Robert Walser

For another person, see Robert Walser (musicologist).

Robert Walser
Robert Walser around 1900
Born	(1878-04-15)15 April 1878 Biel/Bienne, Switzerland
Died	25 December 1956(1956-12-25) (aged 78) near Herisau, Switzerland
Occupation	Writer
Writing career
Movement	Modernism

Robert Walser (Swiss Standard German: [ˈvalzər]; 15 April 1878 – 25 December 1956) was a German language Swiss writer noted for writing four novels (one published posthumously) and a large number of feuilletons, short stories, and causeries. His unconventional, sometimes enigmatic works were appreciated by contemporaries such as Walter Benjamin, Hermann Hesse, Franz Kafka, Robert Musil and Kurt Tucholsky. He additionally worked as a copyist, an inventor's assistant, a butler, and in various other low-paying trades.

After marginal early success in his literary career, the popularity of his work gradually diminished through the 1920's, making it increasingly difficult for him to support himself through writing. He eventually had a nervous breakdown and spent the remainder of his life in sanatoriums. His work underwent a rediscovery in the 1970's with the deciphering of the microscripts (see below), and a large portion of his work was first translated into and published in English in the 2000's and onward. Walser is now considered one of the important German-language authors of the 20th century and a significant figure in modernism.

Life and work

1878–1897

Born Robert Otto Walser, he was the second-youngest of eight children of Adolf Walser (1833–1914), a trained bookbinder who owned a workshop producing stationery goods and picture frames, and his wife Elisabeth (Elisa) Walser (1839–1894). His brother Karl Walser became a well-known stage designer and painter; his elder sister Lisa worked as a teacher and was the family's principal caregiver, while his younger sister Fanny (Fani) Hegi-Walser would later, in 1967, transfer Walser's literary estate to the Carl Seelig Foundation. Walser grew up in Biel, Switzerland, on the language border between the German- and French-speaking regions of Switzerland, and grew up speaking both languages. He attended primary school and progymnasium, which he had to leave before the final exam when his family could no longer bear the cost. From his early years on, he was an enthusiastic theatre-goer; his favourite play was The Robbers by Friedrich Schiller. There is a watercolor painting that shows Walser as Karl Moor, the protagonist of that play.

From 1892 to 1895, Walser served an apprenticeship at the Bernischer Kantonalbank in Biel. Afterwards he worked for a short time in Basel. Walser's mother Elisabeth (1839–1894), described in contemporary terms as gemütskrank — a designation roughly corresponding to what would later be classified as an affective psychosis — died in 1894 after a prolonged illness during which she had been cared for by her elder daughter, Lisa Walser. The Swiss Germanist Peter von Matt has argued that Walser's symbiotic relationship with his mother was constitutive for his literary work. In 1895, Walser went to Stuttgart where his brother Karl lived. He worked as a clerk in the advertising department of the Union Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft; he also tried, without success, to become an actor, auditioning for an actress at the Stuttgart Hoftheater. On foot, he returned to Switzerland where he registered in 1896 as a Zürich resident. In the following years, he often worked as a "Kommis", an office clerk, but irregularly and in many different places. As a result, he was one of the first Swiss writers to introduce into literature a description of the life of a salaried employee.

1898–1912

In 1898, the influential critic Joseph Victor Widmann published a series of poems by Walser in the Bernese newspaper Der Bund. This came to the attention of Franz Blei, and he introduced Walser to the circle of Art Nouveau figures centered on the magazine Die Insel, including Frank Wedekind, Max Dauthendey and Otto Julius Bierbaum. Numerous short stories and poems by Walser appeared in Die Insel.

Until 1905, Walser lived mainly in Zürich, though he often changed lodgings and also lived for a time in Thun, Solothurn, Winterthur and Munich. In 1903, he fulfilled his military service obligation and, beginning that summer, was the "aide" of an engineer and inventor in Wädenswil near Zürich. This episode became the basis of his 1908 novel Der Gehülfe (The Assistant). In 1904, his first book, Fritz Kochers Aufsätze (Fritz Kocher's Essays), appeared in the Insel Verlag, with eleven illustrations by his brother Karl.

Was isch jetz für Zit? Scho drü? Alee, pressier, pressier. (Alemannic German)

"What time is it? Already three? Come on, hurry, hurry."

— Der Teich, 1902.

