"A Paul Klee in Prose": Design, Space, and Time in the Work of Robert Walser Author(s): Tamara S.

Evans Source: The German Quarterly, Vol. 57, No. 1 (Winter, 1984), pp. 27-41 Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Association of Teachers of German Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/405206 . Accessed: 10/02/2014 10:22
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TAMARA S. EVANS Queens College, CUNY

"A Paul Klee in Prose": Design, Space, and Time in the Work of Robert Walser
Robert Walser, whose fate it was to be much ignored and often sadly misunderstood, is "in." This present awareness arose in the sixties when Martin Walser drew attention to the disturbing and essentially contemporary quality in the works of "that literary rumor named Robert Walser," to their relativism, their elusiveness, and to their radical stylistic reduction.' The 1978 paperback edition of his works in twelve volumes by Suhrkamp as well as the elaborate celebrations and public readings on his one-hundredth birthday in Zurich, Berlin, and elsewhere were further testimony of Walser's growing recognition. Two years later, Horst Denkler commented upon certain affinities between Germany's alienated youth movement and Robert Walser, who, seventy-five years earlier, had turned his back upon bourgeois society to opt instead for the life of a drop-out with all the consequences such a choice would and eventually did entail: poverty, isolation, and the lack of fame.2 In 1982, Susan Sontag reminded American readers in a foreword to a collection of Walser stories that he is "one of the important German-language writers of this century," "truly wonderful" and "heartbreaking,"-"a Paul Klee in prose."3 However, Walser's relevance-a word we have come to use with great apprehension--and his disquieting "modernity" are not such recent discoveries as they may seem. In the thirties and forties a few critics had already compared in passing Walser's writings to the art of Paul Klee, who had by that time long enjoyed an international reputation. In his 1934 dissertation on the Swiss contemporary novel, Jean Moser saw in Robert Walser a representative of relativist objectivity on a road leading from impressionism to the drawings of Paul Klee and the blueprints 27

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of an engineer.' Reviewing a selection of Walser's works in 1938, Heinz Politzer remarked that upon reading Walser he was reminded of Paul Klee and his sketches of strange, haunting figures, almost all of them self-portraits in a deeper sense. For Politzer, artists like Klee and Walser have in common "das Leiden an diesem Jahrhundert und eine neue, fltichtige und traumbefangene Schonheit."' Finally, in 1942, Hans Naf remarked in Die Weltwoche that Walser's poems conjured up a series of associations vaguely reminiscent of Paul Klee, among others.6 Brief and casual as these observations were, they nevertheless indicate an awareness among earlier critics not only that Walser's voice, unappreciated and nearly forgotten, deserved to be heard beyond the narrow confines of his country, but also-and more importantly-that his work was worthy of comparison with the art of one of the most creative and independent representatives of modernism. At the same time, this association is likely to be met with some degree of scepticism. Klee's and Walser's biographies fail to yield any information concerning influence and cross-fertilization analogous, for instance, to Dadaist artists and writers. Robert Walser and Paul Klee were born within a year of each other in towns twenty miles apart and spoke the same dialect. They spent important years in Germany, eventually returned to Switzerland--Walser in 1913, Klee in 1933-and died there. They had mutual friends and acquaintances in both Switzerland and Germany. Prior to World War One, they moved in intersecting social circles, but at different times. Both established professional connections with Franz Blei in Munich, Paul and Bruno Cassirer in Berlin, and with Kurt Wolff in Leipzig. Yet Klee and Walser never met. There is evidence that Klee had read Walser, and there is evidence that Walser knew of Klee. In 1906, Klee notes having read Walser's first book, Fritz Kochers Aufsatze; his comment: "psychologisch sehr ansehnlich."' According to Karl Walser, the author's elder brother and a painter, Paul Klee had been suggested as illustrator for an edition of Walser poems; Christian Morgenstern, however, a reader for Bruno Cassirer at that time, rejected the idea because he found Klee too mannered.8 All in all, one must assume that there was neither great enthusiasm for nor passionate rejection of each other's work and that Walser and Klee simply passed each other by. And yet, parallels such as those between Walser and Klee are startling and intriguing. What does it mean to say, as Walser did, that a painting is like a poem or, vice versa, that a poem is like a painting?9 Are these not highly subjective assessments that fail to hold up under precise analysis unless a tertium comparationis is provided? And: what are the common and comparable elements in the works of art by two different artists in two separate media? Questions such as these point to a controversy that has lasted ever since Lessing maintained that the poet,

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KleeandWalser EVANS:

