Institute Benjamenta by Robert Walser

Institute Benjamenta by Robert Walser

Published in 1908, the novel is a notebook, a boy?s impressions of life at the school for servants run by the brother and sister Benjamenta. The lesson of the school is humility and the rejection of power and ambition. It is a lesson that the narrator, Jakob von Gunten, learns well. From his vantage point, he is able to see through the absurd posturings of his fellow students. Like his creation Jakob von Gunten, Robert Walser understood of the attractions of infinitesimal smallness and kept well away from the corruptions and temptations of literary life. An outsider who spent his last twenty-seven years in an asylum, Walser was a writer?s writer whose work was much admired by Kafka, Hesse and Mann. His voice appeals to all those who savour silence in an epoch of deafening noise. Now a major feature film directed by the Quay Brothers, Institute Benjamenta is Walser?s masterpiece. Ninety years after its first publication, this edition offers the chance to read a truly extraordinary classic.

This novel and Musil's Torless and Rilke's Malte Laurids Brigge should be recognized for what they are: not books ahead of their time but of it and in it, revelations which our slow senses are only just beginning to perceiveTorless and Malte Laurids Brigge are extraordinary works; Institute Benjamenta surpasses them in clarity of prose and ruthless, ironic purpose. It is a rare wonder, a transparent transformation, the mask which suddenly reveals what the human face was trying to hide * Times Literary Supplement *
If he had a hundred thousand readers, the world would be a better place -- Hermann Hesse

Robert Walser was born in Switzerland in 1878 and worked as a bank clerk before becoming a writer. In 1929 he was diagnosed as 'schizophrenic' and lived the last twenty years of his life in hospital. His novels include Jakob von Gunten and The Assistant. Robert Walser died in 1956.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781852425050
ISBN 10	1852425059
Title	Institute Benjamenta
Author	Robert Walser
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Profile Books Ltd
Year published	1995-10-15
Number of pages	160
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable