Citations

28 12 20

One historicizes only insofar as one belongs to a mode of being in the world that is aligned with the principle of “disenchantment of the universe,” which underlies knowledge in the social sciences (and I distinguish knowledge from practice). But “disenchantment” is not the only principle by which we world the earth. The supernatural can inhabit the world in these other modes of worlding, and not always as a problem or result of conscious belief or ideas. The point is made in an anecdote about the poet W. B. Yeats, whose interest in fairies and other nonhuman beings of Irish folk tales is well known. I tell the story as it has been told to me by my friend David Lloyd :

One day, in the period of his extensive researches on Irish folklore in rural Connemara, William Butler Yeats discovered a treasure. The treasure was a certain Mrs. Connolly who had the most magnificent repertoire of fairy stories that W.B. had ever come across. He sat with her in her little cottage from morning to dusk, listening and recording her stories, her proverbs and her lore. As twilight drew on, he had to leave and he stood up, still dazed by all that he had heard. Mrs. Connolly stood at the door as he left, and just as he reached the gate he turned back to her and said quietly, “One more question Mrs. Connolly, if I may. Do you believe in the fairies?” Mrs. Connolly threw her head back and laughed. “Oh, not at all Mr. Yeats, not at all.” W.B. paused, turned away and slouched off down the lane. Then he heard Mrs. Connolly’s voice coming after him down the lane : “But they’re there, Mr. Yeats, they’re there.”

As old Mrs Connolly knew, and as we social scientists often forget, gods and spirits are not dependent on human beliefs for their own existence ; what brings them to presence are our practices.

Dipesh Chakrabarty

Provincializing Europe. Postcolonial thought and historical difference

Princeton University Press

2000

p. 111–112

28 12 20

Subaltern histories written with an eye to difference cannot constitute yet another attempt, in the long and universalistic tradition of “socialist” histories, to help erect the subaltern as the subject of modern democracies, that is, to expand the history of the modern in such a way as to make it more representative of society as a whole. This is a laudable objective on its own terms and has undoubted global relevance. But thought does not have to stop at political democracy or the concept of egalitarian distribution of wealth (though the aim of achieving these ends will legitimately fuel many immediate political struggles). Subaltern histories will engage philosophically with questions of difference that are elided in the dominant traditions of Marxism. At the same time, however, just as real labor cannot be thought of outside of the problematic of abstract labor, subaltern history cannot be thought of outside of the global narrative of capital—including the narrative of transition to capitalism—though it is not grounded in this narrative. Stories about how this or that group in Asia, Africa, or Latin America resisted the “penetration” of capitalism do not, in this sense, constitute “subaltern” history, for these narratives are predicated on imagining a space that is external to capital—the chronologically “before” of capital—but that is at the same time a part of the historicist, unitary time frame within which both the “before” and the “after” of capitalist production can unfold. The “outside” I am thinking of is different from what is simply imagined as “before or after capital” in historicist prose. This “outside” I think of, following Derrida, as something attached to the category “capital” itself, something that straddles a border zone of temporality, that conforms to the temporal code within which capital comes into being even as it violates that code, something we are able to see only because we can think/theorize capital, but that also always reminds us that other temporalities, other forms of worlding, coexist and are possible. In this sense, subaltern histories do not refer to a resistance prior and exterior to the narrative space created by capital ; they cannot therefore be defined without reference to the category “capital.” Subaltern studies, as I think of it, can only situate itself theoretically at the juncture where we give up neither Marx nor “difference,” for, as I have said, the resistance it speaks of is something that can happen only within the time horizon of capital, and yet it has to be thought of as something that disrupts the unity of that time. Unconcealing the tension between real and abstract labor ensures that capital/commodity has heterogeneities and incommensurabilities inscribed in its core.