At the end of 1905 he attended a course in order to become a servant at the castle of Dambrau in Upper Silesia. The theme of serving would characterize his work in the following years, especially in the novel Jakob von Gunten (1909). In 1905, he went to live in Berlin, where his brother Karl Walser, who was working as a theater painter, introduced him to other figures in literature, publishing, and the theater. Occasionally, Walser worked as secretary for the artists' corporation Berliner Secession.

In Berlin, Walser wrote the novels The Tanners (Geschwister Tanner), The Assistant (Der Gehülfe) and Jakob von Gunten. They were issued by the publishing house of Bruno Cassirer, where Christian Morgenstern worked as editor. Apart from the novels, he wrote many short stories, sketching popular bars from the point of view of a poor "flaneur" in a very playful and subjective language. There was a very positive echo to his writings. Robert Musil and Kurt Tucholsky, among others, stated their admiration for Walser's prose, and authors like Hermann Hesse and Franz Kafka counted him among their favorite writers.

Walser published numerous short stories in newspapers and magazines, many for instance in the Schaubühne. They became his trademark. The larger part of his work is composed of short stories – literary sketches that elude a ready categorization. Selections of these short stories were published in the volumes Aufsätze (1913) and Geschichten (1914).

1913–1929

In 1913, Walser returned to Switzerland. He lived for a short time with his sister Lisa in the mental home in Bellelay, where she worked as a teacher. There, he got to know Frieda Mermet, a washer-woman with whom he developed a close friendship. After a short stay with his father in Biel, he went to live in a mansard in the Biel hotel Blaues Kreuz. In 1914, his father died.

In Biel, Walser wrote a number of shorter stories that appeared in newspapers and magazines in Germany and Switzerland and selections of which were published in Der Spaziergang (1917), Prosastücke (1917), Poetenleben (1918), Seeland (1919) and Die Rose (1925). Walser, who had always been an enthusiastic wanderer, began to take extended walks, often by night. In his stories from that period, texts written from the point of view of a wanderer walking through unfamiliar neighborhoods alternate with playful essays on writers and artists.

During World War I, Walser repeatedly had to go into military service. At the end of 1916, his brother Ernst died after a time of mental illness in the Waldau mental home. In 1919, Walser's brother Hermann, geography professor in Bern, committed suicide. Walser himself became isolated in that time, when there was almost no communication with Germany because of the war. Even though he worked hard, he could barely support himself as a freelance writer. At the beginning of 1921, he moved to Bern in order to work at the public record office. He often changed lodgings and lived a very solitary life.

During his time in Bern, Walser's style became more radical. In a more and more condensed form, he wrote "micrograms" ("Mikrogramme"), called thus because of his minuscule pencil hand that is very difficult to decipher. He wrote poems, prose, dramolettes and novels, including The Robber (Der Räuber). In these texts, his playful, subjective style moved toward a higher abstraction. Many texts of that time work on multiple levels – they can be read as naive-playful feuilletons or as highly complex montages full of allusions. Walser absorbed influences from serious literature as well as from formula fiction and retold, for example, the plot of a pulp novel in a way that the original (the title of which he never revealed) was unrecognizable. Much of his work was written during these very productive years in Bern.

1929–1956

In the beginning of 1929, Walser, who had had anxieties and hallucinations for quite some time, went to the Bernese mental home Waldau, after a mental breakdown, at his sister Lisa's urging. In his medical records it says: "The patient confessed hearing voices." Therefore, this can hardly be called a voluntary commitment. He was eventually diagnosed with catatonic schizophrenia. While he was in the mental home, his state of mind quickly returned to normal, and he went on writing and publishing. Walser made increasing use of what he called his "pencil method" (Bleistiftmethode), a two-stage compositional process he had reportedly developed as early as 1917. Working drafts of poems, prose pieces, dramatic scenes and even an entire novel (The Robber) were first written in pencil in a minuscule Kurrent hand — the so-called "microscripts" (Mikrogramme) — whose letters measured barely more than a millimetre in height by the end of this phase. In a second working stage, Walser selected from these drafts and copied them out in ink as fair copies, often editing in the process, before submitting them to editors for publication. Only a portion of the microscript drafts were ever transferred into fair copies; comparatively few drafts survive from the Waldau years, with more fair copies and published texts extant from that period.

