Robert Walser (writer)

For the U.S. musicologist, see Robert Walser (musicologist).

Robert Walser
Robert Walser in the 1890s
Born	(1878-04-15)15 April 1878 Biel/Bienne, Switzerland
Died	near Herisau, Switzerland
Occupation	Writer
Nationality	Swiss
Literary movement	Modernism

Robert Walser (15 April 1878 – 25 December 1956) was a German-speaking Swiss writer.

Walser is understood to be the missing link between Kleist and Kafka. "Indeed," writes Susan Sontag, "At the time [of Walser’s writing], it was more likely to be Kafka [who was understood by posterity] through the prism of Walser. Robert Musil, another admirer among Walser’s contemporaries, when he first read Kafka pronounced [Kafka’s work] as, 'a peculiar case of the Walser type.'" Walser was admired early on by writers such as Robert Musil, Hermann Hesse, Stefan Zweig, Walter Benjamin and Franz Kafka, and was in fact better known in his lifetime than Franz Kafka or Walter Benjamin, for example.

Nevertheless, Walser was never able to support himself based on the meager income he made from his writings, and he worked as a copyist, an inventor's assistant, a butler and in various other low-paying trades. Despite marginal early success in his literary career, the popularity of his work gradually diminished over the second and third decades of the 20th century, making it increasingly difficult for him to support himself through writing. He eventually suffered a nervous breakdown, and spent the remainder of his life in sanatoriums, taking frequent long walks. A revival of interest in his works arose when, in the late-twentieth century and the early 2000s, his work from the Pencil Zone, also known as Bleistiftgebiet or "the Microscripts"—works he had written in a microscopically tiny hand, in a coded alphabet while in the sanatorium—were finally deciphered, translated and published.

Life and work

1878–1897

Walser was born into a family with many children. His brother Karl Walser became a well-known stage designer and painter. Walser grew up in Biel, Switzerland, on the language border between the German- and French-speaking cantons of Switzerland, and grew up speaking both languages. He attended primary school and progymnasium, which he had to leave before the final exam when his family could no longer bear the cost. From his early years on, he was an enthusiastic theatre-goer; his favourite play was The Robbers by Friedrich Schiller. There is a watercolor painting that shows Walser as Karl Moor, the protagonist of that play.

From 1892 to 1895, Walser served an apprenticeship at the Bernische Kantonalbank in Biel. Afterwards he worked for a short time in Basel. Walser's mother, who was "emotionally disturbed", died in 1894 after being under medical care for a long period. In 1895, Walser went to Stuttgart where his brother Karl lived. He was an office worker at the Deutsche Verlagsanstalt and at the Cotta'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung; he also tried, without success, to become an actor. On foot, he returned to Switzerland where he registered in 1896 as a Zürich resident. In the following years, he often worked as a "Kommis", an office clerk, but irregularly and in many different places. As a result, he was one of the first Swiss writers to introduce into literature a description of the life of a salaried employee.

1898–1912

In 1898, the influential critic Joseph Victor Widmann published a series of poems by Walser in the Bernese newspaper Der Bund. This came to the attention of Franz Blei, and he introduced Walser to the Art Nouveau people around the magazine Die Insel, including Frank Wedekind, Max Dauthendey and Otto Julius Bierbaum. Numerous short stories and poems by Walser appeared in Die Insel.

Until 1905, Walser lived mainly in Zürich, though he often changed lodgings and also lived for a time in Thun, Solothurn, Winterthur and Munich. In 1903, he fulfilled his military service obligation and, beginning that summer, was the "aide" of an engineer and inventor in Wädenswil near Zürich. This episode became the basis of his 1908 novel Der Gehülfe (The Assistant). In 1904, his first book, Fritz Kochers Aufsätze, appeared in the Insel Verlag.

At the end of 1905 he attended a course in order to become a servant at the castle of Dambrau in Upper Silesia. The theme of serving would characterize his work in the following years, especially in the novel Jakob von Gunten (1909). In 1905, he went to live in Berlin, where his brother Karl Walser, who was working as a theater painter, introduced him to other figures in literature, publishing, and the theater. Occasionally, Walser worked as secretary for the artists' corporation Berliner Secession.

