by W. G. Sebald
———. Stories, ed. Frank G. Ryder (New York: Continuum, 1982): “Clothes Make the Man,” trans. Harry Steinhauer (“Kleider machen Leute”); “The Three Righteous Combmakers,” trans. Robert M. Browning (“Die drei gerechten Kammacher”); “A Village Romeo and Juliet,” trans. Paul Bernard Thomas (adapted by Kenneth Ryder) (“Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe”); all from Die Leute von Seldwyla.
FURTHER TRANSLATIONS:
“Clothes Make the Man,” trans. Michael Fleming, in Eight German Novellas, ed. Andrew J. Webber (Oxford: World Classics, 1997).
“A Village Romeo and Juliet,” trans. Robert Taylor, in Three German Stories (London: Calder and Boyars, 1966).
SECONDARY SOURCES:
Baechtold, Jakob. Gottfried Kellers Leben, 3 vols. (Stuttgart and Berlin: Cotta, 1895—1903).*
Benjamin, Walter. “Gottfried Keller,” in Selected Writings, vol. 2, trans. Rodney Livingstone (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999).
Muschg, Adolf. Gottfried Keller (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1980).*
Schlüter, Wolfgang. Walter Benjamin: Der Sammler und das geschlossene Kästchen (Darmstadt: Jürgen Hüsser, 1993).*
LE PROMENEUR SOLITAIRE
Robert Walser, Romane und Erzählungen, 6 vols. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1984).* Vol. 1: Geschwister Tanner; Vol. 2: Der Gehülfe; Vol. 3: Jakob von Gunten; Vol. 4: Der Räuber; Vol. 5: Erzählungen 1907—1916; Vol. 6: Erzählungen 1917—1932.
———. Fritz Kochers Aufsätze: Geschichten; Aufsätze (Das Gesamtwerk, vol. I) (Geneva, Hamburg: Kossodo, 1972): “Ballonfahrt”; “Einleitung”; “Fritz Kocher: Stumme Minuten”; “Kotzebue”; “Kleist in Thun”; “Simon.”
———. Poetenleben: Seeland; Die Rose (Das Gesamtwerk, vol. III) (Geneva and Hamburg: Kossodo, 1967)*: “Widmann.”
———. Phantasieren: Prosa aus der Berliner und Bieler Zeit (Das Gesamtwerk, vol. VI) (Geneva and Hamburg: Kossodo, 1966)*: “Abschied”; “Am See”; “Asche, Nadel, Bleistift und Zündhölzchen”; “Sonntag”; “Die Untergasse.”
———. Festzug: Prosa aus der Bieler und Berner Zeit (Das Gesamtwerk, vol. VII) (Geneva and Hamburg: Kossodo, 1966): “München.”
———. Aus dem Bleistiftgebiet: Mikrogramme aus den Jahren 1924—1925, vol. 1: Prosa (Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1985)*: “Leihet mir zum Anhören einer der vorsichtigsten Geschichten”; “Und nun spielte er leider Klavier.”
———. Aus dem Bleistiftgebiet, vol. 3: “Räuber”-Roman;“Felix”-Szenen (Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1986).*
ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS:
Walser, Robert. The Assistant, trans. Susan Bernofsky (London: Penguin Books, 2008).
———. Jakob von Gunten, trans. Christopher Middleton (Austin and London: University of Texas Press, 1969; New York: New York Review Books, 1999).
———. The Robber, trans. and intro. Susan Bernofsky (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2000).
———. The Tanners, trans. Susan Bernofsky (New York: New Directions, 2009).
———. Masquerade and Other Stories, trans. Susan Bernofsky (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990): “Simon.”
———. Selected Stories, trans. Christopher Middleton and others, intro. Susan Sontag (Manchester: Carcanet, 1982; reissued as The Walk, London: Serpent’s Tail, 1992; reissued New York: New York Review Books, 2002): “Balloon Journey” (“Ballonfahrt”); “Kleist in Thun.”
———. Speaking to the Rose: Writings 1912—1932, trans. Christopher Middleton (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2005): “Brentano”; “The Back Alley” (“Die Untergasse”); “And now he was playing, alas, the piano” (“Und nun spielte er leider Klavier”).
Robert Walser Rediscovered: Stories, Fairy-Tale Plays, and Critical Responses, ed. Mark Harman (Hanover, N.H., and London: University Press of New England for Dartmouth College, 1985); also includes: Walter Benjamin, “Robert Walser,” trans. Mark Harman; Elias Canetti, “Robert Walser,” trans. Joachim Neugroschel.
The Review of Contemporary Fiction: Robert Walser Number, eds. Susan Bernofsky and Tom Whalen, The Review of Contemporary Fiction 12: 1 (Spring 1992); also includes: MartinWalser, “A Poet Apart: On Robert Walser,” trans. Susan Bernofsky and Tom Whalen.
