Robert Walser

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Robert Walser (born 1878 – 25 December 1956) was a German-speaking Swiss writer. Walser is said to be the missing link between Kleist and Kafka.

"Indeed" writes Susan Sontag, "at the time [of Walser's writing], it was more likely to be Kafka [who was not recognized by posterity] than through Walser's prism.

According to Robert Musil, Kafka's career was "a peculiar case of the Walser type" from his youth, and he was more well-known during his lifetime than Kafka or Benjamin.

Walser, on the other hand, was never able to support himself based on the meager income he earned from his writings, and he worked as a copyist, an inventor's assistant, a butler, and several other low-paying occupations.

Despite modest early success in his literary career, the success of his book has dwindled over the second and third decades of the twentieth century, making it increasingly difficult for him to survive himself by writing.

He had a nervous breakdown and spent the remainder of his life in sanatoriums, going for long walks all day. His writings from the Pencil Zone, also known as Bleistiftgebiet or "the Microscripts," were finally deciphered, translated, and published in a Waldau sanatorium in the late twentieth century and early 2000s.

Life and work

Walser was born in a large family with numerous children. Karl Walser, his brother, is a well-known stage designer and painter. Walser grew up in Biel, Switzerland, on the border between the German- and French-speaking cantons of Switzerland, and he gained proficiency in both languages. He went to primary school and progymnasium, but he had to leave early in the final examination because his family could no longer afford the costs. From his youth to his retirement, he was a lifelong theatregoer; Friedrich Schiller's favorite play was The Robbers. Walser appears in a watercolor painting as Karl Moor, the protagonist of the story.

Walser worked as an apprentice at Biel's Bernich Kantonal bank from 1892 to 1895. He worked in Basel for a short time. Walser's mother, who was "emotionally disturbed," died in 1894 after being in need of medical attention for a long time. Walser moved to Stuttgart, where his brother Karl lived in 1895. He was an office employee at Deutsche Verlagsanstalt and Cotta'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung; he also attempted to become an actor, but no one cared. He returned to Switzerland on foot, where he first registered in 1896 as a Zürich resident. He spent time as a "Kommis," an office clerk, but in the years after that, he worked irregularly and in many places. As a result, he was one of the first Swiss writers to include a story of a salaried employee in literature.

In 1898, Joseph Victor Widmann, the influential critic, published a series of poems by Walser in the Bernese newspaper Der Bund. Franz Blei brought Walser to the Art Nouveau crowd, including Frank Wedekind, Max Dauthendey, and Otto Julius Bierbaum. Walser's Die Insel featured a number of short stories and poems.

Walser lived mainly in Zürich until 1905, but he frequently changed lodgings and then spent time in Thun, Solothurn, Winterthur, and Munich. He fulfilled his military service service duty in 1903 and, starting in the summer, he was the "aide" of an engineer and entrepreneur in Wädenswil, near Zürich. Der Gehülfe (The Assistant), his 1908 book, was based on this episode. Fritz Kochers Aufsätze (Fritz Kocher's Essays), his first book, appeared in the Insel Verlag in 1904 (Fritz Kocher's Essays).

He took a course in 1905 in order to become a servant at the castle of Dambrau in Upper Silesia. His career would be characterized by his theme in the years afterward, especially in the book Jakob von Gunten (1909). He died in Berlin, where his brother Karl Walser, who was working as a theatre painter, introduced him to other figures in literature, publishing, and theater. Walser served as secretary for the Berliner Secession of artists occasionally.

Walser wrote the books Geschwister Tanner, Der Gehülfe, and Jakob von Gunten in Berlin. They were published by Bruno Cassirer's publishing house, where Christian Morgenstern worked as editor. He wrote several short stories, sketching popular bars from the perspective of a poor "flaneur" in a very playful and subjective way beyond the novels. His writings had a definite similarity to his. Among others, Robert Musil and Kurt Tucholsky expressed their admiration for Walser's prose, while Hermann Hesse and Franz Kafka listed him as one of their top writers.

