Robert Walser, Looking at Pictures

Robert Walser. Looking at Pictures . Translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky, Lydia Davis, and Christopher Middleton. New York: Christine Burgin/New Directions, 2015. 144 pages, illustrated. $24.95 hardcover.

The ancient practice of ekphrasis is a matter of speaking about a work of visual art, providing a verbal analogue of a mute image. (Think shield of Achilles , Iliad 18.) In these twenty-five short prose pieces, Robert Walser (1878–1956) writes about paintings, to paintings, and from within paintings. And at times he leaves paintings aside to discuss other things. Each work of art becomes an occasion for the writer’s own imaginative performance.

Walser writes about paintings (by his brother Karl, Fragonard, Watteau, Van Gogh, Cezanne, and others) as if no one had ever thought to do so before. Thus the element of arch naïveté in his prose: “A painter is a person who holds a brush in his hand. On the brush is paint.” “Every great painter the world has known has been cheerful, quiet, thoughtful, clever and superbly educated.” Historicizing a Fragonard painting, Walser presents himself as a game amateur doing his best: “Railroads didn’t exist yet, and the niceties of central heating had not yet been worked out. No one had ever heard of petroleum lamps.” And of Watteau:

Knowing little about him, I shall nonetheless promptly make my way, as if rambling across meadows, into the task of describing his life, as if stepping into an attractive, prettily wallpapered little house, this being a life devoted to gaiety, that is to art, in other words to a certain delight in one’s own person.

A delight in one’s own person indeed.

The aesthetic of Looking at Pictures is a playful blend of realism and its alternatives. An imaginary painter writes in a notebook of painting “meticulously precise likenesses” of people and things. Elsewhere Walser praises painted bouquets as possessing “flower-bouquetishness,” and painted domiciles, “domesticity.” And of a Beardsley candle: “It may be that never before has an illustrator reproduced the flickering of a candle in so candle-like a manner, so flickery.” Paintings (or the figures therein) at times become so real that they talk back: Van Gogh’s Madame Joseph-Michel Ginoux tells Walser of her early life; Manet’s Olympia asks Walser to tell her a story. The high point of this play comes in a piece about Diaz’s The Forest Clearing : its landscape becomes the setting for a terrifying monologue by a mother abandoning her child, a mother conscious of her presence within a painting: “I swear to you, as truthfully as I am standing here with you in this forest painted by Diaz, you must earn your livelihood with bitter toil so that you will not go to ruin inwardly.” And the leaves on the ground offer their comment on Walser’s work:

“What has been written in this brief essay appears to be quite simple, but there are times when everything simple and readily comprehensible recedes from human understanding and only can be grasped with great effort.”

Elsewhere Walser leaves paintings behind. “An Exhibition of Belgian Art” begins with an undescribed visit to one exhibition site, followed by a stop at a café, thoughts about a girlfriend, recollections of military sevice, more thoughts about a girlfriend, an account of a dream, a story from Swiss history, until finally:

Pleased as I am to have had the opportunity to speak about a stately and beautiful artistic event, I consider myself obliged to limit myself with regard to the extensiveness of my remarks. Everything I have neglected to say can be given voice to by others.

The deciphering of Robert Walser’s pencilled microscripts and the rediscovery of his beautiful, funny, sad, enigmatic work (in German and in English translation) is one of the great developments in late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century literary culture. I look forward to further new arrivals in translation from both published works and the Bleistiftgebiet (pencil zone).

Related reading
All OCA Robert Walser posts (Pinboard)

[Thanks to the publishers for a review copy of the book. Cover image from the New Directions website.]

[Your selection here.]

Fresca posted a link to a video clip that begins with a few seconds of a pianist playing John Lennon’s “Imagine” outside the Bataclan Theatre. I watched, and I lost it. (And I don’t even much like “Imagine.”) And then I remembered the words Sonny Rollins spoke to an audience on September 15, 2001:

“Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we are here tonight, and we must remember that music is the — one of the beautiful things of life. So we have to try to keep the music alive some kind of way. And maybe music can help. I don’t know, but we have to try something these days, right?”

