Der Teich

by Robert Walser, Händl Klaus (Translator), Raphael Urweider (Translator)

Robert Walsers kleines Stück Der Teich ist ein Familiendrama. Fritz fühlt sich von seiner Mutter nicht geliebt und täuscht vor, im nahegelegenen Teich ertrunken zu sein. »Weinen müssen sie, und das freut mich«, sagt sich der Knabe. Wenn am Ende alle zueinander finden, ist die Lösung des Konflikts natürlich und einfach und ziemlich prekär. Als hätten Shakespeare, Mark Twain und Astrid Lindgren am selben Strick gezogen. Verfasst hat Walser das Stück um 1902 in berndeutscher Mundart, wohl als Geschenk an seine jüngste Schwester Fanny. Sie war es, die das Manuskript aufbewahrt und vor ihrem Tod im Jahr 1972 zugänglich gemacht hat. Weshalb Walser genau diesen Stoff im Dialekt behandelte, wissen wir nicht. Der Teich ist jedenfalls sein einziger Mundarttext und liegt hier erstmals in einer hochdeutschen Fassung vor. Die Übersetzung besorgten der Theater- und Filmautor Händl Klaus und der Lyriker und Musiker Raphael Urweider. Das zweisprachig präsentierte und von Christian Thanhäuser kongenial illustrierte Kleinod zündet auf der inneren Bühne des Lesers ebenso wie im Theater.

80 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1902

About the author

Robert Walser, a German-Swiss prose writer and novelist, enjoyed high repute among a select group of authors and critics in Berlin early in his career, only to become nearly forgotten by the time he committed himself to the Waldau mental clinic in Bern in January 1929. Since his death in 1956, however, Walser has been recognized as German Switzerland’s leading author of the first half of the twentieth century, perhaps Switzerland’s single significant modernist. In his homeland he has served as an emboldening exemplar and a national classic during the unparalleled expansion of German-Swiss literature of the last two generations.

Walser’s writing is characterized by its linguistic sophistication and animation. His work exhibits several sets of tensions or contrasts: between a classic modernist devotion to art and a ceaseless questioning of the moral legitimacy and practical utility of art; between a spirited exuberance in style and texture and recurrent reflective melancholy; between the disparate claims of nature and culture; and between democratic respect for divergence in individuals and elitist reaction to the values of the mass culture and standardization of the industrial age.

Reviews

[Warwick · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Swiss writer Robert Walser, who has become something of a rediscovered literary darling in recent years, notoriously avoided writing anything in Swiss German, considering this to be eine unziemliche Anbiederung an die Masse, an unseemly pandering to the masses. This brief play, not performed or published in his lifetime, is the one exception. It was written in 1902, when Walser was in his early twenties, staying in a little village on Lake Biel near his sister, and not published until 1972 as part of his Gesamtwerk.

It therefore has its linguistic interest, but as a play it's a bit cringeworthy and – Walser's feelings about dialect notwithstanding – you can see why he never tried to do anything with it. In some ways it's exactly the kind of plot you'd expect a young, artistically-inclined loner to write: a young boy who feels no affection for his family and thinks they don't appreciate him pretends to drown himself in order to make everyone realise how great he was after all.

Annoyingly, instead of slapping some sense into him, they react more or less as he hoped, with his mother immediately swearing her devotion to him:

Bueb, Bueb, was wosch usmer mache? Soll i öppe vor dr i d'Chneu falle? Soll i?—Ach.—I ha der großes, großes Unrächt ato. Aber i will's guet mache.

My boy, my boy, what are we going to do? Do I really need to fall to my knees before you? Do I? Oh, I have done you a great, great injustice. But I shall make it right.

Bleurgh. This maternal reconciliation scene becomes so florid that it edges into Oedipal territory, though perhaps I am misunderstanding things.

This particular edition, part of the appealing Insel-Bücherei series, is beautifully done, with some illustrative woodcuts and an afterword from someone at the Robert Walser Centre which makes a lot of rather grandiose claims for such a minor piece of juvenilia. There is also a translation of the text in Standard German, which was a big help to me at several points (though Swiss GR friend Isabelle says that in literary terms the German version is a disaster).

Basically it's forgettable; a nice curio for Walser fans at best, and one that can at least be read comfortably in under an hour. Though I'm afraid it took me more than a month armed with a shelf's worth of Schwiizertüütsch dictionaries.

[Raymond · Rating 4 out of 5]

I must admit that I read the standard German version (excellently adapted by Händl Klaus and Raphael Urweider, by the way); I don't know if I could have endured the original text in dialect.

It was absolutely adorable — so pure and yet so odd.

Once again, proof that the really great writers can also entertain in a funny, almost silly way, while at the same time, as mentioned in passing, touching on deeper issues.