Little Snow Landscape

by Robert Walser, Tom Whalen (Translator)

Little Snow Landscape opens in 1905 with an encomium to Robert Walser's homeland and concludes in 1933 with a meditation on his childhood in Biel, the town of his birth, published in the last of his four years in the cantonal mental hospital in Waldau outside Bern. Between these two poles, the book maps Walser's outer and inner wanderings in various narrative modes. Here you find him writing in the persona of a girl composing an essay on the seasons, of Don Juan at the moment he senses he's outplayed his role, and of Turkey's last sultan shortly after he's deposed. In other stories, a man falls in love with the heroine of the penny dreadful he's reading (and she with him?) and the lady of a house catches her servant spread out on the divan casually reading a classic. Three longer autobiographical stories--"Wenzel," "Würzburg," "Louise"--brace the whole. In addition to a representative offering of Walser's short prose, of which he was one of literature's most original, multifarious and lucid practitioners, Little Snow Landscape forms a kind of novel, however apparently plotless, from the vast unfinishable one he was constantly writing.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, German Literature, Classics, 20th Century, Literature, Germany

176 pages, Paperback

First published February 16, 2021

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

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Robert Walser’s lyricism is a magic wand that lets him to cast his narrative spells.
Homecoming… No place like home… And one’s homeland is one’s bigger home…

In the past I wept. I was so far away from my native country; so many mountains, lakes, forests, rivers, fields, and ravines lay between me and her, the beloved, the admired, the adored. This morning she embraces me and I lose myself in her voluptuous caress.

Little Snow Landscape is a collection of flying fantasies about anything and everything… A clueless boy aspiring to become an actor… A deposed sultan… Illusions, delusions and dreams… A young poet and revolutionary escaping…

On a certain covert night, shot through by the odious and dreadful fear of being arrested by police henchmen, Georg Büchner, the youthful star flashing brightly in the firmament of German poetry, slipped away from the brutality, stupidity, and violence of political skulduggery.

Hermit, dressmaker, shepherd, beau – there is a place for everybody… Towns and roads… Landscapes and seasons… Scenes and visions…

Oh, how lovely the lake was in the near distance, silvered by the moon which, falling in love with the water, plunged glowingly into the lake to be blissfully reflected in the body it adored. The water shuddered and lay completely still, delighted by the adoration. Moon and water were like boyfriend and girlfriend captivated by a kiss to which they surrendered.

The world has myriads of facets and every facet is a story.

[Alwynne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Little Snow Landscape is NYRB Classics’ latest selection of writings by the legendary Swiss author Robert Walser: produced between 1905 and 1933, here translated by Tom Whalen, the contents are primarily drawn from a particular German edition of Walser’s collected works; out of over 60, mostly prose, mostly brief pieces, only three have previously been made available in English. Walser’s choice of subject matter can appear oddly undisciplined or fragmented as he moves abruptly from topic to topic or genre to genre or suddenly veers off onto pathways carved out by unexpected associations, yet he constantly returns to certain themes, that will be familiar to anyone who knows his work, particularly walking, writing and writers. And Walser himself offers clues about the way outwardly disparate things might fit together,

“In my opinion my prose pieces are nothing other than parts of a long, plotless, realistic story. For me the sketches I produce now and then are shortish or more extensive chapters of a novel. The novel I am constantly writing always remains the same one and could be described as a multifariously cut-up or ripped apart book of the self.”

The entries that worked best for me were the ones explicitly drawing on aspects of his everyday life, vignettes inspired by strolling out into cities or countryside like “Sunday Morning” or “The Moon” which have a quality of prose poetry. Other striking stories were the longer semi-autobiographical “Wurzburg” which displays Walser immersed in self-analysis, striving to understand how others see him, keenly aware of his own outsider status and outward show of eccentricity; and “Louise” a character study of two former friends which turns into a moving meditation on memory, aging and loneliness. Walser seemed to find sources of inspiration in what, for many, might look like the most unlikely places: even his increasing poverty fueled his imagination, as in the absurdly comic sketch lamenting the absence of a too-hastily-devoured, particularly succulent sausage. I really liked how he interacts with his world in general, finding things to fascinate even in the tiniest, most austere room, it made me think about the way in which lockdown’s frequently changed perceptions of our immediate environment so that small, previously unnoticed things take on sudden significance, the mist over the trees in the morning and what that means for a later walk, pigeons flirting on chimneypots suggesting the imminent return of spring. That’s not to say there aren’t sections here that didn’t work for me, there were a few, but there were a number of small gems scattered throughout. Although, overall I think this is a book more suited to Walser enthusiasts than Walser novices.

