Following on from April's roundup of recent publishing events surrounding the œuvre of Robert Walser, six months later there's even more to report!
Firstly, the English translation of the The Tanners finally did come out, although a few months late (reaching the Canadian market on 25 August). After reading Jean Launay's 1985 French translation, reissued in 1992, I very much look forward to reading it in my mother tongue.
But Susan Bernofsky hasn't stopped there. Currently on the horizon, in addition to her forthcoming biography of Robert Walser, is a volume of Walser microgrammes, or Microscripts as they are being called, in English translation. These will be published by New Directions in the spring of 2010, coinciding with an exhibition of the microscripts at the Christine Burgin Gallery in New York. As told by Susan:This project came about as a co-production with Christine Burgin Gallery after Burgin fell in love with Walser’s miniature manuscripts (both the sheets of paper and the handwriting that covers them are unbelievably small) and decided to put together an exhibition of them in New York, due to open in the spring of 2010. The volume Microscripts will serve as a catalogue for the exhibition—it will contain a number of high-resolution facsimiles of Walser’s beautiful manuscripts—and at the same time is a collection of stories from his late work.
As told by the gallery:In Spring 2010 the Christine Burgin Gallery and New Directions will publish a facsimile edition of Robert Walser's microscripts with new translations by Susan Bernofsky. This will be the first publication in English illustrated by and devoted to Robert Walser's microscripts.
Details:
The Microscripts
Robert Walser
New Directions
Hardback, 160 pages
ISBN 9780811218801
25 May 2010
$24.95 US (Canadian market information unavailable at this time)
It seems to me that this book will be a cross between two books previously published by Geneva-based Éditions Zoe:
Despite its 400 pages, the former is in reality but a small subset of the microgrammes published in the monumental six-volume Aus dem Bleistiftgebiet. Mikrogramme aus den Jahren 1924–1933 (2003). Every time I see this beautiful boxed set sitting on the shelves of Das Buch on Sherbrooke Street East, I have to hold myself back from buying it, reminding myself that my German is nowhere near good enough to be able to read the Walser Microgrammes in their original language. But I digress...
Getting back on topic, believe it or not, there's even more on the way from Susan Bernofsky! On her website, she mentions a forthcoming English translation of Robert Walser's "Berlin Stories", to be published by the New York Review of Books in their Classics series. This has also been confirmed by NYRB Classics themselves. I had never even heard of the "Berlin Stories" before today. If anyone knows what these are, and what texts they correspond to in the complete works of Robert Walser in German, I'd love to hear from you...
Moving on to the French side of things, on 9 September 2009 Gallimard reissued La Rose, Bernard Lortholoary's 1987 translation of Die Rose. It's due out later this month in Canada. This book features one of my favourite Walser quotations: "Personne n'a le droit de se comporter à mon endroit comme s'il me connaissait".
Éditions Zoe have lots of Walser stuff coming out in the next few months:
Ouf! Quelle aventure... While all of this is going on, Suhrkamp too seem to have constant stream of Walser publications coming out in the original German, including Robert Walser for Idlers, a book of bons mots and aphorisms, and Der Schnee fällt nicht hinauf - 33 Gedichte, a collection of 33 (winter?) poems.
Exciting times indeed!
19 October 2009
Robert Walser Roundup 19 October 2009
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6 comments:
When Robert Walser lived in Berlin from 1905 to 1913, he published numerous "pieces in prose" in newspapers and magazines. By this time, the novels "Geschwister Tanner", "Der Gehülfe" and "Jakob von Gunten" were written (these are all the novels which were published in the lifetime of the author). When "Geschwister Tanner" came out, Walser soon became established in the literary scene. Among his supporters and admirers were Max Brod, Franz Kafka, Hermann Hesse and Robert Musil. Hit by a crisis in writing, Walser left Berlin and returned to Switzerland and lived in Biel for the next seven years, before he had to move to Berne for financial reasons.
The texts of the Berlin years are characterized as brilliant, ironical and colourful sketches of a major city and its social environment, aswell as apostils of the cultural scene.
The Berlin prose has been published in the first edition of complete works (edited by Jochen Greven from 1966 to 1975) in volume VI together with prose from the time in Biel. Under the title "Bedenkliche Geschichten", the Berlin prose was published in 1985 (volume 15 of the second edition of the complete works edited by Greven in the eighties). There exists one anthology in german dedicated to the Berlin years, "Berlin gibt immer den Ton an. Kleine Prosa aus und über Berlin." edited by Jochen Greven and published in 2006.
I might add a little note on the publication of Urs Allemann, "Der Schnee fällt nicht hinauf": Allemann comments thirty three selected poems, which are not only winter poems. But there are indeed some poems dealing with the subject of snow or winter, like, for example, "Heimkehr" (p. 26), "Weinenden Herzens" (p. 28), "Es zeichnet sich der Winter dadurch aus" (p. 33), "Weisse Männer" (p. 57) and, of course, the self-reflexive poem "Der Schnee": its first line is "Der Schnee fällt nicht hinauf".
As i missed a comment on the latest Walser edition, here is the link to the project: http://kritische-walser-ausgabe.ch/
In this edition, volume I.2 Geschwister Tanner was published in 2008.
Danke Mariana!
Fascinating stuff all round. And I was not at all aware of the new Kritische Robert Walser-Ausgabe, so thanks for the link.
After writing the post yesterday I did a little bit of research myself and came to the same conclusion about the "Berlin Stories": probably texts taken from Sämtliche Werke 15: Bedenkliche Geschichten. Prosa aus der Berliner Zeit 1906-1912 and/or Berlin gibt immer den Ton an. Kleine Prosa aus und über Berlin. I can't wait, although I already have some of the texts from "Bedenkliche Geschichten" in Retour dans la neige and Speaking to the Rose.
Tschüß!
PS - I noticed the new Kritische Robert Walser-Ausgabe isn't published by Suhrkamp. Is it because his work is now in the public domain and can be published by anyone?
The Tanners have English translations and what we can see, a large volume of content and everything is referred to as what a truly impressive and quite perfect translation.
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