Walser and Bernofsky on Writing and Translation

The Robber [Hardcover]
Robert Walser (Author), Susan Bernofsky (Translator, Introduction)

Hardcover: 141 pages
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press (March 1, 2000)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0803247893
ISBN-13: 978-0803247895

Walser and Bernofsky on Writing and Translation


The Robber by Robert Walser is one of the most difficult books I have ever read. It wasn't until the last fifty pages that my main engine began to roar and my reading speed accelerated. By the time I was finished reading this book I had already ordered two more books written by Walser and was feverishly searching for others I might be interested in. I believe I have stumbled on a masterpiece. Or Susan Bernofsky is a translator supreme who takes German works of literature and makes them fantastic works of art. It is very possible that this is the case. It is also possible that Walser cannot write a lick of good nonsense the quality of what I just read in The Robber. Hard to say about a translation. The reader must believe in the translator as much as the author if he is to continue to trudge along with any certainty that he isn't wasting what little time he has left to live. The hourglass is shoveling sand which never relents in its violently obsessive droppings until the quickened bitter end. Really, I feel that way as I am reading. I hate to waste my time. Seems it is the reason I always have four or five books going at the same time, and one or another of them has to take me away sooner or later or the book gets read a page here or a page there which seems it takes forever to accomplish until finally being dumped into my reader's slush pile. Sort of like my version of a landfill or cemetery for the unclaimed and homeless.

The Robber took me every bit of five months to read. But the last fifty pages took me less than a week to glide through. The Robber could have been finished earlier this past week but I was savoring it. Now I am already plotting when I might begin my next reading of it. Walser speaks to me, or Bernofsky does, I haven't quite decided yet. Bernofsky has translated several Walser works and so has a fellow by the name of Middleton. I am presently reading his translation of Walser's The Selected Stories and not having nearly the fun I had reading the words of Bernofsky. That isn't to say that Middleton is not a fine translator. What interests me most in The Selected Stories is the title The Walk which Bernofsky also has recently translated herself and which title will be going to print sooner rather than later. I will be able to compare scientifically the two versions then, but first I will finish the Middleton version. But let's get back to The Robber. So what was so mesmerizing about such a dim and dreary book? I suppose it would be the relationships that both the author and the robber character (who may have been one and the same) had with all the different men and women making their way across and down each page. And I might add that the variety of characters were mostly women. It does not surprise me that, as biographically reported through the years, that Walser asked several different women to marry him. And let is not suppose that Walser was so serious about marriage as previously surmised, but instead, was most likely performing his due diligence for a just research regarding his work, of which there were many many pieces of it completed and never published for several reasons, two of which he destroyed many of his manuscripts and also his publishers lost some of them. Not to mention that not too many others were interested in what Mr. Walser actually had to say. But I am. Totally immersed in his work these days. I completely relate to this guy. He is a cynic and a skeptic and he notices things that I notice even today, which means that nothing much has changed throughout the passing of all these many years since Walser lived, at least in regards to the human condition.

There is much to like in The Robber. As crazy as it is you can't help but think he is fooling us. Maybe even laughing his ass off at us. For a crazy guy his writing is quite exacting and his points well organized. But he is no lover of his modern society or the people in it. He does not like their decorations, bright lights, or advertising. According to Walser mediocrity is the norm. An extraordinary person won't go far in his world. Mediocre people are amused by extraordinary persons. And the extraordinary person who knows this also becomes ordinary and on the par with everyone else. But it is a torment to mediocre people to constantly see things and people just as they are. Being in "the company of a person with his own highly personal way of gazing into the world, that is, somewhat crookedly, as though he were a child, is coveted and sought after." Ah. My kind of guy and what I believe in.

Don't we all read books, magazines, and articles in order to learn something about the world, ourselves and others, or to discover that we are not alone, that somebody else might think like we do? To be acknowledged? Confirmed? Verified? I learned long ago to personally stand on my difference. I believe it was Aristotle who said this first. There have been many people in the course of my personal life who have told me that I see things most differently. That they cannot believe after witnessing the same thing as I did that I would see it the way I do. They usually have some great difficulty sometimes disagreeing with my point of view, but nonetheless, it puzzles them greatly how I came to see it in the manner I did. The more I hear this about myself, the more I like it. Raymond Carver also said that the key to being a great artist is having the natural tendency to look at the world differently than the normal (and I would say, mediocre) person. I really do not believe you can be taught to do this either. It must come naturally, this different way of seeing things. You either do it or you don't. Gordon Lish also incorporates these same ideas in his teaching of fiction-writing, Gordon, a person of extremely high intelligence whose classes have become legendary and himself an even greater myth, even to those who think they know him. What an invigorating experience to discover a writer such as Robert Walser (or a translator such as Susan Bernofsky) who can show you the world in much the same way as you yourself can see it. And to think they thought Walser mad enough to be involuntarily put away. Amazing, these people who always seem to rule things around here. But Walser showed us all a thing or two, and for me, just in time, for I am at the period in my life when I am finally just getting myself warmed up.