Dipesh Chakrabarty

Provincializing Europe. Postcolonial thought and historical difference

Princeton University Press

2000

p. 94–95

28 12 20

The prefix pre in “precapital,” it could be said similarly, is not a reference to what is simply chronologically prior on an ordinal, homogeneous scale of time. “Precapitalist” speaks of a particular relationship to capital marked by the tension of difference in the horizons of time. The “precapitalist,” on the basis of this argument, can only be imagined as something that exists within the temporal horizon of capital and that at the same time disrupts the continuity of this time by suggesting another time that is not on the same, secular, homogeneous calendar (which is why what is precapital is not chronologically prior to capital, that is to say, one cannot assign it to a point on the same continuous time line). This is another time that, theoretically, could be entirely immeasurable in terms of the units of the godless, spiritless time of what we call “history,” an idea already assumed in the secular concepts of “capital” and “abstract labor.”

Dipesh Chakrabarty

Provincializing Europe. Postcolonial thought and historical difference

Princeton University Press

2000

p. 93

27 12 20

Let me make it clear that the raging Medusa of cultural relativism is not rearing her ugly head in my discussion at this point. To allow for plurality, signified by the plurality of gods, is to think in terms of singularities. To think in terms of singularities, however—and this I must make clear since so many scholars these days are prone to see parochialism, essentialism, or cultural relativism in every claim of non-Western difference—is not to make a claim against the demonstrable and documentable permeability of cultures and languages. It is, in fact, to appeal to models of cross-cultural and cross-categorical translations that do not take a universal middle term for granted. The Hindi pani may be translated into the English “water” without having to go through the superior positivity of H₂O. In this, at least in India but perhaps elsewhere as well, we have something to learn from nonmodern instances of cross-categorial translation.

I give an example here of the translation of Hindu gods into expressions of Islamic divinity that was performed in an eighteenth-century Bengali religious text called Shunya-puran. (The evidence belongs to the “history of conversion” to Islam in Bengal.) This text has a description, well known to students of Bengali literature, of Islamic wrath falling upon a group of oppressive Brahmins. As part of this description, it gives the following account of an exchange of identities between individual Hindu deities and their Islamic counterparts. What is of interest here is the way this translation of divinities works :

Dharma who resided in Baikuntha was grieved to see all this [Brahminic misconduct]. He came to the world as a Muhammadan … [and] was called Khoda… . Brahma incarnated himself as Muhammad, Visnu as Paigambar and Civa became Adamfa (Adam). Ganesa came as a Gazi, Kartika as a Kazi, Narada became a Sekha and Indra a Moulana. The Risis of heaven became Fakirs… . The goddess Chandi incarnated herself as Haya Bibi [the wife of the original man] and Padmavati became Bibi Nur [Nur = light].

Eaton’s recent study of Islam in Bengal gives many more such instances of translation of gods. Consider the case of an Arabic-Sankrit bilingual inscription from a thirteenth-century mosque in coastal Gujarat that Eaton cites in his discussion. The Arabic part of this inscription, dated 1264, “refers to the deity worshiped in the mosque as Allah” while, as Eaton puts it, “the Sanskrit text of the same inscription addresses the supreme god by the names Visvanatha (‘lord of the universe’), Sunyarupa (‘one whose form is of the void’), and Visvarupa (‘having various forms’).” Further on, Eaton gives another example : “The sixteenth-century poet Haji Muhammad identified the Arabic Allah with Gosai (Skt. ‘Master’), Saiyid Murtaza identified the Prophet’s daughter Fatima with Jagat-janani (Skt ‘Mother of the World’), and Saiyid Sultan identified the God of Adam, Abraham, and Moses with Prabhu (Skt. ‘Lord’).”

In a similar vein, Carl W. Ernst’s study of South Asian Sufism mentions a coin issued by Sultan Mahmud of Ghazna (c. 1018 C.E.) that contained “a Sanskrit translation of the Islamic profession of faith.” One side of the coin had an Arabic inscription whereas the other side said, in Sanskrit : avyaktam ekam muhamadah avatarah nrpati mahamuda (which Ernst translates as, “There is One unlimited [unmanifest?], Muhammad is the avatar, the king is Mahmud”). Ernst comments, expressing a sensibility that is no doubt modern : “The selection of the term avatar to translate the Arabic rasul, ‘messenger,’ is striking, since avatar is a term reserved in Indian thought for the descent of the god Vishnu into earthly form… . It is hard to do more than wonder at the theological originality of equating the Prophet with the avatar of Vishnu.”

