1911.02
Friedland trip January
1911
Reichenberg February
I must write through the night, so much comes over me, but it is only rough. What a power this has over me, while earlier, so far as I remember, I was capable of evading it with a turn, a small turn, that made me happy in itself.
A Reichenberg Jew in the compartment calls attention to himself with small exclamations about the express trains, which are express only in the ticket price. Meanwhile a thin passenger, the sort they call a creampuff, gulps down ham, bread and two sausages, whose skin he scrapes to transparency with a knife, until he finally tosses all the remains and papers under the seat behind the heating pipe. While he eats with this superfluous heat and haste, which I find sympathetic but imitate without success, he reads through two evening papers turned in my direction. Protruding ears. A fairly wide nose. Wipes his hair and face with his greasy hands without dirtying himself, another thing I can’t manage. His apparently extensive member makes a great bulge in his trousers.
Across from me a thin-voiced, hard-of-hearing gentleman with a goatee and moustache laughs disdainfully at the Reichenberg Jew, at first silently, without unmasking himself; after communicating by glances I join in, with a certain loathing, but also a sort of respect. Later it becomes clear that this man, who reads the Montagsblatt, eats something or other, goes out to buy wine at a station and sips it in the same way that I do, is not worth anything.
From the scant travelers a small, high-chested traveler is then introduced, who sits down beside me and is too oppressive and self-assured to call attention to himself with anything other than a loud (not actually disdainful) smile and a word now and then. Joke with Protiwin. Besides, later he gets off
And then a young red-cheeked lad who reads a good deal of the Interessantes Blatt; he tears it open with the side of his hand, which is certainly careless, but in the end folds it up as if it were a silk cloth, with the care that I always admire in idle men, repeatedly pressing it together, straightening the inner edges, making it firm, brushing off its outer surfaces; then stuffs it, thick as it is, into his breast pocket. So he’ll keep reading it at home. I have no idea where he got off.
The hotel in Friedland. The large hall. I recall a Christ on the cross that might not have been there at all. No lavatory, the snowstorm came up from below. For a while I was the only guest. Most of the weddings in the area are celebrated in the hotel. Very uncertainly I remember looking into a hall the morning after a wedding celebration. Everywhere, in the halls and the corridor, it was very cold. My room was above the entrance; the cold struck me at once, even more once I understood the reason. In front of my room, off the hall, there was a kind of side room; on a table stood two forgotten bouquets from a wedding. The window locked not with a latch but with hooks above and below. Now I remember that at one point I heard music, lasting a while. But there was no piano in the guest room, perhaps in that wedding room. Whenever I closed the window, I saw a delicatessen on the other side of the market. Heated with great pieces of wood. Chambermaid with a wide mouth, once with her neck and upper chest bare in spite of the cold; at times distracted, at times surprisingly friendly, I always respectful and embarrassed as usual around friendly people. After I had gotten a brighter electric light set up for work in the afternoon and evening, she saw it while lighting the fire and was very cheerful. “Yes, you couldn’t work by the light before,” she said. “Not by this light either,” I said after some lively exclamations, which unfortunately always come into my mouth when I am embarrassed. And I didn’t know what to do other than recite my opinion, learned by heart, that electric light is both too glaring and too weak. After that she continued lighting the fire in silence. Only when I said, “Anyway, I’ve only lit up the earlier lamp more brightly,” did she laugh a little, and we were of the same mind.
On the other hand I can do things such as this: I always treated her as a young lady and she had conducted herself accordingly; once I came back to the room at an unusual time and saw her in the hall washing the floor. It didn’t trouble me in the least to spare her any humiliation by greeting her and making a polite request to have the fire lit.
Beside me on the return trip from Raspenau to Friedland this stiff deathly man, whose beard hung down over his open mouth and who, when I asked him about a station, made a friendly turn toward me and gave me the liveliest information.
The castle in Friedland. The many possible ways of seeing it: from the plain, from a bridge, from the park, through leafless trees, from the forest through great firs. The castle built surprisingly on top of itself; it does not fall into order even long after one steps into the hall, for the dark ivy, the gray-black walls, the white snow, the slate-colored slopes of covering ice enhance its variety. The castle is not really built on a wide summit, but rather around a relatively sharp peak. I walked a path, continuously slipping, while the castle warden, whom I met farther up, easily came down two stairways. Ivy everywhere. A grand view from a sharply projecting point. A stairway along the wall stops uselessly halfway up. The drawbridge chains hang down neglected from their hooks.
