Robert Walser (writer)
Encyclopedia
- For the U.S. musicologist, see Robert Walser (musicologist)Robert Walser (musicologist)Robert Walser is an American musicologist associated with the "new musicology". He is author of the book Running With the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music, concerning heavy metal music...
.
Robert Walser (15 April 1878, Biel/Bienne
Biel/Bienne
Biel/Bienne is a city in the district of the Biel/Bienne administrative district in the canton of Bern in Switzerland.It is located on the language boundary and is throughout bilingual. Biel is the German name for the town, Bienne its French counterpart. The town is often referred to in both...
, Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
– 25 December 1956 near Herisau
Herisau
Herisau is a municipality of the canton of Appenzell Ausserrhoden in Switzerland. It is the seat of the canton's government and parliament; the judicial authorities are situated in Trogen....
, Switzerland), was a German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
-speaking Swiss writer.
1878–1897
Walser was born into a family with many children. His brother Karl WalserKarl Walser
Karl Walser was a Swiss painter.-References:*This article was initially translated from German wikipedia...
became a well-known stage designer
Scenic design
Scenic design is the creation of theatrical, as well as film or television scenery. Scenic designers have traditionally come from a variety of artistic backgrounds, but nowadays, generally speaking, they are trained professionals, often with M.F.A...
and painter
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
. Walser grew up in Biel, on the language border
Language border
A language border or language boundary is the line separating two language areas. The term is generally meant to imply a lack of mutual intelligibility between the two languages...
between German and French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
cantons, and grew up speaking both languages. He attended primary school and progymnasium
Gymnasium (school)
A gymnasium is a type of school providing secondary education in some parts of Europe, comparable to English grammar schools or sixth form colleges and U.S. college preparatory high schools. The word γυμνάσιον was used in Ancient Greece, meaning a locality for both physical and intellectual...
, which he had to leave before the final exam when his family could no longer bear the cost. From his early years on, he was an enthusiastic theatre
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...
-goer; his favorite play was The Robbers
Die Räuber
The Robbers was the first drama by German playwright Friedrich Schiller. The play was published in 1781 and premiered on January 13, 1782 in Mannheim, Germany. It was written towards the end of the German Sturm und Drang movement and has been considered by many critics, such as Peter Brooks, to...
by Friedrich Schiller
Friedrich Schiller
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller was a German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright. During the last seventeen years of his life , Schiller struck up a productive, if complicated, friendship with already famous and influential Johann Wolfgang von Goethe...
. There is a watercolor painting
Watercolor painting
Watercolor or watercolour , also aquarelle from French, is a painting method. A watercolor is the medium or the resulting artwork in which the paints are made of pigments suspended in a water-soluble vehicle...
that shows Walser as Karl Moor, the protagonist of that play.
From 1892 to 1895, Walser served an apprenticeship
Apprenticeship
Apprenticeship is a system of training a new generation of practitioners of a skill. Apprentices or protégés build their careers from apprenticeships...
at the Bernische Kantonalbank in Biel. Afterwards he worked for a short time in Basel
Basel
Basel or Basle In the national languages of Switzerland the city is also known as Bâle , Basilea and Basilea is Switzerland's third most populous city with about 166,000 inhabitants. Located where the Swiss, French and German borders meet, Basel also has suburbs in France and Germany...
. Walser's mother, who was "emotionally disturbed", died in 1894 after being under medical care for a long period. In 1895, Walser went to Stuttgart
Stuttgart
Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....
where his brother Karl lived. He was an office worker at the Deutsche Verlagsanstalt and at the Cotta'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung; he also tried, without success, to become an actor. On foot, he returned to Switzerland where he registered 1896 in Zürich
Zürich
Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...
. In the following years, he often worked as a "Kommis", an office clerk, but irregularly and in many different places. As a result, he was one of the first German writers to introduce into literature a description of the life of a salaried employee.