The microscripts were long thought to be written in a private code. They were eventually deciphered between 1985 and 2000 by Werner Morlang and Bernhard Echte, who published the texts in the six-volume edition Aus dem Bleistiftgebiet ("From the Pencil Zone"). Earlier, in 1972, Jochen Greven and Martin Jürgens had deciphered and published The Robber novel and the Felix scenes from the same body of drafts. In 1933, Walser was transferred against his will to the sanatorium of Herisau in his home canton of Appenzell Ausserrhoden. He stopped writing thereafter — a silence likely shaped not only by the move itself but also by the Nazi seizure of power in Germany, which eliminated a substantial portion of the German-language newspaper and journal market in which Walser's short prose had appeared throughout the 1920s. The director of the Herisau institution, Dr. Otto Hinrichsen — himself a writer — reportedly offered Walser a room set aside for literary work, but Walser did not take it up. Like the other patients, he was occupied with making paper bags and with cleaning duties, and in his free time read popular fiction. In 1934, again against his will, he was placed under legal guardianship. He later told Carl Seelig, "I am not here to write, but to be mad."

In 1936, his admirer Carl Seelig began to visit him. He later wrote a book, Wanderungen mit Robert Walser, about their talks. Seelig tried to revive interest in Walser's work by re-issuing some of his writings. After the death of Walser's brother Karl in 1943 and of his sister Lisa in 1944, Seelig became Walser's legal guardian. Though free of outward signs of mental illness for a long time, Walser was crotchety and repeatedly refused to leave the sanatorium.

In 1955, Walser's novella The Walk (Der Spaziergang) was translated into English by Christopher Middleton; it was the first English translation of his writing and the only one that would appear during his lifetime. Upon learning of Middleton's translation, Walser, who had fallen out of the public eye, responded by musing "Well, look at that."

Walser enjoyed long walks alone. On 25 December 1956 he was found, dead of a heart attack, in a field of snow near the asylum. The photographs of the dead Walser in the snow are reminiscent of a similar image of a dead man in the snow in his first novel, Geschwister Tanner.

Reception

Today, Walser's texts, completely re-edited since the 1970s, are regarded as among the most important writings of literary modernism and German-language literature. Susan Sontag has said that "Walser's virtues are those of the most mature, most civilized art. He is truly a wonderful, heartbreaking writer."

Scholar Michael Andre Bernstein has written:

He is a much more interesting writer than one might guess from [typical anecdotes about] his legend, and his quirky power as a storyteller, the elusive interplay between the hopelessly--even abjectly--naive and the sardonically disenchanted, is utterly singular to him. [His work has a] mixture of passionate identification and subversive mockery at its most unsettling. [...]

Walser's indifference to the literary assumptions and strategies that even the most experimental of his great contemporaries accepted helped him to attain something just as elusive and difficult as their modernist masterpieces: a body of work whose utter strangeness and originality, of purpose and of design, sounds like no one but him. A single page of Walser, taken from anywhere in his work, is instantly recognizable as his. And that, surely, is the one reliable sign of a writer who continues to matter.

Contemporary

In his own time, Walser was admired by writers including Franz Kafka, Hermann Hesse, who said during the height of World War I that "If [Walser] had a hundred thousand readers, the world would be a better place", Stefan Zweig, Walter Benjamin, Christian Morgenstern, and Robert Musil. Walser was better known during his lifetime than Kafka or Walter Benjamin were known in theirs. He never belonged to a literary school or group, perhaps with the exception of the circle around the magazine Die Insel in his youth, but was a notable and often published writer before World War I and into the 1920s.

Rediscovery

After around 1925, Walser was rapidly forgotten, in spite of Carl Seelig's editions, which appeared almost exclusively in Switzerland but received little attention. A revival of interest in his work arose in the 1970's when his writings from "the Pencil Zone", also known as Bleistiftgebiet or "the Microscripts", which had been written in a coded, microscopically tiny hand using a form of Kurrent script on scraps of paper collected while in a Waldau sanatorium, were finally deciphered, translated, and published in German. Since then, almost all his writings have become accessible through an extensive republication of his entire body of work.

In the English-speaking world

In the 1950's and 60's, Christopher Middleton's translation of The Walk and Other Stories was published in 1957, and his translation of Jakob von Gunten in 1969. Several journals published English-language translations of Walser's work in the 1960's including Barataria, Chowder Review, Lowlands Review, The Paris Review, Writ, Delos, and Texas Quarterly, and 0 to 9 magazine which published Kleist in Thun in 1967. Many of these examples were translated by Tom Whalen and collaborators, and one by Harriet Watts.

