Prevod

A hedge of hazel bushes surrounded the garden, and beyond it lay fields and meadows with cows and sheep; but in the middle of the garden stood a flowering rosebush. Beneath it sat a snail, who had a great deal within him: he had himself.

"Wait until my time comes!" he said. "I shall accomplish something more than putting forth roses, bearing nuts, or giving milk like cows and sheep!"

"I expect a very great deal of you!" said the rosebush. "May I ask when it will happen?" "I am taking my time!" said the snail. "You are always in such a hurry! That does nothing to heighten expectations!"

The following year the snail lay in much the same spot, in the sunshine beneath the rosebush, which put forth buds and unfolded roses, always fresh, always new. And the snail crept halfway out, stretched out his feelers, and drew them back again.

"Everything looks just as it did last year! There has been no progress; the rosebush sticks to its roses and gets no further!" Summer passed, autumn passed, and the rosebush still bore flowers and buds until the snow fell. The weather grew raw and wet, the rosebush bowed towards the earth, and the snail crept into the ground.

Now another year began, and the roses came out, and the snail came out. "You are an old rosebush now!" he said. "You must be nearly ready to die off. You have given the world everything you had within you; whether it amounted to anything is a question I have had no time to consider. But it is plain enough that you have done nothing whatever for your inner development, or something else would have come out of you. Can you justify that? Soon you will be nothing but bare sticks! Can you understand what I am saying?"

"You frighten me!" said the rosebush. "I have never thought about that!" "No, I daresay you have never troubled yourself much with thinking! Have you ever explained to yourself why you blossomed, and how you came to blossom? Why in this way and no other!"

"No!" said the rosebush. "I blossomed for joy, because I could do nothing else. The sun was so warm, the air so refreshing; I drank the clear dew and the heavy rain; I breathed, I lived! A strength rose into me from the earth, a strength came from above. I felt a happiness, always new, always great, and so I had to keep on blossoming; that was my life, I could do nothing else!"

"You have led a very easy life!" said the snail. "Indeed! Everything was given to me!" said the rosebush. "But still more was given to you! You are one of those thoughtful, profound natures, one of the highly gifted who will astonish the world!"

"I have no intention of doing so!" said the snail. "The world is no concern of mine! What have I to do with the world? I have enough to occupy me in myself, and I am enough for myself!"

"But should not all of us here on earth give the best of ourselves to others! Offer what we can—! Yes, I have given only roses!—But you? You, who were given so much, what have you given the world? What do you give it?"

"What have I given? What do I give? I spit on it! It is worthless! It is no concern of mine. You go on putting forth roses; you can do no better! Let the hazel bush bear nuts! Let cows and sheep give milk; they each have their public, and I have mine within myself! I withdraw into myself, and there I stay. The world is no concern of mine!"

And then the snail went into his house and sealed it shut. "It is so sad!" said the rosebush. "With the best will in the world, I cannot creep inside; I must always burst forth, burst forth in roses. The petals fall and fly away on the wind! Yet I saw one of my roses laid in the mistress's hymnbook; another of my roses found a place at the breast of a beautiful young girl, and one was kissed by a child's lips in blissful joy. It did me such good; it was a true blessing. That is my memory, my life!"

And the rosebush blossomed in innocence, and the snail idled in his house; the world was no concern of his. And years went by. The snail was earth in the earth, the rosebush was earth in the earth; even the rose of remembrance in the hymnbook had crumbled away—but in the garden new rosebushes bloomed, and in the garden new snails grew; they crept into their houses and spat—the world was no concern of theirs.

Shall we read the story again from the beginning?—It will be no different.