Con uno stile ampolloso un flaneur osserva il mondo e lo ce lo racconta. Quanta ironia si nasconde (ma si cela davvero?) dietro a queste osservazioni così rigide e serie? Splendida la lettera a mister otto palchi di corna.

Ci deve essere qualcosa che mi sfugge: sulla carta questo libro aveva tutto per piacermi ma così non è. Mi viene da pensare che forse mi sono trovato a leggerlo nel momento sbagliato. Probabilmente a 16 anni, magari letto insieme a Viaggio intorno alla mia camera di De Maistre (per dire di un libro molto diverso ma affine in quanto molto amato per il suo piglio introspettivo e che forse oggi non amerei) mi sarebbe piaciuto. Ecco l'aggettivo: adolescenziale. Non riesco a descrivere meglio il mix di autoreferenzialità e pessimismo, naiveté e formalismo che anima il libro. E proprio non riesco a digerirlo. Dato tutto il bene che sento dire di Walser, credo dovrò concedergli almeno un'altra lettura, quindi per ora sospendo il giudizio (e metto tre stelline democristiane). ( )

La vida de Robert Walser es una de las más apasionantes tragedias de la literatura centroeuropea de este siglo. Autodidacta, errante, finísimo estilista de la lengua alemana y provisto de una mirada capaz de destripar la realidad con la más suave ironía, Walser empleó los pocos años en que pudo escribir, entre 1904 y 1925, antes de sucumbir a una enfermedad mental de origen hereditario, en tallar exquisitas miniaturas acerca de una vida cotidiana poblada de personajes e impresiones que vienen de la noche cuando ésta es más oscura. El paseo es una de esas miniaturas. Un poeta sale a pasear y ante su mirada se alternan la belleza de la vida y el absurdo de las convenciones de la sociedad, el sonido de una voz que canta y el espectáculo del gran teatro del mundo. Entre el sabor más crítico y la más pura de las reflexiones, El paseo es una espléndida muestra del arte de este autor tan admirado por escritores como Kafka, Thomas Mann, Musil, Canetti, Walter Benjamin o Claudio Magris, entre otros.

I was looking forward to reading this book but was somewhat disappointed by the writer’s wordy style.

The writer describes a walk he takes and all that he sees and does in the course of it, e.g. catches sight of a beautiful woman whom he bountifully praises, meets a girl who sings wondrously and compliments her excessively to an embarrassing extent.

Then he goes to dinner with a Frau Aebi who tells him he must eat until he falls unconscious, and she seems to mean it, so that was unfortunate.

He also had to visit the Post Office and the tailor’s, and then pay his taxes.

He imparts to us the contents of a letter he has just posted, in which he attacks the recipient in no uncertain terms, and is inordinately critical of the tailor who makes a suit for him.

His declaration to the taxman finally lets me realize that the book is a parody (I’m a bit slow in certain respects).

He explains that he earns a very dubious income and that the taxman will find not the tiniest trace of an amassed fortune. He is “extremely free from wealth” but “laden with every sort of poverty”. He asks the taxman to write all this in his notebook.

He cannot permit himself to be seen on the streets on Sundays since he has no Sunday clothes.

He has written several books, “which unfortunately were quite poorly received by the reading public”.

The taxman replies, irrelevantly, that the author is often to be seen out for a walk, to which Walser retorts that without walking he would be dead and would not be able to collect either observations or studies and would thus not be able to produce an essay, let alone a story.

I appreciated the humorous content of the story, while having difficulty with the author’s unwarranted verbose style, that gives the impression that his main object is to show off his prolific vocabulary. But the more I read, the more I liked the book.

We’re told in the introduction that the goal of the author’s various errands is distraction from something he is desperately trying to banish from his thoughts, but I must have missed this.

Though I do see that the end of the story was extremely negative. Perhaps the author was unhappy in love, or had not said what he should have to his lady love. ( )