Cayla’s Reviews > Pictor's Metamorphoses: and Other Fantasies > Status Update

From early on, he was considered to be a little devil and a sly fellow, then he became more and more impertinent, and in the end he had so provoked his father’s household against him, as well as the neighbors, the tribe, and the government, that he was solemnly excommunicated and, like the scapegoat, driven out into the wilderness
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The other fable I’ve made up about Jakob is this: Jakob was a ne’er-do-well, a mischiefmaker, a little rascal, which in no way rules out his being a genius. With his impudent attacks and pranks, he had at first bewildered and at times delighted his father and mother, siblings and relatives, and finally the whole of his community or colony.
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“It is conceivable, or rather, imaginable that this Jakob was a genius who from an early age felt himself to be very different, striving for an abnormal degree of individuality, dreaming of accomplishments, achievements, and honors which were unknown in jackdaw life and the jackdaw tribe, and thus he became an outsider and loner”

The main questions remain unanswered: where the bird made its home and how it came to be on intimate terms with human beings. One person told me the bird was tamed and that he belonged to a woman in Ennetbaden. Another said that he roamed freely, wherever it suited him, and sometimes he’d fly into a room through an open window, peck at something edible, or pluck to shreds some knitted garment left lying around.

This jackdaw was accustomed to having dealings with humans, you could talk to it, and a few people who knew him had already come by and greeted him, saying: “Salut, Jakob.”

“we found that an exceedingly beautiful and mysterious world lay outside, shrouded in great stillness. The narrow valley at our feet was filled with fog, upon whose surface a pale but strong light played. ”

“in the existence of a center around which even an imperiled and troubled life can always form itself anew, from just this innermost core of our being, a belief in the accessibility of God, in the coincidence of this center with the presence of God.”

“It was a product of circumstances which did not suit me and which all my life I have made many a sacrifice to avoid and prevent. The poem arose out of my forced accommodation to a situation which I found strange and unsuitable; and it arose out of a state of intoxication”

“that small faction in Montagsdorf which believed unconditionally that Bird was still alive and would reappear at some future time.”

the selfsame lake, the quay, the same picturesque and droll Old Town, and the same fine hotels with their high glass walls, behind which the palm trees observe us while we dine, the same good soft music; in sum, all that suits the city dweller when he wants to live in style.
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