In 1982, the English-language publication of Selected Stories created a "new phase" of interest about Walser in the English-speaking world and placed him within broader international attention. The reasons were that Farrar, Straus, and Giroux was a much larger publisher than Walser's previous English-language publisher Calder Publishing, and the foreword was written by the renowned public intellectual Susan Sontag. Sontag's introduction contains influential phrasings and analysis about Walser that is often quoted in Walser media coverage. Mark Harman's review in 1983 mentions recent coverage about Walser in Vogue, Time Magazine, and Newsweek.

The bulk of translations and publication of Walser in English occurred in the early 2000's and 2010's, including the three remaining novels that hadn't yet appeared in English (The Tanners, The Assistant, and The Robber), six volumes of prose pieces, and multiple volumes of poetry. (See list of English translations below.)

Simon Wortham asserts that although Walser's revival has rested on a "critical canon" of common-repeated famous names (Kafka, Benjamin, Sontag, Coetzee, etc), the "reassessment of his importance is due to rigorous and patient scholarship [of] a number of academics and translators" over a few decades, especially Susan Bernofsky.

Format and Genre

Aside from his novels and poems, Walser himself called most of his short works "prose pieces." These include a mixture of fiction, historical fiction, non-fictional explorations of specific real subjects, memoir-like musings, "literary snapshots" of urban, social, and natural spaces, and "hybrids of story and essay."

Walser and others have also used the term feuilleton for many of his short works, which refers to the physical type of publication in a newspaper and also refers to the far-ranging sketch-like style that is otherwise uncategorizable. In the words of Christopher Middleton, feuilletons are "miniature impressions, gossipings, entertainments, anecdotes, parables, often with a lyrical twist." Mark Harman writes that Walser's feuilletons are more like parodies of feuilletons.

J.M. Coetzee named Walser as fundamentally an essayist. Walser has also been described as an observer and perceiver of tiny details of everyday life. Scholar George C. Avery wrote that Walser's style is a "characteristically modern combination of essayism and lyricism."

Walser has also been called a "causeur" and a flaneur.

Style and Themes

Susan Sontag has written that Walser's work is "charged with compassion: awareness of the creatureliness of life, of the fellowship of sadness" and that the "moral core of Walser's art is the refusal of power; of domination." Sontag has also described Walser as a "Paul Klee in prose." W.G. Sebald wrote, "Walser accrues insights into his [...] state of mind and the nature of mental disturbance [in a way that is] found nowhere else in literature. With seismographic precision he registers the slightest tremors at the edges of his consciousness, records rejections and ripples in his thoughts and emotions."

In his writing, he made use of elements of Swiss German in a charming and original manner, while very personal observations are interwoven with texts about texts; that is, with contemplations and variations of other literary works, in which Walser often mixes pulp fiction with high literature. Walser has been regarded as the missing link between Heinrich von Kleist and Franz Kafka. As Susan Sontag writes, "at the time [of Walser's writing], it was more likely to be Kafka [who was understood] through the prism of Walser." For example, Robert Musil once referred to Kafka's work as "a peculiar case of the Walser type."

Walser has been described as having a gift for comedy mingling with darker currents and is noted for digressions, abrupt shifts of apparent intention, and shifts of dramatic register. J.M. Coetzee has written that Walser's "charm lies in [...] surprising twists and turns of direction, delicately ironic handling of the formulas of amatory play, and supple and inventive exploitation of the resources of German." Josef Schmidt in the International Fiction Review called Walser a "causeur par excellence" and noted that he treats readers to unique word usages, creations, and hapax legomenon.

William H. Gass has written that many of Walser's pieces are short, reflective, and "deceptively ordinary in their observations." Gass described: "his transitions are abrupt as table edges; non sequiturs flock his pages like [birds]; the pieces turn, often savagely, against themselves, or they dwindle away in apparent weariness and cease for wants of a reason for going on." Noting Walser's "stroller's psychology", Gass wrote, "to his heart, everything is fresh and astonishing."

Benjamin Kunkel has stated that Walser "fulfills the modern criterion: he sounds like nobody else." He described Walser's tone as "hovering between beatific quietism and a burlesque of conventionality". Kunkel stated that Walser's combines "perfect assurance and perfect ambiguity." He observed that Walser seems to never express a non-appreciative opinion about a certain set of things including food, drink, weather, clothing, architecture, and cigars.

Walser has been said to share a literary and stylistic commonality with Ulrich Braker, a Swiss writer who lived from 1735 to 1798. Walser gave a copy of Braker's book The Poor Man of Toggenburg (1789) to Frieda Mermet and said it was full of Lebensweisheit (i.e. or pearls of everyday wisdom).

