The first prose work I read by Robert Walser was his piece on Kleist in Thun, where he talks of the torment of someone despairing himself and his craft, and of the intoxicating beauty of the surrounding landscape. "Kleist sits on a churchyard wall. Everything is damp, yet also sultry. He opens his shirt, to breathe freely. Below him lies the lake, as if it had been hurled down by the great hand of a god, incandescent with shades of yellow and red […] The Alps have come to life and dip with fabulous gestures their foreheads into the water." Time and again I have immersed myself in the few pages of this story and, taking it as a starting point, have undertaken now shorter, now longer excursions into the rest of Walser's work. Among my early encounters with Walser I count the discovery I made, in an antiquarian bookshop in Machest in the second half of the 1960s––inserted in a copy of Bächtold's three-volume biography of Gottfried Keller which had almost certainly belonged to a German-Jewish refugee––of an attractive sepia photograph depicting the house on the island in the Aare, completely surround by shrubs and trees, in which Kleist worked on his drama of madness Die Familie Ghonorez before he, himself sick, had to commit himself to the care of Dr. Wyttenbach in Berne.
Since then I have slowly learned to grasp how everything is connected across space and time, the life of Prussian writer Kleist with that of a Swiss author who claims to have worked as a clerk in a brewery in Thun, the echo of a pistol shot across the Wannsee with the view from a window of the Herisau asylum, Walser's long walks with my own travels, dates of birth with dates of death, happiness with misfortune, natural history and the history of our industries, that of Heimat with that of exile. On all these paths Walser has been my constant companion. I only need to look up for a moment in my daily work to see him standing somewhere, a little apart, the unmistakable figure of the solitary walker just pausing to take in the surroundings. And sometimes I imagine that I see with his eyes the bright Seeland and within this land of lakes the lake like a shimmering island, and in this lake-island another island, the Île Saint-Pierre "shining in the bright morning haze, floating in a sea of pale trembling light." Returning home then in the evening we look out, from the lakeside path suffused by mournful rain, at the boating enthusiasts out on the lake "in boats or skiffs with umbrellas opened above their heads," a sight which allows us to imagine that we are "in China or Japan or some other dream-like poetical land." As Mächler reminds us, Walser really did consider for a while the possibility of traveling, or even emigrating, overseas. According to his brother, he once even had a check in his pocket from Bruno Cassirer, good for several months' travel to India. It is not difficult to imagine him hidden in a green leafy picture by Henri Rousseau, with tigers and elephants, on the veranda of a hotel by the sea while the monsoon pours down outside, or in front of a resplendent tent in the foothills of the Himalayas, which––as Walser once wrote of the Alps––resemble nothing so much as a snow-white fur boa. In fact he almost got as far as Samoa, since Walter Rathenau, whom––if we may believe The Robber on this point––he had met one day, quite by chance, in the midst of an incessant stream of people and traffic on the Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, apparently wanted to find him a not-too-taxing position in the colonial administration on the island known to the Germans as the "Pearl of the South Seas." We do not know why Walser turned down this in many ways tempting offer. Let us simply assume that it is because, among the first German South Sea discoverers and explorers, there was a certain gentleman called Otto von Kotzebue, against whom Walser was just as irrevocably prejudiced as he was against the playwright of the same name, whom he called a narrow-minded philistine, claiming he had a too-long nose, bulging eyes and no neck, and that his whole head was shrunk into and hidden by a grotesque and enormous collar. Kotzebue had, so Walser continues, written a large number of come die which enjoyed runaway box-office success at a time when Kleist was in despair, and bequeathed a whole series of these massive, collected, printed volumes, coxed and boxed and bound in calfskin, to a posterity which would blench with shame were it ever to read them. The risk of being reminded, in the midst of a South Sea idyll, of this literary opportunist, one of the heroes of the German intellectual scene, as he dismissively calls him, was probably just too high. In any case, Walser didn't care much for travel and––apart from Germany––never actually went anywhere to speak of. He never saw the city of Paris, which he dreams of even from the asylum at Waldau. On the other hand, the Untergasse in Biel could seem to him like a street in Jerusalem "along which the Saviour and deliverer of the world modestly rides in." Instead he criss-crossed the country on foot, often on nocturnal marches with the moon shining a white track before him. In the autumn of 1925, for example, he journeyed on foot from Berne to Geneva, following for quite a long stretch the old pilgrim route to Santiago da Compostela. He does not tell us much about this trip, other than that in Fribourg––I can see him entering that city across the incredibly high bridge over the Sarine––he purchased some socks; paid his respects to a number of hostelries; whispered sweet nothings to a waitress from the Jura; gave a boy almonds; strolling around in the dark doffed his hat to the Roussea monument on the island in the Rhône; and, crossing the bridges by the lake, experienced a feeling of light-heartedness. Such and similar matters are set down for us in the most economical manner on a couple of pages. Of the walk itself, we learn nothing and nothing about what he may have pondered in his mind as he walked. The only occasion on which I see the traveller Robert Walser freed from the burden of himself is during the balloon journey he undertook, during his Berlin years, from Bitterfield––the artificial lights of whose factories were just beginning to glimmer––to the Baltic coast. "Three people, the captain, a gentleman, and a young girl, climb into the basket, the anchoring cords are loosed, and the strange house flies, slowly, as if it had first to ponder something, upward…. The beautiful moonlit night seems to gather the splendid balloon into invisible arms, gently and quietly the roundish flying body ascend and … hardly so that one might notice, subtle winds propel it northward." Far below can be seen church spires, village schools, farmyards, a ghostly train whistle by, the wonderfully illuminated course of the Elbe in all its colors.