1898–1912
In 1898, the influential critic Joseph Victor Widmann published a series of poems by Walser in the Bernese newspaper Der BundDer Bund
Der Bund is a daily German-language newspaper published in Bern, Switzerland. Established in 1850 and associated with the cause of liberalism, it was among the leading quality newspapers in Switzerland for much of the 19th and 20th centuries. In economic distress since the 1980s, its circulation...
. This came to the attention of Franz Blei
Franz Blei
Franz Blei was an essayist, playwright and translator from Vienna...
, and he introduced Walser to the Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau is an international philosophy and style of art, architecture and applied art—especially the decorative arts—that were most popular during 1890–1910. The name "Art Nouveau" is French for "new art"...
people around the magazine Die Insel
Die Insel
Die Insel was a German literary and art magazine that was published in Munich from 1899 to 1901 by Otto Julius Bierbaum, Alfred Walter Heymel, and Rudolf Alexander Schröder....
, including Frank Wedekind
Frank Wedekind
Benjamin Franklin Wedekind , usually known as Frank Wedekind, was a German playwright...
, Max Dauthendey
Max Dauthendey
Max Dauthendey was a German author and painter of the impressionistic period. Together with Richard Dehmel and Eduard von Keyserling he is regarded as one of the most influential authors of that period....
and Otto Julius Bierbaum
Otto Julius Bierbaum
Otto Julius Bierbaum was a German writer.Bierbaum was born in Grünberg, Silesia. After studying in Leipzig, he became a journalist and editor for the journals Die freie Bühne, Pan and Die Insel. His literary work was varied...
. Numerous short stories and poems by Walser appeared in Die Insel.
Until 1905, Walser lived mainly in Zürich, though he often changed lodgings and also lived for a time in Thun
Thun
Thun is a municipality in the administrative district of Thun in the canton of Bern in Switzerland with about 42,136 inhabitants , as of 1 January 2006....
, Solothurn
Solothurn
The city of Solothurn is the capital of the Canton of Solothurn in Switzerland. The city also comprises the only municipality of the district of the same name.-Pre-roman settlement:...
, Winterthur
Winterthur
Winterthur is a city in the canton of Zurich in northern Switzerland. It has the country's sixth largest population with an estimate of more than 100,000 people. In the local dialect and by its inhabitants, it is usually abbreviated to Winti...
and Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
. In 1903, he fulfilled his military service obligation and, beginning that summer, was the "aide" of an engineer and inventor in Wädenswil
Wädenswil
-References:...
near Zürich. This episode became the basis of his 1908 novel Der Gehülfe (The Assistant). In 1904, his first book, Fritz Kochers Aufsätze, appeared in the Insel Verlag.
At the end of 1905 he attended a course in order to become a servant at the castle of Dambrau in Upper Silesia
Upper Silesia
Upper Silesia is the southeastern part of the historical and geographical region of Silesia. Since the 9th century, Upper Silesia has been part of Greater Moravia, the Duchy of Bohemia, the Piast Kingdom of Poland, again of the Lands of the Bohemian Crown and the Holy Roman Empire, as well as of...
. The theme of serving would characterize his work in the following years, especially in the novel Jakob von Gunten
Jakob von Gunten
Jakob von Gunten. Ein Tagebuch is a novel by Swiss writer Robert Walser first published in German in 1909.-Introduction:Jakob von Gunten is a first-person account told by its titular protagonist, a young man of noble background who runs off from home and decides to spend the rest of his life...
(1909). In 1905, he went to live in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, where his brother Karl Walser, who was working as a theater painter, introduced him to other figures in literature, publishing, and the theater. Occasionally, Walser worked as secretary for the artists' corporation Berliner Secession
Berlin Secession
The Berlin Secession was an art association founded by Berlin artists in 1898 as an alternative to the conservative state-run Association of Berlin Artists. That year the official salon jury rejected a landscape by Walter Leistikow, who was a key figure amongst a group of young artists interested...
.
In Berlin, Walser wrote the novels Geschwister Tanner, Der Gehülfe and Jakob von Gunten. They were issued by the publishing house of Bruno Cassirer
Bruno Cassirer
Bruno Cassirer was a publisher and gallery owner in Berlin who had a considerable influence on the cultural life of the city.He was born on 12 December 1872, the second child of Jewish parents, Julius and Julcher Cassirer. Julius was a partner, with two of Bruno's cousins, in a cable factory...
, where Christian Morgenstern
Christian Morgenstern
Christian Otto Josef Wolfgang Morgenstern was a German author and poet from Munich. Morgenstern married Margareta Gosebruch von Liechtenstern on March 7, 1910...
worked as editor. Apart from the novels, he wrote many short stories, sketching popular bars from the point of view of a poor "flaneur"
Flâneur
The term flâneur comes from the French masculine noun flâneur—which has the basic meanings of "stroller", "lounger", "saunterer", "loafer"—which itself comes from the French verb flâner, which means "to stroll". Charles Baudelaire developed a derived meaning of flâneur—that of "a person who walks...
in a very playful and subjective language. There was a very positive echo to his writings. Robert Musil
Robert Musil
Robert Musil was an Austrian writer. His unfinished long novel The Man Without Qualities is generally considered to be one of the most important modernist novels...
and Kurt Tucholsky
Kurt Tucholsky
Kurt Tucholsky was a German-Jewish journalist, satirist and writer. He also wrote under the pseudonyms Kaspar Hauser, Peter Panter, Theobald Tiger and Ignaz Wrobel. Born in Berlin-Moabit, he moved to Paris in 1924 and then to Sweden in 1930.Tucholsky was one of the most important journalists of...
, among others, stated their admiration for Walser's prose, and authors like Hermann Hesse
Hermann Hesse
Hermann Hesse was a German-Swiss poet, novelist, and painter. In 1946, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature...
and Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...
counted him among their favorite writers.
Walser published numerous short stories in newspapers and magazines, many for instance in the Schaubühne. They became his trademark. The larger part of his work is composed of short stories – literary sketches that elude a ready categorization. Selections of these short stories were published in the volumes Aufsätze (1913) and Geschichten (1914).
1913–1929
In 1913, Walser returned to Switzerland. He lived for a short time with his sister Lisa in the mental home in Bellelay, where she worked as a teacher. There, he got to know Lisa Mermet, a washer-woman with whom he developed a close friendship. After a short stay with his father in Biel, he went to live in a mansard in the Biel hotel Blaues Kreuz. In 1914, his father died.In Biel, Walser wrote a number of shorter stories that appeared in newspapers and magazines in Germany and Switzerland and selections of which were published in Der Spaziergang (1917), Prosastücke (1917), Poetenleben (1918), Seeland (1919) and Die Rose (1925). Walser, who had always been an enthusiastic wanderer, began to take extended walks, often by night. In his stories from that period, texts written from the point of view of a wanderer walking through unfamiliar neighborhoods alternate with playful essays on writers and artists.
During World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, Walser repeatedly had to go into military service. At the end of 1916, his brother Ernst died after a time of mental illness in the Waldau mental home. In 1919, Walser's brother Hermann, geography professor in Bern, committed suicide. Walser himself became isolated in that time, when there was almost no communication with Germany because of the war. Even though he worked hard, he could barely support himself as a freelance writer. At the beginning of 1921, he moved to Bern in order to work at the public record office. He often changed lodgings and lived a very solitary life.
During his time in Bern, Walser's style became more radical. In a more and more condensed form, he wrote "micrograms" ("Mikrogramme"), called thus because of his minuscule pencil hand that is very difficult to decipher: poems, prose, dramolets and novels – The Robber (Der Räuber). In these texts, his playful, subjective style moved toward a higher abstraction. Many texts of that time work on multiple levels – they can be read as naive-playful Feuilleton
Feuilleton
Feuilleton was originally a kind of supplement attached to the political portion of French newspapers, consisting chiefly of non-political news and gossip, literature and art criticism, a chronicle of the latest fashions, and epigrams, charades and other literary trifles...
or as highly complex montages full of allusions. Walser absorbed influences from serious literature as well as from formula fiction
Formula fiction
In popular culture, formula fiction is literature in which the storylines and plots have been reused to the extent that the narratives are predictable. It is similar to genre fiction, which identifies a number of specific settings that are frequently reused...
and retold for example the plot of a pulp novel in a way that the original (the title of which he never revealed) was unrecognizable. Much of his work was written during these very productive years in Bern.
