doesn't my world have the right to exist even though it's a poor and powerless one?"

Robert: "You asked where I had served as a soldier. In the 25th Fusilier Battalion, Third Company; and in the 134th Landwehr Battalion. I always got on well with my buddies. But the officers always said 'Walser, you're a lazy devil." (ihr syt e faule Chaib.) That never embarrassed me."

Drawing on a cheroot, he enters my compartment. We ride to Urnäsch, and talk about Herisau, whose beautiful old village district can't be seen from the train. A market town, Herisau is the beehive of Appenzell commerce. In neither Upper nor Lower Rhoden is there a more populous town. But the honor of receiving the Swiss kaserne fell to the Herisauers of the Trogen Landesgemeine in 1862 after a hard choice went against Teufen. Fourteen votes had to be taken. Robert said that at the laying of the foundation the bedrock was found to be marshy, which led to witty debate in the Great Council. Someone recommended that the kaserne be built three stories high and then, after it sank, it would be two stories high, as planned. Today Herisau might be swarming with army trainees or with patients who run to wholistic doctors [Naturärzten] and dentists with their problems.

Chatting like that, we arrived in Urnäsch, that lies in chive-green meadowland. Here in 1673 the last bear [sic. in Switzerland?], almost 200 pounds, was killed. As we crossed the village in the orange-yellow Post bus we had to force our way through a herd of stubborn brown cows, with three herdsman smoking their silver fitted traditional Linauerli pipes, and Whitey, running back and forth like an excited sergeant driving them all up the mountain.

On the Schwaegalp cablecar, which has run to the peak of the Saentis since August 1935, we're the only passengers. It's as though we're in a high altitude balloon, as we approach the 51 meter high mast through a thick fog that turned the Saentis massif into a steamy washhouse. Unfortunately the 2,100 meter trip, with an elevation change of 1,200 meters, is over in 10 minutes. Our trip was extremely dramatic, as a wild hailstorm began to pound the windowpanes with ice and snow. When we press our noses to the cold glass we can see the snow-covered limestone boulders approaching like threatening cyclops. Impressions of [Hödlerscher] impact. It's incomprehensible to us that there was so much opposition to this cable car. Aren't there still dozens of trails to the summit on which the ruddest strollers can pester wanderers? Why shouldn't the old and sickly have a chance to enjoy the mountain range? So we ask, and so we enjoy the dramaticmenu that's spread out before us.

We spent the two-hour layover visiting the government weather station. An icy gale shook us as we, without hat or coat, trudged through knee-deep snow to the little stone house in which the Berner Ernst Hostettler and his wife have lived for eleven years, penned up during the nine-month winters with no company but themselves. Every year they take a three-week vacation to visit their son in Zurich to see the elegant stores and the Circus Knie. But eventually the air pollution, the sweltering heat of the city, and the traffic grow tiresome, and they go to the Berner Oberland or Walis. "One must break with everything that one has built as a lowlander to be able to bear the isolation here" said the weatherman, as we thawed out in his parlor. He grumbled a bit about the many hikers and photographers whose pushiness spoils his work.

This work occupies him about 16 hours a day: he sends his first report at about 6:30 AM central European time to the army weather station. There are five more reports for the army, the Duedendorf airfield, and the central Meteorological Institute in Zurich. The last readings are at 9:30 PM, but they are just a summary. To be of any use, these oservations require a close knowledge of complex instruments and the 45 kinds of clouds in the international weather manuals, which have 500 headings. Robert sat quietly on the sofa through all these explanations. But as we pushed through the snow to the pub he said "Instead of a view from a mountain we've had just as interesting a view into two peoples' lives."

In the pub we learned that it's been about a century since the Saentis was closed to international tourism. The first shelter was built in 1846, two decades later the first snack bar, and in 1887 the government weather station, where in 1922 the gruesome robbery and murder of the Haases occurred. Another tragedy occurred on July 5, 1832 (sic), when colonel Anton Buchwalder from Delsberg of the Swiss Survey was struck by lightning while building an observation platform. The helper standing next to him was killed, while the left half of Buchwalder's body was paralyzed. He walked and crawled back down to Toggenberg.

So we had no shortage of topics for conversation after our mountain trip, as we strolled from Urnäsch to Appenzell. On the way we saw a number of little wooden houses of monogram embroiderers with delicate Mediterranean features sitting at their narrow windows. Robert said that they have to work continuously, morning till night, to earn four francs a day.

In Herisau I said "Let's drink a gloss of wine to the Appenzellerland!"

"I'll do do that!" said Robert, and courteously tipped his old felt hat.

By the time we reach the preserve's restaurant we've completely forgotten our complicated directions, so we turn down a random street and ask two or three people the way to Bodensee. They all think it's odd that we want to go that far on foot. In the pub Zur Sonne we order vermouth and warm käswähe. It suits us royally.

When we've finished the chubby waitress tells us that we're not far from the tram stop where we had begun our walk. So we turned back in that direction and headed straight up the main road to Rorschach, which we reached around noon, after a two-hour walk. The main street was oddly quiet. Robert's collar and tie had come apart during our expedition, and I said he should stick them in a coat pocket, but at the dock he slipped into a bathroom to set things right. When he returned the tie and collar were both quite crooked. I told him the ladies like it like that. He laughed and seemed satisfied. We strolled casually about the town. Robert stopped, enchanted, at store windows and houses. The elegant Baroque style of Rorschach touched him, and he could scarcely tear himself away.