OTHER RECENT TRANSLATIONS:
Berlin Stories, trans. Susan Bernofsky (New York: New York Review Books, 2012).
Microscripts, trans. Susan Bernofsky (New York: New Directions, 2010).
Oppressive Light. Selected Poems by RobertWalser, trans. and ed. Daniele Pantano (Pittsburgh, Pa.: Black Lawrence Press, 2012).
A Schoolboy’s Diary, trans. Damion Searls, intro. Ben Lerner (New York: New York Review Books, 2013).
Thirty Poems, selected and trans. Christopher Middleton (New York: New Directions, 2012).
The Walk, trans. Susan Bernofsky, Christopher Middleton (New York: New Directions, 2012).
SECONDARY SOURCES:
Benjamin, Walter. “Robert Walser,” in Selected Writings, vol. 2: 1927—34, trans. Rodney Livingstone (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999) (and see above).
Mächler, Robert. Das Leben Robert Walsers (Geneva and Hamburg: Kossodo, 1966).*
Über Robert Walser (vol. 2), ed. Katharina Kerr (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1978);* includes Elias Canetti, “Einige Aufzeichnungen zu Robert Walser” (1973); Martin Walser, “Alleinstehender Dichter: Über Robert Walser” (1963); Carl Seelig, “27 Juli 1943: Eine Wanderung mit Robert Walser” (1957).
Nabokov, Vladimir. Nikolaj Gogol, German trans. Jochen Neuburger (1990) (Gesammelte Werke, ed. Dieter E. Zimmer, vol. 16).*
———. Erinnerung, sprich, German trans. Dieter E. Zimmer et al. (1991) (Gesammelte Werke, vol. 22)* (Speak, Memory).
———. Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1987)*; (New York: Vintage, 1989).
———. Nikolai Gogol (New York: New Directions, 1961; London: Penguin Books, 2011).
AS DAY AND NIGHT—
Tripp, Jan Peter. Die Aufzählung der Schwierigkeiten: Arbeiten von 1985—92 (Offenburg: Reiff Schwarzwaldverlag, 1993).*
FitzGerald, Edward, trans. Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, ed. and intro. Dick Davis (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1989).*
Gombrich, E. H. Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000).
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. L’Oeil et l’Esprit, ed. Claude Lefort (Paris: Gallimard, 2001); “Eye and Mind,” trans. Michael B. Smith, in The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader: Philosophy and Painting, ed. Galen A. Johnson (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1993).
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Just as it was a privilege and a pleasure to share the teaching of German literature at UEA with Max Sebald at the time he was writing these essays, so, too, it has been an honor and a pleasure to translate them into English. I am very grateful to the Estate of W. G. Sebald and the Wylie Agency, the Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach, the Europäisches Übersetzer-Kollegium Straelen, and the DAAD for their generous assistance and support.
Among the many individuals who have so generously shared their advice and insights, particular thanks are due to Gertrud Aebischer-Sebald, Anthea Bell, Susan Bernofsky, Patrick Charbonneau, Iain Galbraith, Heide Gerland, Russell Goulbourne, Mark Handsley, Ria van Hengel, Richard Hibbitt, Luke Ingram, Anna Kelly, Scott Moyers, Ray Ockenden, Brigid Purcell, Gene Rogers, Clive Scott, Ada Vigliani, and the late Anthony Vivis, for all their assistance, comments, and suggestions.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
W. G. SEBALD was born in Wertach im Allgäu, Germany, in 1944. He studied German language and literature in Freiburg, Switzerland, and Manchester. He taught at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, for thirty years, becoming professor of European literature in 1987, and from 1989 to 1994 was the first director of the British Centre for Literary Translation. His books Vertigo, The Rings of Saturn, The Emigrants, and Austerlitz have won a number of international awards
including the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Award, the Berlin Literature Prize, and the LiteraTour Nord Prize. His other books include Across the Land and the Water, After Nature, Campo Santo, On the Natural History of Destruction, and A Place in the Country. He died in December 2001.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
DR. JO CATLING studied Modern Languages at Wadham College, Oxford, and in Germany at the Universities of Freiburg im Breisgau and Tübingen. Following a research fellowship at the University of Durham, she returned to Norwich in November 1993 to take up a post in German literature and language at the University of East Anglia, where she taught alongside W. G. [Max] Sebald until 2001 and where she is currently a senior lecturer in the School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing. As well as on the work of W. G. Sebald, she has also published extensively on the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke. She is editor (with Richard Hibbitt) of Saturn’s Moons: W. G. Sebald—a Handbook (Oxford: Legenda, 2011). She is also translating W. G. Sebald’s essays on Austrian literature (Die Beschreibung des Unglücks and Unheimliche Heimat) for Hamish Hamilton and Random House.