Looking out into the landscape, I'm able to observe that what moves can appear more graceful, more beautiful, more noble than what stands firm or is stable. For just now, simply and evidently because they are stable, the trees and saplings are being shaken by the wind. Now and then, insofar as they yield, they are shaken. If they weren't rooted, there'd be no rustling of their leaves, and consequently no listening. The listening depends on the rustling, the rustling on the shaking, the shaking on the fixity of the objects, which grow out of a definite place. The fugitive masses of cloud, beautiful, grandiose, don't stand firm, and so evince no shaking.
Entire mountains and fortresses of cloud seem almost indolent, like swans swimming along or women being disposed to smile or to move. The disposition of what is beautiful, soft, and eminent, peaks in a totality of quiet compliance, as is the case, for instance, with acts of kindness, with justice, with love. Inaudible, without a murmur, when blown upon by the primeval mouth of the wind, the grandest comprehension dissipates. Tranquil and persistent phenomena which resist that vital force, or offer to resist it, are meanwhile there, incomprehensible as well as comprehensible, and in a most delicious way they seem to know and to complement one another.
- Robert Walter, Summer-Autumn 1927, Translated by Christopher Middleton