W. looks through my notebooks. Notes on Robert Walser's confinement. Names and dates. Ah, very interesting, W. says. Didn't Walser volunteer to be taken into Herisau asylum?, W. says. Didn't he want to go there for the peace and quiet?

At the sanitarium I have the quiet that I need. Noise is for the young. It seems suitable for me to fade away as inconspicuously as possible.

One lies like a felled tree, and needs no limbs to stir about. Desires all fall asleep, like children exhausted from their play.

Walser was exhausted, W. remembers. He'd written himself out! He had nothing more to say! And there was no market for his feuilltons, W. says. He couldn't make a living. Why shouldn't the welfare state pick up the bill?

Notes on Celan's confinement. Of course, he was much worse off than Walser, W. says. He was much more ill!

'They're doing experiments on me', Celan said to a friend. 'They've healed me to pieces', he said to another.

And notes on Hoelderlin's confinement. Pallaksch, W. reads. - 'What does that mean?' Those were the words Hoelderlin repeated to himself in the 30 years he spent mad, I tell W. Pallaksch!, he sang out, as he played his piano madly. Pallaksch!, he cried up to the night, when he couldn't sleep for mania.