In Berlin, Walser wrote the novels Geschwister Tanner, Der Gehülfe and Jakob von Gunten. They were issued by the publishing house of Bruno Cassirer, where Christian Morgenstern worked as editor. Apart from the novels, he wrote many short stories, sketching popular bars from the point of view of a poor "flaneur" in a very playful and subjective language. There was a very positive echo to his writings. Robert Musil and Kurt Tucholsky, among others, stated their admiration for Walser's prose, and authors like Hermann Hesse and Franz Kafka counted him among their favorite writers.

Walser published numerous short stories in newspapers and magazines, many for instance in the Schaubühne. They became his trademark. The larger part of his work is composed of short stories – literary sketches that elude a ready categorization. Selections of these short stories were published in the volumes Aufsätze (1913) and Geschichten (1914).

1913–1929

In 1913, Walser returned to Switzerland. He lived for a short time with his sister Lisa in the mental home in Bellelay, where she worked as a teacher. There, he got to know Lisa Mermet, a washer-woman with whom he developed a close friendship. After a short stay with his father in Biel, he went to live in a mansard in the Biel hotel Blaues Kreuz. In 1914, his father died.

In Biel, Walser wrote a number of shorter stories that appeared in newspapers and magazines in Germany and Switzerland and selections of which were published in Der Spaziergang (1917), Prosastücke (1917), Poetenleben (1918), Seeland (1919) and Die Rose (1925). Walser, who had always been an enthusiastic wanderer, began to take extended walks, often by night. In his stories from that period, texts written from the point of view of a wanderer walking through unfamiliar neighborhoods alternate with playful essays on writers and artists.

During World War I, Walser repeatedly had to go into military service. At the end of 1916, his brother Ernst died after a time of mental illness in the Waldau mental home. In 1919, Walser's brother Hermann, geography professor in Bern, committed suicide. Walser himself became isolated in that time, when there was almost no communication with Germany because of the war. Even though he worked hard, he could barely support himself as a freelance writer. At the beginning of 1921, he moved to Bern in order to work at the public record office. He often changed lodgings and lived a very solitary life.

During his time in Bern, Walser's style became more radical. In a more and more condensed form, he wrote "micrograms" ("Mikrogramme"), called thus because of his minuscule pencil hand that is very difficult to decipher. He wrote poems, prose, dramolets and novels, including The Robber (Der Räuber). In these texts, his playful, subjective style moved toward a higher abstraction. Many texts of that time work on multiple levels – they can be read as naive-playful Feuilleton or as highly complex montages full of allusions. Walser absorbed influences from serious literature as well as from formula fiction and retold, for example, the plot of a pulp novel in a way that the original (the title of which he never revealed) was unrecognizable. Much of his work was written during these very productive years in Bern.

1929–1956

In the beginning of 1929, Walser, who had suffered from anxieties and hallucinations for quite a time, went to the Bernese mental home Waldau, after a mental breakdown, at his sister Fani's urging. In his medical records it says: "The patient confessed hearing voices." Therefore, this can hardly be called a voluntary commitment. While in the mental home, his state of mind quickly returned to normal, and he went on writing and publishing. More and more, he used the way of writing he called the "pencil method": He wrote poems and prose in a diminutive Sütterlin hand, the letters of which measured about a millimeter of height by the end of that very productive phase. Werner Morlang and Bernhard Echte were the first ones who attempted to decipher these writings. In the 1990s, they published a six-volume edition, Aus dem Bleistiftgebiet ('From the pencil area'). Only when Walser was, against his will, moved to the sanatorium of Herisau in his home canton Appenzell Ausserrhoden, did he quit writing, later telling Carl Seelig, "I am not here to write, but to be mad." Another reason might have been that with the rise of the Nazis in Germany, his works could no longer be published in any case.

In 1936, his admirer Carl Seelig began to visit him. He later wrote a book, Wanderungen mit Robert Walser about their talks. Seelig tried to revive interest in Walser's work by re-issuing some of his writings. After the death of Walser's brother Karl in 1943 and of his sister Lisa in 1944, Seelig became Walser's legal guardian. Though free of outward signs of mental illness for a long time, Walser was crotchety and repeatedly refused to leave the sanatorium.

