Free Telegrams of the Soul by Peter Altenberg Page B

pearls of the soul that roll under the table and are picked up by no one! The significant things in life have absolutely no importance. They tell, they make known nothing more about being than we ourselves already know about it! Since when you get right down to it, everything works by and large the same way. But the important differences are only manifest in the details! For instance, which flowers you give to your beloved. Or which belt buckle you pick out for her among the hundred options. Which pear from France, which grapefruit from America you bring to her house, which speckled brown Canada apple you select for her among the hundreds on display; this attests to many more attachments than the orgies of so-called love! Aesthetics, understanding, love must ultimately form a triad. One must be inclined to allow a symphony of ordinary life to resound in the sumof the “little things”! One cannot wait for big events to happen! All the least consequential things are monumental! The squeak of a mouse caught in a trap is a terrible tragedy! Somebody once said to me: the most terrible thing is a young rabbit dragged into a fox hole. The little foxes gnaw at him alive, slowly, day and night, with their needle-sharp little teeth! These are the tragedies of our existence!
    Little things in life supplant the “great events.” That is their value if you can fathom it!

My Ideals
    The adagios in the violin sonatas of Beethoven.
    The voice and the laughter of Klara and Franzi Panhans.
    Speckled tulips.
    Franz Schubert.
    Solo asparagus, spinach, new potatoes, Carolina rice, salt sticks.
    Knut Hamsun.
    The intelligence, the soul of Paula Sch.
    The blue pen “Kuhn 201.”
    The condiment: Ketchup.
    My little room Number 33: Vienna, First District, Dorotheergasse, Graben Hotel.
    The good looks of A.M .
    Gmunder Lake, Wolfgang Lake.
    The Vöslauer * Baths.
    The Schneeberg † train.
    Mondsee boxed cheese, fresh curdled.
    Sole, perch, young hake, reinanken.
    Money.
    Hansy Klausecker, thirteen years old.
    __________________
    * Vöslau, a spa near Vienna
    â€  Schneeberg, an Austrian mountain resort

On the Street
    Baudry de Saunier’s The Art of Driving
    Â 
    Why do all the splendid things conceived, dreamed up by the godlike human brain so soon degenerate into grotesque chicaneries?!? For the very reason that everywhere you look in this earthly existence there’s heaven and hell, the deceptive devil and guardian angel side by side!
    Nobody who loves the fresh air of nature, the forest and field, the evening and morning, the lazy, easygoing afternoon and the forceful vibrant magnificence before noon, nobody eager to catch a glimpse of a deer in the early evening on the edge of the woods, of hungry crows in a snowy field, of the blossoming and wilting bushes bordering endless streets, the stormy symphonies of mountain streams and the noble, discreet silence of homogeneous groves of trees, nobody so inclined would speed through the world in his holy private luxury automobile and, thereby, endanger his fellow man, animals and himself!
    Could you imagine Beethoven, Goethe, Kant speeding along, you men of means?
    To let life slowly flow into you, that’s all there is to life! Everything else is the pitiful attempt to elude at a speedy clip God’s indictment of your failure to grasp the beauties of this world, for lack of eye, ear, time! The noble horse and buggy in the Prater that can tear along at a speedy clip, still leaves us the pleasure of the morning dew on the meadow, the lonely woods, the old head waters of the Danube, of pebble banks in modern faded tones of gray-brown-blue, of old pastures and cawing crow rookeries. But the speeding automobile wants to whisk away what’s left of your already overly burdened soul! It wants to abduct your own sense of peace with a meanspirited spurt of speed! Roll on, destiny’s children, at the tempo of a rubber-tired hack on the Praterhauptallee,