WALSER'S LITERARY COMMITMENT TO THE SEVENTIES

In his early novels Walser portrays individuals whose spontaneous potential is curtailed by social reality. This theme of dependency and oppression is prevalent both in his novels and novellas after 1973. As Walser considers himself a chronicler of everyday life, the thematics of his texts originate in current socio-political issues. Walser never addresses these issues explicitly in his fictions, but rather draws the reader's attention to them by showing their pernicious effects on average citizens among whom he includes himself. In 1980 Walser summarized the theme in his most recent novels:

Ich habe 1976 Jenseits der Liebe gebracht, das ist … die Konkurrenz zweier Angestellten unter einem Chef. Dann kam 78 das Fliehendes Pferd das ist die Konkurrenz zweier Männer vor zwei Frauen. Dann Seelenarbeit, das ist Abhängigkeit eines Angestellten von diesem Chef. Und jetzt Schwanenhaus, die Konkurrenz nicht von Angestellten, sondern von mittelständischen Kleinunternehmern, Geschäftsleuten.¹

[In 1976 I wrote Beyond All Love, which presents … two employees in competition before their boss. Then, in 1978, came Runaway Horse, which shows two men competing before two women. Then The Inner Man, which presents an employee's dependency on his boss. And now The Swan Villa, where competition occurs not among employees but rather among small-time, middle-class entrepreneurs and businessmen.]

Competition and dependency, experiences that obstruct the individual's efforts to achieve personal autonomy, move again into the foreground in Walser's prose texts since 1980, particularly in the sequel to Jenseits der Liebe, the 1982 novel Brief an Lord Liszt. Yet the roots for these thematics in Walser's work date back several decades. Upon returning from his first extended stay in the United States in 1959 Walser felt daunted by the

Erlebnis des Gefangenseins auf einem Kontinent, in einem Land, einer Familie, einer Sprache, dieses Abgegrenzt- und Abgekapselt- und Abgepacktsein in einer Biographie, aus der Ahnung, du bist der und der, und der hat wieder da und da unter der und der Adresse mit seinem Paß sich einzufinden. Das schien mir unerträglich.²

[feeling of being held prisoner on a continent, in a country, in a family, in a language; a feeling of being confined, isolated, and wrapped up in your biography through the notion that you are supposed to be a certain someone, and that someone has to report to that particular place and address with his passport. This seemed unbearable to me.]

On the one hand the experience of being controlled manifests itself for Walser not only through social forces but also, on a more existential level, through cognitive and linguistic faculties. On the other, it permeates the private sector and affects one's self-esteem and self-identity. Walser equates this feeling of captivity with an incomplete, deficient sense of self. At that time Walser reacted to his feelings of discontent by writing the novel he entitled Halbzeit, drawing up, as it were, the balance sheet of half a lifetime. Seelenarbeit also resulted from a personal experience of this kind, where it was presumably medical treatment that instilled in Walser the impression of being dependent on or dominated by external forces. Although in this case, the dependency experienced by the author had a medical rather than a societal origin, but its intensity led Walser to proclaim that the worst possible experience is “Abhängigkeit” [dependency].³

Between 1974 and 1978 Walser penned the essays compiled in the volume Wer ist ein Schriftsteller? (1979). Walser here elaborates on his concept of writing, a concept that he seems to have modified slightly in that the socio-political vocabulary of his earlier essays has yielded to a more socio-psychological line of argument. In the title piece of this collection (1974), Walser maintains that since the writer's identity is always subjected to social influences, it can never gain stability, but is bound to remain self-conscious, insecure, and questionable. Assuming that socially disadvantaged lower-class families do not possess the requisite self-esteem and confidence to endow their children with a rigorous and unyielding sense of self, Walser draws the inference that most writers emerge from the lower strata of society (WS [Wer ist ein Schriftsteller?] 37). This conclusion arises from his belief that writing serves as a therapeutic means for the writer to consolidate his unstable identity (WS 40). Writing, Walser posits, is a response to negative, oftentimes intolerable, involuntary experiences, and only in this capacity can writing question the validity and legitimacy of the extant social conditions. The writer, then, defuses the intolerability of his experiences by giving vent to an existential urge to write. Walser's understanding of realism is based on this causality. Realistic writing, he argues, requires a motive that cannot originate in literature but in reality.⁴

As the consequence of these postulates Walser advocates the critical transformation of reality into fiction. The literary product, however, is not simply a mirror of reality, but rather a critical Auseinandersetzung [coming to grips] with it and a salve to specific wounds inflicted on the individual by the given conditions. Thus author and reader alike are proffered new experiential and evaluative possibilities, consummating the author's ambition to empower his fictional creations with the ability to serve as an evocative test of reality (WS 16). In contrast to the ‘poet’ (Dichter) who seeks contentment in the literary licking of his wounds, the ‘realistic writer’ (Schreiber) attempts to discover the cause of these wounds. Hence Walser considers writing to be a battle against that which inflicts damage, in fact, no less than the dialectical movement from suffering to resistance (WS 41).

During the sixties, Walser regarded literature as one potential means to help clear the path to democracy and, quite apparently, assigned a concrete public function to literature. By the same token Walser always considered fiction the author's response to personal experiences—experiences, however, that are related to a broader social problem area. The necessity of social change remains the central issue in Walser's essays. In the title piece of the collection Wie und wovon handelt Literatur (1972), Walser demands of each author that he insure the social function of literature by means of a critical, by which he means realistic, portrayal of negative social conditions (WW [Wie und wovon handelt Literatur] 123). In a fervent declaration of 1968 Walser had insisted that the adequate tone of literary expression constitute itself as a “demokratische, mythenzerstörende, mutmachende Schreibe, in der sich der demokratische Befreiungsprozeß manifestiert” [democratic, encouraging, myth-shattering kind of writing that in itself expresses the process of democratic liberation].⁵ Such resolute statements yielded Walser the reputation of a leftist intellectual, despite the fact that this extreme leftist propensity does not speak through his novels. For Walser the function of a novel is undoubtedly not identical to that of a political manifesto. It is rather an artistic-compository enterprise and as such—for author and reader alike—an “Entdeckungsfahrt” [expedition] (WW 136) into the reality of fiction. In Walser's novels a leftist tendency manifests itself not explicitly in specific episodes, but implicitly through the totality of the (multi-volume) work.

