The Tanners

Inside, in his brother’s room, he gazed at everything with wondering eyes, though there wasn’t much to observe. In one corner stood the bed, an interesting bed — after all, it was where Kaspar slept; and the window was a marvelous window — though made of simple wood and with plain curtains — since Kaspar had just stuck his head out this very window. The floor, table, bedspread and chairs were covered with drawings and pictures. Each separate sheet now slid through the visitor’s fingers, every one beautiful and so perfectly executed. Simon found it all but inconceivable what a worker this painter was, so many things lay before his eyes that he could scarcely manage to look at them all. “Why, it’s nature herself you’ve painted,” he exclaimed. “I find it so bittersweet to look at new pictures of yours. Each one is so beautiful, they gleam with sentiment and seem to strike nature in her heart, and yet you are always painting new things, always striving for something even better — possibly you also destroy many things that have turned out poorly in your eyes. I’m incapable of finding any of your pictures weak, each one moves me and bewitches my soul. Even just a brushstroke of yours, or a color, gives me a firm and unshakeable conviction of your talent — it’s simply wonderful. And when I look at your landscapes, painted so expansively and so warmly by your brush, I always see you, and along with you I feel a sort of pain which tells me there is never an end to art. I understand art so well — the urgency human beings feel for its sake, that longing to vie for Nature’s love and good graces in this way. Why do we wish to see a charming landscape reproduced in a picture? Is it just for the sake of pleasure? No, we are hoping this image will explain something—but this is a something that will surely always remain inexplicable. It cuts so deeply into us when we, lying at a window, dreamily watch the setting sun; but that’s nothing at all compared to a street when it’s raining and the women are daintily raising their skirts, or to the sight of a garden or lake beneath the weightless morning sky or to a simple fir tree in winter or to a boat ride at night, or a view of the Alps. Fog and snow enchant us no less than sunshine and colors: Fog refines the colors, and snow is, after all, and particularly beneath the blue of the warm early spring sky, a profound, marvelous, almost incomprehensible thing. How beautiful that you paint, Kaspar, and paint so beautifully. I’d like to be a little bit of nature and be loved by you the way you love every bit of nature. A painter must love nature so ardently and achingly, even more tempestuously and tremblingly and openly than a poet, such as Sebastian, for example — and people are saying he’s built himself a hut up in the high pastures so he can worship nature undisturbed, like a Japanese hermit. But poets, no doubt, are less faithfully attached to nature than you painters; for as a rule they approach nature with their heads over-educated, over-stuffed. But perhaps I’m mistaken, and in this case I would gladly be mistaken. How you must have worked, Kaspar. Surely you have no cause to reproach yourself. I wouldn’t do so. Not even I reproach myself, and truly, I have ample cause. But I don’t, because this makes a person nervous, and nervousness is an ugly state unworthy of human beings—”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Kaspar replied.

The two of them then strolled through the little town, looking at everything, which didn’t take long, and yet, considering the seriousness with which they regarded it all, did in fact take quite some time. They passed the mailman, who handed Kaspar a letter, making a face as he did so. The letter was from Klara. The church was admired, as was the majesty of the town’s towers and the defiant protective walls, which however had often been breached, the vintners’ huts and gazebos set into the mountainside, places where life had died out long ago. The fir trees gazed down solemnly at the small old town, and at the same time the sky was so sweet above the houses which appeared defiant and sullen in their thickness and breadth. The meadows were shimmering and the hills with their golden beech forests beckoned the viewer up to their distant heights. In the afternoon the young men went into the forest. They were no longer speaking much. Kaspar had fallen silent, his brother sensed what he was thinking of and preferred not to rouse him, for it seemed to him more important for things to be thought over than spoken about. They sat down on a bench. “She won’t let go of me,” Kaspar said, “she’s unhappy.” Simon said nothing, but he felt a certain joy on his brother’s behalf, that the woman was unhappy over him. He thought: “How lovely I find it that she is unhappy.” This love enchanted him. Soon, however, the two took leave of one another; it was time for Simon to return, by train this time.

— 7–