Robert Walser Rediscovered: Stories, Fairy-Tale Plays, and Critical Responses

by Mark Harman (editor)

English, German (translation)

Genres: Poetry

237 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 1985

Reviews

[Eddie Watkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

The major recurring theme in Robert Walser’s work is the process of defining one’s position in the world, be that position in the realm of work or thought. I say “process” because he was far too fluid and restless to ever settle on a definition; the definition he sought was itself unsettled and fluid, as contiguous as possible with ever-flowing life.

This book contains two very early works of his, two “Anti-Fairy Tale Plays”, both written in his early 20’s, and both replete with themes that were to obsess him for the remainder of his life. The book also contains critical essays and a small selection of short prose works, but I’ll only focus on the plays.

Cinderella is the simpler of the two and represents Cinderella as appearing to be reluctant to be freed into a life of leisure by the Prince. Instead of instantly releasing herself into his arms she first puts up a fight, which smacks of a mild masochism, an almost saintly masochism as it has a whiff of the ascetic about it; a wish that the Prince whisk her away against her will. But within this saintly, masochistic submission is the intentional will to be submissive, and so is a backdoor way to domination; a position one might expect from someone who later desired to be a butler or house servant.

Walser wants and yet doesn’t want things to be easy. He is intensely preoccupied with dualities and their continuous interplay, and seems to desire a position where dualities exchange positions in such a whir that they float up whirligig-like into a third position, hovering above the fray yet composed of that fray, a kind of humble or at least earthy transcendence. Obviously this position is virtually impossible to maintain, and in fact is not meant to be maintained, but rather continuously renewed, and writing was Walser’s way of continuously renewing it.

The other play is Snowwhite and is much more complex. It takes place after Snowwhite has been freed from her glass coffin by the Prince and has returned to the Queen’s castle. At the castle she fluctuates wildly, with some help from the Prince, between accusing the Queen, and her accomplice the Huntsman, of plotting her death, and absolute forgiveness of the two. Though it’s not simply forgiveness, but an actual wiping out of the past, a complete erasure of it, as if the Queen's plot was merely a literary device - and so could quite literally be erased - and not an intended murder.

So there’s a consciousness within the play that the characters are attempting to emerge from the fairy tale itself, from literature itself, and the means to this is to replace thought based on ratiocination (which sees the facts of the fairy tale as ineluctable) with thought based on feeling (which has the freedom to see the past as malleable, as a changeable reflection determined by present feelings). But again there is a conscious intention behind this, an intention to willfully fool oneself; an obviously extremely difficult endeavor. How does one fool oneself, especially if one’s mind is so self-attuned as Walser’s? Again I think he attempted to attain this “third position”, which is ultimately indefinable, and thus can only be experienced.

Walser not only attempted to achieve this third position in his literary production, but also in his life by willingly entering into positions of submission – butler, assistant, any humble job he could find – and then conducting himself as a lofty prince within this submission as a way of tunneling his way back to the top, then cycling back and forth between the two, until a hovering is attained, an acrobatic cerebral precariousness.

Walser’s ultimate aim is pure experience, and his lifelong quest was to merge literature with life itself. But is this really possible? At least as long as one is writing it is. Or at least as long as one is writing the illusion that it is possible is possible, and within this webwork or possibilities it can be experienced, at least fleetingly. But this involves a certain amount of intentional self-illusion, or self-delusion, and so perhaps in the end Walser willingly settled into the position of “madness” as a way of freeing himself from the self-induced illusions of literary production, of emerging from literature itself, and so permanently attained the “third position” of pure experience beyond words, beyond literature, fully immersed in ever-flowing life itself. Or maybe he simply gave up. Or maybe he did go mad. Or maybe he consciously settled into madness as a way of living the “true illusions” he spent his life creating. We’ll never know. Robert Walser can not be demystified.

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an early collection of Robert Walser's writing in English translation, and it was obviously intended to serve as an introduction to his work for English readers. As such, it includes a section of critical responses to Walser's work, some from notable literary figures Kafka, Musil, and Benjamin, and other more recent examples, including pieces by Elias Canetti, Martin Walser (whose essay on Walser's tone was a particular highlight), and frequent Walser translator Christopher Middleton. As for the Walser excerpts included here, there is a selection of his stories and 'little prose pieces,' three poems, and the two anti-fairy tales in dramatic form, 'Cinderella' and 'Snowwhite.' While these latter two are not among my favorite Walser forms, they do contain early seeds of frequent themes found throughout his work, as Goodreader Eddie Watkins skillfully explicates in his excellent review.

Copies of this book can currently be found at reasonable prices on the used market, although it's probably only worth seeking out for Walser completionists (unless, of course, Eddie's analysis of the fairy tale plays sufficiently intrigues you, as I don't think they're currently available elsewhere in English). A lot of Walser's work has been published in English since this collection came out, so burgeoning Walser fans have plenty else to occupy their time.

[Jack · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good selection of Walser's shorter works, with insightful essays.