Rating: 3.5

[Paul H. · Rating 3 out of 5]

So I'd read Microscripts and skimmed a few of his other works over the years, but this was my first time focusing on Walser at length. He's definitely good, though somewhat overrated imo; his style is the most interesting thing, somewhere in the vicinity of Stifter, Hoffmansthal, Chekhov's more poetic passages, etc., but the clearest comparison is Kafka.

My first thought was: oh that's interesting, to see someone so clearly influenced by Kafka, inverting Kafka's themes into something sunny and joyous, sort of like how Lagerkvist took Kafka's biblical/parable-ish work and made something new out of it.

However, I later learned that this is completely backwards; Walser is the original! Kafka recommended Walser to Brod (for publication) because he was such a huge fan. Kafka is the photographic negative of Walser . . . somehow I had always perceived Kafka as an island unto himself, sui generis, but apparently not.

[Ausma · Rating 4 out of 5]

walser’s humble and tender stories are the perfect balm to warm my world-weary heart in the depths of winter 🥲

[Clay C.]

I loved moments in the stories (prose pieces?) here, but was left mostly cold. I suspect I may have picked the wrong book to get started with Walser. I'll give him another shot later though.

[Daniel Polansky]

Collected short fictions by everyone's favorite eternal innocent. I like Walser in small doses but honestly after a couple of pages it feels like being force fed bonbons. Maybe that's me.

[Toad Soup · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sentences that wrecked me??? “Kindness is stupid, but all the same you’re likely to have that instinct within you” 133

“His mother suffered more than other women. Her longing for something she did not possess was passed on to him. He width the restless one we’re at rest.” 181

“Little by little, be learned of the contents of the classics; he gazed into a wonderful world.” 181

Love Mr. Walser, and screw Rascher and Rowohlt Verlag for not publishing Tobold and Little Mouse!!!! I hope y’all are burning wherever you are!!! Thots!!!

[Mariana · Rating 5 out of 5]

*4,75

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The desire and passion for sketching life with words stems finally only from a certain precision and beautiful pedantry of the soul that suffers when it has to witness so many lovely, vibrant, urgent, transitory things flying off into the world without having been able to capture them in a notebook. What endless worries!”

As with Bolaño—but for more years now—Robert Walser is a writer with a higher rate of post-mortem publishing than during his lifetime. In Walser’s case, it’s not just a matter of making available in English his previously published works, it’s also of publishing newly discovered manuscripts and manuscripts that could not be read until the “code” Walser employed could be cracked. (He wrote not so much in code but in an old German idiom at “microscript” scale. Just how micro was this script? Walser managed to write an entire novel on a single sheet of paper that was (as I recall) similar in size to a sheet of legal paper. There are 570+ plus of these sheets now in the Walser Archive. Only a few decades ago were these sheets decoded, after the markings were first thought to be some sort of nonsense Walser engaged in with pencils while institutionalized. “I came here to be mad,” he allegedly said, “not write,” which apparently was far from true.)

And so it seems that while at least 3,700 pages of published Walser exist (in the 1985 version of the complete works), the translation tap is set to about 150-180 pages a year in English.

And the pages continue to impress, especially in the capable hands of a good translator, as we have here with Tom Whalen, who—like Susan Bernofsky and Christopher Middleton—are aces at replicating the nuances in Walser’s prose, which emotionally often has the feel of forced cheerfulness, of someone battling between optimism and resignation, elation and offense.

The stories gathered in Little Snow Landscape, arranged chronologically, follow Walser from 1905 to 1933, four years into the institutional living in which he would remain until his death in 1956. Let a couple of lines stand in for some of Walser’s tics, one of them being to comment on the quality of his writing while he’s writing: “The sky had the deep, blushing-with-joy blue of a little frock fluttering around pretty legs, which without doubt constitutes a rather serious contemplation of nature” (from “Fragment”).