The pronounced political activism documented in Walser's early essays parallels the turn toward the left in the literature of the sixties. This movement was heralded by such slogans as ‘emancipation’ and ‘self-determination,’ aiming at social change.⁶ When in the late sixties the leftist aspirations that culminated in the student movement of 1968 were subdued by the Radikalenerlaß, a decree that banned members of so-called radical organizations from occupying public positions, and the desired changes remained unrealized, Hans Magnus Enzensberger immediately denounced literature as useless, revolutionary gesticulation.⁷ It was the writer Dieter Wellershoff who then, in an immediate reaction to Enzensberger, advocated a more moderated and unassuming concept of literature. As early as 1969 he anticipated the literary trend from public to private life that was to dominate subsequent decades. When literature illustrates individual suffering as a consequence of social mechanisms, Wellershoff proclaimed, it fulfills its critical potential in that it reveals the price that is often extorted by given circumstances.⁸

This kind of poetics no longer insists on the public function of literature; rather, it stresses the communicative aspect in its personal appeal to the reader. When the reader discovers an affinity to the literary protagonists’ afflictions and is able to descry their social origin, he or she may develop a critical social consciousness. In the early seventies, Walser, who had always been an advocate of this literary concept, begins to stress the text's interaction with the reader even more forcibly. Although he still firmly believes that the literary product should reflect the historical conditions under which it was created, he now renounces the social or political function, the Indienstnahme of literature. In his view, literature achieves its social function through the writer's very motivation to produce it. Constituting the writer's response to personal experience caused by external factors, literature, Walser thinks, mirrors the underlying social conflicts of its very existence. Still, his pointing out that it is unreasonable to expect immediate social changes seems needless, and his statements as to a potential effect of literature are rather vague. Walser mentions the “organisierende Kraft” [activist momentum] imparted to the reader by the reader's own imitation of the author's dialectical change of perspective, yet the explicit significance of this momentum remains undefined, defying the attempt to categorize, and thus exploit it. The only concrete factor posited by Walser is his somewhat simplistic view that the act of reading is analogous to the act of writing (WW 135).⁹ He thus places his trust in the reader, perhaps to disengage himself from public expectations.

In hopes of inducing the reader into an identification with his fictionalized personal experiences, Walser attempts to open a new perspective, one that will question the average citizen's conformist attitudes. He is nevertheless aware that there is no concrete proof as to a potential impact on or change in the reader. Therefore Walser refuses to address the author-reader correlation further and limits his statements to the simple declaration that a writer is someone who undergoes change through his writing (WS 42). Although Walser's demonstration of insidious facets of the given social conditions is limited to the subjective perception of his protagonists, the nexus between personal affliction and social reality becomes apparent. Eventually, however, it is the reader's response which realizes the “Protestkraft, Kritikkraft, Wunschkraft” (WS 95) [potential of protest, critique, and desire] of fiction. Walser emphasizes this in a television interview of 1985:

Ich kann die gesellschaftliche Dimension, die sogenannte politische Brauchbarkeit oder überhaupt gesellschaftliche Brauchbarkeit, die kann ich nicht beabsichtigen. Aber ich kann auf meine Erfahrungen, auf meine negativen Erfahrungen nach meiner Art literarisch antworten und muß dann hoffen, daß in meine negativen Erfahrungen etwas eingegangen sei, was verallgemeinerungsfähig für den Leser, der ähnliche Erfahrungen hat, ist.¹⁰

[I cannot intend the societal dimension, the so-called political function, or societal function in general. What I can do, however, is to react to my negative experiences in my own literary fashion, and then I can only hope that my negative experiences contain something, which for the reader who has undergone similar experiences assumes a more general relevance.]

It is precisely these negative experiences that lead to the feeling of vulnerability, hence an incomplete and unsatisfactory self-identity. Walser is at pains to emphasize that this state of general discontent motivates him to write,¹¹ explicitly stating that his literary protagonists are attempts to come to terms with an autobiographical lack.¹² Although the conflicts Walser depicts in his novels are based on, or at least related to personal experience, the source of these conflicts is not subjective. The lack of self-confidence and self-identity perceived by his characters is always the consequence of external, that is, societal, manipulative influences. Since the author himself is a product of social forces, so, too, are his literary products.¹³ In this manner, the self-defensive strategies of his protagonists assert Walser's own rebellion against such negativity as constitutes his personal experience, in effect, a rebellion by literary proxy.¹⁴

Departing from a subjective vantage point, Walser's narrative approach seeks to invade extra-subjective territory.¹⁵ This literary concept, which seems to content itself with a rather modest objective, is characteristic of German literature of the seventies. It was not the declared goal of this literature to function as a vehicle for social change, but to challenge the perceptions of the individual. This tendency marks the transition from the global, socio-political criticism of the literature of the sixties to a less agitative literature of the subsequent decades. Notwithstanding the renunciation of its public function, this literature assumes its social dimension through the reader's participation. The fact that experiential knowledge has become essential for this sort of literary commitment should not be mistaken for self-sufficient escapism. Walser himself rigidly rejects the self-complacent and ahistorical narcissism of the works of the so-called New Subjectivists, although, notably with his later novels Brandung and Jagd in which the lack of societal relevance prevails, he clearly abandons this position.

