The Walk (New Directions Pearls) - Softcover

Walser, Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0811219925 ISBN 13: 9780811219921

Publisher: New Directions, 2012

Synopsis

Robert Walser's preferred alternate version of his classic tale. In a new translation by Susan Bernofsky, The Walk is an elegant consideration of walking and the philosophical musings it engenders.

A pseudo-biographical “stroll” through town and countryside rife with philosophical musings, The Walk has been hailed as the masterpiece of Walser’s short prose. Walking features heavily in his writing, but nowhere else is it as elegantly considered. Without walking, “I would be dead,” Walser explains, “and my profession, which I love passionately, would be destroyed. Because it is on walks that the lore of nature and the lore of the country are revealed, charming and graceful, to the sense and eyes of the observant walker.” The Walk was the first piece of Walser’s work to appear in English, and the only one translated before his death. However, Walser heavily revised his most famous novella, altering nearly every sentence, rendering the baroque tone of his tale into something more spare. An introduction by translator Susan Bernofsky explains the history of The Walk, and the differences between its two versions.

About this title

About the Authors

Robert Walser (1878–1956) was born in Switzerland. He left school at fourteen and led a wandering and precarious existence working as a bank clerk, a butler in a castle, and an inventor's assistant while producing essays, stories, and novels. In 1933 he abandoned writing and entered a sanatorium―where he remained for the rest of his life. "I am not here to write," Walser said, "but to be mad."

Susan Bernofsky has translated works by Franz Kafka and Hermann Hesse, among others, and is the recipient of many awards, including the Helen and Kurt Wolff Prize. She is the director of the literary translation program at Columbia University and lives in New York.

Edition details

• Publisher: New Directions
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0811219925
• ISBN 13: 9780811219921
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 96