Beautiful park. Since it lies in terraces along the slope and also below, around a pond with varied clusters of trees, one can’t at all imagine its appearance in summer. In the ice-cold pond water sit two swans (I first learned their names in Prague), one thrusts its neck and head into the water. I follow two girls who keep looking back, anxiously and curiously, at my anxiety and curiosity, but also indecision; I let them lead me along the mountain, above a bridge, a meadow, under an embankment and into a rotunda surprisingly formed by the embankment and wooded slope, into a forest with no apparent end. The girls go slowly at first, as I begin to marvel at the size of the forest they go more quickly, and then we are already on a high plain with a strong wind, only a few steps from town.
Kaiserpanorama. The only amusement in Friedland. Had no real comfort inside it, for I did not mistake so beautiful an arrangement as I stepped inside with snow-covered boots and, now before the glaziers, touched the carpet only on tiptoe. I had forgotten the arrangement of panoramas and for a moment feared having to go from one chair to another. An old man at a small lit table, reading a volume of the illustrated world, directs the entire thing. After a while he has an Ariston played for me. Later two more old ladies arrive, sit down at my right, then one more at my left. Brescia, Kremona, Verona. The people within like wax dolls fixed by their soles to the plaster floor. Grave markers: a woman dragging herself up a low flight of stairs opens a door slightly, looking back all the while. A family, a youth reads with one hand on his temple, a boy to the right stretches an unstrung bow. Memorial to the hero Tito Speri: neglected and inspired, the clothes blow around his body. Blouse, wide hat. The pictures alive, as in cinematography, for they afford a gaze into the quiet of reality. The cinematograph gives the spectators the disquiet of their movement, the quiet of reality seems more important. Glassy floor of the cathedral before our tongue. Why is there no fusion of cinema and stereoscopy in this way? Placards with Wihrer Pilsner, familiar from Brescia. The distance between simply hearing a story and seeing a panorama is greater than the distance between the latter and seeing reality. Old iron market in Kremona. At the end I wanted to tell the old man how much I had enjoyed it, but I didn’t dare. Got the next program. Open from 10 o’clock to 10 o’clock.
I had noticed the Dürerbund “literary advisor” in the window display of the bookshop. Decided to buy it, then changed my mind, returned once more to the decision, during which I often remained standing before the display at all times of day. The bookshop seemed so forsaken to me, the books so forsaken. Only here and there did I feel the connection between the world and Friedland, it was so slight. But since any forsakenness induces a warmth in me, soon I felt the happiness of this bookshop as well, and once stepped inside just to see the interior. Since scientific works aren’t needed there, its shelves seemed almost more literary than in city bookshops. An old lady sat under a green-shaded light bulb. Four, five evenly unpacked volumes of Kunstwart reminded me that it was the beginning of the month. The woman, refusing my help, pulled the book out from the display (she was scarcely conscious of its existence), handed it to me, was surprised that I had noticed it behind the icy pane (of course I had seen it earlier), and began to look up the price in the account books, since she didn’t know it and her husband was away. I’ll come back later in the evening, I said (it was five in the afternoon), but didn’t keep my word.
Reichenberg:
The actual intentions of people who rush into a small town in the afternoon are completely unclear to me. If they live outside it, then surely they have to use the trams, since the distances are too great. But if they live in the town itself, then of course there is no distance and no reason to hurry. And yet people stretch their legs in crossing this central square which is no larger than that of a village and whose city hall makes it still smaller by its immediate size (it can amply cover the square with its shadow), so long as, looking from the small square, one doesn’t quite want to believe in the size of the hall and tries to explain the first impression of its size by the square’s smallness.
One policeman doesn’t know the address of the Workers’ Insurance Company, another doesn’t know that of the institute branch office, a third doesn’t even know where Johannes Street is. They explain that they have only been in the service a short time. For an address I have to go to the guardroom, where there are plenty of policemen resting in various ways, all in uniforms of surprising beauty, newness and color, since otherwise only dark winter coats are to be seen on the street.
In the narrow streets only one track could be laid down, so that the trams toward the station go along different streets than those from the station. From the station along Wiener Street, where I stayed in the Hotel Eiche, toward the station along Schücker Street.