Legacy and Influence

Aside from Kafka, Hesse, Walter Benjamin, Robert Musil, and Christian Morgenstern in his own time, a number of later artists and writers have expressed admiration for Walser and his work including Christopher Middleton, Thomas Bernhard, Werner Herzog, William H. Gass, Susan Sontag, Martin Walser (no relation), Max Frisch, Giorgio Agamben, Ben Lerner, Rivka Galchen, Benjamin Kunkel, Claudia Hernandez, and Holly Tavel.

He has exerted a considerable influence on various contemporary German writers, including Ror Wolf, Peter Handke, W. G. Sebald, who has expressed a kinship that connects him to Walser, and Max Goldt.

In 2004, Spanish writer Enrique Vila-Matas published a novel entitled Doctor Pasavento about Walser, his stay on Herisau and the wish to disappear. In 2007, Serbian writer Vojislav V. Jovanović published a book of prose named Story for Robert Walser inspired by the life and work of Robert Walser. In 2012, A Little Ramble: In the Spirit of Robert Walser, a series of artistic responses to Walser's work was published, including work by Moyra Davey, Thomas Schütte, Tacita Dean and Mark Wallinger.

Robert Walser Center

Main article: Robert Walser Center

The Robert Walser Center, which was officially established in Bern, Switzerland, in 2009, is dedicated to Robert Walser and the first patron of Walser's work and legacy, Carl Seelig. Its purpose is to promulgate Walser's life and work as well as to facilitate scholarly research. The center is open to both experts and the general public and includes an extensive archive, a research library, temporary exhibition space, and two rooms with several workstations are also available. The Center furthermore develops and organizes exhibitions, events, conferences, workshops, publications, and special editions. The translation of Robert Walser's works, which the Center both encourages and supports, also represents a key focus. In order to fully meet its objectives and responsibilities as a center of excellence, it often collaborates on certain projects with local, national, and international partners as well as universities, schools, theaters, museums, archives, translators, editors, and publishers.