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to concentrate his picture "in einen unlikethe artist,is not compelled

einzigen Augenblick" and that, therefore, temporal poetry and spatial

art were to be subjectto entirelydifferentcriteria.'0 By the end of the nineteenthcentury,when Klee and Walserwerebeginningtheircareers, the essentialoneness and interchangeability of all the arts were avidly

fromartists,critics,comwerehighlyeclectic,including contributions and writers. for the creation of a "monumental Kandinsky posers, hoped art"thatwouldincorporate all of the artsintoa singlework;'2 Schoenberg expressed the wish that certain painters would reproduce his musical ideas for a film;" and Musil argued that the various arts had to be "irgendwie ineinander ubersetzbar und durchteinanderersetzbar .. . da sie ja nichts als verschiedene Ausdrucksformen des gleichen Menschen sind."'4 However, when Robert Walser was first mentioned together

being discussed by critics and artists alike." Publications such as the Jugendstil journal Pan in the 1890s and the 1912 Blaue Reiter almanac

with Paul Klee, comparativeinterpretations of the arts were becoming

discredited, relegated to the domain of journalism because of a lack of well-founded scholarship. Thus, in consonance with "Neue Sachlich-

keit," a scholaras eminentas KarlVosslerquestionedthe principleof

analogy among the arts and propagated essentially autonomous methods of interpretation.' Wellek and Warren were to follow along similar lines; but, while they cautioned against "an 'explanation' of the arts in terms of 'a time spirit,"' they nevertheless conceived of an analysis of structural relationships to be ultimately the central approach to a comparison of the arts.'6 Joseph Frank set out to demonstrate "the complete congruity of aesthetic form in modern art with the form of modern literature." According to Frank, "both contemporary art and literature have, each in its own way, attempted to overcome the time elements involved in their structures."" P. B. Wessels considered the comparison of the arts necessary and commented with regret that Lessing still exerts his negative influence upon comparative research: "Dennoch spukt Lessings Laokoon in den KOpfen und es beruft sich auf ihn, wer den Mut nicht findet, tiber die Grenzen des eigenen Faches hinauszusehen."'8 More recently, Wylie Sypher has shown how the ideas behind cubist painting have made their imprint upon all the modern arts: the novels of Gide, the theater of Pirandello, and the music of Schoenberg.'9 Similarly, Mario Praz maintained that "there is a general likeness among all the works of art of a period," and that neither Wellek and Warren nor Lessing should "discourage us from searching for a common link between the various arts."20 Taking issue with Sypher's all too contrived search for analogies, Ulrich Weisstein advocated the "wechselseitige Erhellung der Ktinste" especially within a given period or movement; he remained skeptical, however, of comparative aesthetics which focus on the common structure of the arts, because such concepts as rhythm,

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harmony, and perspective, when transferred from one art to the other, tend to lead to false analogies and little else.2' The following is a search for ways to substantiate the claim that Robert Walser is "a Paul Klee in prose" or, for that matter, a Paul Klee in poetry, as at least five critics have asserted so far. It is a search in Walser's elusive work for structural principles and thematic preferences that are quintessential to Paul Klee's oeuvre. In each of the following sections, the focus will first be on Klee before shifting to Walser because Klee, unlike Walser, expressed himself with consistency and perspicuity about the creative process, his own included. Klee's diaries and lectures, considered to be a fundamental contribution to modern aesthetic theory, will provide us with the Archimedian point in this enterprise. Perhaps because Paul Klee was exceptionally gifted not only in the fine arts but in music and poetry as well, he thought and theorized frequently about parallels between the arts. As early as 1905 he wrote in his diary: "Immer mehr drangen sich mir Parallelen zwischen Musik und bildender Kunst auf. Doch will keine Analyse gelingen. Sicher sind beide Kiinste zeitlich, das liesse sich leicht nachweisen."22 Although Joseph Frank claimed in The Widening Gyre that in the twentieth century, "Lessing's attempt to define the limits of literature and the plastic arts has become a dead issue [that] is neither reiterated nor contradicted but simply neglected,"23 Klee had explicity taken issue in Sch6pferische Konfession with Lessing's belief in the uniqueness and autonomy of each form of art, and he maintained that, on closer scrutiny, the dispute about the difference between temporal and spatial art turns out to be erudite hairsplitting: "Denn auch der Raum ist ein zeitlicher Begriff."24 For Klee, all art-regardless of its medium-is created out of motion; art appreciation, too, depends upon motion: that of the eyes and/or that of sounds reaching our ears.2 More than once, Klee compared his own graphics with walks; the language used to describe the evolution of a work of art, his choice of adverbs in particular, reveals the extent to which he considered the composition of his works to be determined by spatial as well as temporal elements.2 Klee both understood and explicated his art in morphological terms, emphasizing not what is already there but what is happening in the creative process. Thus Klee's wish: "Ingres soll die Ruhe geordnet haben, ich mochte Ober das Pathos hinaus die Bewegung ordnen."27 Consequently, in his compositions, Klee set out to structure motion, which is to say time-the element Lessing had denied to spatial art. Klee, it appears, thereby established common and comparable elements within the arts. The most basic manifestation of motion is the line; i.e., "ein Punkt, der sich verschiebt."28 While being indebted to Jugendstil especially in his early etchings, Klee began to fear the sterility of ornament inherent in the linear style of Art Nouveau.29In a diary entry of 1908, he confessed