THE LITERARY CONTEXT: EXAMPLES OF NEW SUBJECTIVITY

The literary movement that began to develop in West Germany during the early seventies after the revolutionary spirit of the sixties had spent its force commonly bears the label New Subjectivity (Neue Subjektivitāt). The works it has brought forth evidence the gradual abdication of explicit political themes while displaying the simultaneous rediscovery of innermost human concerns. For this reason this literature became also known as New Sensibility. Some of the most prominent and widely read authors who emerged from that post-war generation include Peter Handke, often seen as epitomizing that movement, Botho Strauß, Nicolas Born, Peter Härtling, and Bernward Vesper. In addition various established authors, among them Elias Canetti, Max Frisch, or Thomas Bernhard, contributed with their autobiographical sketches to the rapidly revitalizing psychological concerns of literature.

Its hallmarks, generally considered Peter Schneider's narrative Lenz and Karin Struck's first novel Klassenliebe (Class Love), both appeared in 1973, marking the year of transition. In Lenz, the protagonist's search for a political stance is interwoven with his personal quest for self-identity, while the portrayal of his emotions is not subordinated to that of external reality. In Struck's novel the quasi-autobiographical, first-person narrator displays an unusually radical openness in revealing her most secret feelings. Thematically Klassenliebe illustrates socio-political reality, more precisely, the narrator's social dilemma as she is climbing the social ladder. The brash discussion of decidedly political themes is supercharged with emotionalism and is also tightly connected with the purpose of self-portrayal and self-denudation with the ultimate objective of individual self-definition. Writing becomes a means for the conjuration of self (209). Formally the novel which consists of diary-like entries is characteristic of New Subjective prose.

While in the literature of the sixties there prevailed a broad, panoramic view of society, the literary production of the following decades was determined by a rather narrow angle, focusing on the conflict between individuals and society. Schneider's protagonist is considered a key figure in the literary transition to personal themes, because his emotions are no longer subordinated to political issues. Yet while in Lenz a distinct coexistence of personal and political themes prevails, the societal perspective in most of the subsequent New Subjective works is at best implied. For Gregor Keuschnig, the protagonist in Peter Handke's Stunde der wahren Empfindung (1975; A Moment of True Feeling, 1977), for example, all social values becomes suddenly meaningless as he finds himself in an identity crisis. All substance in Handke's narrative is the inner world of the protagonist. On account of this exclusively subjective point of view, any potential reasons or motives for Keuschnig's alienation remain rather vague. There are, however, indications that job-related factors may serve as a explanation. His life is ruled by a feeling of isolation and disorientation. What Handke illustrates in Stunde der wahren Empfindung is the individual's experience of total estrangement from external reality, but also his eventual rediscovery of a new perception of reality. The same theme is central to Handke's novel Chinese des Schmerzes (Chinaman of Sorrow) of 1983. In this narrative the first-person narrator Andreas Loser (a pun on its English meaning may be intended) drops out of his bourgeois profession as teacher of ancient languages, finding himself in a state of passive isolation. Again it is this loss of social context that constitutes the precondition for his ultimate achievement of a new sense of perception.

In Nicolas Born's novel Die erdabgewandte Seite der Geschichte (1976; The Far Side of History) the narrator describes his own identity crisis. His awareness of an inimical world that resists all comprehension causes him to withdraw from history into his own, self-composed story. Like his counterpart Keuschnig, who suddenly finds himself face to face with a nonsensical and incoherent reality, Born's narrator turns his back on the system. But even in his private sphere there arise nothing but conflicts which overshadow his relationships with his wife, his girlfriend and his best friend. Looming above, however, is his loss of orientation, the loss of a healthy symbiosis with a peacefully progressing society (20). Similar to Handke, individual isolation and the feeling of disorientation form the central theme in Born's novel. Born's narrator is possessed by the notion that his life is sliding away from under him (21). Instead of history he experiences “bloß Geschichten” (20) [merely stories], stories that resist comprehension and closure. The realization of his own insignificance as a part of the system leads him to a “Flucht in die Innerlichkeit” [withdrawal into himself] as a reaction to his “Gefangenschaft in der Äußerlichkeit” (51) [imprisonment in external reality]. Analogous to Gregor Keuschnig, who craves a job that produces something definitive and irreversible (161), Born's narrator envisions his salvation from a meaningless existence through “eine Arbeit, die einfach getan werden muß” (16) [a job that simply has to be done]. Only on the basis of his individual usefulness could he develop a new sense of social values.

An all-embracing indictment of society appears to be the concern of Thomas Bernhard's short novels Die Ursache (1975; An Indication of the Cause, 1985), Der Keller (1976; The Cellar: An Escape, 1985), Der Atem (1978; Breath: A Decision, 1985), Die Kälte (1981; In the Cold, 1985), and Ein Kind (1982; A Child, 1985).¹⁶ These texts are conceived as quasi-autobiographical sequels through which the author-narrator relates fragments of his childhood and youth. Looking back in vengeful anger, his cold, self-distancing, and non-palliative report settles scores with the past. In Die Ursache Bernhard illustrates the experiences of a thirteen-year-old school boy during the war and post-war period. The narrator considers himself a victim of a brutal environment that kept him an unprotected and defenseless prisoner. A pronounced historical criticism becomes repeatedly audible in the narrator's remarks about the post-war Catholic regime that presumably superseded Nazi fascism. Both ideologies, he is convinced, represent the same “menschenfeindlichen Züchtigungsmechanismus” (108) [barbarous ritual of castigation]. Furthermore federal institutions, such as the school system, are stigmatized as a “katastrophale Verstümmelungsmaschinerie” (119) [disastrous apparatus for the mutilation of the mind].