Without a Song: The 9/11 Concert (Milestone Records, 2005).

And then I remembered that the one thing I have found helpful in times of tragedy is music. Maybe music can help.

[The post title is no mistake. It’s meant as a suggestion to seek out something helpful. I’m listening to Miles Davis, Anita O’Day, and Steve Lacy, who for many years made his home in Paris.]

Douglas R. Ewart and Quasar

Douglas Ewart, sopranino saxophone,
    didgeridoo, flute, percussion
Edward Wilkerson, clarinet, alto clarinet, tenor
    saxophone, didgeridoo
Preyas Roy, marimba
Darius Savage, bass, percussion
Walter Kitundu, invented instruments
Duriel Harris, voice, percussion

Gelvin Noel Gallery
Krannert Art Museum
Champaign, Illinois
November 12, 2015

The Quasar ensemble’s performance last night began and ended with Douglas Ewart’s voice, first asking a fellow musician about homelessness (“Do you know how close you are to being homeless?”) and later offering life truths: “To get there fast, go alone. To create legacy, go together.” The evening’s performance, a single uninterrupted piece, joined music, poetry, and electronics in ever-shifting and compelling configurations: alto clarinet and bass creating an ostinato over which the sopranino soared, an interlude for flute and phonoharp that evoked the sound of the koto, a percussive exchange between marimba and bass. Harris’s poetry seemed to take up the spirit of inquiry with which Ewart began, asking questions about identity (“How many languages do you speak?” “What does your real voice sound like?”), privilege (“Would you say you’re lucky?”), and state power (“How much water?” “How many chokeholds?”)

About that phonoharp: a brief demonstration followed the performance. The instrument has three bass strings (to be bowed or plucked), a zither-like arrangement of doubled strings, and a turntable for sampling. Kitundu also played a kora, or kora-like instrument. Elaine took a photograph (with permission):



I believe in what Eric Dolphy said: “When you hear music, after it’s over, it’s gone, in the air. You can never capture it again.” But I still want to write about it.

Thanks to Jason Finkelman, who continues to bring the news of the new to east-central Illinois.

More about the musicians
Douglas Ewart : Edward Wilkerson Jr. on practicing : Preyas Roy : Darius Savage : Walter Kitundu : Duriel Harris

Three related posts
Douglas Ewart and Stephen Goldstein : Douglas Ewart
and Wadada Leo Smith : Gray, Ra, Wilkerson

Proper names in America

In Connecticut, some years ago, there was a politician named K. N. Bill whose given-names were Kansas Nebraska , and he had a sister baptized Missouri Compromise . . . . Thornton reprints a paragraph from the Congressional Globe of June 15, 1854, alleging that in 1846, during the row over the Oregon boundary, when “Fifty-four forty or fight” was a political slogan, many “canal boats, and even some of the babies . . . were christened 54° 40′ .”

H. L. Mencken, The American Language: An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States , 4th ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1936).

Shades of William Faulkner’s Snopes names: Admiral Dewey Snopes, Colonel Sartoris Snopes, Montgomery Ward Snopes, Saint Elmo Snopes, and (my favorite) Wallstreet Panic Snopes.

Also from The American Language
The American a : The American v. the Englishman : Anglic : “Are you a speed-cop?” : Benjamin Franklin and spelling : B.V.D. : English American English : Franco-American : “[N]o faculty so weak as the English faculty” : On professor : Playing policy : “There are words enough already” : The -thon , dancing and walking Through -thing and -thin’ : The verb to contact

New Jersey Italian

Fun: How Capicola Became Gabagool: The Italian New Jersey Accent, Explained (Atlas Obscura).

I would alter one pronunciation given in this piece: in my hearing, ricotta has never been pronounced ree-goat . It’s rih-GAWT . My friend Luanne Koper agrees.

