Fairy Tales Read online

  ALSO BY ROBERT WALSER

  FROM NEW DIRECTIONS

  The Assistant

  A Little Ramble

  Looking at Pictures

  Microscripts

  The Tanners

  Thirty Poems

  The Walk

  CONTENTS

  Foreword

  Translators’ note

  Snow White

  Thorn Rose, the Sleeping Beauty

  Cinderella

  The Christ Child

  FOREWORD

  “Cinderella, she seems so easy.”

  Bob Dylan, “Desolation Row”

  In his hometown of Biel, where he was born in 1878 and which he left in 1895, Robert Walser discovered his passion for the theater. Inspired by Friedrich Schiller, he dreamed of becoming an actor and playwright. As a writer, Walser retained and masterfully cultivated this histrionic passion for the spoken word. He expressed, imitated, and perfectly adapted the immediate presence of speech into writing, which also complemented his arsenal for irony.

  Walser is not an author who strives in the free and open. “We are so glad in dark, meditative holes,” he wrote in 1907 in his essay “The Theater, a Dream.” He loved the delimited and well-defined space. Restriction allowed him to compress and unfold his imaginarium. Since his youth, Walser knew that the magical effect of literature finds its most wonderful expression in the theater. “Are the fictions not dreams, and isn’t the open stage nothing other than its wide-open mouth talking in its sleep?”

  Although Walser admired the theater, he never wrote directly for the stage. Instead, he imparted a theatrical Grundgestus in his prose (Brecht’s word meaning fundamental gesture, attitude, posture), which the fairy-tale dramolettes—translated here by Daniele Pantano and James Reidel—also demonstrate. They are short, closet plays that do not retell the familiar fairy tale but rather recall their symbols and tropes. “Whether they could ever be put on with, for instance, music is totally questionable and seems for the present utterly beside the point. They are tempered for speech and language, to a beat and a rhythmic enjoyment,” Walser wrote to a publisher in 1912.

  As it turned out, Walser’s fairy-tale dramolettes found their way to the stage during the 1970s, when young troupes and little theaters discovered them. Representing a milestone in the history of their reception is Heinz Holliger’s opera Snow White (Schneewittchen), which is based on Walser’s text and premiered at the Zurich Opera House in 1998 with great success. Originally, in 1901, Cinderella (Aschenbrödel) and Snow White were published in the journal Die Insel. In 1919, Walser gathered them with other dramolettes for the volume Comedies. Around the same time he likely wrote Thorn Rose (Dornröschen), or Sleeping Beauty, which appeared a year later in the journal Pro Helvetia. The Christ Child (Das Christkind), also dates from that time and was published in Die Neue Rundschau in 1920. It can be read too as a fairy tale or, more properly, a verse morality.

  During Walser’s lifetime these publications received very little real public reaction. An exception is Walter Benjamin who, in his 1929 essay on Walser, called Snow White “one of the most profound creations of recent literature and one that is sufficient on its own to show why the most playful of all writers was a favorite of the merciless Franz Kafka.” Benjamin continues, “Walser starts where the fairy tales stop. ‘And if they are not dead, they live now.’ Walser shows how they live.”

  Looking at literary history, Walser’s fairy-tale dramolettes are not unique. They belong to adaptations, re-creations, collections, and studies in the field of folk and literary fairy tales that have been treated by different minds such as Carlo Collodi, Oscar Wilde, L. Frank Baum, Engelbert Humperdinck, Johann Strauss, Selma Lagerlöf, Blaise Cendrars, Carl Einstein, Franz Kafka, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, and Carl Jung.

  The fairy-tale dramolettes are magical literary theater—“entirely poetry” in Walser’s words. The characters, while still fairy-tale beings, exemplify the modern individual who exists to understand the possible terms of his or her fate. For the characters, the fairy tale is the world and language out of which they are made, their nature. Walser depicts self-knowledge as an existential state of poetic exaggeration. When the characters speak of their existence, they stand as if beside themselves. Everything has already happened; time has stopped; life becomes reflectively stretched apart. It is transformed into this dream reality, which is fantastic, disillusioning, demonic, enchanting, enlightening, and uplifting. In addition to the subject matter and the metatheatrical dimension is Walser’s inimitable language that gives the dramolettes their special charm. For all its simplicity and elegance, his language is dazzling and full of surprising, ironic twists:

  The language must be a weasel

  falling headlong when it wishes

  that it didn’t lack words for her,

  but it can see her poverty.

  These days we have learned to deal with the ambivalence of the tableau. Together with innovation, making the unreal means a threatening alienation as well. Walser, however, belongs to a generation that welcomes illusion. Fiction appears as a romantic power that allows one to transform a mundane reality:

  Isn’t reality a dream too?

  Aren’t we all, even when awake,

  going about a bit like dreamers,

  sleepwalkers in the light of day,

  who play around with caprices

  and act as if awake?

