Geschichten by Robert Walser
"Geschichten" by Robert Walser is a collection of short stories written in the early 20th century. The book offers playful, lyrical vignettes that blend irony, tenderness, and daydream with quick shifts between art, love, nature, and city life. Recurring figures include self-regarding poets, a roving page, stage folk, and flâneurs, all hovering between illusion and the everyday. The opening of the collection moves from six miniature pieces—mocking a poet’s self-importance, personifying memory
as a fragile lute, staging a charged piano lesson, and trapping artists inside their own imaginations—to a longer tale in which the shabby mandolin-player Simon becomes page to the alluring Klara and brazenly faces her looming husband. Next come two sharp fables: a threadbare “genius” who reshapes the world only to remain unhelpable, and an upside-down world of social reversal swallowed at last by divine negation. Subsequent sketches pivot between stage and street: a spent clown eclipsed by an angelic boy dancer, a too-perfect “puppet” city dismissed as unreal, a rapturous swim on a small lake, a panoramic account of a forest fire and civic frenzy, a melancholy Sunday park stroll, and an armchair voyage to Moscow that dissolves back into a quiet room. The sequence also includes a harrowing theater conflagration with a stoic rescuer, a sensual Maria Stuart monologue, and a bustling “Lustspielabend” in a playhouse that ends mid-scene. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
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About this eBook
| Author | Walser, Robert, 1878-1956 |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | Walser, Karl, 1877-1943 |
| LoC No. | unk82075267 |
| Title | Geschichten |
| Original Publication | Leipzig: Kurt Wolff Verlag, 1914. |
| Contents | Sechs kleine Geschichten: 1. Von einem Dichter. 2. Laute. 3. Klavier. 4. 5. 6. Der schöne Platz -- Simon: Eine Liebesgeschichte -- Zwei Geschichten: Das Genie. Welt -- Mehlmann: Ein Märchen -- Seltsame Stadt -- Der Greifensee -- Der Waldbrand -- Der Park -- Illusion -- Theaterbrand -- Kerkerszene -- Lustspielabend -- Katzentheater: Ein Schlafzimmer. Flußgegend mit Turm. Eine Singspielhalle. Vornehme Straße mit Gartengitter. Die Schauspielerin. Die Talentprobe. Kleist in Thun. Wenzel. Paganini: Variation. Die Schlacht bei Sempach. Tagebuch eines Schülers. Ein Vormittag. |
| Credits | Jana Srna, Hans Theyer and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net |
| Reading Level | Reading ease score: 80.2 (6th grade). Easy to read. |
| Language | German |
| LoC Class | PT: Language and Literatures: Germanic, Scandinavian, and Icelandic literatures |
| Subject | Swiss fiction (German) |
| Subject | Short stories, Swiss (German) |
| Category | Text |
| EBook-No. | 76191 |
| Release Date | May 30, 2025 |
| Copyright Status | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 253 downloads in the last 30 days. |
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