In Der Keller Bernhard indicts the destructive mechanisms of a society that harshly suppresses the individual's search for personal fulfillment and instead leaves him with the feeling of desperate imprisonment. The narrator's crisis comes to a dramatic climax in the following two texts. In Der Atem the setting is a hospital where the narrator finds himself among scores of moribund patients. Yet, although the illness of the meanwhile eighteen-year-old has reached a life-threatening stage, he tells us in Die Kälte that he managed to escape from the “perversen medizinischen Unheilsmühle” (148) [perverted medical disaster mill] and rediscover his determination to live. He thus wins the struggle for self-assertion, a victory, however, of so modest an objective as the mere wish to survive. As the narrator already admits in Der Atem, the pursuit of that goal merely insures a prolongation of the “lebenslänglichen Sterbeprozeß” (81) [lifelong process of dying]. This bleak view invalidates even the last remaining ground for existential self-determination. Life itself is the penitentiary to which everyone is committed by birth. The “gesellschaftspolitische Perversität” (127) [socio-political perversity] of society's institutions leads the individual to the realization of his invariable existential captivity. Never does Bernhard's pessimistic portrayal of human existence attempt to address or investigate social issues, it simply condemns an abominable system.

The texts addressed display a trait typical of the New Subjective literature. While the social critical novels of the sixties, for example the novels of Böll, Grass, Lenz, or Walser, presented their protagonists as victims of the demands and promises made by society, they also pointed to the weaknesses and inadequacies of these characters. The New Subjective works, however, unquestionably acquit the individual summarily, while exclusive blame is put on an inhumane society.¹⁷ Bernhard's objective, then, is one of self-justification, which allows him at the same time to externalize his frustrations. For this purpose, as he states in Der Keller, writing becomes a “Lebensnotwendigkeit” (45) [existential necessity].

Bernhard's texts are characteristic of many works of the seventies that are considered quasi-autobiographies, because their authors display a highly subjective attitude:

[E]r begnügt sich mit einer splitterhaften Darstellung seines Lebens, er bleibt dort stehen, wo er psychisch nicht mehr weiter kann; liefert Momentaufnahmen und dokumentiert seine Ehrlichkeit, indem er bewußt oder unbewußt auf seine Ängste hinweist. Dabei rückt die Autobiographie in den Bereich der schöngeistigen Literatur, und die Fiktionalisierung wird oft genug zum integralen Element der Selbstdarstellung.¹⁸

[He contents himself with a fragmentary portrayal of his own life and stops where he cannot go any further mentally. He presents momentary glimpses and documents his honesty by consciously or unconsciously admitting to his fears. Autobiography here approaches the realm of belles lettres, and in many cases fictionalization becomes an integral element of self-portrayal.]

This verdict also applies to the autobiographical fictions of Max Frisch and Peter Härtling. In his diary-like novel Montauk (1975; 1976) Frisch identifies himself as the narrator, who is set on self-analysis. Deliberately ignoring social issues, Frisch hopes that his radical self-denudations will permit him a cool distance from his past and allow him to come to terms with personal problems. Mindful exclusively of his own feelings—“ich bin es, den ich darstelle” [“it is myself that I portray”] the motto reads—he seeks self-assurance both as a writer and his role as a man, downright rejecting the once respected public as a communicative partner.¹⁹

Peter Härtling, in his novel Nachgetragene Liebe (1980; In Retrospect, With Love), likewise undertakes a journey into the past by means of writing. The author-narrator recapitulates the crucial years of his childhood that determined his ambivalent relationship with his—meanwhile deceased—father, desperately trying to disclose the reasons for his father's painful lack of affection. At the same time the narrator seeks self-justification by shedding light on this unbeneficial relationship. Fully cognizant of the writing process, he resurrects the past and simultaneously assumes a more objective distance from himself. As in Frisch's case, the retrospective clarification of formative influences finally leads to self-analysis and self-definition.

Richard Schroubek, the first-person narrator in Botho Strauß's Die Widmung (1977; Devotion, 1979), is disgusted with society's blunt deceptions and withdraws into himself in order to engage in “Ich-Forschung” (41) [“self-analysis”; 32]. Like the narrator in Born's novel, Schroubek is unnerved and bedazzled by society, which has left him politically disoriented. The traceless disappearance of his girlfriend leaves him further emotionally unsettled. In an effort to come to a closer understanding of his emotions and gain a new sense of self he begins to compile the “Biografie seiner leeren Stunden” (127) [“biography of his empty hours”; Devotion 105].

All texts discussed here investigate troubled relationships between an individual and external reality, most allowing this individual to function as the narrator of his story. The emphasis clearly lies on the subjective-emotional equipoise of the narrator while external conditions are either excluded or—as in Bernhard's works—globally denounced. Disillusionment, anger, pessimism, and fear are the motives for these protagonists to retreat into subjective reality, accounting for the lack of a social critical perspective. It is the personal concern of these author-narrators to reveal the ontological causes for their vexing self-doubts and insecurities. This sort of self-reflection seeks to stabilize their shattered psychological make-up. In the New Subjective works the individual functions both as the means and the objective of narration.²⁰ The individual describes, portrays, and analyzes himself because everything external to him resists depiction, portrayal, and analysis for want of a logical coherence. One could argue, then, that it is indeed the abstract system of society that is implicated and held responsible for the deformations of the individual. Since this system is no longer depictable and poses a monstrous threat to the individual, it necessitates his retreat into subjectivity. Walser too employs his protagonists as figural media eluding social reality by barricading themselves within their thoughts and emotions. Yet the goal of his novels is not a narcissistic self-presentation—neither of the author nor of the protagonist. It is Walser's intent to unveil the adverse social conditions and their effect on his protagonists, an intent that manifests itself in his narrative approach.