The interesting point, for our purpose and in our language, is how the translations in these passages take for their model of exchange barter rather than the generalized exchange of commodities, which always needs the mediation of a universal, homogenizing middle term (such as, in Marxism, abstract labor). The translations here are based on very local, particular, one-for-one exchanges, guided in part, no doubt—at least in the case of Shunya-puran—by the poetic requirements of alliterations, meter, rhetorical conventions, and so on. There are surely rules in these exchanges, but the point is that even if I cannot decipher them all—and even if they are not all decipherable, that is to say, even if the processes of translation contain a degree of opacity—it can be safely asserted that these rules cannot and would not claim to have the “universal” character of the rules that sustain conversations between social scientists working on disparate sites of the world. As Gautam Bhadra has written : “One of the major features of these types of cultural interaction [between Hindus and Muslims] is to be seen at the linguistic level. Here, recourse is often had to the consonance of sounds or images to transform one god into another, a procedure that appeals more … to popular responses to alliteration, rhyming and other rhetorical devices—rather than to any elaborate structure of reason and argument.”

One critical aspect of this mode of translation is that it makes no appeal to any of the implicit universals that inhere in the sociological imagination. When it is claimed, for instance, by persons belonging to devotional traditions (bhakti) that “the Hindu’s Ram is the same as the Muslim’s Rahim,” the contention is not that some third category expresses the attributes of Ram or Rahim better than either of these two terms and thus mediates in the relationship between the two. Yet such claim is precisely what would mark an act of translation modeled on Newtonian science. The claim there would be that not only do H₂O, water, and pani refer to the same entity or substance but that H₂O best expresses or captures the attributes, the constitutional properties, of this substance. “God” became such an item of universal equivalence in the nineteenth century, but this is not characteristic of the kind of cross-categorial translations we are dealing with here.

Consider the additional example Ernst provides of such nonmodern translation of gods. He mentions “a fifteenth century Sanskrit text written in Gujarati for guidance of Indian architects employed to build mosques. In it, the god Visvakarma says of the mosque, ‘There is no image and there they worship, through dhyana, … the formless, attributeless, all-pervading Supreme God whom they call Rahamana.’” The expression “supreme God” does not function in the manner of a scientific third term, for it has no higher claims of descriptive ability, it does not stand for a truer reality. For, after all, if the supreme One was without attributes, how could one human language claim to have captured the attributes of this divinity better than a word in another language that is also human ? These instances of translation do not necessarily suggest peace and harmony between Hindus and Muslims, but they are translations in which codes are switched locally, without going through a universal set of rules. There are no overarching censoring/limiting/defining systems of thought that neutralize and relegate differences to the margins, nothing like an overarching category of “religion” that is supposed to remain unaffected by differences between the entities it seeks to name and thereby contain. The very obscurity of the translation process allows the incorporation of that which remains untranslatable.

