"The Walk" by Robert Walser (1917)

"Since then I have slowly learned to grasp how everything is connected across space and time, the life of the Prussian writer Kleist with that of a Swiss author who claims to have worked as a clerk in a brewery in Thun, the echo of a pistol shot across the Wannsee with the view from a window of the Herisau asylum, Walser’s long walks with my own travels, dates of birth with dates of death, happiness with misfortune, natural history and the history of our industries, that of Heimat with that of exile. On all these paths Walser has been my constant companion. I only need to look up for a moment in my daily work to see him standing somewhere a little apart, the unmistakable figure of the solitary walker just pausing to take in the surroundings."  William Sebald

German Literature Month November 2014 Year IV

Works I have so far read for German Literature Month 2014

1.   Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

2.   Gertrude by Hermann Hesse 

3.  "Diary of a School Boy" by Robert Walser (no post)

4.  Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse

5.  Burning Secret by Stefan Zweig 1925

6.  Life Goes On by Hans Keilson

7.  Comedy in a Minor Key by Hans Keilson

8.  "The Wall" by Jurek Becker

9.  "Romeo" by Jurek Becker

10.   "The Invisible City" by Jurek Becker.

11.  Wittgenstein's Nephew by Thomas Bernhard

12. "Dostoevsky's Idiot" by Robert Walser

13.  "French Newspapers" by Robert Wasler 

14.  Jakob the Lier by Jurek Becker

15.  The Trial by Franz Kafka 1915,

16.  "The Seamstress" by Rainer Maria Rilke  1894

17.  "The Experiement or the Victory of Children" by Unica Zürn 1950

18.  "The Star Above the Forest" by Stefan Zweig. 1924

19.  "Saint Cecilia or the Power of Music" by Heinrich von Kleist 1810

20.  Amok by Stefan Zweig 1923

21.  Concrete 1982

22.  "Kleist in Thun" by Robert Walser 1913

23.  "Incident at Lake Geneva" by Stefan Zweig (1924)

24.  "The Governess" by Stefan Zweig 1927

25.  "The Sandman" by E. T. A. Hoffmann 1817

26.  "The Secrets of the Princess of Kagran" by Ingeborg Bachmann 1971

27.  "Twilight" by Stefan Zweig 1928

28.   "The Lunatic" by Georg Heym 1913

29.    "Dissection" by Georg Heym 1913 - no post 

30.   "Blackbird" by Robert Musil

31.  "The Kiss" by Robert Walser 1914. - no post

32.  "The Suspect" by Jurek Becker. 1980,

33.  "A Favorite Family Story" by Jurek Becker 1982

34.  "Moonbeam Alley" by Stefan Zweig. 1928

35.  "Flower Days". By Robert Walser, 1911, no post.

36.  "Fantastic Night" by Stefan Zweig

37.   "The Walk" by Robert Walser. 1917

38.   The Flight Without End by Joseph Roth. No post.

When I attempted to post on Robert Walser's "Kleist in Thun" I found myself unable to do more than launch into a barely credible to those who have not experienced rhapsody on the story in which I said 

it belonged among the greatest of all art.  I now feel the same way about his longer work, "The Walk". 

Maybe in 2015 I will try to write a series of post on Walser, I have two of his collections of short stories.

William Sebald does a great job of explaining the wonder and power of Robert Walser in this article reprinted in The New Yorker.

http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/le-promeneur-solitaire-w-g-sebald-on-robert-walser

                                Getting Ready for the closing Party for German Literature Month IV

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