THE NARRATIVE PERSPECTIVE

The introjection of the thematics in Walser's novels after 1975 has its formal basis in the modified narrative perspective. While Walser presents his narratives now in the third person, the narrative perspective is still centered in the character's consciousness. An outside narrator is not noticeable, yet the use of the third person and of the simple past point to a mediating narrative voice. Oftentimes the narratives are carried by narrated monologue, a form of figural narration that stands between direct and indirect speech and expresses the thoughts of the character—contrary to the interior monologue—in the third person.²¹ Thus narrated monologue casts “the language of a subjective mind into the grammar of objective narration.” While formally it points to the presence of an implied narrator, it is this narrator's “identification—but not his identity—with the character's mentality that is supremely enhanced by this technique.”²² This kind of narration renounces ex cathedra statements of an omniscient narrator and instead mediates external reality via the consciousness of the perceiving character. This creates the illusion of immediacy, the suspension in an instant present and makes possible a high degree of dramatic and mimetic representation of external as well as internal events, including the penetration of the subliminal zones of the mind.²³ This, then, entails a process of identification between reader and character, and the reader is invited to meet the character with empathy and benevolence.

As it is the protagonist's consciousness that is mediated, albeit in the third person, it is often almost impossible for the reader to note the presence of a potential outside narrator. On the other hand a narrative voice implies itself through the use of the third person and the simple past. This co-existence of character and implied narrator (who share the same perspective, but speak in different voices)²⁴ creates a tension between the two. Walser handles this tension skillfully and uses it for sudden and subtle changes of perspective. This is achieved through the shift from past tense to present tense discourse as for example in Brandung: “Unter diesem Himmel hatte man sich also den Pazifik zu denken. … Dieser Anblick sprengt ihm schier sein sogenanntes Fassungsvermögen” (B [Brandung] 29).²⁵ This time shift immediately stops the flow of the narrated monologue and questions the subjective mediation through the figural medium, that is, the character. In this vein the point of view of an implied narrator often but almost imperceptibly disrupts or blends into the protagonist's perspective in order to subtly comment on, ironize, or simply objectify certain thoughts, statements or actions. It immediately takes the reader out of the temporal and spatial context experienced by the character and discontinues his or her identification with the character. Whereas the reader is encouraged by the narrated monologue to share the character's perspective, he or she is now invited or even forced to share the perspective of the implied narrator's commenting voice. The present tense clearly evokes a more ironic distance of the implied narrator from the character.²⁶

Except for Brief an Lord Liszt, which as an epistolary novel is written in the first person, Walser usually avoids the use of the first person pronoun. Instead, the narration switches to second person discourse, which may be interpreted as the narrator addressing his character or the character addressing himself. In Jagd one reads: “Er hatte es satt, der zu sein, der er zu sein hatte. Geh hin und lang dem eine …” (J [Jagd] 96) [He was fed up with the idea of being the way he was expected to be. Go up to him and slap him …]. In the following example from Ein fliehendes Pferd personal pronouns change within the same sentence: “Wehe dir Sabine, wenn er nur vier Bände schafft” (FP [Ein fliehendes Pferd] 11) [“And may the Lord have mercy on you, Sabine, if he only gets through four” (volumes of Kierkegaard's diaries); RH [Runaway Horse] 2]. In such cases the narrating and the figural voice seem to fuse as the narrated monologue temporarily blends into interior monologue and the implied narrator disappears completely behind the character. Rarely does one encounter statements in the interior monologue, such as “Ja, ich suche ein Schlupfloch” (JL [Jenseits der Liebe] 155) [Yes, so I am looking for a retreat], a mental utterance by Franz Horn in Jenseits der Liebe. Gottlieb Zürn in Jagd seems to be the only protagonist whom Walser has granted frequent permission to voice his thoughts directly. More typical are passages of indirect style, reported speech or thought, where the mediation through an implied narrator on which the character is dependent is clearly visible. Yet, here too, the narrative voice invariably adopts the protagonist's angle of vision and yields to the figural thoughts, effacing once again the demarcation between the narrator's and the character's linguistic idiom, so that what is reported seems to be identical with the character's self-knowledge. Given the lack of evaluative judgments, the implied narrator does not appear to have a cognitive privilege over the character.²⁷

Only very few statements seem to reflect an omniscient point of view, for example: “Xavers Vorstellungen begannen zu rasen” (SA [Seelenarbeit] 254) [“Xaver's fantasies began to race”; IM [The Inner Man] 237], although even in this sentence psycho-narration is still maintained in that the figural perspective is not transcended, but rather presented through the use of verbs and nouns of consciousness. At times one finds passages of direct speech by other characters which, by virtue of the absence of quotation marks, must be read as filtered through the protagonist's mind.²⁸ The hidden, yet permanent presence of an outside narrator points to the limited perspective of the protagonist and prevents the reader from taking the character all too readily at his word. While the character's autonomy in his function as a figural medium is sustained, his subjective perspective is at the same time undermined by the presence of an implied narrator, whose true identity is veiled. This play with perspectives reflects an essential component of the texts’ thematic structure, namely the protagonists’ pathological urge to camouflage their true identities. In Brandung we read:

Man weiß nie, ob man sich wirklich durchschaut, wenn man sich ganz zu durchschauen glaubt. Vielleicht fällt man nur auf eine weitere Kulisse herein, die man vor den wirklichen Befund schiebt, weil der für das sogenannte Selbstgefühl unerträglich wäre.

(B 13)

[We never know whether we understand our real motive when we believe we do understand our real motive. Perhaps we are merely deceived by a different backdrop that we have shifted in front of the true scenario because the latter would be intolerable for our so-called self-perception.]

(Br [Breakers] 8)

Here, Helmut Halm (or rather the implied narrator who mediates his perspective) expresses doubts about the objectivity of self-knowledge and of human perception in general. The entire novel is carried by a nostalgic, almost bitter tone as the character finds himself in an existential crisis owing to his realization of the deceptions of life and the illusion of reality.

The dependency on a higher narrating authority entails the psychological weakening of Walser's characters—as opposed to Walser's earlier novels, where narrative perspective and narrative voice are identical, namely unified in the hero. This illustrates the thematic shift of accent denoting the shift from a more sociological view in Walser's early prose to a distinctly psychological approach in his later works. The characters must now react to a “Gegenwelt,” a counter-force that exerts a threatening pressure on them.²⁹ This increasing external psychological pressure brings with it the protagonists’ progressive loss of self-esteem and disintegrating sense of identity. The protagonists withdraw into an introverted self-isolation in order to resist an inimical environment.