In “Wenzel,” Walser describes a person of a (self-defeating) mercurial temperament, another Walserian tic. In this case, Wenzel is someone whose sudden ardor for acting is challenged when he receives his first role. “Wenzel is to play a prince’s lackey who, among other things, has to take a slap in the face. No, that he cannot play, that’s too deplorable. . . He absents himself from the performance, it’s too stupid.” But finally, Wenzel tells himself, “‘Love and ardor endure everything, even a slap in the face.’” And that’s pretty much how Walser lived his life.

[Brendan Monroe · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have a number of New York Review Books Classics, as I'm sure you do. There are many, indeed, classic works of literature that are only available as an NYRB edition.

They're beautiful books — in design and content — and back in February or March of this year the publisher announced that it was starting a monthly subscription.

Now, you know me. I love a good book subscription, particularly one that includes books in translation. I mean, is there anything better than getting book mail? So I, of course, signed up to my fourth active subscription service.

"Little Snow Landscape" is the first of the NYRB Classics I received as part of my subscription. I'd heard of the Swiss writer Robert Walser before but had never read him.

I wish this hadn't been my introduction to him.

Because these aren't really stories, they're more like sketches, two or three pages each. A man walking down the street, a visit to relatives, some people chat about something I can't really remember ...

To be honest, I can't remember much of anything about this collection ... except for how boring it all was.

I've been struggling to get through "Little Snow Landscape" for the past couple of months now, I set it aside for a few weeks just because I couldn't bear it any longer. If you or I had written this, nobody would give a damn. It certainly wouldn't be published. But because Walser is a well-regarded 20th-century novelist, here it is.

The first NYRB Classic I've ever read that I didn't like. I recommend the subscription — not the book.

[Elderberrywine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Robert Walser was a Swiss writer of miniatures, with works dating from 1905 to 1933. As the title indicates, his earlier pieces are primarily short descriptions of the villages and forests of his youth. And the man loved to walk. “The Moon” describes a night stroll as he leaves his village and its Christmas market and climbs up into the forests and mountains. I wished I could stand in the moonlit night forever and surrender to old dear thoughts, to stay like this forever and think back on the past. The dark-bright sky with its cottony clouds appeared to me like a beautiful, beloved, lush meadow. . .” Really lovely stuff.

There’s an occasional short tale as well, such as the time he, at the age of 23, strolled from Münich to Würzberg to hang out with a fellow writer for a week or so. He was especially resplendent in “a suit that would have been impressive in Naples. In well-thought-out, well-measured Germany, however, it seemed to arouse more suspicion than trust” and his buddy persuades him to ditch it. The theme of this story could be “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Idiot”, and it really is delightful.

Unfortunately, the later pieces start to become more nonsensical and Dadaistic, and it turns out that the author spent the last decades of his life in an insane asylum (as apparently did all the rest of his family save one sibling). It seems that he became frustrated that he couldn’t get published anymore, but really, my dude. But thumbs up for the first two thirds.

[Janine · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a NYRB Classic selection for March 2021. I chose to read it for several 2022 book challenge prompts one of which was to read an anthology. Spanning the years 1905-1933, this collection of essays and short fiction was my first encounter with the Swiss writer, Robert Walser. Walser is a master of short prose as the NYRB insert that accompanied the book noted. He has the ability to synthesize a theme down to its pithiest meaning as he does in “Berta” where he writes about a woman who is involved with a men who flip flops between being a wooer and a “rotter” concluding “Were I a woman, I’d be damned if I submitted to someone like him! (page 88).” Walser’s ability to question life and it’s meaning is a constant theme throughout the short prose. “Now and then, yes, it happens that I yearn for more than what life offers me. Then all kinds of things occur to me, countries, and oceans, cities. When I see trees, I think: How calm and benevolent they are. Why aren’t human beings like this as well? (page 113).” The stories and essays were varied and at times tedious but there was also magic at times, searing insight at moments, and delightful humor It was an interesting read.

[Ken · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sentence by sentence, Walser is a fine writer - among the best. And while each of these pieces has something to recommend it, do they add up to anything? This may be a sad case where the total is less than the sum of the parts.

As Walser himself writes “For me, the sketches I produce now and then are shortish or more extensive chapters of a novel. The novel I am constantly writing always remains the same one and could be described as a multifariously cut up or ripped apart book of the self.”

