»Dann aber kehrte er zu seiner Arbeit zurück, so wie wenn nichts geschehen wäre.« Das ist eine Bemerkung, die uns aus einer unklaren Fülle alter Erzählungen geläufig ist, obwohl sie vielleicht in keiner vorkommt.
"But then he returned to his work just as though nothing had happened." This is a remark that we are familiar with from a vague abundance of old stories, although perhaps it does not occur in any of them. [Kaiser/Wilkins]
"And then he went back to his job, as though nothing had happened." A sentence that strikes one as familiar from any number of old stories -- though it might not have appeared in any of them. [Hofmann]
I think Hofmann hits this one more squarely, because it's hard to imagine an abundance being vague in any really meaningful way.
The point here I think is that this sentence is familiar because it's something we need, and so it isn't like a familiar aphorism or saying. You may not know who said "a rose by any other name blah blah blah," but you know it's a quotation from somewhere and that it's in circulation because it sums up the idea that what something is called is only a convention. But the idea "as if nothing had happened" belongs to another category, reserved for ideas that seem indispensible and obvious. Inventing "as if nothing had happened" is like inventing clothing or cooking; it's something so basic that it is not only too remote in the past to be traced to this or that person, but it's something that you wouldn't think people would have to invent at all.
So it would seem that this idea, that something can happen and yet have no effect, is fundamental somehow. What does that say about people? About the idea of work? As if work were a purposeless, eternal duty that no event can do more than interrupt.