Three times in the theater, always sold out: Des Meeres und der Liebe Wellen: I sat in the balcony, too good an actor made too much noise as Naukleros, several times I had tears in my eyes, such as the end of the first act when Hero’s and Leander’s eyes cannot leave each other. Hero steps out the temple door, through which something is visible that can be nothing else but an icebox. In the second act a forest, as in early deluxe editions, it goes to the heart, lianas loop themselves from tree to tree. Everything mossy and dark green. The back wall of the tower turns next evening back into Miss Dudelsack. From the third act on the anticlimax of the piece, as if there were an enemy behind it
19 February 1911
When I tried to get out of bed today, I simply folded up. There’s a very simple reason for this, I am completely overworked. Not by the office but by my other work. The office has an innocent share in it only in that if I did not have to go there, I could live calmly for my work and would not have to spend six hours there daily, which especially on Friday and Saturday afflicted me to a degree you can’t imagine, since I was full of my own affairs. In the end I know perfectly well that these are empty words, that I am guilty and that the office has the clearest and most justified claims against me. But for me in particular it is a terrible double life, from which there is no way out but madness. I write this in good morning light and surely would not write it if it were not so true, and if I did not love you like a son.
For the rest, tomorrow I will surely be together again and will go to the office, where the first thing I hear will be that you want me out of your division.
19 February 1911
The particular nature of my inspiration, in which I, the happiest and unhappiest of men, now go to sleep at two in the morning [perhaps it will remain, if I can only bear the thought of it, for it exceeds all that came before] is such that I can do anything, and not only for one particular work. If I write down a sentence at random, such as He looked out the window, it is already perfected.
“Are you going to stay here much longer?” I asked. At the sudden speech a bit of spittle flew out of my mouth as a bad omen.
Is it bothering you? If it’s bothering you or perhaps keeping you from going up, I’ll go right away, but otherwise I’d rather stay here, for I’m tired.
20 February 1911
Mella Mars in the “Lucerna.” A witty tragedienne, who as it were entered onto an inside-out stage, as tragediennes sometimes show themselves behind the scenery. On her entrance she had a tired, in fact even a flat, empty, old face, the sort that is a natural start for all famous actors. She speaks very sharply, her movements too are sharp, beginning from her bent-back thumbs which seem to have hard sinews in place of bones. Particular changeability of her nose through the shifting highlights and depths of the muscles playing around it. In spite of the unending flashes of her movements and words, she makes her points delicately.
Small cities also have small surroundings for those taking walks.
The young pure well-dressed youths beside me in the gallery remind me of my own youth, and so make an unappetizing impression on me.
Kleist’s youthful letters, age 22. Quits his military position. At home they ask him: So which practical studies for you, since they considered that self-evident. You have a choice between jurisprudence & political science. But do you have any connections at court? “I answered no, somewhat embarrassed at first, but went on to explain much more proudly that if I did have any connections, with my current ideas I would be ashamed to count on them. They smiled, I felt I had been too hasty. One must take care not to voice such truths”
21 February 1911
I live my life here as if I were entirely certain of a second life, as if for example I had entirely gotten over the failed time spent in Paris, since I will strive to return soon. Connected to this, the sight of the sharply divided light and shadow on the street paving.
For a moment I felt myself covered in armor.
How distant, for example, are the muscles of my arms.
Marc Henry—Delvard. The tragic feeling created in the audience by the empty hall heightens the effect of serious songs, harms the lively ones.—Henry gives a prologue while Delvard, behind a curtain that she doesn’t realize is transparent, arranges her hair.—At badly attended performances, Wetzler the presenter seems to wear his Assyrian beard, which is otherwise deep black, with tinges of gray.—Good to let such a temperament blow over you, it lasts for 24 hours, no not so long.—A lot of clothing on display, Breton costumes, the inner underskirt is the longest so that one can count up the richness from a distance.—At first Delvard accompanies, since they wanted to save an accompanist, in a broad low-cut green dress, and freezes.—Parisian street calls. Newsboys are left out.—Someone speaks to me, before I can breathe out I am bid farewell.—Delvard is ridiculous, she has an old maid’s smile, an old maid from the German cabaret, she gets a red shawl from behind the curtain and plays revolution, poems by Dauthendey in the same tough, indestructible voice. Only when she first sat like a woman at the piano was she endearing.—At the song “a Batignolles” I felt Paris in my throat. Batignolles is supposed to be living on pension, even its Apaches. Bruant wrote a song for each of its quarters.