In 1955, Walser's Der Spaziergang (The Walk) was translated into English by Christopher Middleton; it was the first English translation of his writing and the only one that would appear during his lifetime. Upon learning of Middleton's translation, Walser, who had fallen out of the public eye, responded by musing "Well, look at that."

Robert Walser loved long, lonely walks. On 25 December 1956 he was found, dead of a heart attack, in a field of snow near the asylum. The photographs of the dead walker in the snow are almost eerily reminiscent of a similar image of a dead man in the snow in Walser's first novel, Geschwister Tanner.

Writings and reception

A characteristic of Walser's texts is a playful serenity behind which hide existential fears. Today, Walser's texts, completely re-edited since the 1970s, are regarded as among the most important writings of literary modernism. In his writing, he made use of elements of Swiss German in a charming and original manner, while very personal observations are interwoven with texts about texts; that is, with contemplations and variations of other literary works, in which Walser often mixes pulp fiction with high literature.

Walser, who never belonged to a literary school or group, perhaps with the exception of the circle around the magazine Die Insel in his youth, was a notable and often published writer before World War I and into the 1920s. After the second half of the latter decade, he was rapidly forgotten, in spite of Carl Seelig's editions, which appeared almost exclusively in Switzerland but received little attention.

Walser was only rediscovered in the 1970s, even though famous German writers such as Christian Morgenstern, Franz Kafka, Walter Benjamin, and Hermann Hesse were among his great admirers. Since then, almost all his writings have become accessible through an extensive republication of his entire body of work. He has exerted a considerable influence on various contemporary German writers, including Ror Wolf, Peter Handke, W. G. Sebald, and Max Goldt. In 2004, Spanish writer Enrique Vila-Matas published a novel entitled Doctor Pasavento about Walser, his stay on Herisau and the wish to disappear.

Works

German

• Schneewittchen, 1901, verse drama
• Fritz Kochers Aufsätze, 1904 ISBN 3-518-37601-2
• Geschwister Tanner, 1907 ISBN 3-518-39982-9
• Der Gehülfe, 1908 ISBN 3-518-37610-1
• Poetenleben, 1908 ISBN 3-518-01986-4
• Jakob von Gunten, 1909 ISBN 3-518-37611-X
• Gedichte, 1909
• Kleine Dichtungen, 1914 ISBN 3-518-37604-7
• Prosastücke, 1916
• Der Spaziergang, 1917 ISBN 3-518-37605-5
• Kleine Prosa, 1917
• Poetenleben, 1917 ISBN 3-518-01986-4
• Komödie, 1919
• Seeland, 1920 ISBN 3-518-37607-1
• "Ophelia", 1924
• Die Rose, 1925 ISBN 3-518-37608-X
• Der Räuber, 1925 (veröffentlicht 1978) ISBN 3-518-37612-8
• Große Welt, kleine Welt, 1937
• Dichterbildnisse, 1947
• Dichtungen in Prosa, 1953
• Robert Walser – Briefe, 1979
• Geschichten, 1985 ISBN 3-518-37602-0
• Der Spaziergang. Prosastücke und Kleine Prosa., 1985 ISBN 3-518-37605-5
• Aufsätze, 1985 ISBN 3-518-37603-9
• Bedenkliche Geschichten. Prosa aus der Berliner Zeit 1906-1912, 1985 ISBN 3-518-37615-2
• Träumen. Prosa aus der Bieler Zeit 1913-1920, 1985 ISBN 3-518-37616-0
• Die Gedichte, 1986 ISBN 3-518-37613-6
• Komödie. Märchenspiele und szenische Dichtung, 1986 ISBN 3-518-37614-4
• Wenn Schwache sich für stark halten. Prosa aus der Berner Zeit 1921-1925, 1986 ISBN 3-518-37617-9
• Zarte Zeilen. Prosa aus der Berner Zeit 1926, 1986 ISBN 3-518-37618-7
• Es war einmal. Prosa aus der Berner Zeit 1927-1928, 1986 ISBN 3-518-37619-5
• Für die Katz. Prosa aus der Berner Zeit 1928-1933, 1986 ISBN 3-518-37620-9
• Aus dem Bleistiftgebiet Band 1. Mikrogramme 1924/25, 1985 ISBN 3-518-03234-8
• Aus dem Bleistiftgebiet Band 2. Mikrogramme 1924/25, 1985 ISBN 3-518-03234-8
• Aus dem Bleistiftgebiet Band 3. Räuber-Roman, Felix-Szenen, 1986 ISBN 3-518-03085-X
• Aus dem Bleistiftgebiet Band 4. Mikrogramme 1926/27, 1990 ISBN 3-518-40224-2
• Aus dem Bleistiftgebiet Band 5. Mikrogramme 1925/33, 2000 ISBN 3-518-40851-8
• Aus dem Bleistiftgebiet Band 6. Mikrogramme 1925/33, 2000 ISBN 3-518-40851-8
• Unsere Stadt. Texte über Biel., 2002 ISBN 3-907142-04-7
• Feuer. Unbekannte Prosa und Gedichte., 2003 ISBN 3-518-41356-2
• Tiefer Winter. Geschichten von der Weihnacht und vom Schneien. Hg. v. Margit Gigerl, Livia Knüsel u. Reto Sorg. Frankfurt: Insel Taschenbuch Verlag 2007 (it; 3326), ISBN 978-3-458-35026-2

