Research Catalog
Microscripts
- Title
- Microscripts / Robert Walser ; translated from the German and with an introduction by Susan Bernofsky ; afterword by Walter Benjamin.
- Author
- Walser, Robert, 1878-1956.
- Publication
- New York : New Directions : Christine Burgin Gallery, 2010.
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| Status | Format | Access | Call Number | Item Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Schwarzman Building to submit a request in person. | Text | Use in library | JFE 22-2936 | Schwarzman Building - Main Reading Room 315 |
Details
- Additional Authors
- Bernofsky, Susan
- Description
- 159 pages : illustrations (some color); 23 cm
- Summary
- Robert Walser wrote many of his manuscripts in a highly enigmatic, reduced form. These narrow strips of paper, covered with tiny antlike pencil markings a millimeter high, came to light only after the author's death in 1956. At first misconstrued as secret code, the microscripts were eventually found to be a form of German script so radically miniaturized that an entire story might fit on the back of a business card.
- Selected from the six-volume German original, these twenty-five short pieces address schnapps, rotten husbands, small-town life, elegant jaunts, the radio, swine (and how none of us can deny being one), jealousy, and marriage proposals. This is the first English translation of Walser's work to be accompanied by facsimiles of the original microscripts and the original German texts.
- "A clairvoyant of the small."--W.G. Sebald.
- "One of the profoundest products of modern literature."ùWalter Benjamin.
- "Incredibly interesting and beautiful."ùJohn Ashbery.
- "Some of Walser's most beautiful and haunting writing."ùBenjamin Kunkel, The New Yorker.
- "Language is Walser's great love, a love he sometimes openly confesses, sometimes ironizes. He writes out of the pleasure of language, a true musician, and this gives each of his works the magic of an art that has almost become nature again, of a virtuosity almost childlike and naive.".ùHermann Hesse.
- Prize-winning translator Susan Bernofsky is now at work on a biography of Robert Walser. --Book Jacket.
- Uniform Title
- Aus dem Bleistiftgebiet. Selections. English
- Alternative Title
- Aus dem Bleistiftgebiet.
- Subjects
- Genre/Form
- Short stories.
- Criticism, interpretation, etc.
- Bibliography (note)
- Includes bibliographical references.
- Language (note)
- Includes transcriptions of original German texts.
- Contents
- Secrets, not code : on Robert Walser's microscripts / Susan Bernofsky -- Radio -- Swine -- If I am properly informed -- What a nice writer I ran into not long ago -- The songstress -- The demanding fellow -- Somewhere and somewhen -- The train station (II) -- Crisis -- So here was a book again -- Is it perhaps my immaturity -- The prodigal son -- Usually I first put on a prose piece jacket -- My subject here is a victor -- A will to shake that refined individual -- He numbered, as might well have been true -- Journey to a small town -- The marriage proposal -- Autumn (II) -- A sort of Cleopatra -- The failure to prize the chance -- As I was instructed by a book -- Schnapps -- New year's page -- Robert Walser / Walter Benjamin.
- Call Number
- JFE 22-2936
- ISBN
- 9780811218801
- 0811218805
- LCCN
- 2009051824
- OCLC
- 464579947
- Author
- Walser, Robert, 1878-1956.
- Title
- Microscripts / Robert Walser ; translated from the German and with an introduction by Susan Bernofsky ; afterword by Walter Benjamin.
- Imprint
- New York : New Directions : Christine Burgin Gallery, 2010.
- Type of Content
- text
- Type of Medium
- unmediated
- Type of Carrier
- volume
- Bibliography
- Includes bibliographical references.
- Language
- Includes transcriptions of original German texts.
- Chronological Term
- 1900-1999
- Added Author
- Bernofsky, Susan
- Research Call Number
- JFE 22-2936