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A review by ilse
The Walk by Robert Walser
5.0
I walk, therefore I am
And then I see a darkness
“Did I pick flowers to lay them upon my sorrow?” I asked myself, and the flowers fell out of my hand.
Modernism, romanticism, melancholia, irony: it is all there, in the few pages of this bittersweet fairy-tale. As this was my first acquaintance with Walser’s prose, and there is plenty left to discover, here is a happy reader.
The narrator, a poet, flees from his writing room, “or room of phantoms”, and goes out for a stroll. Crossing the path of a variety of passers-by, he gives a tragi-comical account on his impressions, thoughts, futile undertakings and encounters on his walk through a nameless little town and the countryside. As in a manic frenzy, he natters on, slowing down his walking pace, almost stumbling over his own words in his eagerness to report on every detail hitting his eye or striking his mind.
It is a walk without a purpose or destination. As the day and the walking progress, the hypersensitive narrator experiences a multitude of mood swings, changing from frantic happiness and ecstatic joy, an almost neurotic rapturous state, to defeatism, indignation and back to euphoria: the hues of four seasons in one day. In a state of jubilant exultation, the narrator/poet loses himself, he coincides with nature, becomes one with the world soul, Anima Mundi:
The exuberant torrent of words is obviously hiding something. Behind this sprightly verbosity, there is despair, loneliness and angst. Which demons is the voluble narrator running from? The blank page, a writer’s block? The critics? Himself?
The dark thoughts that the narrator so skilfully tries to keep at bay on his stride, slowly obfuscate the pleasure he takes in the Arcadian scenery. His bumping into the pitiable giant Tomzack, an allegoric alter ego of himself, could be seen as a first gloomy omen:
Walser’s prose bristles with exaggerations and reprises; he accumulates pointless tautologies (pun intended) resulting in baroqueness and pomposity, which creates an alienating and deranging effect to the reader at first. Once one becomes used to his curvy, hyperbolic style, the whimsical, syntactically almost derailing sentences turn out strikingly appropriate and functional, as a cunning mimicry of moving, funny ineptitude. At times his prose reminded me of Hrabal’s, yet less gaudy.
In his encounters with the outer world, the narrator/poet behaves himself in a most peculiar, awkward way. He profuses with uncongenially solemn courtesy, is obsequiously polite, while inwardly (or in writing) scolding and disdaining the high and mighty, oscillating from self-disparaging and cowardice to elation; self-destructive recklessness, supercilious megalomania and delusions of grandeur. Facing settled society’s intolerance for day-thieving artists, lazybones, vagrants, ‘unproductive’ dreamers – and the weak and destitute – he exhausts himself in justifying his observant life, his vocation, his very existence. Presenting his narrator/poet – actually himself - as the gentle village idiot, a queer, enigmatic and eccentric figure, Walser considers the relation between the artist and society. In all its jocularity and irony, this relation, for Walser, could only be one of torment, according to his friend Carl Seelig.
Often the narrator directly addresses the reader, seeking his approval and legitimating himself to the point of absurdity. While on the one hand he attempts to ingratiate himself with the reader, he simultaneously lectures the reader on the radical freedom of the artist, making crystal clear that writing is not a game of give and take to oblige the reader. As a “serious writer” he doesn’t feel called upon to jump at the reader’s fancies, at the same time giving a firm sneer at rising consumerism (rather visionary, it’s 1917):
And so Walser throws his pearls, his graceful sentences, at us, like “delectable, luscious tidbits”.
Ambulo ergo sum – I walk therefore I am (Pierre Gassendi)
Walser, the walker, fits in the long tradition of numerous walking writers and philosophers (Kant, Nietzsche, Rousseau, Sebald, Woolf, the Dutch philosopher Ton Lemaire, the list is endless). For the narrator, and for Walser, walking is not only stimulating aesthetical and philosophical reflection. However complex and strained the artist’s relation towards the wilful outside world, the outing is a vital need, social interaction is required for inspiration; walking is living, is being in the world, like writing is.
A ragged soul, Sebald called him, quoting from Walser’s [b:The Tanners|6081631|The Tanners|Robert Walser|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348421619l/6081631._SX50_.jpg|6154056] (in Sebald’s essay on Walser that was published in [b:A Place in the Country|13541957|A Place in the Country|W.G. Sebald|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1358967964l/13541957._SY75_.jpg|21961845], Le Promeneur Solitaire: A Remembrance of Robert Walser). A part of this essay (which however does not relate much to The Walk) can be found here.
And then I see a darkness
“Did I pick flowers to lay them upon my sorrow?” I asked myself, and the flowers fell out of my hand.
Modernism, romanticism, melancholia, irony: it is all there, in the few pages of this bittersweet fairy-tale. As this was my first acquaintance with Walser’s prose, and there is plenty left to discover, here is a happy reader.
The narrator, a poet, flees from his writing room, “or room of phantoms”, and goes out for a stroll. Crossing the path of a variety of passers-by, he gives a tragi-comical account on his impressions, thoughts, futile undertakings and encounters on his walk through a nameless little town and the countryside. As in a manic frenzy, he natters on, slowing down his walking pace, almost stumbling over his own words in his eagerness to report on every detail hitting his eye or striking his mind.