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EVANS: Klee and Walser

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to have found himself in "der Sackgasse des Ornaments,"30but in 1910 he had developed his own provocative and reductive style, and his contour "had been thoroughly purged of the residues of Jugendstil decorativeness and facile suavity."3' In a Bauhaus lecture held in the twenties, Klee explained and justified the artistic intention behind his drawings: Die Sage vom Infantilismus muss meinerZeichnungen ihren Ausgangspunkt bei jenen linearen Gebilden genommenhaben, wo ich versuchte,eine gegenstaindliche Vorstellung, sagenwir einen Menschen,mit reiner des linearenElementszu verbinden. Darstellung Wollteich den Menschen gebenso "wieer ist," dann brauchteich zu dieser Gestaltungein so verwirrendes dassvon einer'reinen elementaren Liniendurcheinander, Darstellungnicht die Rede sein kOnnte,sonderneine bis zur Unendlichkeit eintraite.32 Triibung Klee's "pure trdatment of the element" is achieved nowhere more beautifully than in his drawings made during the last few years of his life when he was already gravely ill. Some of these deceivingly simple works, all of exclusively linear character, express the dying artist's preoccupation with death and the afterlife, with fundamental ethical and metaphysical

K/ --~

L~

~CI~I

Es weint. 1939.959

Niherung Lucifer. 1939.443

questions. His drawing of a weeping angel, es weint (1939), and of Lucifer, Naiherung Luzifer (1939), can be seen as variations of each

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other. Yet as a result of slight additions and omissions in the composition, the figures suggest two entirely different spheres. One has a face because it suffers; the other is void. The angel, perfectly centered on the sheet, seems to be hovering weightlessly, beyond gravity; whereas Lucifer is left of center, and his entire figure is pulled down to the lower lefthand corner of the sheet because of his club foot. A fallen angel, he is touching ground. On the diagonal line, Lucifer's empty face and disproportionately small head are balanced by his substantial genitals-an attribute missing from the otherworldly and (hence?) neuter angel ("es weint," in Klee's title). Thus with his reductive linear style Klee has succeeded in these two drawings in expressing the ambiguity of appearances and the profound antithesis between good and evil, suffering and indifference. Looking at two of Walser's early poems, "Und ging" and "Ein Landschaftchen," one cannot help but notice that linearity as well as seeming childishness are essential aspects of his style. Und ging Er schwenkteleise seinenHut und ging, heisstes vom Wandersmann. Er riss die Blattervon dem Baum und ging, heisstes vom rauhenHerbst. Sie teilte hichelndGabenaus und ging, heisst'svon der Majestat. Es klopfte nichtlich an die Ttir und ging, heisstes vom Herzeleid. Er zeigteweinendauf sein Herz und ging, heisstes vom armenMann. (VII, 27) In her recently published dissertation, Der Jugendstil und Robert Walser, Irma Kellenbergerhas failed to prove convincingly that Walser's early poems are essentially Jugendstil documents." To be sure, "Und ging" is structured upon the rhythmic linear repetition so characteristic of Jugendstil, and one might apply to this text, as well as to "Ein Landschdftchen," Wylie Sypher's description of an Art Nouveau poem in which "details from nature are isolated, sharply framed, and reduced to ornament."34 Following Wolfdietrich Rasch's analysis of postimpressionism, symbolism and Jugendstil in his essay entitled "Flache, Welle, Ornament," Sypher's observation can be taken one significant step further.35 Because of the structural parallels along the horizontal as well as the vertical, the details in Walser's poem are not only separated from but also connected with each other like motifs woven into a tapestry. The repeated sentence patterns together with the two verbs reoccurring in every second line stress the sameness of life, the universal aspect of its individual manifestations: a wanderer, the seasons, the emotions, the rich as well as the poor, all coming and-especially-going. But while Walser does indeed show the oneness of all life, he is far from

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EVANS: Klee and Walser

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celebrating "die Verkettung alles Irdischen," which Rasch and other critics have recognized as the central experience of the period around 1900.36 The panerotic abundance of lines and curves which Jost Hermand noted in the Jugendstil poems of Rilke, Mombert, and George is absent in Walser's "Und ging"; by contrast, its linear composition is stark and threadbare.37Walser's vocabulary and the vision it conveys is marked by radical ddpouillement rather than by a predilection for decorative lushness. "Und ging" lacks such hallmark Jugendstil motifs as swans and peacocks, tulip stems and tendrils--sinuously curved organic structures, some intertwined and enlaced, and all meant to symbolize the stream of life. Instead, autumn storms and heartaches come and go, leaving a chill behind them. It seems to me that the structural impact of Walser's poems can be better understood with the help of Klee's theories concerning linear principles. "Ein Landscha*ftchen"serves as an example: Dort steht ein Baumleinim Wiesengrund und noch viele artigeBiumleindazu. Ein Blattleinfriertim frostigenWind und noch viele einzelneBlIttleindazu. Ein HaufleinSchneeschimmert an BachesRand und noch viele weisseHaufleindazu. Ein SpitzleinBerglacht in den Grundhinein und noch viele schuftigeSpitzedazu. Und in dem allem der Teufel steht und noch viele armeTeufel dazu. Ein Engleinkehrtab sein weinendGesicht und alle Engel des Himmelsdazu. (VII, 20) Of the six sentences in the poem, three are structurally identical (1. 3-8), and a fourth sentence (1. 11-12) does not vary significantly from the predominant pattern established by the other three. In terms of their syntactic organization, these four sentences resemble a roster with linear repetition into two directions, a lattice structure with "Punktverschiebung" from left to right and from top to bottom, the former connecting words to form a sentence, the latter aligning subjects, verbs, adverbial phrases, etc. along the vertical. In Paidagogisches Skizzenbuch, a publication based on his Bauhaus lecture notes, Paul Klee had called such patterns "primitive strukturelle Rhythmen."38 When one looks at the remaining two sentences of "Ein Landschaftchen" (1. 1-2 and other four, their deviation from the "primitive structural rhythms" becomes apparent. Were one to transpose the poem onto a graph and to draw two lines connecting all the subjects and all the verbs along the vertical, these lines-in typical Jugendstil fashion-would whiplash because of the different positions taken by the two subjects and verbs in sentences one and five. However, these are the only asymmetries in