  While they are jubilantly playful, the fairy-tale dramolettes are little teaching plays too. The characters behave as if in a poetic purgatory, twisting and turning until they confess, which in the end is precisely their purpose. They are messengers of a poetic existence who bear witness to the human longing for being without boundaries while rooted in a center. As an enlightened poet, Walser knew where the power of poetry exists. This is revealed by the Fairy Tale, as a character herself:

  The people don’t believe in me,

  but so what when just my nearness

  makes them think a little again.

  RETO SORG

  ROBERT WALSER-ZENTRUM, BERN

  TRANSLATORS’ NOTE

  The source text for these translations is Robert Walser, Komödie: Märchenspiele und szenische Dichtungen (1986). Occasional notes are provided to enhance reading and understanding. The order of the first three plays is not chronological, but rather that of a dramatic or cinematic trilogy-triptych, one that allows the reader to challenge, in a small, Walserian way, the culturally hegemonic Disney cartoon adaptations of the past midcentury (and reinforced once more with the 2014 film Maleficent).

  As to the titles, Snow White is a virtual cognate of the German title. Cinderella, however, is from the familiar French version of the tale by Charles Perrault — Cendrillon — which means the same as the German word Aschenbrödel, a scullion maid. (The second part of the word/name is from the verb brodeln, or prudeln, literally to seethe, boil, sputter, and figuratively to talk too much, which Walser exploits here.) Thorn Rose — which alludes to the heroine’s “thorny” quality — would be lost in the title that has supplanted it over time. Thus, “Sleeping Beauty” appears in the translation’s subtitle.

  The inclusion here of The Christ Child is our inescapable assertion that Walser intended it as a fairy tale, too, given all the devotion to the original text as the other three.

  J.R. & D.P.

  SNOW WHITE

  A garden. To the right the palace entrance. In the background rolling mountains. The Queen, Snow White, the foreign Prince, the Hunter.

  Queen:

  Say, are you sick?

  Snow White:

  You would ask since you wanted death

  on the one who ever stung you

  in the eyes as too beautiful.

  How you look at me so composed.
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  This kindness, showing in your eyes,

  so full of love, is just made up,

  the serene tone just counterfeit.

  Hate really does dwell in your heart.

  You dispatched the Hunter to me

  and told him to draw his dagger,

  to point it at this despised face.

  You ask me whether I’m sick now?

  Such sport sounds bad from a soft voice.

  Indeed, softness becomes sly sport

  when it is so fearlessly cruel.

  I’m not sick; I’m very much dead.

  The poison apple was painful,

  O, O so painful, and Mother, you,

  you’re the one who brought it to me.

  So why joke about my being sick?

  Queen:

  Fair child, you are wrong. You are sick,

  no, gravely, very gravely ill.

  There’s no doubt this fresh garden air

  will do you good. I beg of you,

  just don’t let your weak little head

  give in to the idea. Be still.

  Don’t mull things over and over.

  Get some exercise, skip and run.

  Shout racing for a butterfly.

  Scold the air for not making it

  warm enough yet. Become a child.

  Soon you’ll leave this color behind,

  which is like a pale winding sheet

  draped over your pink complexion.

  Think not of sin. The sin should be

  forgotten. Perhaps I did sin

  against you many long years ago.

  Who could remember such a thing?

  Unpleasant things are easily

  forgotten if you consider

  who’s near and dear. Are you crying?

  Snow White:

  Yes, I must when I realize

  how quick you are to wring the past

  by the neck the way you wanted

  mine wrung. Crying, of course, over

  the sinful absent mind that wants

  to sweet-talk me. O how you give

  this sin such wings, and yet it flies

  terribly with this new pair

  that do not fit. It lies so close

  to me and you, this thing you want

  bantered away with a sweet word,

  so close, I’d say, close to the touch,

  such that I can never forget it,

  nor you who committed it.

  Hunter, speak, you did swear my death?

  Hunter:

  Of course, princess, a grisly death,

  just not performed as loud and clear

  as the fairy tale made public.

  The humble way you begged touched me,

  your face, lying there sweet as snow

  beneath the kiss of the sunlight.

  I sheathed that which I intended

  for your murder, stabbing the deer

  that leapt across our path. I sucked

  the blood out of him greedily.

  Yours, however, I left untouched.

  So don’t say I swore you should die.

  I took pity and broke my oath

  before I did you any harm.

  Queen:

  So what are you crying about?

  He drew his dagger as a joke.

  He’d have to stab what’s soft in him

  before he could ever stab you.

  But he didn’t. The soft in him

  is alive like the morning sun.

  Come give me a kiss and forget.

  Look up with joy and show some sense.

  Snow White:

  How can I kiss the lips of one

  who pushed this Hunter off, kissed him

  into doing the bloody deed.