Dipesh Chakrabarty

Provincializing Europe. Postcolonial thought and historical difference

Princeton University Press

2000

p. 83–86

27 12 20

Consider the following description from the 1930s of a particular festival (still quite common in India) that entails the worshiping of machinery by workers : “In some of the jute mills near Calcutta the mechanics often sacrifice goats at this time [autumn]. A separate alter is erected by the mechanics… . Various tools and other emblems are placed upon it… . Incense is burnt… . Towards evening a male goat is thoroughly washed … and prepared for a … final sacrifice… . The animal is decapitated at one stroke … [and] the head is deposited in the … sacred Ganges.” This particular festival is celebrated in many parts of north India as a public holiday for the working class, on a day named after the engineer god Vishvakarma. How do we read it ? To the extent that this day has now become a public holiday in India, it has obviously been subjected to a process of bargaining between employers, workers, and the state. One could also argue that insofar as the ideas of recreation and leisure belong to a discourse of what makes labor efficient and productive, this “religious” holiday itself belongs to the process through which labor is managed and disciplined, and is hence a part of the history of emergence of abstract labor in commodity form. The very public nature of the holiday shows that it has been written into an emergent national, secular calendar of production. We could thus produce a secular narrative that would apply to any working-class religious holiday anywhere. Christmas or the Muslim festival Id could be seen in the same light. The difference between Vishvakarma puja (worship) and Christmas or Id would then be explained anthropologically, that is, by holding another master code—“culture” or “religion”—constant and universal. The differences between religions are by definition incapable of bringing the master category “culture” or “religion” into any kind of crisis. We know that these categories are problematic, that not all people have what is called “culture” or “religion” in the English senses of these words, but we have to operate as though this limitation was not of any great moment. This was exactly how I treated this episode in my own book. The eruption of Vishvakarma puja interrupting the rhythm of production, was no threat to my Marxism or secularism. Like many of my colleagues in labor history, I interpreted worshiping machinery—an everyday fact of life in India, from taxis to scooter-rickshaws, minibuses and lathe machines—as “insurance policy” against accidents and contingencies. That in the so-called religious imagination (as in language), redundancy—the huge and, from a strictly functionalist point of view, unnecessarily elaborate panoply of iconography and rituals—proved the poverty of a purely functionalist approach never deterred my secular narrative. The question of whether or not the workers had a conscious or doctrinal belief in gods and spirits was also wide of the mark ; after all, gods are as real as ideology is—that is to say, they are embedded in practices. More often than not, their presence is collectively invoked by rituals rather than by conscious belief.

Dipesh Chakrabarty

Provincializing Europe. Postcolonial thought and historical difference

Princeton University Press

2000

p. 77–78

24 12 20

Leslie Scalapino

« hmmm_____________ » The Woman who Could Read the Minds of Dogs

Sand Dollar

1976

, lien

23 12 20

Every would-be equation of the available with the inevitable bit the dust…

Nathaniel Mackey

