Robert Walser (April 15, 1878 - December 25, 1956) is a German-speaking Swiss writer.
Walser is understood as the missing link between Kleist and Kafka. "Indeed," writes Susan Sontag, "At that time [Walser's writings], it is more likely to be Kafka [understood by posterity] through the prism of Walser." Robert Musil, another admirer of Walser's peers, when he first read Kafka says [Kafka's work] as, 'a strange case of the Walser type.' "Walser was admired from the beginning by writers like Robert Musil, Hermann Hesse, Stefan Zweig, Walter Benjamin and Franz Kafka, and is actually better known in his life than Franz Kafka or Walter Benjamin, for example, known in their lives.
Nevertheless, Walser can never support himself based on the small income he earns from his writings, and he works as a copyist, inventor assistant, butler and in other low-wage trades. Despite his early marginal success in his literary career, his gradual popularity of his work decreased during the second and third decades of the 20th century, making it increasingly difficult for him to support himself through writing. She eventually suffered a nervous breakdown, and spent the rest of her life in the sanatorium, taking frequent walks. The revival of interest in his work came when, in the late 20th and early 2000s, his writings from the Pencil Zone, also known as Bleistiftgebiet or The Microscripts, were written in code, hands small microscopic on pieces of paper collected while in the sanatorium Waldau, finally described, translated, and published.
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1878-1897
Walser was born into a family with many children. His brother, Karl Walser, became a famous designer and stage painter. Walser grew up in Biel, Switzerland, on the language frontier between the German and French-speaking Swiss cantons, and grew by speaking both languages. She studied in elementary school and progymnasium, which she had to leave before the final exam when her family could no longer bear the cost. From his early years, he was an enthusiastic theater; His favorite game is The Robbers by Friedrich Schiller. There is a watercolor painting that shows Walser as Karl Moor, the drama's protagonist.
From 1892 to 1895, Walser underwent an apprenticeship at Bernische Kantonalbank in Biel. After that he worked for a short time in Basel. Mrs. Walser, who was "emotionally disturbed", died in 1894 after being under medical care for a long time. In 1895, Walser went to Stuttgart where his brother, Karl, lived. He was an office worker in Deutsche Verlagsanstalt and in the Cotta'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung; he also tried, without success, to become an actor. By walking, he returned to Switzerland where he enrolled in 1896 as a resident of ZÃÆ'¼rich. In subsequent years, he often worked as "Kommis", an office clerk, but irregular and in many different places. As a result, he was one of the first Swiss writers to introduce into the lifestyle literature of a paid employee.
1898-1912
In 1898, influential critic Joseph Victor Widmann published a series of poems by Walser in the Berni Bund Der Bund newspaper. This became Franz Blei's concern, and he introduced Walser to the Art Nouveau people around Die Insel's magazine, including Frank Wedekind, Max Dauthendey, and Otto Julius Bierbaum. Many of Walser's short stories and poems appeared in Die Insel.
Until 1905, Walser lived mainly in ZÃÆ'¼rich, although he often changed shelter and also lived temporarily in Thun, Solothurn, Winterthur and Munich. In 1903, he fulfilled his military service duties and, starting that summer, was a "helper" an engineer and inventor at Wegenswijk near ZÃÆ'¼rich. This episode became the basis of his novel in 1908 Der GehÃÆ'¼lfe ( Assistant ). In 1904, his first book, Fritz Kochers AufsÃÆ'¤tze , appeared on Insel Verlag .
At the end of 1905 he attended a course to be a waitress at Dambrau castle in Upper Silesia. The presentation theme will be the hallmark of his work in subsequent years, especially in Jakob von Gunten's novel (1909). In 1905, he went to live in Berlin, where his brother Karl Walser, who worked as a theater painter, introduced him to other literary, publishing and theater figures. Occasionally, Walser works as secretary for the Berliner Secession artist company.
In Berlin, Walser wrote Geschwister Tanner's novels, Der GehÃÆ'¼lfe and Jakob von Gunten. They were issued by Bruno Cassirer's publishing house, where Christian Morgenstern worked as an editor. Regardless of the novel, he wrote many short stories, sketching popular bars from a poor "flaneur" point of view in a very humorous and subjective language. There is a very positive echo of his writings. Robert Musil and Kurt Tucholsky, among others, expressed their admiration for Walser prose, and authors like Hermann Hesse and Franz Kafka counted it among their favorite authors.
