Dame mit Barsoi
Here’s something you might like.
A few weeks ago, my fellow literary obsessive and author of the wonderful blog Vertigo shared some interesting news. Bob Skinner, who began an English-language translation of Wandering with Robert Walser long before Smyth and I began ours, has shared his translation online. This is the first time that Seelig’s book has ever been available in English in (what seems to be) its entirely. Do check it out. It’s a bit of a revelation for Walser lovers.
Perhaps I’ll direct my own efforts into commentary, annotation, and illustration. For example, I was reading the entry for 28 January 1943, which is notable for a long passage in which Walser discusses his life. (Seelig: “Here he felt quite comfortable, and began to talk about himself, which he rarely did.”)
Anyhow, when I came to this line it rang a bell:
“I’ll tell you plainly: in Berlin I was fond of making the rounds of common bars and tingletangles, around the time when I lived with Karl and Muschi the cat in the loft. That’s where he painted his Czech girlfriend with the borzoi, but not me. I wandered [foulierte mich] the world from the beginning.”
I thought, hey, I’ve seen that painting. And indeed I had. Here it is:
Cool, huh? I had seen it on Artnet. It was auctioned at Christie’s Zurich in 2004.
Sam :: Sep.12.2009 :: Uncategorized :: 3 Comments »
[...] A translation of Carl Seelig’s Wandering with Robert Walser by Bob Skinner (via Golden Rule Jones). [...]
Interesting, that quote. In the French edition, the last sentence says something more like ‘I didn’t give a toss about high society’, with no mention at all of ‘from the beginning’.
My German is horrible (and getting worse all the time!), so I have no idea what ‘foulierte mich’ could mean, but I googled it and could find no reference to it whatsoever, except on Bob Skinner’s website and the reference to it on this very page. I wonder if it might actually be the verb ‘foutierten sich’ which, although I don’t know what it means, is more frequently used (according to Google), and looks a lot like the French verb ’se fouter’, which is the one used in Bernard Kreiss’ translation, and which means something like ‘to not give a toss’.
Thanks, Thomas. Here’s a version Smyth did:
“I tell you in all sincerity: in Berlin I went around all alone to rather vulgar bars and cabarets. At the time, I was living with Karl and Muschi the cat in the same study where he painted his Czech friend with the Russian hound, but not me. I wasn’t interested in the world above.”
I don’t have either the French or the German version in front of me, but “high” (yours) “above” (Smyth’s) and “before” (Bob’s, sort of) are close enough to all be derived from the same word. Yours makes the most sense to me.
You can tell, as Terry at Vertigo mentions, that Bob considers this still a work in progress.