From a broken bottle traces of perfume still emanate

New Directions

2010

p. 156

, via Gabriel

21 12 20

« It takes a plague to know a plague » may be said both of the principle of inoculation and of the historiography of epidemics. Certainly this was true of Daniel Defoe’s book, The Journal of the Plague Year, which was ostensibly about the Great Plague of London in 1665 but which actually was contribution to the planning of the plague in 1721 when both the bubonic plague and the smallpox re-appeared in Europe and the western Atlantic.

In 1721 the bubonic plague appeared in Marseilles where it was met with religious piety and repressive quarantine. In the Dutch ports cargoes were burnt and sailors forced to swim ashore naked. In London merchants, reeling under the interruptions of their profits by the financial scandals of the South Sea Bubble, were reluctant to agree to similar measures of quarantine. The danger appeared at a conjuncture of a) rural guerilla movement in some recently expropriated Royal forests, b) serious strikes by the industrial weavers of London, c) an urban crime wave, and d) mobs rioting against the Royal dynasty.

These instabilities took place amidst a widespread debate about the indiscipline of the working class and the desirability of establishing workhouses. The Government, therefore, called upon the Bishop of London to stress the gravity of the situation, so he hired Daniel Defoe to take up his pen to contribute to the formation of that moral panic characterizing the biomanagement of epidemic.

Peter Linebaugh

Lizard Talk ; Or, Ten Plagues and Another

chap. 6  : « The Death Carts Did More… »

Midnight Notes

1989

, An Historical Reprise, in Celebration of the Anniversary of Boston ACT UP February 26, 1989

20 12 20

[…] Eu égard au discours académique de l’histoire – l’« histoire » en tant que discours produit dans le site institutionnel qu’est l’université –, l’« Europe » demeure le sujet théorique souverain de toutes les histoires, y compris de celles que nous appelons « indienne », « chinoise », « kényane », et ainsi de suite. De façon très étrange, toutes ces histoires ont tendance à devenir des variantes d’un récit maître que l’on pourrait appeler « l’histoire de l’Europe ». En ce sens, l’histoire « indienne » se trouve elle-même dans une position de subalternité ; c’est au nom de cette histoire seulement que l’on peut articuler des positions subjectives subalternes. […] « Europe » et « Inde » sont ici traités comme des termes hyperréels, en ce sens qu’ils se rapportent à des figures imaginaires dont les référents géographiques conservent une part d’indétermination. En tant que figures de l’imaginaire, ces termes sont contestables, mais je les traiterai pour l’instant comme des catégories données et réifiées, comme des opposés réunis au sein d’une même structure de domination et de subordination. En adoptant une telle approche, j’ai bien conscience de m’exposer à l’accusation d’indigénisme, de nationalisme – pire encore, de me rendre coupable du pire des péchés : la nostalgie. D’emblée, les chercheurs libéraux s’insurgeront, en disant que l’idée d’une « Europe » homogène et incontestée ne résiste pas à l’analyse. C’est parfaitement exact, mais de même que le phénomène de l’orientalisme n’a pas disparu parce que certains en ont désormais une appréhension critique, de même une certaine version de l’« Europe », réifiée et célébrée dans le monde phénoménal des rapports de pouvoir quotidiens en tant que scène de la naissance de la modernité, continue de dominer le discours de l’histoire. L’analyse est impuissante à l’éradiquer.

