Peter Camenzind (9 page)

His opinion of my writing did not exceed my own. He once said to me: “Look, I always thought you were a poet and I still think you are, not because you write for the literary journals but because there is something beautiful and deep alive in you that will break out sooner or later.
That
will be genuine poetry.”

Meanwhile, the weeks slipped like thin coins through our fingers, and the time was quite unexpectedly at hand when Richard had to think about returning home. With slightly feigned high spirits we enjoyed the waning weeks and finally agreed that some festive undertaking would have to precede our bitter leave-taking, so that it would end on a cheerful and promising note. I suggested a holiday in the Bernese Alps. Yet it was only the beginning of spring, much too early for the Alps. While I racked my brain for other suggestions, Richard wrote his father, quietly preparing a great surprise for me. One day he appeared with a formidable check and invited me to accompany him as a guide through northern Italy.

A dream I had harbored since youth was about to come true. Feverishly I made my small preparations, quickly taught my friend a few words of Italian, and was apprehensive to the last minute before our departure lest our plans come to nothing.

Our bags were sent ahead, we sat in a train carriage, the green fields and hills flitted past, Lake Urner, the Saint Gotthard pass, then the mountain hamlets and brooks and boulder-strewn slopes and snow-capped peaks of the Ticino, and then the first dark stone houses on the more gently sloped vineyards, and the journey full of expectation along the lakes and through the fertile plains of Lombardy toward the lively, noisy, strangely attractive yet repulsive Milan.

Richard had never tried to imagine what the Cathedral of Milan might look like; he had only heard it mentioned as an architectural masterpiece. So it was a delightful experience to watch his outraged disappointment. Once he had overcome the initial shock and regained his sense of humor, he was the first to suggest that we climb to the roof and make our way among the confused array of gargoyles. We noted with some satisfaction that the hundreds of statues of saints on the small Gothic spires were of little consequence, at least the more recent ones, which seemed to have been mass-produced. For almost two hours we lay on our backs on the sloping marble slabs, which had been warmed by the April sun. Contentedly, Richard confessed: “You know, I wouldn't really mind being disappointed again the way I was here. During the entire trip I have been a little afraid that all the treasures we would see would overwhelm us. And now the whole thing has had such a human and slightly ridiculous beginning.” Then the confused assemblage of stone figures in whose midst we were camping aroused the baroque streak in his imagination.

“Presumably,” he said, “the most distinguished and highest of the saints has his place right up there on the choir tower. But because it cannot be an altogether delightful experience to balance like an acrobat of stone on this sharp little pinnacle for all time, it is only fair that the topmost saint be relieved periodically and moved up into heaven. Now just imagine what a spectacle ensues when this happens, for all the other saints have to move up one place according to their rank in the hierarchy, each one having to leap onto his predecessor's perch, each one in a great rush and each jealous of those who precede him.”

Whenever I visited Milan thereafter, I would remember that afternoon and with a melancholy smile envision the hundreds of marble saints performing their bold leaps.

Genoa, too, provided a rich reward. Shortly after noon on a bright windy day, my arms resting on a broad parapet, my back to the brightly colored city, I beheld for the first time the swell of the great blue flood, the sea. Tossing darkly with unfathomable yearning, eternal and immutable, it hurled itself toward me and I sensed something within me fashioning a friendship for life and in death with this foam-flecked surge.

The unlimited spaciousness of the horizon affected me as deeply. Once again, as in childhood, I beheld the soft blue of immeasurable distances beckoning to me like an open gate. And the feeling swept over me that I was not born for a normal life at home among my people or in cities and houses, but my fate was to wander through foreign regions and make odysseys on the sea. Darkly, the old melancholy longing rose up in me to throw myself on God's mercy and merge my own pitifully insignificant life with the infinite and timeless.

Near Rapallo I went swimming. For the first time I wrestled with waves, tasted the salty tang and experienced the might of the ocean. Around me nothing but clear blue waves, brown-yellow rocks along the shore, a deep calm sky, and the eternal great roar of the sea. The sight of ships passing along the horizon affected me anew each time: black masts and polished white sails, or the small ribbon of smoke from a steamship far away. Next to my favorites, the clouds, I know of nothing more beautiful than a ship sailing at a great distance, growing smaller and smaller, disappearing finally into the horizon.

