O lovely, floating, restless clouds! I was an ignorant child and loved them, watched them, little knowing that I would drift through life like a cloud--voyaging, everywhere a stranger, hovering between time and eternity. Ever since childhood they have been my dear friends and sisters. There is not a street I cross without our nodding and greeting each other. Nor did I ever forget what they taught me then: their shapes, their features, their games, their roundelays and dances, their repose, and their strange stories in which elements of heaven and earth mingled.
Particularly the tale of the Snow Princess, which has the middle mountain ranges for a setting, early in winter, as warm air flows in from the lower reaches. The Snow Princess, coming down from immense heights, appears on this stage in the company of a small retinue and looks for a place of repose in the broad mountain hollows or on a summit. The false North Wind enviously watches the trusting maiden lie down to rest and inches voraciously up the mountain, to fall upon her suddenly with a furious roar, tossing black-cloud rags at the beautiful Princess, mocking her, intent on chasing her away. Momentarily the Princess is disconcerted, but she waits and patiently suffers her adversary; sometimes she retreats unhappily, in quiet scorn, to her former height. At other times she gathers her frightened entourage about her, unveils her dazzlingly regal countenance, and motions the ogre to stand back. He temporizes, howls, then flees. And she beds down quietly and shrouds her throne in white mists as far as the eye can see. When the mist has withdrawn, the peaks and hollows lie clear, glistening with pure soft new snow.
This story has something in it so noble, of such soulfulness, has in it so much of beauty's triumph that I was enthralled by it; my heart stirred as with a happy secret.
Soon the time came when I was allowed to approach the clouds, walk among them, and gaze down upon their host from above. I was ten years old when I climbed my first mountain, the Sennalpstock, at whose foot lies our hamlet, Nimikon. That was the first time I beheld both the terror and beauty of the mountains. Gaping ravines, filled with ice and half-melted snow, glass-green glaciers, moraines ugly beyond belief, and suspended above all this, like a bell, the dome of heaven. When you have lived for ten years surrounded by mountains and hemmed in between mountain and lake, you can never forget the day you see your first wide sky above you, and the first boundless horizon. Even on the ascent I was amazed at how huge the familiar crags and cliffs really were. And now, quite overcome, I saw with fear and joy in my heart the immense distances bearing down upon me. So that was how fabulously wide the world was! And our village, lost in the depth below, was merely a tiny, light-colored speck. Pinnacles that had seemed to be within walking distance lay days apart.
I guessed that I had had only a glimpse of the world, not a full view at all. I realized that mountains could rise and crumble out there in the world, and great events transpire, without the slightest whisper reaching our isolated hamlet. Yet something quivered within me, like a compass needle striving with great energy, unconsciously, toward those great distances. And as I gazed into the infinite distances into which the clouds were voyaging, I grasped something of their beauty and melancholy.
My two adult companions praised my climbing as we rested briefly on the ice-cold summit. They were amused by my enthusiasm. Once recovered from my initial astonishment, I bellowed like a bull with joy and excitement, into the clear mountain air. This was my first inarticulate hymn to beauty. I expected a loud echo, but my voice died away in the peaceful heights like the faint cry of a bird. Then I felt abashed and was silent.
That day was the beginning. One momentous event now succeeded another. For one thing, the men took me along on mountaineering trips more often, even on the more difficult climbs, and with a strange and uneasy ecstasy I penetrated the great secret of the heights. Then I was made village goatherd. On one of the slopes where I usually drove my beasts was a sheltered nook overgrown with cobalt-blue gentians and bright-red saxifrage. In all the world this was my favorite spot. I could not see the village from there, and only a narrow, gleaming strip of lake was visible across the rocks, but the flowers glowed in fresh, laughing colors, the blue sky hung like a canopy over needle-sharp peaks, and the tinkling goat bells mingled with the incessant roar of a nearby waterfall. There I sprawled in the warmth, gazed in wonderment at the hurrying white cloudlets, and yodeled softly to myself until the goats noticed my laxness and took advantage of it, indulging in all sorts of forbidden games and tricks. This idyllic existence suffered a rude interruption during the first weeks, when I fell into a gully with a goat that had strayed from the flock. The goat died, my head ached, and I received an unmerciful hiding. I ran away from home, and was recaptured amid curses and lamentations.
These adventures might well have been my first and last. In which case this little book would not have seen the light of day and quite a number of other efforts and foolish acts would not have been perpetrated. Presumably I would have married one of my cousins and might even lie frozen in some glacier now. That would not have been the end of the world either. However, everything turned out differently and it would be presumptuous to compare what happened with what might have been.
Occasionally my father would do a little work for the monastery in Welsdorf. One day he fell ill and ordered me to notify the monastery that he was unable to come. Instead of traipsing to the monastery myself, I borrowed pen and paper from a neighbor, wrote a courteous letter to the friars, handed it to the woman who regularly took messages there, and set off into the mountains on my own.