Dipesh Chakrabarty

Provincialiser l’Europe. La pensée postcoloniale et la différence historique [2000]

trad.  Olivier Ruchet trad.  Nicolas Vieillescazes

Amsterdam

2020

p. 75–76

16 12 20

Il neige, il neige. Il neige tout ce que le ciel contient de neige, et c’est considérable. Sans arrêt, sans début et sans fin. Il n’y a plus de ciel, tout est chute de neige grise, blanche. Il n’y a plus d’air non plus, il est plein de neige. Il n’y a plus de terre non plus, elle est couverte de neige, et encore de neige. Toits, routes, arbres sont enveloppés de neige. Il neige sur tout, et c’est compréhensible, car quand il neige, la neige tombe sur tout, on l’aura compris, sans exception. Tout doit porter la neige, objets fixes et objets mobiles, par exemple les voitures, les meubles et les immeubles, les propriétés et tout ce qui est transportable, et les pieux, piquets et poteaux autant que les hommes qui marchent. Il ne reste pas le moindre recoin épargné par la neige, à l’exception de ce qui est dans des maisons, dans des tunnels et dans des grottes. Des forêts entières, des champs, des montagnes, des villes, des villages, des domaines sont enveloppés de neige. La neige tombe sur des États entiers, sur des budgets d’État. Seuls les lacs et les fleuves ne sont jamais enneigés. On ne peut pas couvrir un lac de neige du moment que l’eau, tout simplement, absorbe et avale la neige ; en revanche, dépotoirs, détritus, haillons, guenilles, rocs et rocailles ont fortement tendance à être recouverts de neige. Chiens, chats, pigeons, moineaux, vaches et chevaux sont couverts de neige, et de même, chapeaux, manteaux, robes, pantalons, chaussures et nez. Sur les cheveux des jolies femmes, il neige sans façon, et de même, sur les visages, les mains et les cils des mignons enfants qui vont à l’école. Tout ce qui marche, s’arrête, rampe, saute ou bondit est bien proprement couvert de neige. Les haies sont décorées de petites boules blanches, les affiches multicolores se couvrent de blanc, ce qui, ici et là, ne gâte rien. Les réclames sont rendues inoffensives et invisibles, ce dont les commanditaires se plaignent en vain. Il y a des chemins blancs, des murs blancs, des branches blanches, des tiges blanches, des portails de jardin blancs, des champs blancs, des collines blanches et Dieu sait quoi encore. Avec assiduité, avec constance, il continue de neiger, cela ne va jamais s’arrêter, semble-t-il. Toutes les couleurs, rouge, vert, brun et bleu sont couvertes de blanc. Où que l’on regarde, tout est d’une blancheur de neige ; où que tu portes les yeux, tout est d’une blancheur de neige. Et c’est silencieux, c’est chaud, c’est meuble, c’est propre. Assurément, se salir dans la neige pourrait être assez difficile, voire complètement impossible. Toutes les branches de sapin sont couvertes de neige, ploient jusqu’à terre sous l’épais fardeau blanc, obstruent le chemin. Le chemin ? Comme s’il y avait encore un chemin ! On marche, et tout en marchant, on espère que l’on est sur le bon chemin. Et c’est le silence. La neige a amorti tout murmure, tout bruit, tous les sons et tous les échos. On n’entend que le silence, l’absence de son qui, vraiment, ne fait pas beaucoup de bruit. Et il fait chaud, dans toute cette dense douce neige, chaud comme dans un salon douillet où les gens paisibles sont rassemblés pour une fête élégante, aimable. Et c’est rond, à la ronde, tout est comme arrondi, lissé. Les arêtes, les angles et les pointes sont couverts de neige. Ce qui était aigu et pointu est maintenant coiffé d’un capuchon blanc, et de ce fait, arrondi. Tout le dur, le grossier, le raboteux, est recouvert de neige avec obligeance, avec une aimable complaisance. Où que tu ailles, tu ne marches que sur quelque chose de meuble, de blanc, et tout ce que tu touches est doux, humide et mou. Tout est voilé, nivelé, atténué. Là où régnait le multiple et le divers, il n’y a plus qu’une chose, la neige ; et là où il y avait des contrastes, il n’y a plus qu’une seule chose, la neige. Quelle douceur, quelle paix dans toutes les apparences diverses, parmi toutes les formes reliées pour composer un seul visage, un seul tout, rêveur. Une forme unique règne. Ce qui dépassait beaucoup est amoindri, et ce qui saillait de la communauté est au service, au meilleur sens du terme, d’un ensemble grandiose, beau et bon. Mais je n’ai pas encore tout dit. Patiente encore un peu. J’aurai bientôt fini, bientôt. Car l’idée me vient qu’un héros qui se serait défendu avec courage contre une puissance supérieure, qui n’aurait pas voulu entendre parler de se rendre, qui aurait accompli son devoir jusqu’au bout, pourrait être tombé dans la neige. La neige diligente aurait enseveli le visage, la main, le pauvre corps avec sa blessure sanglante, le noble stoïcisme, la mâle résolution, l’âme vaillante, courageuse. On peut marcher sur cette tombe sans rien remarquer, mais lui, qui repose sous la neige, il est bien, il est tranquille, il a la paix, il est chez lui. – Sa femme est au logis, à la fenêtre, et elle voit qu’il neige et elle pense : « Où peut-il bien être et comment va-t-il ? Il va sûrement bien. » Tout à coup, elle le voit, elle a une vision. Elle s’écarte de la fenêtre, elle s’assied, et elle pleure.