(1. 9-10) and comparesthem to the roster of linear repetitionin the

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an otherwise rigidly executed geometrical pattern. Peter Selz, commenting on the decline of Jugendstil, observed that "with almost sudden deliberation the inventiveness of ornament ... comes to a halt... Whenever used, ornament becomes geometric; the right angle takes the Thus Walser's predominantly "primitive place of the sinuous curve.""39 structural rhythms" based on angular design signal his emancipation from Jugendstil. The world we perceive through Walser's gridlike structure is filled with ambiguities. In "Ein Landschaftchen" he has represented a duplicitous world set against a deceivingly pretty background reminiscent of children's songs like "Ein Mannlein steht im Walde." The idyll, already questioned in the third line by the presence of a leaf (and many others!) shivering in the frosty breeze, is destroyed for good by the introduction of a single adjective in line eight, "schuftig," and the change from diminutive "Spitzlein" to "Spitz." This little landscape with its natural attributes ("ein Spitzlein Berg") and aloof from questions of morality is usurped: the wicked ("schuftige Spitze") are cheering. In the following two lines as well, the introduction of one adjective completely changes the meaning of the noun it qualifies, for "Teufel" and "arme Teufel" are to be understood as opposites, the former holding a position of power, the latter relegated to a miserable existence of one kind or another. Behind the paratactic sentence structure, Walser has hidden a causal connection: because the devil rules, there are many poor devils in the land. The shocking appearance of evil in "einem Landschaftchen" that seemed sound is heightened by the powerful metric irregularity of line nine, which in contradistinction to the other five odd-numbered lines begins with a dactylic foot: enter the devil, thus throwing the regular alternation between iambic and dactylic feet at the beginning of the lines harshly out of balance. (Line nine, of course, is the place where whiplash occurs.) In poems like "Und ging" and "Ein Landschiftchen" there is a profound rift between the apparent ease of Walser's lines, his clean syntactic design and the blemished world this style feigns to capture, a world in which the privileged, although giving alms, can simply remove themselves from the calamities surrounding them while the suffering continues; a world in which the angels cry and that cannot be protected, for as Jakob von Gunten, one of Walser's fictional characters puts it, "Ein Gott mtisste und k6nnte das vielleicht tun, doch es gibt keine Gotter, nur einen Einzigen, und der ist zu erhaben zur Hilfe." (VI, 124) The dichotomy so apparent in these two poems between extreme formal reduction on the one side and the confused predicament of creation on the other engenders ironic tensions as well as diffractions of reality that are reflected most poignantly in the ambiguities of Walser's language, which definitely points beyond Jugendstil.

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EVANS:Klee and Walser

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Walser's treatment of linear structures is thus comparable to Klee's. By shifting balances, by making minute additions or omissions, both Klee and Walser are playing with simple formal elements until a counter world of complexities and ironies is created. Walser's poems and Klee's drawings are studies in structural as well as semantic antitheses and ambiguities. How do Klee and Walser treat time, the medium for motion? A 1902 diary entry reveals that Klee consciously sought not to be influenced and fettered by the style of the academy of arts: Ich projiziereauf die Flache, das heisst, das Wesentliche muss immer sichtbar werden, auch wenn es in der keit eine wesentliche Rolle. .... Ich lerne von vorn, ich

Natur, die auf diesenReliefstilnichteingestelltist, unmoglichware. Dabei spielt auch die Verkiirzungslosigbeginnezu formen, als ob ich nichts wiisstevon aller Malerei. Denn ich habe ein ganz kleines Eigentum entdeckt: eine besondere Art der dreidimensionalen auf der Flache."4 Darstellung Of course, three-dimensional representation on the plane was by no means new. The tendency towards two-dimensionality had begun with the impressionists, and three-dimensionality was overcome by post-impressionists like Seurat. Jugendstil art also rejected three-dimensionality as well as modelling.41 But with his own discovery of a special sort of three-dimensional representation on the flat surface, Klee eventually developed a relief style reminiscent of primitive art, of Egyptian frescoes and children's drawings, and he thereby put himself into the tradition of non-naturalism, which Wilhelm Worringer was to analyze in his influential 1908 dissertation, Abstraction and Empathy.42 Non-naturalism characterizes the artistic productivity of certain eras in which man has been "inhabited by a gloomy knowledge of the problematic nature and relativity of the phenomenal world," and in which the artist wanted "to
wrest the object of the external world out of its natural context. . . ."43

