The Fall 2010 issue of the The Adirondack Review features two Robert Walser poems translated by Daniele Pantano.
One of these poems (“Oppressive Light”) will be familiar and the other (“Beer Scene”) won’t. Both are provided in the original German as well as in English translation. Read them here.
By the way, I think all editions of poetry in translation should be bilingual editions, don’t you?
Sam :: Sep.06.2010 :: Uncategorized :: No Comments »
Sam :: Aug.31.2010 :: Uncategorized :: No Comments »
In its August issue, excellent online politics and arts magazine Guernica features a poem by Robert Walser, translated by Daniele Pantano. No composition date is provided for the poem, which is entitled “The Lucky One.” Go check it out.
I particularly appreciated the use of the Scandinavian word “Altan,” meaning terrace or balcony.
(You might also want to take a look at some of the fiction they’ve published over the past few years. In particular, I was pleased to discover that the June and July issues this year included excerpts from a novel by Mario Benedetti, an Uruguayan novelist and poet popular in the Spanish-speaking world who sadly passed away in May.)
Sam :: Aug.18.2010 :: Uncategorized :: 2 Comments »
EVENT
Reading the World Conversation Series: Robert Walser and His “Microscripts”
Thursday, Sept. 23, 2010, 6:00 p.m.
Welles-Brown Room, Rush Rhees Library
University of Rochester
(free and open to the public)
Sam :: Aug.17.2010 :: Uncategorized :: No Comments »
Come this October, the cool kids over at Ugly Duckling Presse — I don’t know that they’re kids exactly; let’s call them, perhaps, a nice Walserian green — have a lovely object heading our way. It is, as shown above, an edition of Walser’s prose piece, “Answer to an Inquiry,” translated by Paul North and illustrated by the artist, Friese Undine. Here’s how it’s described on the UDP website:
The Swiss author Robert Walser’s Answer to an Inquiry is a short work written in the form of a letter. Walser assumes the voice of a great man of the theater responding to an aspiring actor’s request for advice. The young actor is given very simple, practical suggestions on how best to perform absolute anguish. This new edition, featuring a new translation accompanied by more than 40 drawings is a collaboration between translator Paul North and artist Friese Undine. Answer to an Inquiry should serve as a practical handbook for anyone wanting to convey deep suffering.
I love some of the illustrations, which you can see on Undine’s website. The text was previously translated into English by Christopher Middleton, and appeared under the title “Response to a Request” as the first piece in Selected Stories.
Will the text in the UDP book be interspersed, as it is on the Undine’s site, by quotations from the Book of Ezekial? We don’t know. To find out, order it here. While you’re at it, you might want to do as I do and add a copy of 0 to 9: the Complete Magazine to your cart as well.
Sam :: Aug.12.2010 :: Uncategorized :: 2 Comments »
From the New Directions newsletter today, a little news about the microscripts exhibition in New York this fall.
Gearing up for the Microscripts Exhibit
Robert Walser’s Microscripts continues to be a huge hit with readers and reviewers as well as the darling of many independent bookstores. The Christine Burgin Gallery, which co-published the Microscripts with New Directions, will be exhibiting the actual scripts this autumn. There will also be some incredible surprises to accompany this fantastic show — more details to come in the near future.
I’ll let you know when I get the exact dates.
Sam :: Jul.13.2010 :: Uncategorized :: No Comments »
Two more reviews of the Microscripts appeared over the past few days.
The first is by Jacob Silverman and appears in the Summer 2010 issue of the Virginia Quarterly Review. Extra points for noticing Walser’s anger.
Writing in 1926, in one of several pieces he composed about the German Romantic writer Clemens Brentano, Walser opined, “what a gentle and angry instrument I am.” Bernofsky’s translation lucidly balances this phrase on a fulcrum of two common adjectives; the result is an astonishing slip of poetry, signaling Walser’s complex self-awareness. Walser could be fierce—towards himself, towards his perceived antagonists, towards the paper scraps that he tore and scrawled upon—but he was also a bighearted thinker, an innovative stylist, and a creator of winsome verbal melodies.
The second appears in today’s Los Angeles Times. No author is named; as in the old days of the anonymous TLS, feel free to speculate as to whether the author is Virginia Woolf or Marie Belloc Lowndes:
The furtive, secretive nature of the microscripts lend them a talismanic aura. “It amuses me to believe that readers are, as it were, writers’ chaperones,” Walser writes in “Autumn.” In “The Microscripts,” he appears to have given them the slip, to thrilling effect.
I love that image of Walser eluding his more responsible reader. Nicely done.
[The LA Times review now shows the name of the reviewer. It's Megan Doll, who has written on literature in translation for The Believer and Bookslut.]
Sam :: Jul.04.2010 :: Uncategorized :: No Comments »
“The passion to go far in the world is unknown to me. Africa with its deserts is to me not more foreign.” So says Wenzel, the employment-seeker in Walser’s “The Job Application,” as translated by Christopher Middleton. Walser himself, unless I’m mistaken, never traveled outside of Germany and Switzerland. Today, of course, Walser has readers all over the world. Here are some graphs showing the geographic distribution of visitors to this website over the past few weeks (click for larger image).
I sometimes have the chance to meet with other Walser readers on my travels, which is always fun. As for future trips, I’m in London next week, Oslo next month, and Melbourne next year. If you’re in any of those places and want to get together, just send me an email.
Sam :: Jun.28.2010 :: Uncategorized :: 3 Comments »
If you’ve got $50,000 burning a hole in your pocket, and you’re in or near the city of Berlin, here’s something for you: On Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, J. A. Stargardt’s auction of autograph manuscripts features two Walser manuscripts. Here’s the catalogue. And here are the images:
ADDENDUM 6/21/10:
If I’m reading my Ergebnisliste properly, it appears that the Walser manuscripts both successfully sold at the auction last week. “Ferienreise,” estimated at €25,000, sold at €22,000. “Kopf,” estimated at €20,000, went for €20,000. Doesn’t say who the lucky winner was. Wasn’t me. Whoever it is, I hope he, she, or they are intending, in the fullness of time, to put their new possessions here.
A little trivia: the Walser manuscripts each brought a higher price than any other single item in the literary division of the auction. Goethe came next (€19,000). Overall, top moneymakers were Nietzsche (science division) and Bach (music division), both with items fetching €140,000 each. Unless I misread, the Bach was a signed receipt for a piano rental. Nice.
Sam :: Jun.13.2010 :: Uncategorized :: No Comments »
A tip of the Alpine Hat in Velour Fur Felt (Discontinued) to Dañado, for this superb graphical innovation on a lonely byway in Melbourne’s Northcote suburb: Robert Walser graffiti.
Sam :: Dec.29.2009 :: Uncategorized :: No Comments »