English translations

• Microscripts (New Directions, 2010), translated by Susan Bernofsky, ISBN 978-0-8112-1880-1
• The Tanners (New Directions, 2009), translated by Susan Bernofsky, ISBN 978-0-8112-1589-3
• The Assistant (New Directions. 2007), translated by Susan Bernofsky, ISBN 978-0-8112-1590-9
• Speaking To The Rose: Writings, 1912-1932 (University of Nebraska Press, 2005), translated by Christopher Middleton, ISBN 0-8032-9833-1
• Selected Stories (Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1982; New York Review Books Classics, 2002), translated by Christopher Middleton, ISBN 0-940322-98-6
• The Robber (University of Nebraska Press, 2000), translated by Susan Bernofsky, ISBN 0-8032-9809-9
• Jakob von Gunten (University of Texas Press, 1970; New York Review Books Classics, 1999), translated by Christopher Middleton, ISBN 0-940322-21-8
• Masquerade and Other Stories (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), translated by Susan Bernofsky, ISBN 0-8018-3977-7
• Robert Walser Rediscovered: Stories, Fairy-Tale Plays, & Critical Response Including the Anti-Fairy Tales, Cinderella & Snow White (University Press of New England, 1985) ISBN 0-87451-334-0
• Berlin Stories (New York Review Books Classics, 2012), translated by Susan Bernofsky, ISBN 978-1-59017-454-8
• Oppressive Light: Selected Poems by Robert Walser (Black Lawrence Press/Dzanc Books, New York, 2012), edited and translated by Daniele Pantano, ISBN 978-1-93687-318-0
• A Schoolboy's Diary (New York Review Books Classics, 2013), translated by Damion Searls, introduction by Ben Lerner, ISBN 9781590176726

Plays

• Robert Walser – mikrogramme – das kleine welttheater, director: Christian Bertram, stage: Max Dudler, music: Hans Peter Kuhn, début performance 14 April 2005 Berlin; readings, films and podium discussion with corollary program www.mikrogramme.de
• "Institute Benjamenta" – (listening to a plateau which people call the world), Director: Gökçen Ergene, [1]

Movie and musical adaptations

• Jakob von Gunten, director: Peter Lilienthal, script: Ror Wolf and Peter Lilienthal, 1971
• Der Gehülfe, director: Thomas Koerfer, 1975
• Der Vormund und sein Dichter, direction and script: Percy Adlon, 1978 (free picturization of Seelig's Wanderungen mit Robert Walser)
• Robert Walser (1974–1978), direction and script: HHK Schoenherr
• Waldi, direction and script: Reinhard Kahn, Michael Leiner (after the story Der Wald), 1980
• Brentano, director: Romeo Castellucci, with Paolo Tonti as Brentano, 1995
• Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life, directors: Stephen Quay, Timothy Quay (i.e. Brothers Quay) with Mark Rylance as Jakob von Gunten, 1995
• Schneewittchen, 1998, opera by Heinz Holliger
• Blanche Neige, directed by Rudolph Straub, music by Giovanna Marini, 1999
• Branca de Neve[2], director: João César Monteiro, 2000

