Summer in the Country | Robert Walser, 1914

Fairfield Porter, South Meadow, 1972

WHAT DO you do during a summer in the country? Good God man, what do you need to do? You relax. You get up on the late side. Your room is very clean, although the house you occupy barely deserves the name of hut. The village streets are soft and green. Grass covers them like a green carpet. People are friendly. You don’t have to think about anything. Meals are rather big. Breakfast is in a secluded garden arbor shot through with sunlight. The appetizing innkeeper carries the breakfast out in her hands, you need only reach out and take it. Bees hum around your head, which is a real summer-vacation head. Butterflies flutter from flower to flower and a kitten leaps through the grass. A wonderfully pleasant scent fills your nose. Afterward you take a walk on the edge of a little forest, the sea is deep blue and cheery brown sailboats sail over the beautiful water. Everything is beautiful. It all has a winning look. Then comes the hearty lunch, and a game of cards after lunch under the chestnut trees. In the afternoon, swimming in the water park. The waves in the pool refresh and revive you when they beat against you. The sea is now gentle, now rough. In rainstorms it offers you a splendid view. Then come the lovely quiet evenings, when the lamps are lit in the farmhouse rooms and the moon hangs high in the sky. The night is pitch black, barely pierced by any light. You never see anything as deep at that. And so one day follows the next, one night follows the next, in peaceful alternation. Sun, moon, and stars declare their love for you, and likewise you yours for them. The meadow is your girlfriend and you are her boyfriend, you look up at the sky many times in the course of the day and out into the far hazy gentle distance. In the evening, at the appointed hour, the bulls and cows come back to the village, and you just look at them, you lazy bum. Yes, summer vacation is the time for downright colossal lazing, and that’s just what’s great about it.

Robert Walser, Summer in the Country, 1914

Also:
Self-Reflection | A poem by Robert Walser, 1924-1933
Kleist in Thun | Robert Walser (1913)
A Note on Van Gogh’s L’Arlésienne | Robert Walser (1912)