The urban world.
Oskar M., an older student—if one looked at him closely, one was frightened by his eyes—stood one winter afternoon in the midst of the falling snow on an empty stretch, in his winter clothes with a winter coat on top, a shawl around his neck, and a fur cap on his head. He squinted his eyes in deliberation. He had lost himself so deeply in thought that at one point he took off his cap and brushed the fuzzed fur over his face. At last he seemed to reach some conclusion and turned with a dance step toward the road home. As he opened the door of his parents’ living room he saw his father, a clean—shaven man with a fleshy face, facing the door from his seat at an empty table. “Finally,” he said, Oskar having scarcely set foot in the room, I’m waiting here for you at the door, I’m so furious with you that I can hardly handle myself. But father, said Oskar, and only on speaking noticed how he had been running. Quiet, his father shouted and stood up, blocking a window. Quiet, I order you. And no arguments from you, you understand. Meanwhile he took the table with both hands and dragged it a step closer to Oskar. I won’t put up with your idle life any more. I’m an old man. I thought that in you I’d have a consolation for my old age, that’s what makes you a torment worse than all my illnesses. Blast such a son—through laziness, wastefulness, spite, and stupidity, he’s pushing his old father into the grave. Here Oskar’s father fell silent, but moved his face as if he were still speaking. Dear father, said Oskar, and moved cautiously toward the table, calm down, everything will be fine. I’ve had an idea today that will make a hardwoking man of me, as you could only hope for. What’s that? asked his father and looked into a corner. Just trust me, I’ll explain everything to you over dinner. Deep down I’ve always been a good son, it’s just that I couldn’t show it on the outside, I was so bitter that I would rather torment you, if there was no way I could make you happy. But just let me go for a short walk now, so that I can get my thoughts clearer. Oskar’s father, at first paying close attention, had sat down on the table’s edge, now he stood: I don’t believe there’s much sense in what you just said, I’d sooner take it for blather. But in the end you’re my son — come back on time, we’ll have dinner at home, and you can tell me the matter then. That little trust is all I need, I’m thankful to you from the bottom of my heart. But isn’t it plain to see in my eyes that I’m entirely occupied with a serious matter? At the moment I don’t see anything, said Oskar’s father. But that could also be my fault, after all I’ve gotten used to looking right past you. Meanwhile, as was his habit, he struck regular blows against the tabletop as a reminder of passing time. But what matters is that I don’t trust you at all any more, Oskar. If I shout at you — when you arrived I shouted at you, didn’t I? — I do it only in the hope that it might improve you, I do it only for the thought of your poor good mother, who perhaps now feels no immediate sorrow over you, but is slowly going to ruin from the effort of fending off that sorrow, since she imagines that this will help you somehow. But in the end this is something you already know quite well, and for my sake alone I wouldn’t have reminded you of it if you hadn’t provoked me with your promises. During these last words, the servant girl stepped in to check on the fire in the oven. Scarcely had she left the room when Oskar called out: But father! I wouldn’t have expected that. If I’d had only a small idea, let’s say an idea about my dissertation, that’s been sitting a good ten years in my chest and needs ideas like salt, so it’s possible, if not even highly probable, that just as happened today I would have come running home from my walk and said: Father, happily I’ve had this and this idea. And if then, with your venerable voice, you had spoken those accusations from a little while ago into my face, then my idea would have been simply blown away and I would have had to march off with some excuse, or without one. But now! Everything you say against me helps my ideas, they don’t cease, they get stronger and fill up my head. I’ll go, because only in privacy can I set them in order. He gulped at his breath in the warm room. And it could also be a dirty trick that you have in your head, said his father with wide eyes, now I believe it has got hold of you. But if something capable gets into you by mistake, then it runs out of you overnight. I know you. Oskar shook his head as if he were being held by the neck. Let me alone. It’s most unnecessary how you’re drilling into me. The mere possibility that you might be able to predict my future really shouldn’t tempt you to disturb my careful deliberations. Perhaps my past gives you that right, but you shouldn’t make use of it. There you see best how great your insecurity must be, if it forces you to speak against me like this. Nothing forces me, said Oskar, and jerked his neck. He even stepped much closer to the table, so that one could no longer tell to whom it belonged. What I said, I said in awe, and even from love for you, as you’ll see later, for the greatest part of my decisions comes out of consideration for you and Mama. Then I shall have to thank you, said his father, since it’s highly unlikely that your mother and I will still be able to do so at the appropriate moment. Please father, let the future sleep for now, as it deserves. If you wake it too early, you get a groggy present. But that your son should have to tell you this! It’s not even that I wanted to convince you, but only to announce the news. And that at least, as you have to admit, I’ve accomplished. Now Oskar only one thing still amazes me: why you haven’t often before come to me with a thing like today’s. It fits your previous nature so well. No, in fact I’m serious.