We wanted a meal in the Traube, a pub in a butcher shop. But there was only the proprietress and a blond girl with a bowl of corn, and they said there was nothing to eat. We see the oven standing cold in the kitchen. We study the menus at a couple of other restaurants until we wind up in the Post, which a customs agent recommended. We had red wine from the Buchberg and the daily special, which was actually quite good: Schnitzel with potato soup, beans, and peas. We cleared our plates and chatted afterward over coffee at a pastry shop. Return to St. Gallen, where I bought a copy of Gogol's Overcoat for a friend.

Without a topcoat, with rolled-up umbrella, Robert ran through the alleys ahead of me, as though he scented something. I didn't argue, and followed like a lamb. When we reached the Stadttheater I saw he was looking for the shadowy Bayrische Bierhalle, which we had visited before. Here he felt quite comfortable, and began to talk about himself, which he rarely did.

He liked oranges, so we bought some at the market, and, from a chattering woman whose left arm was crippled, warm chestnuts. Farewell drink in the train station cafeteria. Robert says several times: "That was an enchanting day, don't you think?" "Perhaps the next time to Bischofszell?"

It occurred to me again that his red, fleshy lips look like the mouth of a fish that's been pulled out of the water--just like they're gasping for air.

From his youth: "From Biel, where I went to elementary school and junior high. I spent three years as a bank trainee at the Kantonalbank, and then in the Spring of 1895 as a clerk in the bank and shipping house of Speyr and Co. in Basel, where I only stayed a few months. My brother Karl, who was working for a window display painter in Stuttgart, told me I should move there. So I replied to an advertisement of the Deutschen Verlagsanstalt, and got a position in their advertising bureau. I stayed there until the autumn of 1896. Then I headed for Zurich, where I found a place with an insurance company, then the Kreditanstalt. I was out of work a lot around then; that is, when I scraped a bit of money together, I gave notice, so that I could write undisturbed. Whoever wants to do something right has to do it full time, it seems to me. Writing in particular needs a man's full strength--it just sucks him dry. So in passing, an arabesque, so to speak, something worthwhile would emerge. At that time on the Spiegelgaße, where Lenin had lived and Georg Büchner had died, Fritz Kocher's Aufsätze was born, including the story about the painter. Another part on the right side of the Trittligaße where you climb the stairs from the upper town. I was very poor, and copied mountains of addresses at the [unemployment office]."

"Do you know why I was never really established as a writer? I'll tell you: I don't have the social instincts. I don't put on enough of an act for people. That's how it is! I understand it completely now. I've indulged myself too much in personal pleasures. It's true--I had an aptitude for vagrancy and scarcely tried to fight against it. This selfishness annoyed the readers of Geschwister Tanner; they believed the writer should not lose himself in subjectivity. They thought it arrogant to take myself so seriously. A writer is mistaken if he thinks the rest of the world is interested in his private affairs."

"My literary debut must have given the impression that I was peeved by upright citizens and didn't value them as I should. They've never forgotten me for that, I'll always be a [big fat zero] for them, a good-for-nothing. I should have included love and sadness, some solemnity and some applause in my books, also a little high romantic, as Hermann Hesse did in Peter Camenzind and in Knulp. Even my brother Karl has told me the same thing, indirectly."

"I'll tell you plainly: in Berlin I was fond of making the rounds of common bars and tingletangles, around the time when I lived with Karl and Muschi the cat in the loft. That's where he painted his Czech girlfriend with the borzoi, but not me. I wandered [foulierte mich] the world from the beginning."

"I was content with my poverty, and lived like a carefree dancer. I was also an industrious drinker. Eventually I became impossible to deal with, and it was only dumb luck that I made my way back to my wonderful sister Lisa in Biel. I never would have achieved such fame in Zurich."

"In Berlin, the Swabian playwright Karl Vollmöller, (who was born the same year I was and was sponsored by Max Reinhardt) told me, as impertinent as could be: 'Walser, you began as a clerk and will always be a clerk.' He also intrigued against me, enthusiastically, at Insel Verlag after Fritz Kocher was published. The result: today he is completely forgotten, as am I."

"At the Institute I reread the Grünen Heinrich--he always pulls me back. Imagine Gottfried Keller, that rascal [de luuschaib], a member of the oversight commission of the asylum Burghoelzli in Zurich! Heinrich Leuthold sank into the earth from embarrassment when they met during his inspection!"

"Now I'm not interested in going back to Biel or Bern. It's quite nice here in the east, don't you think? I find it enchanting. You have seen how warm and cheerful everyone was to us today! I couldn't ask for more. At the sanitarium I have the quiet that I need. Noise is for the young. It seems suitable for me to fade away as inconspicuously as possible."

"Wasn't this day wonderful? We're certainly no sun worshippers--we also love the fog and shady woods. I know I'll think back many times on the silvery-gray Bodensee, the fairy tale forest in the park, and the sleepy aristocratic town of Rorschach."