This narrative technique reflects the theme of the characters’ alienation and their struggle for self-assertion. The subjective perspective makes the depiction of reality as a trustworthy totality impossible. Helmut Halm explicitly addresses the problematic of a subjective world view when he deplores that “[w]hat a person sees reflects virtually nothing of what actually is” (RH 64). The outside world in these texts presents itself only as perceived by the protagonists. The story unfolds not at the initiative of these protagonists, but rather follows their reactions to external, i.e. society's manipulative influences. Their (social) behavior is confined to developing defensive strategies in order to secure themselves a minimal realm of unassailability by public expectations.

THE INTERNALIZED THEMATICS

Aside from the modified narrative perspective, Walser undertakes a new artistic approach to the form of his post-1973 narratives. The formal structure of these narratives reflects compository discipline and linguistic density. Gone are the days of Anselm Kristlein's loquacious digressions, and consequently the plot unravels much more economically, proceeding in a linear and purposive fashion toward an eventual climax. Furthermore, compared to the earlier novels, the scope of narrated time, setting, and external events is drastically reduced, while the focus lies on the individual protagonist's internal suffering and the impossibility of gaining relief. Owing to this narrowed point of view, other characters remain pallid and faceless. The voices of bosses and friends alike fade away, and both setting and sound of events are introjected into the protagonist's mind.³⁰

With the conclusion of the trilogy Walser bids farewell to Kristlein and his social upstart mentality of the fifties and sixties. The last sentence of Der Sturz seems to capture the cynicism of Kristlein's lasting disillusionment. Isolated and paralyzed he will vegetate in apathy: “Es fielen jetzt Glück und Ende zusammen wie beim Biß” (S [Der Sturz] 356) [Like the closing of jaws, his happiness and his end now clashed]. It is several years before a successor emerges to evaluate Kristlein's defeatist capitulation to society's immutability, a successor who awakens to once again subject societal foibles to the light of day. When Franz Horn opens his eyes at the beginning of Jenseits der Liebe his teeth are clenched. It is the beginning of a new chapter of suffering, although under slightly modified auspices. From the outset the new protagonists find themselves in a state of introversion, isolated from others, and fixated on themselves and their mental misery.

In his coda to Anselm Kristlein, Walser states that Kristlein had never been happy, let alone in control of or in harmony with himself.³¹ Being exposed to nothing but hostilities, the life of Kristlein, the would-be parvenu, was a continuous battle. Although in retrospect Walser denies his protagonist any self-confidence, he nonetheless considers him a hero, because he believed in survival. Kristlein, Walser continues, could not help but lead a life of conformity, never giving thought to the price of his life style. The debts continue to be paid by Walser's protagonists since 1976, who have long since forfeited their natural spontaneity to cope with their environment. The relationship between them and the outside world focuses on psychological ramifications and mirrors the deformations of their suffering consciousness. The protagonists of this era have internalized Kristlein's extroverted verbosity. Hence, in Seelenarbeit, the chauffeur Xaver Zürn engages in self-contained dialogues with his boss since he is unable to communicate through genuine conversation.

While the Kristlein novels centered on the protagonist's zealous struggle for self-realization via social ascent, the later works illustrate the characters’ resignation and their exhaustion from this struggle. Despite the fact that they have moved up the social ladder, they have failed to find their yearned-for happiness and are now preoccupied with developing strategies for survival in order to come to terms with their failures. These characters are individual examples of the changing phase from the social, political, and economic euphoria of the fifties to the stagnation and recession of the seventies.³² Undoubtedly, the protagonists of the seventies and eighties have attained higher living standards, a mechanism by which they seem to realize that throughout their laborious social ascent they “justified and absolved even the most destructive and oppressive features of th[is] enterprise.”³³ Thus the recognition of their own passive contributions to social oppression renders them unwilling to participate any longer in the masquerade of seeking advancement through conformism. Aware that the system has claimed them as victims, they have become “Unterlegenheitsspezialisten” [experts of subordination]³⁴ whose sole concern it is to withdraw from society.

The nature of the dependencies of Walser's everyday heroes is closely related to his modified narrative approach. It is no longer the material dependence of an Anselm Kristlein which limits their possibilities. Indeed, the immediate economic pressure to which Kristlein was once exposed has vanished into a psychological pressure, which, however, can be traced to economico-political conditions. These protagonists are ruled by the need to disguise and conceal themselves as they experience a sense of captivity generated by their rampant inferiority complex toward their environment. Although these feelings of inferiority are primarily evident in their intercourse with superiors, they also manifest themselves in public as well as private behavior patterns. This assertion is of particular significance in Ein fliehendes Pferd and Brandung, where the effects of social conditioning severely encroach on as private an enterprise as leisure activities.

Franz Horn in Jenseits der Liebe withdraws into a self-isolation of muted suffering in order to escape the influence of his competitor Liszt, who has ousted him from a leading position. In Ein fliehendes Pferd Helmut Halm is confronted with society's attacks personified by the manic conformist Klaus Buch. In this novella Walser warns the reader against the threat of an anonymous societal apparatus. Yet even after Ein fliehendes Pferd, Walser's most celebrated work to date,³⁵ he felt motivated to bolster the degree to which society insinuates itself into the lives of his protagonists, altering and amplifying their sufferings.³⁶ Additional evidence as to the obsolescence of the conventional forms of dependence—those under which Kristlein had been suffered—can be found in the novel Das Schwanenhaus, where Walser grants a senior Kristlein a brief appearance. Being one of those industrial pioneers, who single-handedly built up their own corporation, his entrance is dashing and exudes self-confidence. Meanwhile, however, aged and drained of all his vitality, but enormously wealthy, his death is reported only a little later. The later protagonists clearly belong to a new generation and reflect “das Leidensprofil der Familie Kristlein … anders” [the afflictions of the Kristlein family in a different manner].³⁷