Works

German

• Der Teich, 1902, verse drama
• Schneewittchen, 1901, verse drama
• Fritz Kochers Aufsätze, 1904 ISBN 3-518-37601-2
• Geschwister Tanner, 1907 ISBN 3-518-39982-9
• Der Gehülfe, 1908 ISBN 3-518-37610-1
• Poetenleben, 1908 ISBN 3-518-01986-4
• Jakob von Gunten, 1909 ISBN 3-518-37611-X
• Gedichte, 1909
• Aufsätze, 1913
• Geschichten, 1914
• Kleine Dichtungen, 1915 ISBN 3-518-37604-7
• Prosastücke, 1917
• Der Spaziergang, 1917 ISBN 3-518-37605-5
• Kleine Prosa, 1917
• Poetenleben, 1917 ISBN 3-518-01986-4
• Tobold-Roman, 1918
• Komödie, 1919
• Seeland, 1920 ISBN 3-518-37607-1
• Theodor-Roman, 1921
• Die Rose, 1925 ISBN 3-518-37608-X
• Der Räuber, 1925 (published 1978) ISBN 3-518-37612-8
• Felix-Szenen, 1925
• Große Welt, kleine Welt, 1937
• Dichterbildnisse, 1947
• Dichtungen in Prosa, 1953
• Robert Walser – Briefe, 1979
• Sämtliche Werke in Einzelausgaben. 20 Bde. Hg. v. Jochen Greven. Zürich, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag 1985-1986
• Geschichten, 1985 ISBN 3-518-37602-0
• Der Spaziergang. Prosastücke und Kleine Prosa., 1985 ISBN 3-518-37605-5
• Aufsätze, 1985 ISBN 3-518-37603-9
• Bedenkliche Geschichten. Prosa aus der Berliner Zeit 1906–1912, 1985 ISBN 3-518-37615-2
• Träumen. Prosa aus der Bieler Zeit 1913–1920, 1985 ISBN 3-518-37616-0
• Die Gedichte, 1986 ISBN 3-518-37613-6
• Komödie. Märchenspiele und szenische Dichtung, 1986 ISBN 3-518-37614-4
• Wenn Schwache sich für stark halten. Prosa aus der Berner Zeit 1921–1925, 1986 ISBN 3-518-37617-9
• Zarte Zeilen. Prosa aus der Berner Zeit 1926, 1986 ISBN 3-518-37618-7
• Es war einmal. Prosa aus der Berner Zeit 1927–1928, 1986 ISBN 3-518-37619-5
• Für die Katz. Prosa aus der Berner Zeit 1928–1933, 1986 ISBN 3-518-37620-9
• Aus dem Bleistiftgebiet Band 1. Mikrogramme 1924/25. Hg. v. Bernhard Echte u. Werner Morlang i. A. des Robert Walser-Archivs der Carl Seelig-Stiftung, Zürich. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag 1985–2000 ISBN 3-518-03234-8
• Aus dem Bleistiftgebiet Band 2. Mikrogramme 1924/25. Hg. v. Bernhard Echte u. Werner Morlang i. A. des Robert Walser-Archivs der Carl Seelig-Stiftung, Zürich. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag 1985–2000 ISBN 3-518-03234-8
• Aus dem Bleistiftgebiet Band 3. Räuber-Roman, Felix-Szenen. Hg. v. Bernhard Echte u. Werner Morlang i. A. des Robert Walser-Archivs der Carl Seelig-Stiftung, Zürich. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag 1985–2000 ISBN 3-518-03085-X
• Aus dem Bleistiftgebiet Band 4. Mikrogramme 1926/27. Hg. v. Bernhard Echte u. Werner Morlang i. A. des Robert Walser-Archivs der Carl Seelig-Stiftung, Zürich. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag 1985–2000 ISBN 3-518-40224-2
• Aus dem Bleistiftgebiet Band 5. Mikrogramme 1925/33. Hg. v. Bernhard Echte u. Werner Morlang i. A. des Robert Walser-Archivs der Carl Seelig-Stiftung, Zürich. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag 1985–2000 ISBN 3-518-40851-8
• Aus dem Bleistiftgebiet Band 6. Mikrogramme 1925/33. Hg. v. Bernhard Echte u. Werner Morlang i. A. des Robert Walser-Archivs der Carl Seelig-Stiftung, Zürich. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag 1985–2000 ISBN 3-518-40851-8
• Unsere Stadt. Texte über Biel. 2002 ISBN 3-907142-04-7
• Feuer. Unbekannte Prosa und Gedichte. 2003 ISBN 3-518-41356-2
• Tiefer Winter. Geschichten von der Weihnacht und vom Schneien. Hg. v. Margit Gigerl, Livia Knüsel u. Reto Sorg. Frankfurt: Insel Taschenbuch Verlag 2007 (it; 3326), ISBN 978-3-458-35026-2
• Kritische Robert Walser-Ausgabe. Kritische Ausgabe sämtlicher Drucke und Manuskripte. Hg. v. Wolfram Groddeck, Barbara von Reibnitz u.a. Basel, Frankfurt am Main: Stroemfeld, Schwabe 2008
• Briefe. Berner Ausgabe. Hg. v. Lucas Marco Gisi, Reto Sorg, Peter Stocker u. Peter Utz. Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag 2018

English translations

• The Walk and Other Stories (Calder Publishing, 1957), translated by Christopher Middleton
• Jakob von Gunten (University of Texas Press, 1970; New York Review Books Classics, 1999), translated by Christopher Middleton, ISBN 0-940322-21-8
• Selected Stories (Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1982; New York Review Books Classics, 2002), translated by Christopher Middleton, ISBN 0-940322-98-6
• Robert Walser Rediscovered: Stories, Fairy-Tale Plays, & Critical Response Including the Anti-Fairy Tales, Cinderella & Snow White (University Press of New England, 1985), edited by Mark Harman ISBN 0-87451-334-0
• Masquerade and Other Stories (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), translated by Susan Bernofsky, foreword by William H. Gass ISBN 0-8018-3977-7
• The Robber (University of Nebraska Press, 2000), translated by Susan Bernofsky, ISBN 0-8032-9809-9
• Speaking to the Rose: Writings, 1912–1932 (University of Nebraska Press, 2005), translated by Christopher Middleton, ISBN 0-8032-9833-1
• The Assistant (New Directions, 2007), translated by Susan Bernofsky, ISBN 978-0-8112-1590-9
• The Tanners (New Directions, 2009), translated by Susan Bernofsky, ISBN 978-0-8112-1589-3
• Microscripts (New Directions, 2010), translated by Susan Bernofsky, ISBN 978-0-8112-1880-1
• Answer to an Inquiry (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2010), translated by Paul North, with drawings by Friese Undine, ISBN 978-1933254746
• Berlin Stories (New York Review Books Classics, 2012), translated by Susan Bernofsky, ISBN 978-1-59017-454-8
• The Walk (New Directions, 2012), translated by Christopher Middleton with Susan Bernofsky, ISBN 9780811219921
• Thirty Poems (New Directions, 2012), translated by Christopher Middleton, ISBN 978-0811220019
• Oppressive Light: Selected Poems by Robert Walser (Black Lawrence Press/Dzanc Books, New York, 2012), edited and translated by Daniele Pantano, ISBN 978-1-93687-318-0
• A Little Ramble: In the Spirit of Robert Walser (New Directions, 2012), translated by Susan Bernofsky with Christopher Middleton and Tom Whalen ISBN 978-0811220996
• A Schoolboy's Diary (New York Review Books Classics, 2013), translated by Damion Searls, introduction by Ben Lerner, ISBN 9781590176726
• Looking at Pictures (Christine Burgin / New Directions, 2015), translated by Susan Bernofsky with Lydia Davis and Christopher Middleton, ISBN 9780811224246
• Girlfriends, Ghosts, and Other Stories (New York Review Books Classics, 2016), translated by Tom Whalen, with Nicole Kongeter and Annette Wiesner, afterword by Tom Whalen, ISBN 978-1681370163
• Little Snow Landscape (New York Review Books, 2021), trans. Tom Whalen
• Robert Walser: The Poems (Seagull Books, 2022), translated by Daniele Pantano
• My Heart Has So Many Flaws: Early Poems (Sublunary Editions, 2024), translated by Kristofor Minta

