Speaking to the Rose: Writings, 1912-1932

The chronological sequence of the texts should not be mistaken for a means to focus attention on Walser as a person. As author and individual, Walser articulates a large and general cast of mind, such as strictly “personal” writings seldom do. He can be considered a voice of the unvanquished downtrodden (in early work, of the employee), of people never quite small enough to slip through power’s mesh, of the powerless who do not squirm but resist. Elusive as he is, his mimicries, his discontinuous digressions, ironies, even simulations, project an authentic and vital type, homo ludens, for whom creative play is the desirable thing, even the sublime thing. His prose, more agile than proper, more obstinately naif than burnished, certainly has ancestors, but it stands apart from other literary registers (as does that of Joyce or of Beckett). This otherness may be Swiss: that Walser spoke Swiss-German his prose does remind us. Yet he also did maintain a stand, seldom without his slingshot, in opposition to the grander writing in German of his time.