Kaspar Hauser Speaks

Ladies and gentlemen of Nuremberg. Distinguished guests. It is with no small measure of amazement that I stand before you today, on the occasion of the third anniversary of my arrival in your city. When I recall the brutish creature, half idiot and half animal, who appeared suddenly in your streets that day—a creature jabbering unintelligibly—stumbling—weeping—blinded by daylight—a hunched and stunted creature—lost—unutterably lost—a creature who from his earliest years had been shut up in a dark dungeon—and when I next consider the frock-coated and impeccably cravated young gentleman you see before your eyes—then, I confess, I am seized by a kind of spiritual dizziness. It’s as if I were nothing but a dream, a fantastic dream—your dream, ladies and gentlemen of Nuremberg. For whatever I may be, I who was buried deeper than the dead, I am always mindful how very much I am your creation. Through the patient guidance of Professor Daumer, to whom my gratitude is boundless, I have been formed in your image. I am you—and you—and you—I who only a few short years ago was lower than any beast.

I understand, of course, that my progress is far from complete. About this matter I have no illusions. When I enter a room, I am fully aware of the stray looks of amusement or pity, to say nothing of those subtler and more harmful looks that may be described as the polite suppression of amusement or pity. Even now, as a full-grown man of twenty, I cannot hold my arms in a natural way, but can feel them hanging awkwardly at my sides, the fingers slightly outspread. My manner of walking is uncertain. This is especially so when I feel myself the center of attention: then I advance in a kind of delicate lurch, or as if I were falling forward and then quickly moving my feet in order to remain upright. Nor am I absolute master of my face, which now and then will break into a scowl, or reveal a look of childlike astonishment. Even my words don’t always emerge with the fluency I long for, but come forth in rushed clusters, or with unnatural slowness. Sometimes I stumble into a pit or well of sadness, a deep pit, a long fall; the sheer walls soar; and as I fall, never reaching the bottom, for there is no bottom, I stare up and see, far above, in the little circle of light that is always receding, faces peering down at me, faces unimaginably high up—and they are your faces, ladies and gentlemen of Nuremberg. For though I have been formed in your image, yet at the same time I am so far beneath you that the effort of looking up at you makes me giddy. That much is clear.