Plays

• Robert Walser – mikrogramme – das kleine welttheater, director: Christian Bertram, stage: Max Dudler, music: Hans Peter Kuhn, début performance 14 April 2005 Berlin; readings, films and podium discussion with corollary program www.mikrogramme.de
• Institute Benjamenta, director: Gökçen Ergene
• Fairy Tales: Dramolettes (New Directions, 2015), translated by James Reidel and Daniele Pantano, with a preface by Reto Sorg, ISBN 978-0-8112-2398-0
• Comedies (Seagull Books, 2018), translated by Daniele Pantano and James Reidel, with a preface by Reto Sorg, ISBN 978-0857424693

Movies

• Jakob von Gunten, director: Peter Lilienthal, script: Ror Wolf and Peter Lilienthal, 1971
• Der Gehülfe, director: Thomas Koerfer, 1975
• Der Vormund und sein Dichter, direction and script: Percy Adlon, 1978 (free picturization of Seelig's Wanderungen mit Robert Walser)
• Robert Walser (1974–1978), direction and script: HHK Schoenherr
• Waldi, direction and script: Reinhard Kahn, Michael Leiner (after the story Der Wald), 1980
• The Comb, directors: Stephen Quay, Timothy Quay (i.e. Brothers Quay), 1990
• Brentano, director: Romeo Castellucci, with Paolo Tonti as Brentano, 1995
• Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life, directors: Stephen Quay, Timothy Quay (i.e. Brothers Quay) with Mark Rylance as Jakob von Gunten, 1995
• Blanche Neige, directed by Rudolph Straub, music by Giovanna Marini, 1999
• Branca de Neve, director: João César Monteiro, 2000
• All This Can Happen, directors: Siobhan Davies, David Hinton, 2012