Non-naturalistic styles, including the dominant art styles of the twentieth century, shun the third dimension, "the authentic dimension of space," "which gives things their temporal value."44 Shortly after the outbreak of World War One, Klee himself made the point that "[j]e schreckensvoller diese Welt (wie gerade heute), desto abstrakter die Kunst, w~ihrend eine gliickliche Welt eine diesseitige Kunst hervorbringt."45 A work like Klee's Komposition aufparallele Horizontallinien (1920) is a good example of the transformation of natural depth relations into plane relations. Clearly, the drawing defines what one would normally expect to see in adult art work, but unlike a child's drawing, this work is, in Worringer's words, the outcome of "a consistently executed stylistic intention that is capable of doing what it wishes to do."46 Because Klee has excluded depth perspective and single vanishing point, the

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"Komposition auf parallele Horizontallinien" 1920.63.

femalefigurein the centerof the drawingseemsto be tryingto hold her a babypram balanceon top of a dog whilesomething vaguelyresembling is about to slam into her head; animalsare as long as entirebuildings of the traditional and twice as tall as trees. As a consequence, hierarchy of in state a fixed forever it is and variousobjectshas been overturned, in we are a carried with a pram pushinga girl by dog, disintegration; and between turn forced to reconsiderthe causal relationships objects a worldequallyout of joint whenthe protagosubjects.One encounters nist in Jakob von Gunten experiencesobjects in space as moving on the plane: "Dann sind Wagen da, die wie fahrendeAussichtstutrme aussehen. Menschen sitzen auf den hocherhobenenSitzplatzenund fahrenallem, was unten geht, springtund lauft, tiberden Kopf weg." the fe(VI, 37f.) In Klee'sKompositionaufparallele Horizontallinien and the see both we in is male figure represented profile;yet shoulders, arms Neither viewer. the at if were as it is drawn looking straight eye whichleads to the distortionof humanpronor legs are foreshortened, both horizontal the and lines, touchingboth shoulders, parallel portions; the woman's that the fact further accentuate feet both and limbs, hands, i.e., those furtherremovedfrom a viewerwerethis a live scene, are dislong in spatial terms. In refuting Lessing, Klee had proportionately contendedthat space itself is a temporalconcept. By abandoning,in Kompositionauf parallele Horizontallinien,the third dimensionand motion on the plane, Klee has createda counterrealityin structuring

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Klee and Walser EVANS:

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which traditional time sequences have been transmutedinto playful linearrhythmsseeminglywithoutbeginningnor end. With regardto time structure,Walser'sstory "Der Spaziergang," for first on a field the child has resembles a account instance, trip; grader's yet to be taughtto compose,to presentthe chronologyof eventsclearly, and not to spendinordinateamountsof time on the tellingof relatively is an autobiographical minorepisodes. "Der Spaziergang" accountof a in a dull in dull and around town. What be a event day's outing might place turns into an adventurebecause of Walser's rebellion against naturalismin the narrativerenderingof time, because he, like Klee, is starting"ganzvon vorn." And like Klee in his graphics,whichhe compared to walks, Walserjumps ahead; he returns,meandering through time as he is throughspace. Above all, his progressthroughtown is not registeredin objectivelymeasurabletime units; rather, time as a subsense-is superentity-real time in the Bergsonian jectivelyexperienced imposed like a texturescreen over the events of the day. The story is with a numberof lengthyspeechesdeliveredby the narrator interspersed most likelyto no one but himself. In front of a bakery,for example,he launchesinto a long diatribeagainst the owner's ostentatiousness and bad taste;anothertirade,just as long, is directedagainstan incompetent tailor;there are tedious laudationsto women who hardlycare to listen; and to his tax collectorhe deliversan oration of epic dimensionon the virtue of loafing about all day long. Similarto Paul Klee, who had no intentionof representing man "as he is," Walseris not describing actual situations,nor does he want to. His "unrealistic" speechesare delivered in the world of his imaginationwhere time can be gatheredup and stretched out at will. For a readerusedto traditional narrative standards, everyone of these speechesis absurdlyand irritatingly long, an antipode of the equallyabsurd"Sekundenstil," in whichnarrated time ("erzdhlte time ("Erzahlzeit") are supposedto merge.In other Zeit") and narrative words, the narrativetime taken up by these speechesin "Der Spaziergang" is disproportionately long in relationto narratedtime. WhileWalserneverfully abandoned the sequential aspectin his narratives-for instanceboth "Der Spaziergang" and Jakob von Guntenhave a distinctbeginningand an end in time-time relationsare nevertheless translatedinto spatial categories.Criticshave noted the kaleidoscopic lines and arabesques of his prose, and certainly changes,the meandering Susan Sontag's remarkthat Walser"spent much of his life obsessively For as Walserput turningtime into space:his walks," is to the point."7 it himselfin "Der Spaziergang," he is not interested in journeys;whathe
is engaged in is a "feiner Rundgang." (III, 233) Thus he is turning time into circles, into patterns geometrically conceived on the plane. In Jakob von Gunten, which purports to be a diary, one of the most basic properties of diary-keeping has been deliberately withheld: the