*

11:12 a.m. An afterthought: as memories fade and people depart, it may become increasingly difficult or even impossible to reverse-engineer such pronunciations. I am resigned to never knowing the true Italian name (if there indeed is one) for the delicious stuffing that my grandmother made for holiday turkeys. The ingredients included eggs, ham, parsley, and raisins, and the result was known by the mysterious name ying-a dood-a .

Related posts
Bafangool! : Capeesh? : Parlando italiano a Brooklyn

Philosophers and welders

In The New York Times : “Philosophers (and Welders) React to Marco Rubio’s Debate Comments.”

My reaction: Characterizing philosophy as an odd, antiquated endeavor, something for practical people to avoid, will do nothing to endanger the discipline at elite schools. Rubio’s remarks are one more gesture toward recasting non-elite education as vocational training. I will quote myself (again):

If powerful and moneyed interests now seeking to reshape higher education have their way, “college” will soon become a two-tier system, with the real thing for a privileged few  . . . and credits and credentials, haphazardly assembled, vocationally themed, for everyone else.

As the son of a tile man, I have great respect for all trades and those who ply them. But I also believe in the value of studying philosophy. By the way, it wasn’t that long ago (1999) that a presidential candidate could be asked to name a favorite philosopher. “Jesus Christ,” George W. Bush famously replied.

A related post
“Rich kids” and English

[If you’re Matthew Crawford, quoted in the Times piece, you can both philosophize and weld.]

Veterans Day

[“KP Duty at Fort Dix.” Photograph by George Strock. January 1942. From the Life Photo Archive. Click for a larger view.]

I found this photograph by chance and found it moving — one small moment of daily routine in a dark time. I’m unable to find a Life article that developed from George Strock’s photographs of this unnamed soldier.

Illiberal intolerance and safe spaces

The reactions of some Yale students to a faculty member’s e-mail about Halloween costumes is sad and frightening: rather than reading carefully enough to engage what the faculty member said (and what she said her Yale-colleague husband said), students shout and denounce. The subject line of the e-mail, “Dressing Yourselves,“ makes a point about the difference between children and young adults: the latter have the freedom to choose their clothes (or costumes) and the ability to dress themselves, and then talk, if necessary, about what they’re wearing and why. The response of the student in this video clip — “You are disgusting!” and “You should step down!” — reveals a deeply illiberal intolerance: if I think you’re wrong, you must go away. “It is not about creating an intellectual space,” she says. She’s certainly right about that.

The Missouri scenario is more complicated, with a president whose credentials and performance were deeply lacking. But there too, the organized response to his inaction dismays me: the president must resign, but only after he acknowledges his white privilege and provides “a verbal commitment” to fulfilling students’ demands. What does that commitment amount to once he has resigned?

So too with the treatment of journalists: a Missouri faculty member who seeks to remove a journalist by calling out “I need some muscle over here” represents a deeply illiberal intolerance, however progressive she might believe herself to be. At Yale, it’s about “comfort” (to quote the student in the clip); at Missouri, it’s about a “safe space.” “You don’t have a right to take our photo,” says a member of the most photographed generation in history. My comfort, right or wrong.

The dream of the “safe space” suggests to me a womblike existence upon which nothing untoward is supposed to intrude. It might be understandable that students in a dangerous, uncertain world would aspire to inhabit such a space. But if they think that college is meant to provide that space, they need to do some growing up.

Dowdy-world miracle

Beverly Cleary, Fifteen (1956).

Elaine read and reread Fifteen when she was eleven. She says it taught her everything she knew about being a teenager. (She adds that her teenaged years were quite different from Jane Purdy’s.) Elaine borrowed the book from the library last week; I ended up reading it straight through in a day. She told me I would like it. Yes, it’s wonderful.

Unlike Walt Whitman, I’m not certain that I contain “multitudes.” But there must be a fifteen-year-old girl in there somewhere.

11:22 a.m.: In 2011, Daughter Number Three wrote about Fifteen and cultural mores.

Related posts
Alvin’s Secret Code and Deathman, Do Not Follow Me
From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler