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 ...
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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."
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Seller's Description:
Fine in Fine jacket. Translated from the German and with an Introduction by Susan Bernofsky. Green hardcover with titles in black and paper facsimile of microscripts laid down on front cover. Illustrated in color and black and white. Interior fine, some light wear to bottom corners of cover. In a fine dust jacket in a mylar protector.
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Seller's Description:
Near Fine in Near Fine jacket. 8vo. 1st printing; afterword by Walter Benjamin; dj in mylar; pictorial boards that match dj; 160 clean, unmarked pages.
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Seller's Description:
New York. 2010. June 2010. New Directions. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket. 9780811218801. Bilingual edition, Translated from the German and with an Introduction by Susan Bernofsky. Afterword by Walter Benjamin. 160 pages. hardcover. keywords: Literature Translated Germany. FROM THE PUBLISHER-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. Microscripts gathers 40 short pieces-stories, poems, fragments, ‘dramolettes'-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 telegram, the inside of a soap wrapper. 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. ' inventory #10709.