I found this interesting take on the seasons in the 2/11/10 New York Review of Books, from Christian Carryl’s review of Robert Walser’s The Assistant. Carryl quotes this excerpt from the book:
“And the world, was it changing? No. A wintry image could superimpose itself upon the world of summer, winter would give way to spring, but the face of the earth remained the same. It put on masks and took them off again, it wrinkled and cleared its huge, beautiful brow, it smiled or looked angry, but remained always the same. It was a great lover of make-up, it painted its face now more brightly, now in paler hues, now it was glowing, now pallid, never quite what it had been before, constantly it was changing a little, and yet remained always vividly and restlessly the same.”
Mr. Walser, a Swiss writer unfamiliar to me before reading the review, spent the last 20 years of his life in a mental institution. Always comforted by long walks, one day he simply slipped out unnoticed into a snowstorm.
Another view of Western Hills, gunnera unfurling pondside, “vividly and restlessly the same.”