Walser publishes many short stories in newspapers and magazines, many of them in SchaubÃÆ'¼hne. They became his trademark. The greatest part of his work consists of short stories - literary sketches that avoid ready categorization. Selection of this short story was published in the volume of AufsÃÆ'¤tze (1913) and Geschichten (1914).
1913-1929
In 1913, Walser returned to Switzerland. He stayed for a short time with his sister Lisa in a mental home in Bellelay, where she worked as a teacher. There, he had to know Lisa Mermet, a washing woman with whom she had close friendships. After a short stay with his father in Biel, he went to live in mansard at Biel Blinkes Kreuz hotel. In 1914, his father died.
In Biel, Walser wrote a number of short stories that appeared in newspapers and magazines in Germany and Switzerland and electives published at Der Spaziergang (1917), ProsastÃÆ'¼cke (1917)), Poetenleben (1918), Seeland (1919) and Die Rose (1925). Walser, who has always been an enthusiastic traveler, began to stroll, often at night. In his stories from that period, texts written from the point of view of the nomads traveled through a foreign environment alternating with playful essays on writers and artists.
During World War I, Walser repeatedly had to go to military service. At the end of 1916, his brother Ernst died after suffering a mental illness in the mental home of Waldau . In 1919, Walser's brother Hermann, professor of geography at Bern, committed suicide. The Walser itself became isolated at the time, when almost no communication with Germany was due to war. Although he works hard, he can hardly support himself as a freelance writer. In early 1921, he moved to Bern to work in a public record office. He often changed his residence and lived a very aloof life.
During his time in Bern, the Walser style became more radical. In more and more condensed form, he writes "microgram" ("Microgramme"), so called because the hand of a pencil is so small that it is very difficult to decipher. He wrote poems, prose, dramolets and novels, including The Robber Der RÃÆ'¤uber . In these texts, its funny subjective style moves toward a higher abstraction. Many texts at that time work on various levels - they can be read as a naive Feuilleton or as a very complex montage filled with figures. Walser absorbs the influence of serious literature as well as from formula fiction and retold, for example, a paperback novel plot in its original way (a title that he never discloses) can not be recognized. Much of his work was written during the very productive years in Bern.
1929-1956
In early 1929, Walser, who had suffered anxiety and hallucinations for some time, went to the mental home of Bernese Waldau, after a mental disorder, at the encouragement of his younger brother Fani. In his medical record it says: "Patients claim to hear voices." Therefore, this can hardly be called voluntary commitment. He was eventually diagnosed with catatonic schizophrenia. While in the mental home, his state of mind quickly returned to normal, and he continued to write and publish. Increasingly, he uses a way of writing which he calls the "pencil method": He writes poetry and prose in the hands of small SÃÆ'¼tterlin, letters measured about one millimeter high at the very end of a highly productive phase. Werner Morlang and Bernhard Echte were the first to attempt to decipher these writings. In the 1990s, they published a six-volume edition, Aus dem Bleistiftgebiet ('From the pencil area'). Only when the Walser, contrary to his will, moved to Herisau's sanatorium in his Canton, Appenzell Ausserrhoden, did he stop writing, then told Carl Seelig, "I am not here to write but to be angry." Another possible reason is that with the advent of the Nazis in Germany, his works could no longer be published in any case.
In 1936, his admirer Carl Seelig began to visit him. He then wrote a book,
In 1955, Walser Der Spaziergang ( The Walk ) was translated into English by Christopher Middleton; it was the first English translation of his writings and the only one that would appear during his lifetime. After learning the Middleton translation, Walser, who fell from the public eye, answered thoughtfully, "Well, look at that."
Robert Walser loves long, deserted streets. On December 25, 1956 he was found, died of a heart attack, in a snowfield near a mental hospital. The photographs of dead pedestrians in the snow are almost frightening reminiscent of similar images of dead men in the snow in Walser's first novel, Geschwister Tanner .
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Today, Walser texts, fully re-edited since the 1970s, are considered one of the most important writings of literary modernism. In his writings, he makes use of the elements of German Swiss in a charming and original manner, while very personal observations are intertwined with texts on texts ; that is, by contemplation and other variations of literary works, in which Walser often mix pulp fiction with high literature.
Walser, who had never been a member of a school or literary group, perhaps with the exception of the circle around Die Insel magazine in his youth, was a well-known and often published author before World War I and into the 1920s.. After the second half of the last decade, he was quickly forgotten, regardless of the edition of Carl Seelig, who appeared almost exclusively in Switzerland but received little attention.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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