THE PETTY-BOURGEOIS ‘HERO’

Walser's protagonists are typically drawn from the lower classes of society, more precisely, they are the descendents of blue-collar working class families. Although they have, by virtue of their personal aspirations and public education, long since attained a material and social middle-class status, they continue to cling to their inextricable emotional ties with their class of origin, which Walser loosely defines as the petty bourgeoisie, the German Kleinbürgertum. In his novels Walser tells “Kleinbürgergeschichte. Also die Geschichte der meisten Leute” (WS 25) [petty-bourgeois history, hence, the (hi)story of most people]. Basically Walser's petty bourgeoisie encompasses a class of average citizens who invariably derive from that segment of the social spectrum comprising the lower to lower middle class, which in his view includes not only the proletariat but also various sectors of white-collar working class, such as tenured public servants, the German Beamtenstand. Walser's early novels are particularly illustrative of the mania of social advancement, combined with the need for subordination and conformity which account for the discontent and psychological malaise of employees and public servants.³⁸

As the lower-class individual is preoccupied with his social ascent, Walser's protagonists resemble that uniform type of employees characterized by Siegfried Kracauer as a natural selection bred under the pressure of social conditions and inevitably promoted by the economy and its appeal to the pertinent consumer needs.³⁹ Since this social stratum lacks a concretely defined affiliation with a specific social class, it orients itself toward the bourgeoisie. Walser calls this upward orientation the “Rette-sich-wer-kann-Praxis” (WS 28) [every-man-for-himself attitude], declaring it the goal of every petty-bourgeois citizen to convert as quickly as possible to the ruling class so as to rid himself of his innate social inferiority complex. By contributing his own productivity the petty-bourgeois only ensures the efficacy of the system.

In 1964 Walser complained about the shortcomings of West German literature. Although the petty-bourgeoisie may be said to be the successor to the bourgeoisie, whose rise started during the eighteenth century (WS 96), Walser feels that the petty-bourgeois has been sorely neglected in German literature. Insisting that literature contain reference to socio-historical reality, Walser demands the abolishment of pseudo-realistic literature in favor of a critical debate of contemporary issues. His works from 1957 to 1973 place special emphasis on the social mobility of his petty-bourgeois protagonists. Walser's later texts, then, stand in stark contrast to his earlier ones, preferring to investigate the characters’ psychological deformations, the mechanisms to which they are exposed after having attained the desired bourgeois social status. Marcuse considers the social mobility of the petty-bourgeoisie the essential structural principle of an advanced industrial society. For “‘the people,’ previously the ferment of social change, have ‘moved up’ to become the ferment of social cohesion.”⁴⁰ The stagnant social conditions in Walser's novels attest to that, because they show how society has replaced, in the words of Marcuse,

personal dependence (…) with dependence on the ‘objective order of things’ (on economic laws, the market, etc.). To be sure, the ‘objective order of things’ is itself the result of domination, but it is nevertheless true that domination now generates a higher rationality—that of society which sustains its hierarchic structure while exploiting ever more efficiently the natural and mental resources, and distributing the benefits of this exploitation on an ever-larger scale. The limits of this rationality, and its sinister force, appear in the progressive enslavement of man by a productive apparatus which perpetuates the struggle for existence. …⁴¹

Walser, who considers himself a petty-bourgeois citizen, regards petty-bourgeois life as a representative form of contemporary existence:

Für mich fließt alles, was ich mir vorstellen kann, im Kleinbürgerlichen zusammen. Das kommt halt daher, weil ich selber Kleinbürger bin, kleinbürgerlich geboren und aufgewachsen. Daher können andere Klassen bei mir eher nur Gastspiele geben. Meine Arbeitshaltung kann nie eine andere sein, als daß der Held Kleinbürger-Frequenz hat, und ich könnte keine andere anstreben.⁴²

[For me everything I can imagine is a part of petty-bourgeois existence. This is simply a consequence of my own background, as I was born and grew up to be a petty-bourgeois. This is why other (social) classes can merely give guest performances in my books. When I work my heroes automatically have a petty-bourgeois wave-length, I could not design them in any other way.]

Elsewhere Walser has stated the reasons for his sympathies with the petty-bourgeois hero, who in his opinion is “eine ausgenutzte, ausgepowerte Figur … in der Geschichte” [an exploited, washed-up figure … in history], lacking a historical consciousness as well as collective self-esteem.⁴³ Another reason for Walser's genuine devotion to the petty-bourgeois hero is the general social reputation of that class. Society, Walser elaborates, has created a negative image of the petty-bourgeois with regard to his cultural taste, his intellectual standards, his political, and perhaps even his erotic preferences.⁴⁴ Walser's statements document his partisanship with the socially underprivileged, with those who are subjected to superior authorities.

Society's oppressive power mechanisms become one of the prevalent topics in Walser's most recent essays, the 1986 collection Geständnis auf Raten (Confession by Installments). Whoever exercises power, Walser writes, abuses it (GR [Geständnis auf Raten] 74). In most of the thirty-six short essays contained in this volume he criticizes the miscellaneous misuses of power that promote the oppression of the petty-bourgeois and hence are antagonistic to a democratic ideal.⁴⁵ In each of his novels Walser presents an individual who embodies the effects of societal manipulation. An important aspect of his characters’ psychological make-up can be derived from Walser's concept of irony as defined in his Frankfurt lectures.