Then we reached Florence. The city displayed itself to our eyes as I remembered it from hundreds of pictures and a thousand premonitions—sunlit, spacious, hospitable, traversed by a green stream with many bridges, and girdled by sharply outlined hills. The bold tower of the Palazzo Vecchio pointed defiantly into the clear sky. Behind it, at the same height, lay beautiful Fiesole, white and sun-drenched, and all the hills were white and rose-red with the bloom of the fruit trees. The carefree, harmless life of Tuscany opened itself to me like a miracle and soon I felt more at home there than I ever had anywhere else. We idled away our days in churches, piazzas, in little side streets, loggias, and marketplaces; in the evenings we lolled dreamily in gardens on the hillsides, where the lemons were already ripening, or in simple taverns that served Chianti, where we drank and talked. In between we spent richly rewarding hours in the galleries and in the Bargello, in cloisters, libraries, and sacristies; afternoons in Fiesole, San Miniato, Settignano, Prato.

As we had previously agreed, I would now leave Richard for a week by himself, and I had the noblest and most delicious experience of my youth: wandering through the rich green Umbrian hills. I trod the streets St. Francis had walked, and often felt as though he were walking beside me, full of unfathomable love, joyously and thankfully greeting each bird and mountain spring. I picked lemons and ate them on hills glistening with sunlight, spent my nights in little villages, sang and composed poems within myself, and celebrated Easter in Assisi, in the church of my saint.

I still feel that those eight days I wandered through Umbria were the crown and sunset of my youth. Each day new sources welled up within me and I gazed onto the clear and festive landscape as into the benign eyes of God.

In Umbria I had devotedly traced the steps of St. Francis, the musician of God; in Florence I had savored the illusion of living in the quattrocento. Though I had written satires on contemporary life, I did not realize the ridiculous shabbiness of modern culture until I set foot in Florence. In Florence I began to sense that I would be a stranger in society for the rest of my life, and the desire was born in me to lead my life outside this society, preferably in the south. I did not feel a stranger among people here, and the ease and naturalness of life overjoyed me, especially since the tradition of classical culture and history ennobled and refined it.

The beautiful weeks slipped by in a marvelous series of joyous experiences; never had I seen Richard so enraptured. In our wanderings we came upon out-of-the-way mountain villages basking in the sun, made friends with innkeepers, monks, country girls, and humble village priests; listened to naïve village serenades, fed pretty, brown-skinned children bread and fruit, and gazed down on the glistening Ligurian sea from the sunlit Tuscan hills. Both of us, certain that we were worthy of our good fortune, looked forward to a rich new life. Work, struggle, pleasure, and fame lay within our reach, so we enjoyed our days with no sense of urgency. Even our imminent separation seemed inconsequential; for we knew with greater certainty than ever before that we needed each other and could count on each other for the rest of our lives.

*   *   *

That is the story of my youth. Upon reflection, it seems as brief as a summer night. A little music, love, and vainglory—yet it was beautiful and rich and colorful like an Eleusian feast.

And it was snuffed out as quickly and pathetically as a candle in the wind.

Richard took leave of me in Zurich. I never saw him again. Two weeks later he drowned while bathing in a ridiculously small river in southern Germany. I did not attend the funeral, for I learned of his death a few days after he was buried. Then I threw myself on the floor of my little room blaspheming God and life with horrible, vile curses, cried, and went mad. I had not realized until then that my friendship was my sole possession. Now it was gone.

I could not bear to stay in a town where each step I took filled me with a host of memories that seemed to choke me. It was all the same to me what happened now; I was sick to the core of my soul and had a dread of everything alive. And I had few expectations that my harrowed being would right itself and drive courageously with newly hoisted sails into a time of manhood that promised to be even harsher. God had decreed that I was to offer the best part of myself to a pure and joyous friendship. Like two swiftly moving skiffs, we had stormed forward together, and Richard's skiff was the colorful, fragile, happy, and loved one, to which my eye clung and which I trusted to bear me along toward beautiful destinies. Now it had sunk with no more than a brief cry, leaving me rudderless and adrift on waters that had suddenly darkened.

