Robert Walser

The Forest


Imbued with all sorts of strange emotions, I walked slowly on the rocky path up into the forest that advanced towards me like a dark-green impenetrable mystery.  The forest was still, yet it seemed to me as if it were moving toward me with all its splendors.  It was evening and, as far as I can recall, the air was filled with a sweet, melodic chill.  The sky threw golden embers into the thicket, and the grasses and herbs were oddly fragrant.  The scent of the forest earth bewitched my soul, and as I was bewildered and oppressed, I was able to progress only with slow, very slow steps.  Suddenly, from a low coppice of oaks and between the trunks of firs, there appeared a wild, large, beautiful, unfamiliar woman wearing little clothing, her head covered with a small straw hat from which a ribbon fell onto her dark hair.  It was a forest woman.  She nodded and waved her hand and came slowly toward me.  The evening was already so beautiful, the birds, invisible, already sang so sweetly, and now this beautiful woman who seemed to me like the dream of a woman, like the pure idea of what she was.  We drew closer and greeted each other.  She smiled and I, I, too, had to smile, and was overcome by her smile and captivated by her magnificent fir-like figure.  Her face was pale.  Now the moon also emerged from between the branches and regarded us both with a pensive solemnity, and then we sat down next to each other on the moist, soft, sweet smelling moss and gazed contentedly into each other's eyes.  O, what beautiful, huge, wistful eyes she had.  A whole world seemed to lie in them.  I embraced her huge, soft body and bade her, with as much adulation in my voice as I could put into it (and this wasn't difficult), to show me her legs; and she pulled her skirt away from them and the heavenly, beautiful, white ivory shimmered softly toward me through the dark of the forest.  I bowed down and kissed both legs, and a friendly welcome stream streamed through my beatified body, and now I kissed her mouth, the swelling, yielding goodness and love itself, and we put our arms around each other and embraced for a long, long time in our mutual silent rapture.  Ah, how the fragrance of the forest night enraptured me, but how the fragrance pouring from the woman's body also enraptured me.  We lay down on the moss as if on a precious, richly decorated bed, silence and darkness and peace all around us, and above us the dancing and glittering stars and the good, dear, huge, carefree, heavenly moon.




trns. by Annette Wiesner