"Remarkably white, polished-looking plains alternate with gardens and small wildernesses of bush. One peers down into regions where one's feet would never, never have trod, because in certain regions, indeed in most, one has no purpose whatever. How big and unknown to us the earth is!" Robert Walser was, I think, born for just such a silent journey through the air. In all his prose works he always seeks to rise above the heaviness of earthly existence, wanting to float away softly and silently into a higher, freer realm. The sketch about the balloon journey over a sleeping nocturnal Germany is only one example, one which for me is associated with Nabokov's memory of one of his favorite books from his childhood. In his picture-book series, the black Golliwog and his friends––one of whom is a kind of dwarf or Lilliputian person––survive a number of adventures, end up far away from home and are even captured by cannibals. And then there is a scene where an airship is made of "yards and yard of yellow silk … and an additional tiny balloon […] provided for the sole use of the fortunate Midget. At the immense altitude," writes Nabokov, "to which the ship reached, the aeronauts huddled together for warmth while the lost little soloist, still the object of my intense envy notwithstanding his plight, drifted into an abyss of frost and stars––alone."3
––TRANSLATED BY JO CATLING
1. Walter Benjamin. "Robert Walser," in Selected Writings: vol 2. 1927-34 (Harvard).
2. Vladimir Nabokov, Nikolai Gogol (New Directions).
3. Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory (Random House).
The Tanners
–1–
One morning a young, boyish man walked into a bookshop and asked to be introduced to the proprietor. His request was granted. The bookseller, an old man of quite venerable appearance, gave a sharp glance at the one standing rather shyly before h
im and instructed him to speak. “I want to become a bookseller,” said the youthful novice, “I yearn to become one, and I don’t know what might prevent me from carrying out my intentions. I’ve always imagined the trade in books must be an enchanting activity, and I cannot understand why I should still be forced to pine away outside of this fine, lovely occupation. For you see, sir, standing here before you, I find myself extraordinarily well suited for selling books in your shop, and selling as many as you could possibly wish me to. I’m a born salesman: chivalrous, fleet-footed, courteous, quick, brusque, decisive, calculating, attentive, honest—and yet not so foolishly honest as I might appear. I am capable of lowering prices when a poor devil of a student is standing before me, and of elevating them as a favor to those wealthy individuals who, as I can’t help noticing, sometimes don’t know what to do with all their money. Although I’m still young, I believe myself in possession of a certain knowledge of human nature—besides which, I love people, of every variety, so I would never employ my insight into their characters in the service of swindling—and I am equally determined never to harm your esteemed business through any exaggerated solicitousness toward certain underfinanced poor devils. In a word: My love of humankind will be agreeably balanced with mercantile rationality on the scales of salesmanship, a rationality which in fact bears equal weight and appears to me just as necessary for life as a soul filled with love: I shall practice a most lovely moderation, please be assured of this in advance—”
The bookseller was looking at the young man attentively and with astonishment. He appeared to be having trouble deciding whether or not his interlocutor, with this pretty speech, was making a good impression on him. He wasn’t quite sure how to judge and, finding this circumstance rather confusing, he gently inquired in his self-consciousness: “Is it possible, young man, to make inquiries about your person in suitable places?” The one so addressed responded: “Suitable places? I’m not sure what you mean by suitable. To me, the most appropriate thing would be if you didn’t make inquiries at all! Whom would you ask, and what purpose could it serve? You’d find yourself regaled with all sorts of information regarding my person, but would any of it succeed in reassuring you? What would you know about me if, for example, someone were to tell you that I came from a very good family, that my father was a man worthy of respect, that my brothers were industrious hopeful individuals, and that I myself was quite serviceable, if a bit flighty, but certainly not without grounds for hope, in fact that it was clearly all right to trust me a little, and so forth? You still wouldn’t know me at all, and most certainly wouldn’t have the slightest reason to hire me now as a salesclerk in your shop with any greater peace of mind. No, sir, as a rule, inquiries aren’t worth a fig, and if I might make so bold as to venture to offer you, as an esteemed older gentleman, a piece of advice, I would heartily advise against making any at all—for I know that if I were suited to deceive you and inclined to cheat the hopes you place in me on the basis of the information you’d gather, I would be doing so in even greater measure the more favorably the aforementioned inquiries turned out, inquiries that would then prove to be mendacious, if they spoke well of me. No, esteemed sir, if you think you might have a use for me, I ask that you display a bit more courage than most of the other business owners I’ve previously encountered and simply engage me on the basis of the impression I am making on you now. Besides, to be perfectly truthful, any inquiries concerning my person you might make will only result in your hearing bad reports.”
“Indeed? And why is that?”
“I didn’t last long,” the young man continued, “in any of the places I’ve worked at thus far, for I found it disagreeable to let my young powers go stale in the narrow stuffy confines of copyists’ offices, even if these offices were considered by all to be the most elegant in the world—those found in banks for example. To this day, I haven’t yet been sent packing by anyone at all but rather have always left on the strength of my own desire to leave, abandoning jobs and positions that no doubt carried promises of careers and the devil knows what else, but which would have been the death of me had I remained in them. No matter where it was I’d been working, my departure was, as a rule, lamented, but nonetheless after my decision was found regrettable and a dire future was prophesied for me, my employers always had the decency to wish me luck with my future endeavors. With you, sir, in your bookshop (and here the young man’s voice grew suddenly confiding), I will surely be able to last for years and years. And in any case, many things speak in favor of your giving me a try.” The bookseller said: “Your candor pleases me, I shall let you work in my shop for a one-week trial period. If you perform well and seem inclined to stay, then we can discuss it further.” With these words, which signaled the young man’s dismissal, the old man at the same time rang an electric bell, whereupon, as if arriving on the gusts of a strong wind, a small, elderly, bespectacled man appeared.