It would be my task now to withstand this hard test and, setting my course by the stars, to set out on a new journey for the crown of life—with the chance of losing my way once more. I had believed in friendship, in the love of women, and in youth. Now that one after the other had left me, why did I not put my trust in God? But all my life I have been as timid and obstinate as a child, always confident that real life would come like a storm and overwhelm me. It would make me wise and rich, then bear me on its huge wings toward a ripe fortune.

Wise and frugal, life remained silent, however, and let me drift. It sent me neither storms nor stars but waited so that I would become aware of my insignificance again and in patience lose my obstinacy. It let me perform my little comedy of pride and knowledge, ignoring this as it waited for the lost child to find his way back to his mother.

Chapter Five

I
NOW COME
to a period in my life apparently more lively and colorful than earlier periods, one which would provide me with the material for a slight but fashionable novel. I could tell how I became the editor of a German newspaper, how I allowed too great a freedom to my pen and malicious tongue and suffered the consequences; how I became a notorious drinker, finally resigned my position after much unpleasantness, and managed to have myself assigned to Paris as a special correspondent; how I lived wildly, wasting my time in that corrupt place, and got involved in all kinds of scrapes.

If I skip this interlude and deprive those of my readers with a taste for the sordid of the intimate details, it isn't because I'm afraid. I admit I entered one dead-end street after the other, saw all sorts of vile things, and became involved in them. The attraction of
la vie bohème
lost all its appeal and you must allow me to concentrate on what is pure and good and leave those wasted, rejected years behind me.

One evening as I sat in the Bois de Boulogne, wondering whether to have done with Paris or even with life itself, I reviewed my entire existence for the first time in years and reached the conclusion that I had little to lose by suicide.

All at once I imagined that day long since past—an early summer morning in the mountains as I knelt at the side of the bed on which my mother lay dying. Not having been able to think of that morning for so long startled me with shame and the stupid impulse to commit suicide disappeared. For I believe that no one, unless foolish or mad, is capable of taking his own life if he has witnessed the end of another person's good life. Once again I saw my mother dying, watched the sober labor of death on her face, ennobling it. Death appeared harsh yet as strong and as kind as a father who fetches a lost child.

Now I realized that death is our wise and good brother who knows the right hour and on whom we can depend. I began to understand that suffering and disappointments and melancholy are there not to vex us or cheapen us or deprive us of our dignity but to mature and transfigure us.

A week later my trunks were packed and on their way to Basel. I set off on foot, covering large stretches of southern France; with each day I walked, my ungodly Paris period, pursuing me in memory like a stench, turned more and more into a fog and blew away. I followed a
cour d'amour,
spent my nights in castles, mills, or barns, and drank southern wines in the company of dark and loquacious country folk.

Unkempt, lean, sunburned, and inwardly changed I arrived in Basel two months later. This was my first great trip on foot, the first of many. For there are few places between Locarno and Verona, between Basel and Brig, Florence and Perugia, that my dusty boots have not traversed twice or three times—in pursuit of dreams, none of which has yet been fulfilled.

In Basel I rented a run-down apartment outside town, unpacked my things, and set to work. I was glad I lived in a quiet town where no one knew who I was. I had kept up my connections with some newspapers and journals and had sufficient work to keep me alive. The first few weeks were good, but gradually my melancholy returned, staying with me for days and weeks on end, and would not leave even when I worked. Those who have never felt this melancholy will not understand what I mean. How should I describe it? I was enveloped by a sensation of ghastly loneliness. Between myself and people and life in the city, plazas, houses, and streets, a wide cleavage existed at all times. There would be an accident, newspaper headlines—none of it mattered to me. There were fetes, funerals, fairs, concerts—to what purpose? Why? I ran out of my room, roamed forests, mountains, and highways. The meadows, trees, and fields were silent. They looked at me with mute entreaty, sought to communicate, to be obliging, to greet me. But they stood there unable to say anything, while I understood their suffering and suffered with them because I could not redeem them.