Speaking to the rose : writings, 1912-1932 / Robert Walser ; selected and translated by Christopher Middleton.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Walser, Robert, 1878-1956.

Contributor:

Middleton, Christopher, 1926-2015.

Standardized Title:

Short stories. Selections. English

Language:

English

German

Subjects (All):

Walser, Robert, 1878-1956--Translations into English.

Walser, Robert.

Walser, Robert, 1878-1956.

Physical Description:

x, 128 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press, [2005]

Summary:

A Swiss writer of whom Hermann Hesse famously declared, "If he had a hundred thousand readers, the world would be a better place," Robert Walser (1878-1956) is only now finding an audience among English-speaking readers commensurate with his merits-if not with his self-image. After a wandering, precarious life during which he produced poems, essays, stories, and novels, Walser entered an insane asylum, saying, "I am not here to write, but to be mad." Many of the unpublished works he left were in fact written in an idiosyncratically abbreviated script that was for years dismissed as an impenetrable private cipher. Fourteen texts from these so-called pencil manuscripts are included in this volume-rich evidence that Walser's microscripts, rather than the work of incipient madness, were in actuality the product of desperate genius building a last reserve, and as such, a treasure in modern literature.

With a brisk preface and a chronology of Walser's life and work, this collection of fifty translations of short prose pieces covers the middle to later years of the writer's oeuvre. It provides unparalleled insight into Walser's creative process, along with a unique opportunity to experience the unfolding of his rare and eccentric gift. His novels The Robber (Nebraska 2000) and Jakob von Gunten are also available in English translation.

Contents:

A Note on Van Gogh's L'Arlesienne 1

Brentano 3

Writing Geschwister Tanner 7

The Back Alley 9

The Story of the Prodigal Son 12

The Cave Man 15

Dreaming 20

Hercules 22

Odysseus 23

Theseus 24

Olga's Story 25

Something about Goethe 29

The Robber 32

The One and Only 33

Finally she condescended 34

The Fairytale Town 36

The Blind Man 38

And now he was playing, alas, the piano 39

An Essay on Lion Taming 42

These little services 45

Ramses II 47

Spanish Wine Hall 49

It can so happen that 51

Brentano (III) 54

From the Life of a Writer 57

Letter of a European 59

O how in this not large 63

Apparently not a cloud was to be seen 65

The White Lady 67

The Red Thread 70

I would like to be standing 73

Loud expressions of opinion 75

Letter to a Patient Lady 78

The stage-space might have measured 81

Looking out into the landscape 83

It's still not so long ago 84

Cabaret Scene 87

The idea was a delicate one 92

Execution Story 94

To a Poet 96

She addressed me in the formal style 98

Prose Piece 100

My Endeavors 101

I Was Reading Two Stories 103

A Propos the Kissing of a Hand 105

The Avenue 107

Heroic Landscape 109

The Gifted Person 111

The Lake 113

Previous Translations into English 127.

ISBN:

0803248075

0803298331

OCLC:

57675836