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Friday, September 14, 2007

Robert Walser, Again






















The Impresario
Your career, do you want to ruin it?

The Flapper
Once and for all,
Get this: my name is Flapper. Now
What a dismal face you’re making. Me,
A pleasure person is what I am.
Enamoured of joy. So I say little of it.
Say it, and you lose it. Ho hum,
Lady Muck, I think it was, the other day,
Honoured me with her attentions.

Impresario
Any moment now, and here she comes,
Andalusia!

The Flapper
A pretty dance,
Considering she has toothache.

{Quotation one ends}

At present I’m reading a most tastefully written novel.
I’m more active than seems to be the case.
The first impression I make on myself is one of being wide awake, a satisfactory state, reason enough to think I’m capable of something.

{Quotation two ends}

Both from Speaking to the Rose: Writings, 1912-1932, i.e. from Walser’s Bleistiftgebiet or ‘pencil area’ phase, the material written in a microscopic cipher that now occupies the 2000 pages of Aus dem Bleistiftgebiet, 1985-2000.

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