1929–1956
In the beginning of 1929, Walser, who had suffered from anxieties and hallucinations for quite a time, went to the Bernese mental home Waldau, after a mental breakdown, at his sister Fani's urging. In his medical records it says: "The patient confessed hearing voices." Therefore, this can hardly be called a voluntary commitment. While in the mental home, his state of mind quickly returned to normal, and he went on writing and publishing. More and more, he used the way of writing he called the "pencil method": He wrote poems and prose in a diminutive SütterlinSütterlin
Sütterlinschrift , or Sütterlin for short, is the last widely used form of the old German blackletter handwriting . In Germany, the old German cursive script developed in the 16th century, replacing the Gothic handwriting at the same time that bookletters developed into the Fraktur typeface...
hand, the letters of which measured about a millimeter of height by the end of that very productive phase. Werner Morlang and Bernhard Echte were the first ones who attempted to decipher these writings. In the 1990s, they published a six-volume edition, Aus dem Bleistiftgebiet ('From the pencil area'). Only when Walser was, against his will, moved to the sanatorium of Herisau
Herisau
Herisau is a municipality of the canton of Appenzell Ausserrhoden in Switzerland. It is the seat of the canton's government and parliament; the judicial authorities are situated in Trogen....
in his home canton Appenzell Ausserrhoden
Appenzell Ausserrhoden
Appenzell Ausserrhoden is a canton of Switzerland. The seat of the government and parliament is Herisau, judicial authorities are in Trogen. Appenzell Ausserrhoden is located in the north east of Switzerland, bordering the cantons of St...
, did he quit writing, later telling Carl Seelig he was there to be crazy, not to write. Another reason might have been that with the rise of the Nazis
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
in Germany, his works could no longer be published in any case.
In 1936, his admirer Carl Seelig began to visit him. He later wrote a book, Wanderungen mit Robert Walser about their talks. Seelig tried to revive interest in Walser's work by re-issuing some of his writings. After the death of Walser's brother Karl in 1943 and of his sister Lisa in 1944, Seelig became Walser's legal guardian. Though free of outward signs of mental illness for a long time, Walser was crotchety and repeatedly refused to leave the sanatorium.
Robert Walser loved long, lonely walks. On the 25th of December 1956 he was found, dead of a heart attack, in a field of snow near the asylum. The photographs of the dead walker in the snow are almost eerily reminiscent of a similar image of a dead man in the snow in Walser's first novel, Geschwister Tanner. In 2008 the British Artist and novelist Billy Childish
Billy Childish
Billy Childish is an English artist, painter, author, poet, photographer, film maker, singer and guitarist...
completed a series of paintings, based on the life and death of Walser, whom Childish has cited as an influence on his own prose work.
Writings and reception
A characteristic of Walser's texts is a playful serenity behind which hide existential fears. Today, Walser's texts, completely re-edited since the 1970s, are regarded as among the most important writings of literary modernismModernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
. In his writing, he made use of elements of Swiss German
Swiss German
Swiss German is any of the Alemannic dialects spoken in Switzerland and in some Alpine communities in Northern Italy. Occasionally, the Alemannic dialects spoken in other countries are grouped together with Swiss German as well, especially the dialects of Liechtenstein and Austrian Vorarlberg...
in a charming and original manner, while very personal observations are interwoven with texts about texts; that is, with contemplations and variations of other literary works, in which Walser often mixes pulp fiction with high literature.
