Where should I keep a heart? I have forgotten that I have one. Certainly it is sad, but how should I find it proper to feel sorrow? One feels sorrow only when one has lost money, or when one’s new hat does not fit well, or when one’s holdings on the stock exchange drop, and even then one has to ask if that is sorrow or not, and on closer inspection it is not, it is only a fleeting regret, which vanishes like the wind. It is, no, how can I put it now—it is marvelously strange to have no feelings in this way, not to know at all what an emotion is. Feelings which concern one’s own person, everyone has these, and they are at root despicable ones, presumptuous ones if they relate to humanity as a whole. But feelings for particular people? Of course, one sometimes would like to ask oneself about this, one feels something like a slight longing to become a good, compliant person, but when could one manage it? Perhaps at seven in the morning, or some other time? Already on Friday, and right through the Saturday following, I am wondering what to do on Sunday, since on Sunday something always has to be done. —Robert Walser, “Helbling’s Story”