Sources

• Walter Benjamin: Robert Walser, 1929 (essay) Volltext
• Susan Bernofsky: "Introduction to the Microscripts." 2012 978-0811220330
• Carl Seelig: Wanderungen mit Robert Walser, 1957 ISBN 3-518-01554-0
• Robert Mächler: Das Leben Robert Walsers, 1976 ISBN 3-518-39986-1
• Robert Walser – Leben und Werk in Daten und Bildern, 1980
• Die Brüder Karl und Robert Walser. Maler und Dichter., 1990 ISBN 3-907960-37-8
• Jochen Greven: Robert Walser. Figur am Rande in wechselndem Licht, 1992 ISBN 3-596-11378-4
• Catherine Sauvat: Vergessene Welten. Biographie zu Robert Walser., 1993 ISBN 3-905208-01-6
• Bernhard Echte: Walsers Kindheit und Jugend in Biel. Biographischer Essay., 2002 ISBN 3-907142-05-5
• Lukas Märki: Auf den Spuren Robert Walsers. Interaktive CD-ROM., 2002 ISBN 3-907142-07-1
• Wolfram Groddeck, Reto Sorg, Peter Utz, Karl Wagner (Hrsg.): Robert Walsers 'Ferne Nähe'. Neue Beiträge zur Forschung. 2. Edition. Fink, München 2008 [1. Ed. 2007], ISBN 978-3-7705-4517-9
• Lucas Marco Gisi: Das Schweigen des Schriftstellers. Robert Walser und das Macht-Wissen der Psychiatrie. In: Martina Wernli (Hrsg.): Wissen und Nicht-Wissen in der Klinik. Dynamiken der Psychiatrie um 1900. Bielefeld: transcript 2012, S. 231–259, ISBN 978-3-8376-1934-8
• W.G. Sebald: "Le Promeneur Solitaire: On Robert Walser" from a Place in the Country. trans. Jo Catling 2014 ISBN 978-1400067718
• Lucas Marco Gisi (ed.): Robert Walser-Handbuch. Leben – Werk – Wirkung. Metzler, Stuttgart 2015, ISBN 978-3-476-02418-3

Further reading

• The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Vol. XII, no. 1 (Robert Walser special issue)
• Davenport, Guy "A Field of Snow on a Slope of the Rosenberg" Georgia Review 31:1 (Spring 1977) pp. 5–41
• Frederick, Samuel. Narratives Unsettled: Digression in Robert Walser, Thomas Bernhard, and Adalbert Stifter. Evanston, Ill: Northwestern University Press, 2012.
• Vila-Matas, Enrique Bartleby & Co. ISBN 0-8112-1591-1
• Gary J. Shipley. "Smithereens: On Robert Walser’s Microscripts" The Black Herald (issue 4, October 2013) pp. 104–119

External links

• Robert Walser Center (in German): Official site of the Robert Walser archive and society in Bern, with information, documentation, and resources about the writer's life and work
• Works by Robert Walser at Project Gutenberg
• J. M. Coetzee: "The Genius of Robert Walser" (2000)
• Ben Lerner: "Robert Walser's Disappearing Acts"
• Institute Benjamenta – Dishwasher Studio – Director: Gokcen Ergene (Jakob von Gunten adapted to the stage)
• "Still Small Voice" essay on Walser by Benjamin Kunkel in The New Yorker
• "The Book Bench: Scribe of the Small" a brief article about Walser's handwriting in The New Yorker
• "The Lightest Touch" review of A Schoolboy's Diary at The Millions
• "A Celebration of the Work of Swiss Writer Robert Walser" Podcast, KCRW's Bookworm
• "Smithereens: On Robert Walser’s Microscripts"