Robert Walser (1) (1878–1956)

Ridiculous; sublime; verbose. Whitmanian, with added melancholia.

Spontaneously I exclaimed, "Pretty indignant, by God, should one be, when brought face to face with such golden inscriptional barbarities, which impress upon our rustic surrounds the seal of greed, moneygrubbing, and a miserable coarsening of the soul. Does a master baker really require to appear so huge, with his foolish proclamations, to beam forth and glitter, like a dressy, dubious lady? Let him bake and knead his bread in honest, reasonable modesty. What sort of vertiginous conditions are we beginning to live in, when the municipality, the neighbors, officials, and public opinion not only tolerate but unhappily, it is clear, even applaud that which injures every sense of good office, every sense of beauty and probity, that which is morbidly puffed up, thinks it must offer a ridiculous, miserable, tawdry show of itself screaming out over a hundred yards' distance into the good air: 'Such and such am I. I have so and so much money, and I dare to make an unpleasant impression. Of course I am a bumpkin, a blockhead with my hideous ostentation, a taste-deficient fellow. But there will scarcely be anyone to forbid me to be blockheaded.'

He was offended, dear reader, by the presence of gold lettering in a bakery's shop window.

The earth became a dream; I myself had become an inward being, and I walked as in an inward world. Everything outside me faded to obscurity, and all I had understood till now was unintelligible. I fell away from the surface, down into the depths, which I recognized then to be all that was good. What we understand and love understands and loves us also.

Is not all music, even the most niggardly, beautiful to the person who loves the very being and existence of music? Is not almost any human being you please - even the worst and most unpleasant - lovable to the person who is a friend to man?

… (mere)

A collection of short stories and prose sketches by early 20th-century writer Robert Walser, A Schoolboy's Diary is uneven, idiosyncratic, and often strangely charming. These pieces—sometimes only a page long—show Walser returning over and over to issues of authority, obedience, childhood, and the beauty of the Swiss landscape. Inevitably, some of these are much stronger than others. But when Walser was on, he was on: whether with verbal watercolours of various places, sometimes whimsical and sometimes eerie; or with his channelling of the eponymous schoolboy with a narrative voice that's doing something more complex and subversive than it appears at first glance.… (mere)