'Ich schreibe hier dekorativ': Essays zu Robert Walser by Peter Gronau

Abstract

MLR, I03.2, 2oo8 59I Sutherland's analysis of the scope of Rilke's work is especially perceptive. She moves fromRilke's early poetry, inwhich life and death are polarized (with death given theprivileged place), tohis attempts tounify lifeand death within poetry.Rilke eventually creates a language of poetic figures inwhich he 'forges a space for,and lends a voice to,death as thatwhich exceeds ordinary language' (p. 283). In his late work, particularly theDuineser Elegien, Rilke creates poetic figures that go beyond normal human articulation to touch upon the empty category of death and make its very absence present in the poetic language itself. While the description here may seem rather abstract, Sutherland grounds her discussion in compelling analyses of specific poetic texts.By the time she has explored Rilke's poetrywith hermain theme of death inview, the reader gains a clear understanding both of Sutherland's analytic vocabulary and of some ofRilke's most complex poetry. Sutherland's readings are usefully informed both by theorists (particularly Blan chot, but also Heidegger and Bachelard) and by a wide range of Rilke's critics and translators. She also includes biographical moments fromRilke's letters and life. I was particularly takenwith her reading of Rilke's Requiem in relation to the death of Paula Modersohn-Becker shortly after childbirth. This is an intense analysis of the interplay among death, absence/presence, other/self, and poetry. It examines the transformation of body into language and Rilke's struggling attempt tomake death into a poetry of absence. Sutherland astutely explores the interaction between Modersohn-Becker's own artistic production and Rilke's to demonstrate how they both move towards a new presentation of existence through art. Images ofAbsence will be rewarding reading not just forRilke scholars but forall readers interested in the complex attempt to create poetry thatcaptures thepersonal power but also the abstract absence of death. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, Los ANGELES KATHLEEN L. KOMAR 'Ich schreibehier dekorativ': Essays zu Robert Walser. By PETER GRONAU.Wiirzburg: KOnigshausen& Neumann. 2oo6. i68 pp. Ei9.8o. ISBN 978-3-8260-3354-4. The essays in this collection can scarcely be described as informative: that is not theirpurpose. On the contrary, they might more accurately be described as deliberate attempts, some going back to the i960s, to capture and convey the the essence of Walser. Only when this is realized can Peter Gronau's unusual study be appreciated for what it is: a serious and often surprisingly successful attempt toconvey theessence ofWalser theman andWalser the poet fifty years after his death. 'Der Satiriker ist sich seiner Sache sicher.Robert Walser istes nicht,' writes Gronau (p. I I9), leaving it to alliteration to catch the reader's ear.Or take the statement: 'diese sehr um Unauf dringlichkeit bemiihte Ironie breitet sich iuberdie gesamte, ein wenig schiilerhaft eifriganmutende Ausflugsschilderung aus' (p. 97), a telling reference to a short prose piece entitled 'Sonntagsausflug'. These are just twobrief samples of amode ofwriting which Peter Gronau considers to be themost effectiveway of conveying the essence of Walser's world as thewriter experienced and captured it. There is,however, a price tobe paid forthisapproach. The reader expecting a firm foundation of fact ispresented insteadwith a carefully considered word-game which conveys much that is valid about the Swiss poet but deliberately avoids the factual basis and analytic objectivity generally associated with studies ofmajor writers. That Gronau isperfectly capable ofproviding what he has chosen to avoid becomes evident when, half-way through his study, he inserts a lecture given in 2004, inwhich the requirements of addressing an audience impose ameasure of conventional clarity on what he has to say; similarly, the section entitled 'Das berstende Ich- Brentano und 592 Reviews Robert Walsers Nachwehen' (pp. 56-74) provides an impressive exploration of the romantic in Walser, a theme developed out of a quotation from Dichtungund Wahrheit and all thebetter for theGoethean transparencywith which it iswritten. These two sections are literally central to this unusual study and have much to recommend them; indeed the reader starting out from this centre will findmuch to enjoy and much to learn throughout Gronau's discussion ofWalser and his works and will in all likelihood soon feelencouraged toventure into its more...