Telegrams of the Soul

A Walk

I ran into an important politician in the Stadtpark. “Well, that’s all very interesting, but everyone of you writers has a screw loose!”

“Well, for heaven’s sake, that’s the tool of our trade. The shoemaker has a shoemaker’s bench, or else he wouldn’t be able to make any shoes. We have a screw loose, or else we wouldn’t be able to be any different from the others and would be unable, therefore, to communicate anything special to them that they don’t already know!”

“But what about those writers with no screw loose?!”

“Writers, precisely, my dear sir, they are not!”

“For once you actually seem to hit the nail on the head. Why just the other day when I went for a walk in the woods with one of those famous ‘altogether normal’ ones, and he suddenly screamed on the verge of despair: ‘These woods are too green for me, too green, much much too green!’ it first dawned on me and I recognized that he was a real great writer!”

“On the contrary, that one, in particular, was a just a fool! Any man for whom the woods are too green is no writer, but rather a fool! He really has no screw loose. He’s a perfectly normal fool!”