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dates introducing individual entries. We do not know when the entries were made nor how much time has passed between one entry and the next; the chronological structure typical of diaristic writing is nonexistent. The entries are, to borrow a phrase from Joseph Frank, "juxtaposed in space rather than unrolling in time.""4 Walser himself wrote about the mosaic quality of his prose,"' and it sounds like an echo when Jakob von Gunten, towards the end of his diary, is contemplating the character of time and notices: "Wie war das doch eigentiimlich. Die einzelnen Wochen sahen sich an wie kleine, glitzernde Steine." (VI, 163) A number of critics have commented upon the ahistorical culture of our century,50and Walser's Jakob von Gunten indeed is one of its earliest representatives: he is utterly incapable of telling the story of his life, as he was repeatedly asked to, in the style of a "Lebenslauf" because he experiences life ahistorically, i.e., not as the accumulation of consecutive events. Jakob von Gunten, who can never figure out whether he is awake or dreaming, moves effortlessly from past to present and back again: "Mit einem Mal, ohne dass ich es habe verhindern konnen, war ich Kriegsoberst geworden, so ums Jahr 1400 herum, nein, etwas spater, zur Zeit der mailandischen Feldziige" (VI, 108). Jakob's best friend at school is not only Kraus in the here and now but also Joseph in Egypt: "Abrahams Zeiten werden auf dem Antlitz meines Mitschiilers wieder lebendig." And when Potiphar's wife tries to seduce Joseph, ".. . da weigerte sich Kraus, wollte sagen Joseph. Aber es kOnnte ganz gut Kraus sein, denn er hat so etwas Joseph-in-Aegypten-haftes" (VI, 77-78). Klee and Walser freed themselves provocatively from the representation of space and time as separate categories. Clocks and yardsticks were buried either to recreate a world uncorrupted by cognition or to create a world structured by the impulses of the self. The preceding observations regarding linearity and the transmutation of time into space have shown that there are indeed structural and thematic congruities in Walser's writing with the art of Paul Klee. Both began their work around 1900, the heyday of Art Nouveau from which they were emancipated a decade later. They have in common modern forms of artistic expression based upon the modes of a modern consciousness: their creations are an illustration of Pierre Francastel's observation that the modern world has ceased to exist not only physically but also artistically "in traditional space. Literally it has gone out, in the proper sense of the word."" Furthermore, time proves to be neither for Walser nor for Klee a projectile catching up with them from behind and shooting forward; it is a patchwork design. Finally, Klee's early postulate-"das Wesentliche muss immer sichtbar werden, auch wenn es in der Natur... unmoglich ware"-is also a key to Walser's much less accessible work.

