{"id":16119,"date":"2015-07-10T15:13:08","date_gmt":"2015-07-10T19:13:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=16119"},"modified":"2015-07-10T15:13:08","modified_gmt":"2015-07-10T19:13:08","slug":"robert-walser-fairy-tales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2015\/07\/10\/robert-walser-fairy-tales\/","title":{"rendered":"Robert Walser: Fairy Tales<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

More than a century ago, Robert Walser wrote a series of\u00a0dramolettes that, as Walter Benjamin said when admiring them in 1929, “start where the fairy tale stops,” presenting to us\u00a0unique visions of some famous stories.\u00a0New Directions has recently brought\u00a0four of these to us — Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty,\u00a0and the Christ Child — in Fairy Tales<\/em> (tr. from the German by Daniele Pantano and James Reidel, 2015).<\/p>\n

\"Walser<\/p>\n

Though written in dramatic form, according to Reto Sorg’s useful preface to the edition pictured below, Walser\u00a0never intended the\u00a0mini-plays\u00a0to be performed. Of course, Walser wrote many things he seemingly never intended to make its way to an audience; he wrote, particularly in his later years when hospitalized in the Waldau sanatorium, many volume’s worth of manuscripts in a shrunken down form, some of which is nicely presented to us in another New Directions volume published in English in 2012: Microscripts<\/em>. Walser, though in his youth hopeful about his ambitions, seems to have been more\u00a0interested in the life of literature, even when unread. Of course, these “fairy tales” should not be unread. They are\u00a0delightfully playful\u00a0while being\u00a0sophisticated interrogations into existence, which I’ve also ruminated about when writing about Walser’s Berlin Stories<\/em> and The Walk<\/em> (here <\/a>and here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

In the four pieces presented here, it is the fairy tale characters themselves who — refreshingly —\u00a0question the world around them and, in particular, how they were fated to be in that fairy tale to begin with.<\/p>\n

When we begin the first tale, Snow White<\/em>, as Benjamin said, we essentially\u00a0pick up where the tale left off. The Queen approaches Snow White and merely says, “Say, are you sick?” Snow White begins to chastise the Queen, whom she calls Mother, for wanting her death. The Prince, perhaps a bit confused as to how he got involved in this whole thing (the princes have been called Walserian heroes, and I cannot think of a better way to describe their uncertainty), supports Snow White and they walk away:<\/p>\n

Queen:<\/em><\/span>
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Just go, broken mast and rigging.<\/span>
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Go newlyweds, married to death.<\/span>
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Go misery, lead weakness away,<\/span>
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 and be very dear arm in arm.<\/span>
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Come, fair Hunter, let’s have a talk.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But, while the Prince talks on about how wonderful their life is going to be, he cannot help but notice all is not well with his new companion:<\/p>\n

Prince:<\/span>
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 What’s wrong, speak! You look so somber,<\/span>
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 so plaintive right down to your toes,<\/span>
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 as if you were searching for words<\/span>
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 that whisper love. Do not sulk there.<\/span>
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Speak up when something troubles you.<\/span>
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Unroll it just like a carpet<\/span>
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 on which we will merrily play.<\/span>
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 To dally in heartache does one good.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You see, Snow White was never meant for passion and love. Later, when he spies the Hunter and the Queen embraced lovingly — to say the least — the Prince is troubled by his fate. Snow White is too: “O, how I long for nothing more \/ than to be smiling and dead, dead.” This leads to an unlikely, but fully felt, reconciliation between Snow White and the Queen.<\/p>\n

Similarly, Walser upends the other two classic fairy tales — Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty — and in each case there is every reason to wonder about the prince who comes to the rescue, not because he is secretly evil but because he is entirely human. All of the characters abandon their tropes — even the fairy tale itself pops in now and again to have a word.<\/p>\n

Consequently, more than simple revisionism or what-if speculation,\u00a0which we see so often now, for good and for bad, Walser’s characters look at the world in which they’ve been placed, examine the discrepancies and limitations, and then speak what they feel, not necessarily because they’re emboldened.<\/p>\n

Though my admiration for this book comes from Walser’s modernist examinations of fate, my joy comes from Walser’s playfulness.\u00a0Roaming underneath his stories is a sense of a dark hole, but fighting for prominence is a whimsy, an exuberance (a word I cannot help but include in a review of Walser’s work), that, fully aware of the shadow, shines light and cheerfulness on everything.\u00a0And so, beyond being a dramolette based on an old and familiar story,\u00a0the Christ Child fits nicely in this package. In it, Mary and Joseph experience joy at the birth for the same reasons any of us experience joy at the birth of our children. They’re aware that a dark day is coming, but for now they can manage to look at what they have, what they truly sense right in front of them, and the shadow, though frightening,\u00a0makes it all the more lovely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Robert Walser’s playful and sophisticated four dramolettes, featuring Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and the Christ Child, are now available from New Directions. Trevor reviews Fairy Tales<\/em>, translated from the German by Daniele Pantano and James Reidel. Read the full post<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16120,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"libsyn-item-id":0,"libsyn-show-id":0,"libsyn-post-error":"","libsyn-post-error_post-type":"","libsyn-post-error_post-permissions":"","libsyn-post-error_api":"","playlist-podcast-url":"","libsyn-episode-thumbnail":"","libsyn-episode-widescreen_image":"","libsyn-episode-blog_image":"","libsyn-episode-background_image":"","libsyn-post-episode-category-selection":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_thumbnail":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_theme":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_height":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_width":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_placement":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link_text":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_custom_color":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-explicit":"","libsyn-post-episode":"","libsyn-post-episode-update-id3":"","libsyn-post-episode-release-date":"","libsyn-post-episode-simple-download":"","libsyn-release-date":"","libsyn-post-update-release-date":"","libsyn-is_draft":"","libsyn-new-media-media":"","libsyn-post-episode-subtitle":"","libsyn-new-media-image":"","libsyn-post-episode-keywords":"","libsyn-post-itunes":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-season-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-type":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-title":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-author":"","libsyn-destination-releases":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-enabled":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-input-enabled":false,"libsyn-post-episode-premium_state":"","libsyn-episode-shortcode":"","libsyn-episode-embedurl":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[127],"tags":[556],"coauthors":[505],"class_list":["post-16119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-robert-walser","tag-german"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Walser-Fairy-Tales.jpg?fit=416%2C700&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-4bZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16119"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16127,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16119\/revisions\/16127"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16119"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=16119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}