Walser's newspapers and journals have published numerous short stories, many in the Schaubühne, for example. They became his trademark. The bulk of his collection is made up of short stories – literary sketches that defy a preconceived categorization. In the volumes Aufsätze (1913) and Geschichten (1914), selections of these short stories were published.

Walser returned to Switzerland in 1913. He and his sister Lisa lived in Bellelay, where she worked as a tutor for a short time. He got to know Lisa Mermet, a washerwoman with whom he shared a close relationship. After a brief stay with his father in Biel, he decided to live in a mansard in the Biel hotel Blaues Kreuz. His father died in 1914.

Walser, Biel, produced a number of shorter stories that appeared in newspapers and magazines in Germany and Switzerland, as well as selected ones from which were not published in Prosastücke (1917), Seeland (191919) and Die Rose (1925). Walser, a voracious wanderer, began taking long walks, many by night. Literary essays on writers and artists are mixed in his tales from that time.

Walser was repeatedly required to go into military service during World War I. Ernst's brother Ernst died after a time of mental illness in the Waldau mental hospital at the end of 1916. Hermann, Walser's brother, died in Bern in 1919. Walser himself became isolated at that time, when there was almost no contact with Germany as a result of the war. Despite working hard, he could barely help himself as a freelance writer. He moved to Bern in 1921 to work at the public records office. He often changed lodgings and lived a very solitary life.

Walser's style became more experimental during his time in Bern. He wrote "micrograms" ("Mikrogramme"), a word he described in a more concise style, referring to his minuscule pencil hand that is much more difficult to decipher. He wrote poems, prose, dramolettes, and books, including The Robber (Der Räuber). His playful, subjective style shifted to a higher degree in these books. Many texts of that time are both naive and playful feuilletons or as layered montages full of allusions. Walser absorbed influences from both classical literature and formula fiction, as well as retold, for example, the book's structure was unrecognizable in a way that the original (which he never revealed) was unrecognizable. During these incredibly productive years in Bern, a significant portion of his work was written.

Walser, a patient with anxiety and hallucination, went to the Bernese mental hospital Waldau in 1929 after a mental breakdown, according to his sister Fani. "The patient admitted to hearing voices," it says in his medical records. This cannot be characterized as a voluntary pledge. He was eventually diagnosed with catatonic schizophrenia. Although he was in the mental hospital, his mood quickly returned to normal, and he began writing and publishing. He began writing "pencil method": he wrote poems and prose in a diminutive Sütterlin hand, the letters of which measured about a millimeter of height by the end of the very productive period. Werner Morlang and Bernhard Echte were among the first ones to decipher these writings. Aus dem Bleistiftgebiet, a six-volume edition, was released in the 1990s ('From the Pencil Zone'). Walser only quit writing when he returned to Appenzell Ausserrhoden, against his will, only later telling Carl Seelig, "I am not here to write, but to be mad."

Carl Seelig, his admirer, began to visit him in 1936. Wanderungen mit Robert Walser, his brother, wrote a book about their discussions. Seelig attempted to reissue some of Walser's books by re-issuing some of his articles. Seelig was Walser's legal guardian after the death of his brother Karl in 1943 and his sister Lisa in 1944. Walser was crotchety and had persistently refused to leave the hospital, despite being free of outward signs of mental illness for a long time.

Walser's Der Spaziergang (The Walk) was translated into English by Christopher Middleton in 1955; it was the first English translation of his book and the only one that would appear during his lifetime. Walser, who had fallen out of the public eye, replied with, "Well, look at that."

Walser enjoyed long walks alone. He was discovered dead of a heart attack in a field of snow near the asylum on December 25, 1956. The dead Walser's photographs in the snow are reminiscent of a similar photograph of a deceased man in the snow in his first book, Geschwister Tanner.

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