It is a walk without a purpose or destination. As the day and the walking progress, the hypersensitive narrator experiences a multitude of mood swings, changing from frantic happiness and ecstatic joy, an almost neurotic rapturous state, to defeatism, indignation and back to euphoria: the hues of four seasons in one day. In a state of jubilant exultation, the narrator/poet loses himself, he coincides with nature, becomes one with the world soul, Anima Mundi:
The soul of the world had opened and I fantasized that everything wicked, distressing and painful was on the point of vanishing….all notion of the future paled and the past dissolved. In the glowing present, I myself glowed. The earth became a dream; I myself had become an inward being, and I walked as in an inward world.
The exuberant torrent of words is obviously hiding something. Behind this sprightly verbosity, there is despair, loneliness and angst. Which demons is the voluble narrator running from? The blank page, a writer’s block? The critics? Himself?
The dark thoughts that the narrator so skilfully tries to keep at bay on his stride, slowly obfuscate the pleasure he takes in the Arcadian scenery. His bumping into the pitiable giant Tomzack, an allegoric alter ego of himself, could be seen as a first gloomy omen:
Without motherland, without happiness he was; he had to live completely without love and without human joy. He had sympathy with no man, and with him and his mopping and mowing no man had sympathy. Past, present and future were to him an insubstantial desert, and life was too small, too tiny, too narrow, for him. For him there was nothing which had meaning, and he himself in turn meant something to nobody. Out of his great eyes there broke a glare of grief in overworlds and underworlds. Infinite pain spoke from his slack and weary moments. A hundred thousand years old he seemed to me, and it seemed to me that he must live for eternity, only to be for eternity no living being. He died every instant and yet he could not die. For him, there was no grave with flowers on it.
Walser’s prose bristles with exaggerations and reprises; he accumulates pointless tautologies (pun intended) resulting in baroqueness and pomposity, which creates an alienating and deranging effect to the reader at first. Once one becomes used to his curvy, hyperbolic style, the whimsical, syntactically almost derailing sentences turn out strikingly appropriate and functional, as a cunning mimicry of moving, funny ineptitude. At times his prose reminded me of Hrabal’s, yet less gaudy.
In his encounters with the outer world, the narrator/poet behaves himself in a most peculiar, awkward way. He profuses with uncongenially solemn courtesy, is obsequiously polite, while inwardly (or in writing) scolding and disdaining the high and mighty, oscillating from self-disparaging and cowardice to elation; self-destructive recklessness, supercilious megalomania and delusions of grandeur. Facing settled society’s intolerance for day-thieving artists, lazybones, vagrants, ‘unproductive’ dreamers – and the weak and destitute – he exhausts himself in justifying his observant life, his vocation, his very existence. Presenting his narrator/poet – actually himself - as the gentle village idiot, a queer, enigmatic and eccentric figure, Walser considers the relation between the artist and society. In all its jocularity and irony, this relation, for Walser, could only be one of torment, according to his friend Carl Seelig.
Often the narrator directly addresses the reader, seeking his approval and legitimating himself to the point of absurdity. While on the one hand he attempts to ingratiate himself with the reader, he simultaneously lectures the reader on the radical freedom of the artist, making crystal clear that writing is not a game of give and take to oblige the reader. As a “serious writer” he doesn’t feel called upon to jump at the reader’s fancies, at the same time giving a firm sneer at rising consumerism (rather visionary, it’s 1917):
Perhaps there were a few repetitions here and there. But I would like to confess that I consider man and nature to be in lovely and charming flight from repetitions, and I would like further to confess that I regard this phenomenon as a beauty and a blessing. Of course, one finds in some places sensation-hungry novelty hunters and novelty worshippers, spoiled by overexcitement, people who almost every instant covet joys that have never been seen before. The writer does not write for such people, nor does the composer compose for them, nor does the painter paint for them. On the whole I consider the constant need for delight and diversion in completely new things to be a sign of pettiness, lack of inner life, of estrangement from nature, and of a mediocre or defective gift of understanding. It is little children for whom one must always be producing something new and different, only in order to stop their being dissatisfied. The serious writer does not feel called upon to supply accumulations of material, to act the agile servant of nervous greed; and consequently he is not afraid of a few natural repetitions, although of course he takes continual trouble to forfend too many similarities.
And so Walser throws his pearls, his graceful sentences, at us, like “delectable, luscious tidbits”.
Ambulo ergo sum – I walk therefore I am (Pierre Gassendi)
Walser, the walker, fits in the long tradition of numerous walking writers and philosophers (Kant, Nietzsche, Rousseau, Sebald, Woolf, the Dutch philosopher Ton Lemaire, the list is endless). For the narrator, and for Walser, walking is not only stimulating aesthetical and philosophical reflection. However complex and strained the artist’s relation towards the wilful outside world, the outing is a vital need, social interaction is required for inspiration; walking is living, is being in the world, like writing is.
A ragged soul, Sebald called him, quoting from Walser’s [b:The Tanners|6081631|The Tanners|Robert Walser|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348421619l/6081631._SX50_.jpg|6154056] (in Sebald’s essay on Walser that was published in [b:A Place in the Country|13541957|A Place in the Country|W.G. Sebald|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1358967964l/13541957._SY75_.jpg|21961845], Le Promeneur Solitaire: A Remembrance of Robert Walser). A part of this essay (which however does not relate much to The Walk) can be found here.