Es schneit, schneit, was vom Himmel herunter mag, und es mag Erkleckliches herunter. Das hört nicht auf, hat nicht Anfang und nicht Ende. Einen Himmel gibt es nicht mehr, alles ist ein graues weisses Schneien. Eine Luft gibt es auch nicht mehr, sie ist voll Schnee. Eine Erde gibt es auch nicht mehr, sie ist mit Schnee und wieder mit Schnee zugedeckt. Dächer, Strassen, Bäume sind eingeschneit. Auf alles schneit es herab, und das ist begreiflich, denn wenn es schneit, schneit es begreiflicherweise auf alles herab, ohne Ausnahme. Alles muss den Schnee tragen, feste Gegenstände wie Gegenstände, die sich bewegen, wie z.B. Wagen, Mobilien wie Immobilien, Liegenschaften wie Transportables, Blöcke, Pflöcke und Pfähle wie gehende Menschen. Kein Fleckchen existiert, das vom Schnee unberührt bleibt, ausser was in Häusern, in Tunneln oder in Höhlen liegt. Ganze Wälder, Felder, Berge, Städte, Dörfer, Ländereien werden eingeschneit. Auf ganze Staatswesen, Staatshaushaltungen schneit es herab. Nur Seen und Flüsse sind uneinschneibar. Seen sind unmöglich einzuschneien, weil das Wasser allen Schnee einfach ein- und aufschluckt, aber dafür sind Gerümpel, Abfällsel, Hudeln, Lumpen, Steine und Geröll sehr veranlagt, eingeschneit zu werden. Hunde, Katzen, Tauben, Spatzen, Kühe und Pferde sind mit Schnee bedeckt, ebenso Hüte, Mäntel, Röcke, Hosen, Schuhe und Nasen. Auf das Haar von hübschen Frauen schneit es ungeniert herab, ebenso auf Gesichter, Hände und auf die Augenwimpern von zur Schule gehenden zarten kleinen Kindern. Alles, was steht, geht, kriecht, läuft und springt, wird sauber eingeschneit. Hecken werden mit weissen Böllerchen geschmückt, farbige Plakate werden weiss zugedeckt, was da und dort vielleicht gar nicht schade ist. Reklamen werden unschädlich und unsichtbar gemacht, worüber sich die Urheber vergeblich beklagen. Weisse Wege gibt’s, weisse Mauern, weisse Äste, weise Stangen, weisse Gartengitter, weisse Äcker, weisse Hügel und weiss Gott was sonst noch alles. Fleissig und emsig fährt es fort mit Schneien, will, scheint es, gar nicht wieder aufhören. Alle Farben, rot, grün, braun und blau, sind vom Weiss eingedeckt. Wohin man schaut, ist alles schneeweiss ; wohin du blickst, ist alles schneeweiss. Und still ist es, warm ist es, weich ist es, sauber ist es. Sich im Schnee schmutzig zu machen, dürfte sicher ziemlich schwer, wenn nicht überhaupt unmöglich sein. Alle Tannenäste sind voll Schnee, beugen sich unter der dicken weissen Last tief zur Erde herab, versperren den Weg. Den Weg ? Als wenn es noch einen Weg gäbe ! Man geht so, und indem man geht, hofft man, dass man auf dem rechten Weg sei. Und still ist es. Das Schneien hat alles Geräusch, allen Lärm, alle Töne und Schälle eingeschneit. Man hört nur die Stille, die Lautlosigkeit, und die tönt wahrhaftig nicht laut. Und warm ist es in all dem dichten weichen Schnee, so warm wie in einem heimeligen Wohnzimmer, wo friedfertige Menschen zu irgendeinem feinen lieben Vergnügen versammelt sind. Und rund ist es, alles ist rundherum wie abgerundet, abgeglättet. Schärfen, Ecken und Spitzen sind zugeschneit. Was kantig und spitzig war, besitzt jetzt eine weisse Kappe und ist somit abgerundet. Alles Harte, Grobe, Holperige ist mit Gefälligkeit, freundlicher Verbindlichkeit, mit Schnee, zugedeckt. Wo du gehst, trittst du nur auf Weiches, Weisses, und was du anrührst, ist sanft, nass und weich. Verschleiert, ausgeglichen, abgeschwächt ist alles. Wo ein Vielerlei und Mancherlei war, ist nur noch eines, nämlich Schnee ; und wo Gegensätze waren, ist ein Einziges und Einiges, nämlich Schnee. Wie süss, wie friedlich sind alle mannigfaltigen Erscheinungen, Gestalten miteinander zu einem einzigen Gesicht, zu einem einzigen sinnenden Ganzen verbunden. Ein einziges Gebilde herrscht. Was stark hervortrat, ist gedämpft, und was sich aus der Gemeinsamkeit emporhob, dient im schönsten Sinne dem schönen, guten, erhabenen Gesamten. Aber ich habe noch nicht alles gesagt. Warte noch ein wenig. Gleich, gleich bin ich fertig. Es fällt mir nämlich ein, dass ein Held, der sich tapfer gegen eine Übermacht wehrte, nichts von Gefangengabe wissen wollte, seine Pflicht als Krieger bis zu allerletzt erfüllte, im Schnee könnte gefallen sein. Von fleissigem Schneien wurde das Gesicht, die Hand, der arme Leib mit der blutigen Wunde, die edle Standhaftigkeit, der männliche Entschluss, die brave tapfere Seele zugedeckt. Irgendwer kann über das Grab hinwegtreten, ohne dass er etwas merkt, aber ihm, der unterm Schnee liegt, ist es wohl, er hat Ruhe, er hat Frieden, und er ist daheim. – Seine Frau steht zu Hause am Fenster und sieht das Schneien und denkt dabei : « Wo mag er sein, und wie mag es ihm gehen ? Sicher geht es ihm gut. » Plötzlich sieht sie ihn, sie hat eine Erscheinung. Sie geht vom Fenster weg, sitzt nieder und weint.

Robert Walser

« Neiger » Petite prose [1917]

trad.  Marion Graf

Zoé

2009

p. 50–54