Robert Walser (1878-1956) was a German-Swiss prose writer and novelist who enjoyed high repute among a select group of authors and critics in Berlin early in his career, only to become nearly forgotten by the time he committed himself to the Waldau mental clinic in Bern in 1929. Since his death in 1956, however, interest in Walser’s work was revived, and today he is recognized as the leading German-Swiss author of the first half of the 20th-century.
Walser’s writing is characterized by a linguistic sophistication that alternates between exuberance and melancholy, between a modernist devotion to art and a ceaseless questioning of its practical utility and moral purpose, between the respect of an individual’s rights in a democracy and elitist reaction to the values of mass culture and standardization of the industrial age.
A Little Ramble: In the Spirit of Robert Walser (New Directions, 2013) is a book inspired by a series of exhibitions at the Donald Young Gallery in Chicago. Donald Young saw in Robert Walser an exemplary writer through whom connections between art and literature could be discussed from a modernist viewpoint. He invited a group of artists to respond to Walser’s writings and these pieces along with the drawings form the body of this book. The artists have chosen stories by Robert Walser as well as excerpts from Walks with Robert Walser: Conversations with the Writer recorded by his guardian Carl Seelig. Much of this material appears in English for the first time. Accompanying these pieces are over fifty color artworks created specifically for this project and examples of Walser’s handwritten essays with his signature small scripts that came to be known as “microscripts.” (pictured below)
Extracts of Walser’s writings from A Little Ramble
On Being Romantic
Being romantic means perhaps no more than having the capacity to be enchanted by the beauties of life and the magnitude of the world, to feel love for all phenomena, and to see the invisible as well as the visible.
On the Art of Paul Cézanne
The man I’m now speaking of gazed at these fruits, which are as ordinary as they are remarkable … He ate them and studied them with equal pleasure; he enjoyed the taste of them just as much as its form and color, which he called “wonderful,” and its presence, which he called “phenomenal,” … He translated wine, too, into the domain of art. He magicked flowers onto paper, so that upon it they quivered, rejoiced, and smiled, swaying in their plantlike ways … If we find it proper to speak of his musicality, it was from the plentitude of this observation that it sprang, and from his asking each object if it might agree to give him a revelation of its essence …The things he contemplated became eloquent, and the things to which he gave shape looked back at him as if they had been pleased, and that is how they look at us still.
A Story
A girl and a young man were very unhappy. He was supposed to abduct her but hadn’t quite made up his mind. She wanted to be abducted, but already suspected how difficult this might be … At any rate, a decision was made, the hour struck, it was nighttime of course, wind howling, the nearby woods dark as can be … They took flight, but it was as if they were fleeing their own uncertainty, and in what direction?
They came to a field, the grass was fragrant, it was the time of the hay harvest. Already they began to grow weary and to feel a bit bored. Usually abductions were so stirring, with pounding hearts and the highest expectations. Here things were different. When they reached a forest and sat down on the ground, they heard sounds here and there, as if someone were coming, but no one came. They encountered nothing, only the fir tree swaying, the leaves whispering, foliage rustling, axes thwacking, a little owl hooting softly, and the stars twinkling above the treetops. Then, an insightful mood came over them both, and they agreed it would be better to turn back. All would remain as it was, and really that would be ideal. They deemed it sensible to head for home, and on their way home they smiled …Now that they themselves were calm, no longer set on carrying out extravagant plans, their senses opened like burgeoning freckles, they were content and led one another home, finding it lovely to wait just a bit longer before becoming engaged. When they were home, someone stood there who asked: “Are you now united?” They replied” “Indeed we are.” And so our story would seem to have a happy conclusion: that’s the main thing, it means the weather tomorrow will be fair.
The Walk
I walked through the mountains today. The weather was damp, and the entire region was gray. But the road was soft and in places very clean. At first, I had my coat on; soon, however, I pulled it off, folded it together, and laid it upon my arm. The walk on the wonderful road gave me more and ever more pleasure; first it went up and then descended again. The mountains were huge, they seemed to go around. The whole mountainous world appeared to me like an enormous theater. The road snuggled up splendidly to the mountainsides. Then I came down into a deep ravine, a river roared at my feet, a train rushed me with magnificent white smoke. The road went through the ravine like a smooth white stream, and as I walked on, to me it was if the narrow valley were bending and winding around itself. Gray clouds lay on the mountains as though that were their resting place.
I met a young traveler with a rucksack on his back, who asked if I had seen two other young fellows. No, I said. Had I come here from very far? Yes, I said, and went farther on my way. Not a long time, and I saw and heard two young wanderers pass by with music. A village was especially beautiful with humble dwellings set thickly under the white cliffs. I encountered a few carts, otherwise nothing, and I had seen some children on the highway. We don’t need to see anything out of the ordinary. We already see so much.