  I’ll never kiss you. With kisses

  you fired the Hunter to murder

  and my death was seconds away,

  because he was your sweet lover.

  Queen:

  What did you say?

  Hunter:

  Me with kisses?

  Prince:

  I really believe it’s all true.

  That man in the green jacket has

  far less respect than befits him

  in the presence of this great Queen.

  Snow White, O how evilly have

  you been played by such ruthless hate.

  It’s a wonder that you’re alive.

  You survived poison and a knife.

  From what stuff are you made,

  for you’re dead and yet so lovely

  alive, indeed, so little dead

  that life must be in love with you?

  Tell me, did this Hunter stab you?

  Snow White:

  No, no, there beats in this fellow

  a good heart filled with compassion.

  If the Queen had this heart, she would

  be a better mother to me.

  Queen:

  I mean to be much better with you

  than your keen suspicion suggests.

  I did not send the Hunter off

  after you with kisses. Blind fear

  has made you too apprehensive.

  In fact, I have always loved you

  as my sweet, innocent child.

  Why would I have any reason,

  cause, or right to hate one as dear

  to me as a child of my own breast!

  O do not believe that coy voice

  that whispers of sin, which it’s not.

  Believe your right, not your left ear,

  I mean that false one telling you

  that I am this evil mother

  green-eyed at beauty. Don’t be fooled

  by such an absurd fairy tale

  stuffing the world’s greedy ears full

  of these newsy bits that I am

  mad with jealousy, by nature

  evil. It is just idle talk.

  I love you. To admit this has

  never been said more sincerely.

  That you’re so lovely gives me joy.

  Beauty in one’s own child is balm

  for a mother’s love gone weary,

  not the goad to some heinous deed,

  like the fairy tale has laid out

  for this story line here, this play.

  Don’t turn away. Be a dear child.

  Trust a parent’s word as your own.

  Snow White:

  O I believed you with pleasure,

  for believing is quiet bliss.

  But how much faith is going to make

  me believe when no faith exists,

  where a roguish malice lurks, where

  injustice sits with a proud neck?

  You speak as kindly as you can,

  and yet you still cannot act kind.

  Those eyes, flashing so scornfully,

  wince at me so threatening, so

  unmotherly, laugh with menace

  at the affection on your tongue,

  with derision. They speak the truth,

  and they alone, those proud eyes, I

  believe, not the backstabber’s tongue.

  Prince:

  I believe you see right, my child.

  Queen:

  Must you keep helping, little prince,*

  feeding more flames to the fire, where

  a flood of healing is needed?

  A stranger clad in motley clothes

  should not step too close to a queen.

  Prince:

  Why not dare to rise against you,

  you fiend, for the princess’s sake?

  Queen:

  What?

  Prince:

  Yes, and while I look small and weak,

  I’ll echo this a thousand times,

  ten—a hundred thousand times for you:

  a dreadful crime’s taken place here,

  and one that points to you, the Queen.

  Poison was strewn for this sweet child,

  set out as though she were a dog.

/>   Why not admit your wickedness,

  your good conscience! You, fair child,

  let’s go up for a little while

  and contemplate this grievous thing.

  If you’re too weak, just lay your head

  upon my faithful shoulder here,

  which would cherish such a burden.

  From you, Queen, we shall take our leave

  for now of a short span of time.

  Then we’ll continue our talk.

  (To Snow White) Come,

  permit me this sweet liberty.

  He leads her inside the palace.

  Queen:

  Just go, broken mast and rigging.

  Go newlyweds, married to death.

  Go misery, lead weakness away,

  and be very dear arm in arm.

  Come, fair Hunter, let’s have a talk.

  Change of scene. A room inside the palace. The Prince

  and Snow White.

  Prince:

  I would talk away the whole day

  with you and do so arm in arm.

  How strange this language is to me

  that comes from that sweet mouth of yours.

  Your mere word, how alive it is.

  My ear hangs rapt on its richness

  in a hammock of harkening,

  while dreaming of a violin strain,

  a lisp, a fair nightingale’s song,

  of love’s twittering. In and out

  the dreaming goes like ocean waves

  washing onto our garden shore.

  O speak, and I’m ever asleep,

  a prisoner of love this way,

  in chains, yet infinitely rich,

  free as no free man ever was.

  Snow White:

  You speak such noble princely speech.

  Prince:

  No, let me listen instead,

  so that the love I swore below

  in the garden, in that playpen,

  never blows away in vain words.

  I only want to listen and respond

  to your love that sounds in my head.

  Speak, that I am ever silent

  and true to you. Unfaithfulness

  comes quick with words. It speaks rashly,

  a fountain in the wind, being whipped,

  to froth over into babble.

  No, let me be silent, true to you.

  In this sense I shall love you more

  than with love. Then wholeheartedness

  knows itself no more. It showers

  me in wetness the same as you.

  Love is wet the way the night is,