Category: Robert Walser

Robert Walser

My cheeks are red hot,my lip still trembles,because I sent my heartto speak; every word of itdelusional and awkward,an exuberance, an abrupt sound.That’s how I spoke, oh, it stillshows on my hot cheeksI’m now carrying home.I look down at the snowand walk past many houses,past many hedges, many trees,the snow adorns hedge, tree and house.I walk on, staring downat the snow, on my cheeksnothing but red-hot memoryreminding me of my wild talk.

Robert Walser

How reprehensible it is when those blessed with commodities insist on ignoring the poor. Better to torment them, force them into indentured servitude, inflict compulsion and blows—this at least produces a connection, fury and a pounding heart, and these too constitute a form of relationship. But to cower in elegant homes behind golden garden gates, fearful lest the breath of warm humankind touch you, unable to indulge in extravagances for fear they might be glimpsed by the embittered oppressed, to oppress and yet lack the courage to show yourself as an oppressor, even to fear the ones you are oppressing, feeling ill at ease in your own wealth and begrudging others their ease, to resort to disagreeable weapons that require neither true audacity nor manly courage, to have money, but only money, without splendor: That’s what things look like in our cities at present

Robert Walser

With the utmost love and attention the man who walks must study and observe every smallest living thing, be it a child, a dog, a fly, a butterfly, a sparrow, a worm, a flower, a man, a house, a tree, a hedge, a snail, a mouse, a cloud, a hill, a leaf, or no more than a poor discarded scrap of paper on which, perhaps, a dear good child at school has written his first clumsy letters. The highest and the lowest, the most serious and the most hilarious things are to him equally beloved, beautiful, and valuable.