Yes, and you would have struck me instead of listening to me. I ran here so quickly, God knows, to give you some joy. But I can’t give away anything to you until my plan is completely finished. So why do you berate me for my good intentions, and demand explanations from me that might hinder the accomplishment of my plan.
Quiet I don’t want to know a thing. But I must answer you very quickly, since you’re drawing back to the door and obviously have something very urgent in mind: you calmed my original anger with your piece of artistry, — only now it’s all the sadder for me than before and so I beg you — if you stay longer I can even fold my hands — at least say nothing of your ideas to your mother. Let it be enough with me.
That certainly isn’t my father who’s speaking this way, cried Oskar, who had already laid his arm on the doorknob. Something has come over you since noon, or you’re a stranger I’m now meeting for the first time in my father’s room. My real father — Oskar was silent a moment, his mouth open — he would surely have embraced me, he would have called for my mother. What has happened to you, father?
You’d better eat dinner with your real father, I think. It would be more pleasant.
He’ll come soon. He can’t stay away much longer. And my mother must be with him. And Franz, whom I’m calling now. All of them. And Oskar pushed his shoulder against the easily moved door, as if he had meant to break it down.
Having arrived at Franz’s apartment, he bowed to the small landlady with the words: I know the Herr Engineer is sleeping, that means nothing, and with no further regard for the woman, who was moving uselessly back and forth in the hallway from displeasure at the visit, he opened the glass door, which trembled in his hand as if touched in a delicate position, and called carelessly into the room, which he still scarcely saw: Franz, get up. I need your professional advice. But I can’t stand it here in the room, we’ll have to go for a little walk, you’ll have to eat dinner with us too. So quickly now. With pleasure, said the engineer from his leather sofa, but which first, getting up, going for a walk, eating dinner, giving advice, and I probably missed some of it. And above all, no little jokes, Franz. That’s the most important, I forgot that. I’ll do you the favor immediately. But getting up — I’d rather eat dinner for you twice than get up for you once. Up now! No arguments. Oskar grabbed the weak man by the front of his clothes and sat him up. But you’re raving, you know. With all respect. He rubbed at his closed eyes with both little fingers. Say. Have I ever torn you like this from the sofa. But Franz, said Oskar with a twisted face, get dressed now. I’m not some idiot who’s woken you for no reason. — Just as I don’t sleep for no reason. I had the night shift last night, so I’ve just now gotten to my midday sleep, on your account too — How so? Oh, how it irritates me, how little consideration you take for me. It isn’t the first time. Naturally you’re a free student and can do whatever you like. Not everyone is so lucky. So you really have to be considerate, for God’s sake. Of course I’m your friend, but they haven’t lessened my work because of that. He illustrated this by shaking his open hands back and forth. But mustn’t I believe, from how you’re talking now, that you’ve slept more than enough, said Oskar, who had drawn himself up on a bedpost and from it looked at the engineer as if he had somewhat more time than earlier. So what do you actually want from me? or better said, why did you wake me? asked the engineer, and heavily rubbed his neck beneath his goatee, in the close connection with one’s body that one has after sleeping. What I want from you, said Oskar gently, and gave the bed a small push with his heel. Very little. I already told to you from the hall: for you to get dressed. If you want to suggest by this, Oskar, that your news interests me very little, then you’re completely right. That’s just fine, then it will set you on fire on your own account, even without our friendship getting involved. The information too will become clearer, I need clear information, keep that thought foremost. If you’re perhaps looking for your collar and necktie, they’re lying there on the armchair. Thanks, said the engineer and began to fasten his collar and tie, one really can depend on you.