3.5

[Charlie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Walser figured out pandemic living: you take your little walk, you write your little story, try to make a little cheer out of what you have been given with your day, and you send it along to your friends and the local paper. The collection of short pieces (only three of the 60-plus in here come close to 10 pages) in this NYRB edition are uniformly delightful ruminations on the mundanity that fills up our lives.

[Logan · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's helpful to read these prose pieces less as a collection of short stories and more as a series of journal entries. Walser often fictionalizes his life, referring to himself in the third person and probably augmenting or adding things whole cloth, but these works are clearly self-reflective. Reading these, I've been inspired to add a little ✨pizazz✨ to my own journal, writing them with a bit more voice.

[Sam Hicks · Rating 1 out of 5]

Maybe I'm incapable of recognising mind-bending genius. Gave up a third of the way through. Started each one in the hope it would compensate for the ones preceding. Didn't happen. One noodly little scrap of nothing after another.

[Paul van Zwieten · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some beautiful lyrical pieces, also full of soft irony, especially in the first half of the book. The later pieces I found difficult to get through, distant, in a way repetitive, in their jerkiness. Another reviewer commented that this is a book for Walser diehards: he may be right.

[Mimi · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Charlie Kruse · Rating 5 out of 5]

absolute delight. Walser teeters on the edge of literature and a scrap of paper you cast off into the street

[Lucas Schmidt]

Pretty interesting mini-stories. My first read of Walser. I think he's worth exploring further. This is probably not his best, of course, but some of the stories were very nice and touching.

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short essays, musings on nature and man. Walser writes exuberantly about the landscape, the rain, the little things in his life.

[Rachel Weinberg · Rating 3 out of 5]

kindness is stupid silly amiright!!

[michal k-c · Rating 4 out of 5]

Without Barthelme, a lot of American short fiction wouldn’t exist. I believe that without Walser, Barthelme wouldn’t have existed as he did. Simple as

[Josh Barrett · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great collection of pseudo-autobiographical short stories from an author who’s writing style I find uniquely refreshing

[Jivesh Mohan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very fun collection of Walser: I always enjoy his sweet light prose. Some pieces meander a lot and sometimes that's nice and sometimes it isn't.

[Katherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

*3.75 stars. An odd little book. So many wonderful phrases.
"I smoked a pipe, and if it didn't allow for a proper draw, the head of one of my slaves leapt off his obsequious shoulders" (18).
"Regardless, I'll at least had a map, it hung on the wall in my study, and there I could travel with the tip of my nose or fingertips as much as I desired out into the wide world. Vast, sweeping Russia as a body alone enruptured me. I miss the muddy corpus, exactly at the fixed, beautiful, true midpoint of a center, lake, silver in snowflakes, the city of Moscow" (21).
"The letter's contents: 'Dear, or if you would prefer, nobly born, inadequately exalted, kind sir, listen, and inheritance has fallen to you around of around two hundred thousand marks. Be astonished and happy. You may take a receipt of the money in person as soon as you wish"(25).
"...pouring a mind-filching liquid…" (25).
"When one indulges the desire to allow the eye to rove ever farther, the beautiful panorama grows more and more instructive" (30).
"...the peaceful little cottage, hemmed by a garden…" (34).
"...evening comes on to give the dear day a kiss and put it to sleep..." (35).
"...of such women is due to the constant torment they inflict on themselves by a lamentable incessant anxiety about their mouth, cheeks, eyes, hair, and figure. It seems there are numerous women who have never been able to progress beyond the small and basically quite paltry concern with their appearance and can't be happy because they are tormented slaves who tremble before the whip of the pitiful question, 'How do I look?' or, 'What kind of impression am I making?'" (93).
"How richly thinged the world is; again and again we sincerely have to adore it" (100).
"You, my worthy fellow citizen, are warm and kind and representative of something robust" (105).
"It turned out colossally stylish, what with my behaving rather fantastically back then" (117).
"Horses feel whom they carry, and ours, too, will have felt its burden in the finest detail" (128).
"...I found her a sufficient feast for the eyes for three minutes..." (134).
"I climb sightseeingly way up a medieval tower and find the view there resplendent" (175).
"… her agile legs joggling her frock…" (175).

[Taylor Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Curious, magical, inventive. Walser is a grand visionary of the brief.