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EVANS:Klee and Walser

Notes

39

Martin Walser, "Alleinstehender Dichter. Ober Robert Walser," in Uber Robert Walser, ed. Katharina Kerr (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1978), II, 14-20. 2 Horst Denkler, "Lektiire ffir die Reise nach Tunix und anderswohin: Zur Aktualitat des Rezeptionsangebots von Robert Walsers Gesamtwerk," in Basis. Jahrbuch fiir deutsche Gegenwartsliteratur, X, ed. Reinhold Grimm and Jost Hermand (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1980), pp. 36-53. 3 Susan Sontag, Introduction to Robert Walser, Selected Stories, trans. Christopher Middleton (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1982), p. vii. Undoubtedly, Susan Sontag is indebted to Christopher Middleton who had compared Walser to Klee in the introduction to his translation of Jakob von Gunten (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1969), p. 14; the phrase, "a Paul Klee in prose," appears on the jacket of that edition. * Jean Moser, Le Roman contemporain en Suisse Allemande de Carl Spitteler d Jakob Schaffner, Diss. Lausanne 1934 (Lausanne: Editions R. Freudweiler-Spiro. Librairie Centrale, 1934), p. 16. ? Heinz Politzer, review of Robert Walser: Grosse kleine Welt, ed. Carl Seelig, Mass und Wert, 1 (1938), 468. 6 Hans Nif, "Robert Walsers Gedichte," Die Weltwoche, 17 July 1942. ' Paul Klee, Tagebicher (KOln: DuMont Schauberg, 1957), p. 221. * Reported by Carl Seelig, "27. Juli 1943. Eine Wanderung mit Robert Walser," in Uber Robert Walser, II, 66. 9 Such comparisons are scattered throughout Walser's work; especially Robert Walser, Briefe, ed. Jorg Schafer (Ziirich: Suhrkamp, 1979), p. 126f.; and Robert Walser, Das Gesamtwerk in 12 Bdnden, ed. Jochen Greven (Ziirich: Suhrkamp, 1978), XII, 38, 442 and VIII, 340f. In the following, volume and page references from the Suhrkamp edition will be placed directly after the Walser quotes. 1o Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Gesammelte Werke (Miinchen: Carl Hanser, 1959), II, 801. " See Carl E. Schorske, Fin-de-Sidcle Vienna: Politics and Culture (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980), p. 235, 254; Werner Hofmann, "Gustav Klimt and Vienna at the Turn of the Century," Gustav Klimt (Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society, 1971), p. 11, 13; Wolfdietrich Rasch, Zur deutschen Literatur seit der Jahrhundertwende (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1967), pp. 1-48, pp. 186-220; Peter Selz, Art Nouveau (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1959), pp. 7-17. 12 Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art (New York: George Wittenborn, 1964), p. 72. " Arnold Schoenberg, Briefe, ed. Erwin Stein (Mainz: B. Schott's Sohne, 1958), p. 40f. 1' Robert Musil, "Ansatze zu neuer Asthetik: Bemerkungen iber die Dramaturgie des Films," Gesammelte Werke (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1978), VIII, 1149. " Detailed information in Jost Hermand, Literaturwissenschaft und Kunstwissenschaft (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1965), pp. 19 and 45. 16 Ren6 Wellek and Austin Warren, Theory of Literature (New York: Harcourt, 1949), pp. 129 and 135. 7 Joseph Frank, The Widening Gyre: Crisis and Mastery in Modern Literature (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1968), pp. 57-60. The first chapter, "Spatial Form in Modern Literature," from which these quotes are taken, was originally written in 1945. " P. B. Wessels, "Poesie und Malerei," Neophilologus, 33 (1949), 218. 19 Wylie Sypher, Rococo to Cubism in Art and Literature (New York: Random House, 1960), pp. 255-330. 20 Mario Praz, Mnemosyne: The Parallel between Literature and the Visual Arts (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), p. 54. 21 Ulrich Weisstein, Einfiihrung in die Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1968), pp. 184-97. The phrase "wechselseitige Erhellung der Kiinste" is actually the title of a lecture given by Oskar Walzel to the Berliner Kantgesellschaft in 1917.-On the topic of "wechselseitige Erhellung der Katnste" see also Helmut A. Hatzfeld, "Literary Criticism through Art and Art Criticism through Literature," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 6 (1947), 2; and Herman Meyer, Zarte Empirie (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1963), p. 265f.