Opera

• Schneewittchen, 1998, by Heinz Holliger

Further reading

In English

• Davenport, Guy (Spring 1977). "A Field of Snow on a Slope of the Rosenberg". Georgia Review. 21 (1): 5–41.
• O'Brien, John, ed. (Spring 1992). "Robert Walser Special Issue". The Review of Contemporary Fiction. 12 (1).
• Benjamin, Walter (1999). "Robert Walser". In Jennings, Michael W.; Eiland, Howard; Smith, Gary (eds.). Selected Writings of Walter Benjamin Volume 2, 1927–1934 (PDF). Translated by Livingstone, Rodney. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. pp. 257–261. ISBN 0-674-94586-7.
• Coetzee, J. M. (2 November 2000). "The Genius of Robert Walser". The New York Review of Books.
• Mendelssohn, Deidre Foley (26 May 2010). "The Book Bench: Scribe of the Small". The New Yorker.
• Bernofsky, Susan (2012). Introduction. Microscripts. By Walser, Robert. New Directions. ISBN 978-0-81122-033-0.
• Frederick, Samuel (2012). Narratives Unsettled: Digression in Robert Walser, Thomas Bernhard, and Adalbert Stifter. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. ISBN 978-0-81012-817-0.
• Frederick, Samuel; Heffernan, Valerie, eds. (2018). Robert Walser - A Companion. Northwestern University Press.
• Shipley, Gary J. (October 2013). "Smithereens: On Robert Walser's Microscripts". The Black Herald (4): 104–119.
• Fabri, Ansgar; Brückner, Burkhart (2015). "Biography of Robert Otto Walser". Biographical Archive of Psychiatry.
• Weitzman, Erica (2015). Irony's Antics: Walser, Kafka, Roth and the German Comic Tradition. Northwestern University Press. ISBN 978-0-81012-983-2.
• Seelig, Carl (2017). Walks with Walser. Translated by Posten, Anne. New Directions. ISBN 978-0-81122-139-9.
• Ahmadian, Mahdi; Mohsen, Hanif (2018). "An Existential Crisis: The Significance of the Opening and Concluding Passages of Robert Walser's Jakob Von Gunten". Forum for World Literature Studies. 10 (3): 463–472.
• Bernofsky, Susan (2021). Clairvoyant of the Small: The Life of Robert Walser (Biography). Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300220643.
• Wortham, Simon (2025). Reading Robert Walser: Criticism, creativity, correspondence. UCL Press. ISBN 9781800088269.
• Wortham, Simon (2025). Robert Walser and the Politics of Neglect. Springer. doi:10.1007/978-3-032-03002-3. ISBN 978-3-032-03001-6.

In German

• Mächler, Robert (1976). Das Leben Robert Walsers. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. ISBN 3-518-39986-1.
• Hamm, Peter (1980). Robert Walser. Leben und Werk in Daten und Bildern. Insel. ISBN 978-3-45831-964-1.
• Meier, Andreas; Echte, Bernhard, eds. (1990). Die Brüder Karl und Robert Walser. Maler und Dichter. Rothenhäusler. ISBN 3-907960-37-8.
• Greven, Jochen (1992). Robert Walser. Figur am Rande, in wechselndem Licht. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag. ISBN 3-596-11378-4.
• Sauvat, Catherine (1993). Vergessene Welten. Biographie zu Robert Walser. Bruckner & Thünker. ISBN 3-905208-01-6.
• Echte, Bernhard (2002). Walsers Kindheit und Jugend in Biel. Biographischer Essay. Nimbus. ISBN 3-907142-05-5.
• Märki, Lukas (2002). Auf den Spuren Robert Walsers. Nimbus. ISBN 3-907142-07-1.
• Groddeck, Wolfram; Sorg, Reto; Utz, Peter; Wanger, Karl, eds. (2007). Robert Walsers "Ferne Nähe". neue Beiträge zur Forschung. Brill Deutschland. doi:10.30965/9783846745175. ISBN 978-3-7705-4517-9.
• Gigerl, Margit; Fattori, Anna, eds. (2008). Bildersprache, Klangfiguren. Spielformen der Intermedialität bei Robert Walser. Brill Deutschland. ISBN 978-3-7705-4711-1.
• Gisi, Lucas Mario (2012). "Das Schweigen des Schriftstellers. Robert Walser und das Macht-Wissen der Psychiatrie". In Wernli, Martina (ed.). Wissen und Nicht-Wissen in der Klinik. Dynamiken der Psychiatrie um 1900. Bielefield. pp. 231–259. ISBN 978-3-8376-1934-8.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Gisi, Lucas Marco, ed. (2015). Robert Walser-Handbuch. Leben – Werk – Wirkung. Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler. doi:10.1007/978-3-476-05303-9. ISBN 978-3-476-02418-3.
• Bernofsky, Susan (2025). »Hellseher im Kleinen«. Das Leben Robert Walsers. Translated by Adrian, Michael. Suhrkamp. ISBN 978-3-518-43159-7.

External links

In English

• Robert Walser Center (official site of the Robert Walser archive and society in Bern, with information, documentation, and resources about the writer's life and work)
• Works by Robert Walser at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Robert Walser at the Internet Archive
• Works by Robert Walser at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• "A Celebration of the Work of Swiss Writer Robert Walser on KCRW's Bookworm
• Swiss Literary Archive
• "The Lightest Touch" review of A Schoolboy's Diary at The Millions
• "A Prose Piece for Your Gaps" Archived 27 November 2017 at the Wayback Machine Review of A Schoolboy's Diary at Open Letters Monthly

In German

• Robert Walser Center
• Robert Walser-Pfad, Herisau
• Kritische Walser Ausgabe
• Robert Walser Preis