W. G. Sebald called Robert Walser “a clairvoyant of the small,” and nowhere is the phrase more apt than in his “microscripts.” Robert Walser wrote many of his manuscripts in a highly enigmatic, shrunken-down form. These narrow strips of paper (many of them written during his hospitalization in the Waldau sanatorium) covered with tiny ant-like markings only a millimeter or two high, came to light only after the author’s death in 1956. At first considered a secret code, the microscripts were eventually discovered to be a radically miniaturized form of a German script: a whole story could fit on the back of a business card.

Selected from the six-volume German transcriptions from the original microscripts, these 25 short pieces are gathered in this gorgeously illustrated co-publication with the Christine Burgin Gallery. Each microscript is reproduced in full color in its original form: the detached cover of a trashy crime novel, a disappointing letter, a receipt of payment. Sometimes Walser used the pages of small tear-off calendars (but only after cutting them lengthwise and filling up each half with text). Schnapps, rotten husbands, small town life, the radio, pigs (and how none of us can deny being one), jealousy, Van Gogh and marriage proposals are some of Walser’s subjects. These texts take strength from Walser’s motto: “To be small and to stay small.” 65 full-color illustrations

Afterword by Walter Benjamin

Swiss writer Robert Walser (1878-1956), one of the major European writers of the early twentieth century, worked as a bank clerk, a butler in a castle, and an inventor's assistant before writing as many as seven novels and more than a thousand stories. Forcibly hospitalized in 1933 with a now much disputed diagnosis of schizophrenia, he spent the final twenty-three years of his life in an institution.

Prize-wining translator Susan Bernofsky is now at work on a biography of Robert Walser.

羅伯特·瓦爾澤(Robert Walser，1878～1956) 瑞士作傢。父親是書籍裝訂工。1892年起先後從事過銀行和保險公司職員、科學傢助手、縫紉機廠職員和傢庭傭人等多種職業，同時進行文學創作。1898年開始發錶詩歌。1905年去柏林專事寫作。1913年後返迴故鄉隱居，1920至1929年先後在伯爾尼檔案館和地産公司任職，後患精神病，幾度試圖自殺。1929年被送入瓦爾道精神病療養病，1933年轉入黑裏紹的精神病院，1956年去世。瓦爾澤從30年代初期起，在文壇上便被人遺忘。第二次世界大戰後，他的作品中寓意、朦朧的特點又引起批評傢注意，被稱為奧地利作傢卡夫卡的先驅。他的作品多選擇受壓抑的小人物的經曆作為題材，以錶現人的個性在現代資本主義社會中遭受蹂躪的問題。他的作品沒有貫穿始終的完整故事，隻有孤立的、互不聯係的情節和大量的氣氛渲染。他的3部重要小說都帶有自傳性。《丹諾兄妹》(1907)的主人公西濛·丹諾，從事過多種職業，到處都無法站穩腳跟。《助手》(1907)錶現約塞夫·馬蒂在給一個工程師當助手的半年時間裏所看到的資産階級傢庭的虛僞、墮落，以及他自己作為局外人的種種感受。《雅科布·封·貢滕》(1908)以日記的形式，描寫一個孤兒院的孩子在各種不閤理的規章製度下個性發展受到的壓抑。這個孤兒院就是現代資本主義社會的象徵。這些作品具有同情下層人民、反對資本主義製度的傾嚮。

他的其他作品還有《詩集》(1909)、長篇小說《玫瑰》(1924)，以及《散步》（1917）、《詩人的生活》(1918)等