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22

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Klee, Tagebacher, p. 187; see also p. 383. Christian Geelhaar quotes Klee announcing in Disseldorf (probably in 1932 when he created Polyphony): "Now it is possible that sound could form a synthesis with the world of appearances." (Paul Klee and the Bauhaus [Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society, 1973], p. 145.) See also Robert Hughes, The Shock of the New (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981), p. 304. 23 Frank, The Widening Gyre, pp. 3f. 24 Paul Klee, Schopferische Konfession in Das bildnerische Denken, ed. Jurg Spiller (Basel: Benno Schwabe, 1956), p. 78. 25 Klee, Das bildnerische Denken, p. 78. 26 Klee, Das bildnerische Denken, p. 76. 27 Klee, Tagebiicher, p. 320. 28 Klee, Pidagogisches Skizzenbuch (Mainz: Kupferberg, 1965), p. 6. 29 On Klee and Jugendstil see Jiirgen Glaesemer, Paul Klee: Handzeichnungen (Bern: Kunstmuseum Bern, 1973), I, 116; Peter Selz, German Expressionist Painting (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), pp. 216 and 295; Charles Werner Haxthausen, Paul Klee: The Formative Years (New York: Garland, 1981), pp. 10f., 84, 121, 233. 30 Klee, Tagebiicher, p. 242. 31 Haxthausen, Paul Klee: The Formative Years, p. 321. 32 Paul Klee, Uber die moderne Kunst (Bern-Biimpliz: Benteli, 1948), pp. 49f.; also Tagebiicher, pp. 161f. and 248. 3 Irma Kellenberger, Der Jugendstil und Robert Walser, Basler Studien zur deutschen Sprache und Literatur, No. 57 (Bern: Francke, 1981). 34 Wylie Sypher, Rococo to Cubism in Art and Literature, p. 246. " Writing about the painters of Pont-Aven, Rasch noted the recurrence of "Teppichstruktur" in their works. Their paintings cannot be grasped at a single glance because there is "ein Nebeneinander, eine Reihung." (In Zur deutschen Literaturgeschichte der Jahrhundertwende, p. 195f.) In his introductory chapter, too, Rasch had drawn attention to the "Teppich als Symbol, . . . als Strukturmodell der Lebenseinheit" in the poetry of George, Hofmannsthal, and Rilke (p. 23f.). 36 Borrowing a phrase from Hugo von Hofmannsthal's Die Frau ohne Schatten, Rasch concluded: "Das ist es, was die gesamte Kunst und Dichtung dieser Epoche schafft: Zeichen und Verse, die das ewige Geheimnis der Verkettung alles Irdischen preisen." (Zur deutschen Literaturgeschichte der Jahrhundertwende, p. 210.) See also Rasch, pp. 13ff. and W. Hofmann, Gustav Klimt, p. 10. 7 Jost Hermand, ed., Lyrik des Jugendstils (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1969), pp. 73f. " Klee, Padagogisches Skizzenbuch, p. 12. 9 Peter Selz, Art Nouveau, p. 17. 40 Klee, Tagebiicher, p. 134. 41 Regarding the flattened perspective in the paintings of artists born around 1860 (Seurat, b. 1859; Klimt, b. 1862), Wolfdietrich Rasch writes: "Die Flachenordnung ist ein Mittel, jenen Zusammenhang der Dinge, die totale Einheit spilrbar zu machen, die den Grundzug der Weltinterpretation jener Epoche ausmacht. .... Innerhalb der Flache, als blosse FlAchenteile, gewinnen die Einzeldinge einen sehr engen Zusammenhang. ... Der Raum trennt, die FlAche bindet." (Zur deutschen Literaturgeschichte der Jahrhundertwende, pp. 191-92). See also Werner Hofmann on Klimt (Gustav Klimt, p. 37). 42 Wilhelm Worringer, Abstraktion undEinfahlung (Mlnchen: Piper, 1908). Klee's library contains the 1918 edition (see Haxthausen, Paul Klee, p. 424).-Will Grohmann mentions that Klee discussed the book with Kandinsky and Marc in the winter of 1911/12 (Will Grohmann, Paul Klee [New York: Harry N. Abrams, n. d.], p. 53). Regarding Worringer's influence upon Klee see Christian Geelhaar, Paul Klee and the Bauhaus, pp. 24-25; Jiirgen Glaesemer, Paul Klee: Handzeichnungen, I, 186, n. 47; Werner Haxthausen, Paul Klee, pp. 423-25. However, in light of Klee's recently published letters to his family, a reassessment of his indebtedness to Worringer seems called for. On July 30, 1911, Klee wrote to his wife: "Worringer ist ftir die Distanz von Natur und Kunst, betrachtet die Kunst als eine Welt fir sich, ist nicht der Meinung, dass die Primitiven zu wenig gekonnt haben usw. Alles ftir mich langst Errungenschaft, aber als wissenschaftliche AXusserung hochst erfreulich." (Klee, Briefe an die Familie [Koln: DuMont, 1979], p. 768).

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EVANS:Klee and Walser

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41

Abstraction andEmpathy,trans.MichaelBullock(NewYork:International Worringer, Universities Press, 1963),p. 16. Abstraction and Empathy,p. 129, p. 38f.-In the Renaissance " Worringer, representation of space,depthequalled"the timeit takesto enterthat depth"(Sypher,Rococo to to PierreFrancastel, Cubism,p. 288). Not untilthe close of the 19thcentury,according did the traditional of space begin to be revised("The Destruction of a representation
Plastic Space," in Art History: An Anthology of Modern Criticism, ed. Wylie Sypher " Klee, Tagebiicher, p. 323. 46 Worringer, Abstraction and Empathy, p. 70; see also Klee, Tagebuicher,p. 248.
47

[New York:Vintage,1963],p. 395).

SusanSontag, Introduction to SelectedStories,p. viii.

The Widening Gyre, p. 10.

4" Frank,
49

In a letterto the Frankfurter Zeitung on May 5, 1927(XI, 465). to MirceaEliade Fin-de-Siecle Vienna,p. xvii; JosephFrankrefersthe reader 50 Schorske, who has noted in modernthought "a resistance to history,a revolt againsthistorical time . . . to a placein the time thatis cosmic, time, an attemptto restorethis historical
cyclical, infinite." (The Widening Gyre, p. 60)

" Francastel, "The Destruction of a PlasticSpace,"in Art History,p. 397.

Modern Language Association Prize for Independent Scholars In order to recognize and further encourage the achievements and contributions of independent scholars, the Modern Language Association is pleased to announce the establishment of the Modern Language Association Prize for distinguished published research in the fields of modern languages and literatures, including English. Under the auspices of the MLA's Committee on Research Activities, the award will be presented annually to a person who for a period of three years at the time of the granting of the award has not held a teaching or research position of any sort at a post-secondary educational institution or a position at an education- or research-related organization if that position provides the sort of support for scholarly researchusually associated with institutions of higher education. The award will consist of an engrossed certificate, a check of $1,000, and a year's membership in the Association. The first Prize will be awarded for a work published in 1983 (book or article) and will be presented at the Association's Annual Convention in December 1984. To enter a work into competition, send seven copies of the work, a statement of justification for the nomination, the date of publication, and a brief curriculum vitae to MLA Prize for Independent Scholars, Modern Language Association, 62 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10011. Nominations for the 1983 award will be accepted until 1 March 1984. For further information, contact Judith Teply, Research Programs, Modern Language Association.

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