Fairy Tales by Robert Walser

Author:Robert Walser
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New Directions
Published: 2015-02-25T16:00:00+00:00

† Appetite comes with the eating.

CINDERELLA

A garden behind a house.

Cinderella:

I will not cry so that they scream

at me for crying. My crying,

not their screaming, is what’s awful.

When their hate doesn’t make me cry,

the hate is good and sweet like cake.

It would be a jealous black cloud

blotting out the sun if I cried.

No, if I cried, I’d feel the hate

so hard it wouldn’t be content

with mere tears. It would take my life,

a monster like that would eat me

dead. Its highly poisonous nature

is so lovely to me, the blithe

creature who never cries, who knows

no tears save only those of joy,

of only mindless happiness.

There is an imp inside my head

and he knows nothing of sadness.

Whenever they make me cry, there

cries this jolly sense inside me.

When they hate me, my joy loves them

that cannot even hate the hate.

When they come for me blind with rage,

with poison arrows of their wrath,

I smile like so. My presence shines

like the sun to theirs. Its bright ray

may not touch them, but in a flash

it will dazzle their wicked hearts.

And I, since I’m always occupied,

I really have no time for crying,

only laughter! Work laughs. Hands laugh.

They do. This soul laughs with a joy,

with what should win over the souls

of others no matter how stubborn.

Come heart, laugh my troubles away.

She wants to go. Her sister, in the window above.

First Sister:

That thing acts as if she were worth

looking at, standing there stock-still,

like a pillar in the sunlight,

splendor to the eye only she sees.

Get your lazy hide to the kitchen.

Do you no longer remember

your scant responsibilities?

Cinderella:

I’m going already, calm yourself.

Some reverie overwhelmed me

as I was on my way just now.

I was thinking of how pretty

you are, your darling sister too,

how you wear such pretty faces,

how it makes me more envious.

Forgive me and let me humbly

take my leave now.

She exits.

First Sister:

What a silly stupid dreamer.

We’re way too soft on her. The fake

secretly laughs us off, pulling

her sad face when we surprise her

laughing at us behind our backs.

From now on, I’ll give her the whip

for being so lazy on the sly.

That apron wraps her up in such

a dusty, black cloud. Then she dreams,

the hypocrite, who even now

stands idle. I will shortly go

and see that she gets back to work.

She closes the window.

Change of scene. A room in the royal palace.

Prince:

What makes me so melancholy?

Is my mind taking leave of me?

Is my life oppressed by remorse?

Is it in my nature to grieve?

Grief is sweet joy’s adversary,

which I feel when I’m miserable.

But from where intrudes this sly shame

on my abandoned wits? Neither

wit nor its friend insight can tell.

I simply bear it in silence

while it weighs on me.—Ah, music!*

Whose voice sounds so serenely clear?

Whatever it is, I kiss it

kissing me so impossibly.

In this sweet kiss lies tranquil calm.

Grief has fled. I hear nothing more

than this sound. I feel nothing more

than this lovely dance’s lesson

with my limbs. Could melancholy

dance with so light a step? Well there,

it’s flown out the door and I feel

wonderfully happy once more.

The Fool?

Fool:

It’s the Fool indeed and ever

the fool, it’s the fool of the

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