The following week I came home to find a priest sitting there, waiting for the person who had written the letter. I was afraid, but then the priest praised me and tried to persuade my father to let me become a student. Uncle Konrad was in good graces at the time and was consulted. He was inflamed by the idea that I should study and eventually attend the university and become a scholar and a gentleman. My father allowed himself to be convinced, and thus my future took its place alongside my uncle's other risky ventures--the fireproof oven, the sailboat, and his similarly fantastic schemes.
I entered then upon a period of intense study, especially in Latin, Biblical history, botany, and geography. At that time I thoroughly enjoyed my studies; it never occurred to me that I might be buying all this foreign matter at the cost of my home and many years of happiness. Nor was Latin solely to blame. My father would have liked to make a farmer of me even if I had known all the viri illustres by heart. But the shrewd man penetrated to my innermost being and discovered there, as its center of gravity, my cardinal virtue: lassitude. I dodged work whenever possible and would run off to the mountains or the lake or lie hidden on a slope, reading and dreaming and lazing away the time. Realizing this, my father finally gave up on me.
This then is a good moment to say a few words about my parents. My mother, who had been beautiful, retained only her firm, straight frame and lively, dark eyes. She was tall, vigorous, industrious, and quiet. Though she was certainly as intelligent as my father, and stronger, she did not rule the house, leaving the reins in his hands. He was of average height, with thin, almost delicate limbs, and a stubborn, sly head, a light-complexioned face lined with tiny, exceptionally expressive wrinkles. His forehead was marked by a deep vertical fold that darkened whenever he moved his brows, lending him a doleful, ailing expression. At those times he looked as if he were trying to recollect something very important but lacked all hope of ever finding out what it was. You could detect a certain strain of melancholy in him, but no one paid this any heed. For almost all people in our region were victims of a slightly dour turn of mind, caused by the long winters, the dangers, the harsh and wearying struggle for survival, and the isolation from the world outside.
I have inherited important traits from both my parents. A modest worldly wisdom, a trust in God, and a calm, taciturn disposition from my mother, and from my father, irresoluteness, the inability to handle money, and the art of drinking heavily and with full awareness of it. However, the last-mentioned
trait was not in evidence during my tender years. I have my father's eyes and mouth, my mother's slow, heavy gait, her build and her strength. My father in particular, and our people in general, endowed me with natural peasant cunning but also with their melancholy and tendency to baseless fits of depression. Since it was my destiny for many years to make my way far from home, among strangers, I would have been better equipped had I taken a good measure of lightheartedness with me on my travels.
Fitted out with these characteristics and a new set of clothes, I began my journey into life. My parents' gifts have stood me in good stead, for I went out into life and have held my own ever since. Yet something must have been amiss that science and a wordly life never set right. Though I can scale a mountain, row for more than ten hours at a stretch, and if necessary kill a man singlehanded even today, I am as incompetent as ever in the art of living. My early, one-sided preoccupation with the earth, flowers, and animals has stunted in me the growth of most social graces. Even today my dreams offer remarkable proof of how much I tend toward a purely animal existence. For I often dream of myself lying on some shore as an animal, generally as a seal, conscious of such an intense feeling of well-being that, on waking, the recovery of my human dignity fills me not with pride or joy but with regret.
I was given the usual preparatory-school education, although my board and tuition fees were waived; it was decided that I should become a philologist. No one knows exactly why. There isn't a more useless or more tiresome subject, and none with which I felt less kinship.
My school years passed quickly. Fights and lessons alternated with hours during which I felt homesick, and hours filled with impudent dreams about the future or devoted to the worship of science. In the midst of this, my innate lassitude would suddenly assert itself, getting me into all kinds of trouble, until thwarted by some new enthusiasm.
"Peter Camenzind," said my Greek professor, "you are stubborn and single-minded and one of these days you'll break your neck." I took a close look at the stout, bespectacled figure, calmly listened to his pronouncement, and found him amusing.
"Peter Camenzind," remarked the mathematics instructor, "you're a genius when it comes to wasting time and I regret that the lowest mark I can give you is zero. I estimate that your exercise today deserves a minus two and a half." I looked at him, pitied him because he squinted, and thought him very tedious.
"Peter Camenzind," my history professor once said, "you're no great shakes as a student, but you'll make a good historian all the same. You are lazy but you know how to differentiate between the momentous and the trivial."
Even that did not strike me as exceptionally important. Still, I respected my teachers because I thought they were in possession of the secret of science and science overawed me. And though my teachers were of one mind about my laziness, I managed to make some headway and my place in the classroom was just forward of center. Indeed, it did not escape me that school and school science were an inadequate patchwork, but I was biding my time. Beyond these preparations and fumblings there lay, I assumed, a realm of pure intellect and an unambiguous dead-certain science of truth. Once I reached this realm I would discover the meaning of the dark confusion of history, the wars of the nations, and the fearful questions that bother each and every soul.
