Robert Walser (1878 - 1956) One snowy Christmas Day in eastern Switzerland children out playing stumbled upon the body of a man, sprawled in the middle of a pristine white field: it was 1956 and the man was Robert Walser. He had been taking his daily walk from the sanatorium (mental institutions had been home to him for quarter of a century after periods in Zurich, Berlin, Biel and Bern) and it seems fitting that his heart should choose to fail on one of these country walks which had formed such a significant part of his life. He left behind four novels and a body of short prose in which he excelled - brilliant sketches, somewhat in the tradition of the feuilletonist, with a musicality all their own - pieces that shiver with irony, or invite the reader to see what is just under the postcard-like descriptions, and often end with a tantalising or provocative or devastating question mark. At the heart of his work always lies his suspicion of power and imposed conventions, his distrust of rank and privilege and all other lofty pretensions. His quirkiness and peculiarities may have found disfavour in his day (at times he lived close to poverty), although he was esteemed by contemporaries such as Franz Kafka (he was once described as 'Kafka inside out'), Walter Benjamin, Max Brod, Robert Musil, Christian Morgenstern and Hermann Hesse, who wrote of him: 'If he had a hundred thousand readers, the world would be a better place'. Reading Robert Walser is a unique experience. Susan Sontag in her introduction to his Selected Short Stories/ The Walk remembers the 'rush of pleasure' his short prose brought her, and in his excellent 'Postscript' to that work translator Christopher Middleton writes: 'Small wonder that Walser, with his proletarian mode of life and his princely imagination, found in short prose his proper habitat'. Here we have chosen, to celebrate his anniversary, three examples of it: two pieces written in 1914 and one in 1925, just four years before he entered the sanatorium. The Boat I think I’ve written this scene before, but I’ll write it down once again. In a boat, midway upon the lake, sit a man and woman. High above in the dark sky stands the moon. The night is still and warm, just right for this dreamy love adventure. Is the man in the boat an abductor? Is the woman the happy, enchanted victim? This we don’t know; we see only how they both kiss each other. The dark mountain lies like a giant on the glistening water. On the shore lies a castle or country house with a lighted window. No noise, no sound. Everything is wrapped in a black, sweet silence. The stars tremble high above in the sky and also upward from far below out of the sky which lies on the surface of the water. The water is the friend of the moon, it has pulled it down to itself, and now they kiss, the water and the moon, like boyfriend and girlfriend. The beautiful moon has sunk into the water like a daring young prince into a flood of peril. He is reflected in the water like a beautiful affectionate soul reflected in another love-thirsty soul. It’s marvelous how the moon resembles the lover drowned in pleasure, and how the water resembles the happy mistress hugging and embracing her kingly love. In the boat, the man and woman are completely still. A long kiss holds them captive. The oars lie lazily on the water. Are they happy, will they be happy, the two here in the boat, the two who kiss one another, the two upon whom the moon shines, the two who are in love? [1914] Translated by Tom Whalen A Little Ramble 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 theatre. 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 past 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 as 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 traveller 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 the 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. [1914] Translated by Tom Whalen A Sort of Speech The deputy, how he pursued in metropolitan suburbs his irresponsibilities garnished all in green, afterwards casting deeply troubled glances at the ceiling, a consolation. Certainly he’ll have been a splendid father. We are the last who doubt the opulence of his somewhat pear-mellow noble intentions. In the days of his youth he nodded with casual patience at the poets when they were introduced to him in his opera box. As for his wife, her first mistake was to follow him zealously on the paths of his trespasses, thereby inviting him, deviously, to believe that he was very much loved by her. Second, she was too involved with her brother, who could never be satisfied, on his solitary climbings, as morning breezes lisped around him, with mere medium heights. So she was more of a sister than a wife and almost an egoist rather than a performer of her really very lovely duties. Above all, she was a beauty and never as long as she lived got over the idea. Now to the sons, who carried jewellery caskets through woodlands by night, as if that were essential to them and their world. One of them dreamed only of disappearing entirely from sight. Often he must have read exciting stories. As a person, he was, in addition, nothing to speak of. So we shall dismiss him. The second settled, as a recluse, in a villa which enshrouding ivy had rendered almost invisible. The beard of this country-house dweller grew longer by the hour, until it extended out of the window, whereat he saw his life’s task completed – a belief we gladly allow him. The third found reason to become inconceivably incautious on account of a soprano, all naturally behind the wonderfully shaped back of his mother, who had a way of saying: ‘My sons displease me.’ They made her suffer, she made them suffer, and the patriarch suffered from his spouse, and the products suffered because of the producers. This family, to which many families looked up without reluctance, displayed a pompous falling short. No pen can describe the sighs they heaved together. Folly upon folly was committed. What use is the most dazzling scenery? The father knew no peace till he could say: ‘One darn thing after another!’ All the members of the family longed to be constantly wept over; the daughters found their language instructor bewitching. Meanwhile, a book had been through many too many editions, a book which had the virtue of being nicely written. The book had melody. The family we are speaking of had melody, too. There was a Mediterranean island in it, where the best opportunities for perceiving realities were dreamed away. Still to this day it lies there, witness of a disinclination to wash oneself spiritually, in the proper way. But they all wore fitting clothes and were virtuosos of dissatisfaction. And then she who bore the responsibility might step forward and say to her son: ‘I command you to suffer!’ He laughed at her. She says: ‘Get out of my sight!’ – but wishes inwardly for him not to obey, she wrestles laboriously with her composure. She feels guilty and innocent. She blames the times. ‘Tell me all! Vindicate yourself!’ He quietly replies: ‘All this longing to cast off the shackles, to despise what the surrounding world imposes upon you, isn’t this what you’re injecting into me? What you prohibit me from doing you should also deny yourself,’ and softly he adds: ‘Unbridled woman!’ Whereupon she has a scene with her husband. If I felt talkative I’d repeat the reproaches she brought against him. Her words slapped his face. He thought it was very imposing to listen to her respectfully. But his graciousness was for her a martyrdom. Perhaps one can say that tact is the point from which powerlessness spreads more and more into the male world. Defense to the last gasp seems to be not shrewd. If a man is shrewd, if he is conciliatory, relenting, submissive, the bonds are not torn, of course, but they still hang from him, more like threads, I mean as far as order is concerned, and women have won nothing, if one lets them win, although they tell themselves otherwise. So he always eluded her, politely. A reckless answer would have hurt her. Together, by their fleeing from one another, they poisoned the atmosphere. What kind of people am I thinking of, as I say this? Of me, of you, of all our theatrical little dominations, of the freedoms that are none, of the unfreedoms that are not taken seriously, of these destroyers who never pass up a chance for a joke, of the people who are desolate? Well, I could go around from person to person, letting each say some new thing, new but also old. For they constantly repeated themselves. Each had his own sort of idée fixe. And, in the theatres, play were being performed that wearied the spectators’ souls, made them rebellious and perverse, cringing, and eager for war. Should one speak out or be silent? [1925] Translated by Christopher Middleton These pieces were published in Selected Stories (Carcanet Press) and are available in the paperback edition The Walk (Serpent’s Tail). Reprinted with kind permission of Carcanet Press Ltd From Selected Stories: © Carcanet Press Ltd 1982 Also by kind permission of Serpent’s Tail The Walk: © Carl Seelig-Stiftung, Zurich, Switzerland. With special thanks to Michael Schmidt, Carcanet Press, and Pete Ayrton, Serpent’s Tail.