Institute Benjamenta is the third Robert Walser novel I have reviewed on A Common Reader, the other two, The Tanners and The Assistant, sharing with this one, a common theme of “servanthood”.
W G Sebald wrote of Robert Walser (1878-1956), “The traces Robert Walser left on his path through life were so faint as to have been almost effaced altogether. . . he was only ever connected with the world in the most fleeting of ways”. It can be seen that Institute Benjamenta springs naturally from such a life, being the story of a man who undergoes a lengthy course of training in becoming little more than a nothing.
The book is written in the first person by Jakob von Gunten, a 17 year old boy who enrols in a private academy for servants, the Institute Benjamenta. The Institute is like a boys’ boarding school, run by an eccentric couple, Frau and Fraulein Benjamenta who teach the basics of a servant’s behaviour and duties such as entering a room, behaviour towards women and waiting on table etc. But more importantly, they also attempt to train their pupils in the inner attitude of a servant which seems to consist of a daily personal humiliation in which the servant’s character is moulded by an almost Christian principle of denying oneself.
Continue reading Review: Institute Benjamenta – Robert Walser
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I have had a very busy week and have been suffering mild literary withdrawal symptoms due to the demands of visitors preventing me from updating A Common Reader for the last few days, or even responding properly to those who have commented on my reviews – apologies to those.
However, I’ve managed to snatch some reading time and have enjoyed reading The Tanners by Robert Walser. The only other book I’ve read by Walser is The Assistant, which I enjoyed greatly so I came to this newly published edition of The Tanners with a sense of anticipation.
Swiss writer Robert Walser wrote during the first part of the 20th century, and was a unique writer and as his Wikipedia entry says, “A characteristic of Walser’s texts is a playful serenity behind which hide existential fears. Today, Walser’s texts, completely re-edited since the 1970s, are regarded as among the most important writings of literary modernism”. Walser led an outwardly limited life, never marrying and ending his years in an asylum. He died while out for a long lonely walk in the snow
Robert Walser is an important writer for those with an interest in this period and in writers who followed in his wake such as W G Sebald. Sebald in fact provides a critical biography of Walser in his 36 page introduction to this edition of The Tanners which is worth the purchase price in itself, beginning with the words,
The traces Robert Walser left on his path through life were so faint as to have been almost effaced altogether. . . he was only ever connected with the world in the most fleeting of ways.
Continue reading Review: The Tanners, Robert Walser
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