Walser, who never belonged to a literary school or group, perhaps with the exception of the circle around the magazine Die Insel in his youth, was a notable and often published writer before World War I and into the 1920s. After the second half of the latter decade, he was rapidly forgotten, in spite of Carl Seelig's editions, which appeared almost exclusively in Switzerland but received little attention.
Walser was only rediscovered in the 1970s, even though very famous German writers such as Christian Morgenstern
Christian Morgenstern
Christian Otto Josef Wolfgang Morgenstern was a German author and poet from Munich. Morgenstern married Margareta Gosebruch von Liechtenstern on March 7, 1910...
, Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...
, Walter Benjamin
Walter Benjamin
Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin was a German-Jewish intellectual, who functioned variously as a literary critic, philosopher, sociologist, translator, radio broadcaster and essayist...
, and Hermann Hesse
Hermann Hesse
Hermann Hesse was a German-Swiss poet, novelist, and painter. In 1946, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature...
were among his great admirers. Since then, almost all his writings have become accessible through an extensive republication of his entire body of work. He has exerted a considerable influence on various contemporary German writers, including Ror Wolf, Peter Handke
Peter Handke
Peter Handke is an avant-garde Austrian novelist and playwright.-Early life:Handke and his mother lived in the Soviet-occupied Pankow district of Berlin from 1944 to 1948 before resettling in Griffen...
, W. G. Sebald
W. G. Sebald
W. G. Maximilian Sebald was a German writer and academic. At the time of his death at the age of 57, he was being cited by many literary critics as one of the greatest living authors and had been tipped as a possible future winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature...
, and Max Goldt
Max Goldt
Max Goldt is a German satirical author and musician.Some hallmarks of Goldt's style are: a fresh ironic perspective on familiar aspects of everyday life; frequent, seemingly tangential changes of topic, triggered by unexpected associations; creative use of language, often combined with a...
. In 2004, Spanish writer Enrique Vila-Matas
Enrique Vila-Matas
Enrique Vila-Matas is a Spanish novelist who has had a long and outstanding literary career and is one of the most prestigious and original writers in contemporary Spanish fiction...
published a novel entitled Doctor Pasavento about Walser, his stay on Herisau and the wish to disappear.
Sources
- Walter Benjamin: Robert Walser, 1929 (essay) Volltext
- Carl Seelig: Wanderungen mit Robert Walser, 1957 ISBN 3-518-01554-0
- Robert Mächler: Das Leben Robert Walsers, 1976 ISBN 3-518-39986-1
- Robert Walser – Leben und Werk in Daten und Bildern, 1980
- Die Brüder Karl und Robert Walser. Maler und Dichter., 1990 ISBN 3-907960-37-8
- Jochen Greven: Robert Walser. Figur am Rande in wechselndem Licht, 1992 ISBN 3-596-11378-4
- Catherine Sauvat: Vergessene Welten. Biographie zu Robert Walser., 1993 ISBN 3-905208-01-6
- Bernhard Echte: Walsers Kindheit und Jugend in Biel. Biographischer Essay., 2002 ISBN 3-907142-05-5
- Lukas Märki: Auf den Spuren Robert Walsers. Interaktive CD-ROM., 2002 ISBN 3-907142-07-1
- Wolfram Groddeck, Reto Sorg, Peter Utz, Karl Wagner (Hrsg.): Robert Walsers 'Ferne Nähe'. Neue Beiträge zur Forschung. 2. Edition. Fink, München 2008 [1. Ed. 2007], ISBN 978-3-7705-4517-9
Plays
- Robert Walser – mikrogramme – das kleine welttheater, director: Christian Bertram, stage: Max DudlerMax DudlerMax Dudler is an architect born in Altenrhein, Switzerland. He studied at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main and later at the Academy of Arts in Berlin with Ludwig Leo. Early on he worked with Oswald Mathias Ungers. He has held teaching positions and had exhibitions both in Germany and Italy...
