Berlin Stories by Robert Walser

Abstract

May– june 2012 73 Living Spirit: Literature and Resurgence in Okinawa Frank Stewart & Katsunori Yamazato, eds. University of Hawai`i Press This rich volume, which includes ancient lyrics through contemporary works of fiction, drama, and poetry, reflects the irrepressible spirit of native Okinawans. Higa Yasuo’s striking photographs of maternal deities provide added depth of meaning. Tomas Espedal Against Art James Anderson, tr. Seagull Books The themes of art and family are combined in this novel centered on the craft of writing. Norwegian author Tomas Espedal facilitates an engaging conversation about the profession, duties, and obstacles of the written word while also looking at the dynamic relationships between family members. Nota Bene takes, however. In this way Irma Voth and Silent Light provide interesting counterpoint views of a culture as seen through the eyes of an outsider. Of course, Reygadas and the fictional filmmaker in Irma Voth portray a society within its insular context, a culture out of time and place, while Toews and Irma have learned to coexist in both worlds. Catharine E. Wall Riverside, California Robert Walser. Berlin Stories. Jochen Greven, ed. Susan Bernofsky , tr. New York. New York Review Books. 2012. isbn 9781590174548 The work of Swiss writer Robert Walser , who was born in 1878 and wrote in German, is enjoying a renaissance. No fewer than three American editions of his work have either been recently released or are waiting to be released in the next few months. Why this is happening now is as curious as all whims of literary posterity, but in this case especially so, given the fact that Walser had stopped writing a long time before he was found dead, from a heart attack, near a snowcovered trail not far from the Swiss sanatorium where he spent the final twenty-odd years of his life, on Christmas day in 1956. Why Walser had stopped writing and, equally interesting , why he refused to move out of the sanatorium in Herisau, even though he had been certified as healthy by the local doctors long before his death, will probably never be answered, though some have speculated that the decision had something to do, at least initially, with the Nazis banning his books. Berlin Stories is a collection of feuilletons and literary sketches written for journals and newspapers. As such, the pieces are decisively brief, yet filled with keen observations , giving us wonderful insight into the hustle and bustle of turnof -the-century Berlin, which, then as now, brimmed with human activity and, in Walser’s words, could only be described as “exceptional.” The collection is divided into four sections (“The City Streets,” “The Theater,” “Berlin Life,” and “Looking Back”), but sampling it at will, rather than reading it straight through, is equally rewarding and perhaps the better approach, for Walser, who was twenty -seven when he moved to Berlin in the footsteps of his brother Karl, a stage-set designer and painter, is constantly in awe of the place that’s about to “burst at the seams with newness.” Consequently, the texture of his prose sparkles with innumerable details whose concrete representation does not diminish their opulence but rather makes the places and the people he describes come alive. Walser writes that an artist in Berlin “has no choice than to pay attention,” so he does, covering, in these thirty-eight pieces, everything from human emotions (“Desires are terrible things”), people (especially women), the Tiergarten, the market , bars, smoking, the Russian ballet , horse-drawn omnibuses, trains, and trams (“Riding the ‘electric’ is an inexpensive pleasure”). Long sentences , which find both the speaker and the reader running out of breath, point to Walser’s immense excitement (“I was playing the role of youthful novice”) and readiness to render anything and everything, with special attention paid to the insignificant rather than the grand. His insatiable hunger to document the hodgepodge of modernity may have been motivated by the necessity of earning a paycheck, but it goes a long way toward establishing Walser 74 World Literature Today reviews as one of the most observant of writers, whose insights and musings manage to create and illuminate the very fabric of our lives. Piotr Florczyk Los Angeles, California Banana Yoshimoto...