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Beatenburg (i.e. Beatenberg): View of Jungfrau, Mönch and Eiger, Bernese Oberland, Switzerland: photochrome colour print, photographer unknown, between c. 1890 and c.1900; image by Snapshots of the Past, 8 January 2007 (Library of Congress)
There is a rustling of animals at night,
they breathe like us.
Have you ever felt it,
this Substance with a thousand wounds
at moments when it's quiet in the mountains,
up in the cold air,
in this Nature, this Crypt? --
Do not be cross with me,
even if from a hundred mouths
it had in you disparaged me,
still I honor you!
Everybody quarrels with himself,
climbs from the summit of his discontent
slowly into the vale
on paths as small
as tongues pronouncing attitudes
which have swung round,
and everybody reverts, deserting spirit,
into a bit of happiness,
to take a distance from what they imagined.
Have you seen it, with great eyes
standing in the forest, the creature
that witnessed wars against the Huns?
Last night I did come close to her.
Now here I sit.
The locomotives race across the lands.
Across the ocean fly the ships.
Robert Walser (1878-1956): The Creature, from Prager Tagblatt, October 1925, in Robert Walser: Thirty Poems, selected and translated by Christopher Middleton: Christine Burgin/New Directions 2012
Beatenberg: View of Jungfrau, Mönch and Eiger, Bernese Oberland,
Switzerland: photochrome colour print, photographer unknown, between c.
1890 and c.1900; image by Snapshots of the Past, 8 January 2007 (Library of Congress)
Beatenberg Village and Hotel Silberhorn, Bernese Oberland, Switzerland: photochrome colour print, photographer unknown, between c. 1890 and c.1900 (Library of Congress)