Another yearning, however, held an even stronger and more urgent sway over me: I longed to have a friend. There was Kaspar Hauri, a brown-haired, serious-minded boy two years older than I, who had about him a calm and self-assured air, who held his head erect and spoke little to his classmates. I venerated him for months. I followed him about in the streets and longed to be noticed by him. I felt envious of every person he greeted and of every house I saw him leave or enter. But he was two classes ahead of me and presumably felt superior even to those in the same grade as he. We never exchanged as much as a single word. Instead, a puny, sickly boy attached himself to me, without any encouragement on my part. He was younger than I, timid and untalented, but he had beautiful doleful eyes and features. Because he was weak and somewhat misshapen, he was subjected to much bullying in his class and looked to me, strong and respected as I was, for protection. Soon he became too ill to attend school. I did not miss him and quickly forgot him altogether.
One classmate of mine was a boisterous fellow, short, fair-haired, and easygoing, with a thousand tricks up his sleeve--a musician, a mimic, and a clown. It took some doing on my part to win his friendship and this wily and irrepressibly cheerful little contemporary always treated me somewhat patronizingly. But at least I now had a friend. I visited him in his room, read a number of books with him, did his Greek homework, and in turn let him help me with math. We also went on a number of walks together and must have looked like bear and weasel on those occasions. He always dominated the conversation, was gay, witty, and completely at ease; I listened and laughed and was glad to have such a lighthearted friend.
One afternoon, however, I came upon him just as the little charlatan was amusing several friends with one of his favorite stunts. He had just impersonated one of the teachers when he called out: "Guess who this is!" And he proceeded to read a few lines from Homer, imitating my embarrassed demeanor, my nervous voice, my rasping country accent, and my habit of blinking and shutting my left eye when concentrating. It looked very funny and was rendered wittily and ruthlessly.
As he closed the book and collected his well-deserved applause, I stepped up to him from behind and had my revenge. I said nothing but gave my shame and wrath graphic expression with a single powerful slap in his face. Immediately afterwards the lesson began, and the teacher noticed my former friend's tears and his swollen red cheek--this boy was also his favorite pupil.
"Who did that to you?"
"Camenzind."
"Camenzind, stand up. Is that true?"
"Yes, sir."
"Why did you slap him?"
No reply.
"Did you have a reason?"
"No, sir."
So I was severely flogged and wallowed stoically in the ecstasy of innocent martyrdom. But since I was neither stoic nor saint but a schoolboy, I stuck my tongue out at my enemy after I had been punished--to its full length.
Horrified, the teacher let fly at me. "Aren't you ashamed of yourself? What is the meaning of this?"
"It's supposed to mean that he's a rat and I despise him. And he's a coward besides."
Thus ended my friendship with the mimic. He was to have no successor, and I was forced to spend my adolescence without a friend. And though my opinion of life and of mankind has undergone a number of changes since that time, I always remember that slap in the face with deep satisfaction, and I only hope the fair-haired boy hasn't forgotten either.
At seventeen I fell in love with a lawyer's daughter. She was beautiful and I am genuinely proud that all my life I have fallen in love only with very beautiful women. What I suffered because of her and other women, I will tell another time. Her name was Rosi Girtanner and even today she is worthy of the love of better men than I.
At that time, all the untapped vigor of youth coursed through my limbs. With my schoolmates I was forever becoming involved in the wildest scrapes. I was proud of being the best wrestler, batter, runner, and oarsman--yet I still felt melancholy. This had hardly anything to do with being unhappily in love. It was simply that sweet melancholy of early spring, which affected me more strongly than others, so that I derived pleasure from mournful visions of death and pessimistic notions. Of course, someone was bound to make me a gift of Heine's Book of Songs, in a cheap edition. What I did with this book did not really qualify as reading. I poured my overflowing heart into the empty verses, suffered with the poet, composed poems with him, and entered states of lyrical intoxication that were as well-suited to me as a nightgown to a little pig. Until that time I had had no idea of "literature." Now there followed in rapid succession Lenau, Schiller, Goethe, and Shakespeare; suddenly the pale phantom, literature, had become a god.
With a delicious shudder,
I felt streaming toward me from these books the cool but pungent fragrance of a life not of this world yet real nonetheless, a life whose waves now pounded where it sought to realize its fate--in my ecstastic heart. In my reading nook in the attic the only sounds to reach me were the hourly chimes from the nearby tower and the dry clapping of nesting storks, but there the characters of Shakespeare's and Goethe's worlds walked in and out. The sublime and the laughable aspects of everything human were revealed to me: I realized the enigma of the sundered unruly heart, the deep meaningfulness of the world's history, and the mighty miracle of the spirit that transfigures our brief stay and through the power of reason raises our petty lives into the realm of fate and eternity. When I stuck my head out through the narrow dormer window, I could see the sun shining on the roofs and in the narrow alley. With astonishment I would listen to the tangled small noises of work and everyday existence rushing up. I sensed the loneliness and mysteriousness of my attic nook filling with great spirits as in remarkably beautiful fairy tales. And gradually, the more I read and the more strangely the roofs, streets, and everyday life affected me, the more often I was overcome by the timid and intimidating feeling that I too might be a visionary: the world spread out before me expected me to discover part of the treasure, to rip the veil that covered the accidental and the common, to tear my findings out of chaos and immortalize them through the gift of poetry.