, music: Hans Peter Kuhn, début performance 14 April 2005 Berlin; readings, films and podium discussion with corollary program www.mikrogramme.de - "Institute Benjamenta" – (listening to a plateau which people call the world), Director: Gokcen Ergene, Dishwasher Studio
Movie and musical adaptations
- Jakob von Gunten, director: Peter LilienthalPeter LilienthalPeter Lilienthal is a German film director, writer, actor and producer. His 1979 film David won the Golden Bear at the 29th Berlin International Film Festival. His 1984 film Das Autogramm was entered into the 34th Berlin International Film Festival.-Filmography:*1958 – Studie 23. *1959 – Im...
, script: Ror Wolf and Peter Lilienthal, 1971 - Der Gehülfe, director: Thomas Koerfer, 1975
- Der Vormund und sein Dichter, direction and script: Percy AdlonPercy AdlonPercy Adlon is a German film and television director, screenwriter, and producer. He is best known for his film Bagdad Café aka Out of Rosenheim.-Biography:...
, 1978 (free picturization of Seelig's Wanderungen mit Robert Walser) - Robert Walser (1974–1978), direction and script: HHK Schoenherr
- Waldi, direction and script: Reinhard Kahn, Michael Leiner (after the story Der Wald), 1980
- Brentano, director: Romeo Castellucci, with Paolo Tonti as Brentano, 1995
- Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life, directors: Stephen Quay, Timothy Quay (i.e. Brothers QuayBrothers QuayStephen and Timothy Quay are American identical twin brothers better known as the Brothers Quay or Quay Brothers. They are influential stop-motion animators...
) with Mark RylanceMark RylanceMark Rylance is an English actor, theatre director and playwright.As an actor, Rylance found success on stage and screen. For his work in theatre he has won Olivier and Tony Awards among others, and a BAFTA TV Award...
as Jakob von Gunten, 1995 - SchneewittchenSchneewittchen (opera)Schneewittchen is an opera by Heinz Holliger. He wrote the libretto based on a poetic text by Robert Walser in iambic trimeter. The opera premiered on 17 October 1998 at the Zurich Opera House which had commissioned the work. The work is a psychoanalytical reworking of the fairy tale, analysing the...
, 1998, operaOperaOpera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
by Heinz HolligerHeinz HolligerHeinz Holliger Heinz Holliger Heinz Holliger (born 21 May 1939 is a Swiss oboist, composer and conductor.-Biography:He was born in Langenthal, Switzerland, and began his musical education at the conservatories of Bern and Basel. He studied composition with Sándor Veress and Pierre Boulez... - Blanche Neige, directed by Rudolph Straub, music by Giovanna Marini, 1999
- Branca de Nevehttp://www.imdb.com/title/tt0267155/, director: João César MonteiroJoão César MonteiroJoão César Monteiro was a Portuguese film director, actor, writer and film critic . He was born in Figueira da Foz on February 2, 1939 and died of cancer in Lisbon on February 3, 2003.- Life and career :...
, 2000
Further reading
- The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Vol. XII, no. 1 (Robert Walser special issue)
- Davenport, Guy "A Field of Snow on a Slope of the Rosenberg" Georgia Review 31:1 (Spring 1977) pp. 5–41
- Vila-Matas, Enrique Bartleby & Co. ISBN 0-8112-1591-1
External links
- J. M. Coetzee: "The Genius of Robert Walser" (2000)
- Institute Benjamenta – Dishwasher Studio – Director: Gokcen Ergene (Jakob von Gunten adapted to the stage)
- "Still Small Voice" essay on Walser by Benjamin KunkelBenjamin KunkelBenjamin Kunkel is an American novelist. He co-founded and is a co-editor of the journal n+1. His first novel, Indecision, was published in 2005.-Background and education:...
in The New YorkerThe New YorkerThe New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast... - "The Book Bench: Scribe of the Small" a brief article about Walser's handwriting in The New YorkerThe New YorkerThe New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
- "A Celebration of the Work of Swiss Writer Robert Walser" Podcast, KCRW's Bookworm
- Wandering with Robert Walser – tribute blog