Answer to an Inquiry

by Robert Walser, Paul North (Translator), Friese Undine (Illustrator)

Fiction. Art. Translated from the German by Paul North. Illustrated by Friese Undine. The Swiss author Robert Walser's ANSWER TO AN INQUIRY is a short work written in the form of a letter. Walser assumes the voice of a great man of the theater responding to an aspiring actor's request for advice. The young actor is given very simple, practical suggestions on how best to perform absolute anguish. This new edition, featuring a new translation accompanied by more than 40 drawings is a collaboration between translator Paul North and artist Friese Undine. ANSWER TO AN INQUIRY should serve as a practical handbook for anyone wanting to convey deep suffering.

Genres: Fiction

64 pages, Hardcover

First published February 28, 1907

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

[Jon · Rating 2 out of 5]

The writing is beyond reproach, and we know this thanks to earlier translator Christopher Middleton. This translation is extremely clunky. The illustrator's introduction adds little. The translator's afterword may actually detract. The drawings are serviceable, but literal and stark and out of tune with Walser's tone; they deflate the writing. Illustrating a great but slight story, children's book-style, seems like a waste of everyone's time and money. The book looks pretty though, like it's meant to be up near cash registers. I found this used and bought it because I'm a completist. No other reason to own, unless you're related to the illustrator, I guess.

[Sean Stevens · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this slender volume up at a bookstore in the Berkshires and it's as if POLONIUS from Hamlet had the seriousness of a Kierkegaard! To thine own self be miserable. haha.

[Jem · Rating 2 out of 5]

Of the opinion that these illustrations need be much further abstracted...