Archive for October, 2007

“Do you know Meier?”

Among writers of modest renown, has anyone had more translation-genius placed at his disposal than Robert Walser? Christopher Middleton, Susan Bernofsky, Tom Whalen … lucky Walser! Still, I’m always delighted to see a piece translated by someone new. It’s just fun to see another sympathetic mind make its way through his sentences.

The latest is “Kennen Sie Meier,” translated as “Do You Know Meier?” in the Fall 2007 issue of 91stMeridien.org, the online journal of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. Millay Hyatt translates Walser’s prose piece about a cafe comic:

Do you know Meier? Meier spelled with an I? You don’t? Well, in that case, I would like most humbly to permit myself to draw your attention to this man. He is presently performing at the Cafe Bumplitz, which is on I cannot remember exactly what street. There, amidst foul and inappropriate tobacco smoke, rough talk and clanking beer glass lids, he performs night after night, until perhaps someday a wise manager will come pick him up, which I actually do not doubt for a moment will happen in the near future. This man, this Meier, this fellow is a genius.

Later, the narrator says:

For myself I’ve seen him now almost, wait a minute, fifty times I believe and am far from tired of it. One just never tires of seeing excellence.

It’s an interesting piece. No year of composition is provided, but it reminds me of the some of the pieces from the Berlin years collected in Masquerade. (“Do you know the mountain halls of Unter den Linden? You ought to pay them a visit someday.”)

(It also brought to mind, somewhat spuriously, of my favorite story by Gombrowicz, which begins with the line: “I was on my way to see the operetta ‘The Gypsy Princess’ for the thirty-fourth time …”)

Accompanying the story is a brief introduction by Hyatt, with observations on the “delight and torment” of translating Walser. (I now notice that the intro identifies the year “Kennen” was composed: 1907.) Read the details yourself, but I liked the opening:

Robert Walser (1878-1956) was a Swiss essayist, poet, clerk, novelist, short-story writer, dramolettist, servant, theater-lover, microgrammatist, and inveterate walker. His light touch and disarmingly unsophisticated prose (particularly in early works such as Fritz Kochers Aufsatze, essays written from the perspective of a school boy on such topics as “Nature” and “Art”) conceal, but only ever partially, a melancholy restlessness, a lonely, erotic longing, and above all, a fierce pleasure in — and uncompromising dedication to — language.

And the reference at the end to:

the way in which Walser constantly circles back on himself, the way in which the first person peeps out from behind the third person in his mischievously layered texts.

A nice, succinct description of some of the unique qualities of Walser’s work. Altogether, great stuff!

Sam :: Oct.31.2007 :: Uncategorized :: No Comments »

Walser in Berlin

I’ve added a map to places Walser lived during his time in Berlin, 1906-13. He wrote his first three novels, including The Assistant, during this period. As with the Zurich map, the details come mainly from Jochen Greven’s timeline (which really should be online in its entirety – another project for me).

I’m going to be in Berlin in May, so I’ll try to take some pics. If you’re aware of other Walser-related sites in Berlin that I should visit, please let me know.

(Once again, this map application is a little balky in Internet Explorer. Try Firefox.)

Sam :: Oct.26.2007 :: Uncategorized :: No Comments »

The modest modernist

I haven’t seen the full text yet, but there’s a review of The Assistant in the October 15, 2007, issue of The Weekly Standard. Says Charles Peterson:

What makes Robert Walser such a difficult writer to categorize is that he is, perhaps, the sole instance of a mongrel species: the modest modernist.

Update 10/11: The complete review is here. (Thanks, Dave.) The salient paragraphs:

James Wood has argued that such dialectics of pride–where “pride … is the sin of humble people and humility is the punishment of proud people” — almost only occur in religious writers, or writers deeply affected by religion. Such cycles are not necessarily religious; philosophically, pride comes down to the problem of skepticism, doubting whether other people really exist. But the great demands that a higher power places on humility has driven authors to some of the most remarkable extremes in fiction: Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Chaucer’s Pardoner, Dostoevsky, and in the modern period, Hamsun and Beckett.

It’s tempting to think of Walser as the worthy shadow of these better-known authors, but he’s the first instance of another type entirely. Untroubled by religion or philosophy, tepidly dissatisfied yet afraid to challenge himself, it often seems as if Walser is the first instance of the Last Man in his artistic guise–a beautiful sensibility with a constant bourgeois fear of asserting himself. The tension between ages, religious and secular, is what makes modernist art so powerful; without that tension, the edifice crumbles.

Kafka, who was mistaken for a Walser pseudonym when young, provides the most salient comparison. Where Kafka’s insistently austere style made the greatest argument for his own nobility, picking up the pieces to create defiantly artistic works, Walser fell to mimicking and mocking his surroundings, toying with the fragments of culture like a child. That’s a harsh judgment, especially for a writer so tragic as Walser, who lived out the last few decades of his life in an asylum. Still, while I enjoy Walser’s playful style, I find it difficult to celebrate his achievement.

Comments (maybe) when I ponder this further …

Sam :: Oct.09.2007 :: Uncategorized :: 1 Comment »