"The Little Berliner" - A Short Story by Robert Walser - 1914- translated from the German by Helen Watts - included in Selected Short Stories of Robert Walser

The Little Berliner" - A Short Story by Robert Walser - 1914- translated from the German by Helen Watts - included in Selected Short Stories of Robert Walser

"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

 "The Little Berliner" by Robert Walser, is part of my Participation in German Literature III, hosted by Lizzy’s Literary Life 

https://lizzysiddal2.wordpress.com/2023/09/22/announcing-german-literature-month-xiii/

Born: April 15, 1878, Biel/Bienne, Switzerland

Died: December 25, 1956, Herisau, Switzerland

Robert Walser is for sure now on my read everything he wrote list. I was glad to see a preface by Susan Sontag, (say what you will but they do not come much smarter than Sontag) included with The Walk and Other Stories by Robert Walser.  

I have already done several posts on short stories by Walser. (You can read Sontag's essay and "Response to a Request" by downloading a sample of The Walk and Other Stories). There is great sadness and loneliness in the stories of Walser. There was a time when people compared Kafka to him, now it is the other way around. Sontag and W. C. Sebald both verify this. Sontag calls Walser "a kind, gentle tempered Beckett". Walser's stories seem to me about the struggle to keep the self  alive in a world where blind conformity is the norm. 

"The Little Berliner" is narrated by the 12 year old daughter of an affluent art dealer, she lives in a rich neighbourhood.  She is an only child.  Her parents are separated, she occasionally stays in Munich with her mother. She has her future all as the wife of a wealthy man mapped out. She does know there are many poor people in Berlin but this is very remote to her, 

I found "The Little Berliner" a delightful story.