SELBSTBEWUßSTEIN UND IRONIE: THE IRONY OF PETTY-BOURGEOIS EXISTENCE

Walser's theoretical expositions on self-confidence and irony, which date back to 1973, display a distinct relation and relevance to the conflicts depicted in his fictions. Analogous to the theme of Walser's novels, his concept of irony derives from the “kleinbürgerliche Bedingung” (SI [Selbstbewußstein und Ironie] 167) [petty-bourgeois premise]. This origin remains visible as Walser undertakes the development of his own concept, contrasting two principal notions of irony. One pole is represented by the classic tradition of bourgeois irony, a tradition that commences with the romantic philosopher Friedrich Schlegel (1772-1829) and his contemporary, the little known writer Adam Müller (1779-1829), and culminates in the twentieth century with Thomas Mann (1875-1955). The other pole is the petty-bourgeois variant of irony which Walser traces back to Socrates and he delineates its recurrences in Kierkegaard (1813-1855) and Hegel (1770-1831). By juxtaposing both traditions Walser decidedly distances himself from the bourgeois concept of irony. His fundamental objection is that bourgeois irony ostensibly originated in Schlegel's misinterpretation of Socrates’ and Johann Gottlieb Fichte's (1762-1814) writings.

Walser's concept of irony rests upon Socrates’ famous statement: I know that I know nothing, where the affirmative statement of the first clause is negated in the second. Therefore, Walser reasons, Socrates’ blunt revelation of a negative state of affairs in an affirmative manner, the affirmation of his own intellectual incompetence, must inadvertently appear ironical. Walser believes that irony must be involuntary by definition, and it is by virtue of being uncontrived that it gains the property of such grave seriousness (SI 28). The serious aspect of irony in literature, then, is the consistency with which it has the protagonist uncover and acquiesce to negative conditions (e.g. I know that I know nothing). The point of it all, as Walser explains, is that the reader will discover the lack and engender “die Entbindung des Schlechten, auf daß es erscheine und dadurch auf der Strecke bleibe …” (SI 41) [the localization of negative aspects, so that they may become visible and thus perish]. Granting unconditional legitimacy to the negative elements embedded in accepted mores allowed Socrates to identify flaws and deficiencies of external reality (SI 40).

Walser criticizes Schlegel for misinterpreting Socrates. He takes Schlegel to task for accusing Socrates of simulating a naïve exterior while concealing his true intelligence. Hence, it is Schlegel's conclusion that Socrates’ irony is at the same time overt and outspoken as well as unrecognizably veiled (SI 33). In Walser's view, Schlegel undervalues Socrates’ genuine concern, a concern that Walser believes to be unmistakably earnest and educational (SI 34). Schlegel, conversely, conceives of Socrates’ irony as a poetic license of sorts, which allows the poet to elevate himself above both his own prejudices and the world's. Since Schlegel categorizes irony simply as self-parody (SI 34), Walser disparages, one would—if one were to agree with Schlegel—have to classify Socratic irony as bourgeois irony—an irony that merely reflects the author's sublime self-consciousness and arrogance and must not be considered a literary phenomenon (SI 107).

Like the authors of the bourgeois irony, their fictional characters—Walser cites Thomas Mann's Tonio Kröger (1903; 1925) as the prime example—are endowed with the self-confidence of the ruling class and exude imperturbable self-complacency (SI 111, 118). Walser rejects this bourgeois irony outright, believing it to be merely a means of self-glorification. He sees in Schlegel, Adam Müller, and especially Thomas Mann typical representatives of this tradition as all of them descended from influential bourgeois families and were, by right of birth so to speak, furnished with a firm and sound self-esteem. In Müller's writings too, Walser detects a kind of irony that in his view is replete with conceit and a sublime self-complacency. Walser traces Schlegel's as well as Müller's use of irony to their assumed bourgeois elitism, a presumptuous attitude completely detached from a concern with social conflicts.

Walser conceives of irony as the manifestation, or rather the result of a certain social class consciousness. Just as he explains bourgeois irony as originating in the unshakable self-confidence of the bourgeois author, he considers the petty-bourgeois variant a mirror of socio-psychological conditions. Walser here resorts to Fichte's thesis according to which the self becomes aware of and experiences itself ex negativo, that is, to the extent by which it is defined and delimited by forces external to itself, to wit, the non-self. Hence, the self-identity of an individual is entirely determined by the outside world. The greater the influence exerted by the outside world, the more difficult the experience of a genuine sense of self for the individual. Thus self-confidence or self-identity must necessarily be experienced primarily in its limitation, insufficiency or lack. Fichte's low social background gives Walser a valid reason to sympathize with Fichte's dialectical method of deducing self-confidence from the interplay between self and outside world. He therefore extols Fichte's successful attempt to achieve an autonomous, solipsistic self, in admiration of this glorious self-liberation of a petty-bourgeois identity that had little opportunity of finding external recognition (SI 62).

If applied to the petty-bourgeois consciousness, Socrates’ sentence would have to read: I know that I am nothing. Since the given social conditions deny the lower-class individual the accessibility of a solid sense of self, he or she can only experience self-esteem by somehow achieving a sense of harmony with the outside world. Such a state of accordance, however, can only be gained if the individual endorses the external conditions regardless of their restrictive potential, and ignores or suppresses his or her genuine desires. The continual self-denial of a literary protagonist in order to experience harmony with the outside world creates what Walser describes as ironic style (SI 178). The identities of these protagonists are negative identities, originating in the negative self-confidence of the oppressed who sacrifice their personalities to the ruling conditions, which they accept, affirm, internalize, reproduce, and consolidate. Yet, since that negative potential is all these protagonists possess, they cherish it as their sole means to realize their personalities and find happiness. A petty-bourgeois identity, then, reveals itself essentially as a non-identity or an identity of alienation.

As for the literary archetypes of this petty-bourgeois irony of subordination and self-denial, Walser admires especially Robert Walser's Jakob von Gunten in the novel of the same title (1908) and Kafka's Gregor Samsa in Die Verwandlung (1915; The Metamorphosis, 1937). Through their conscious, yet compulsive attempts to affirm the restrictive social conditions with which they are confronted, these characters endeavor to compensate for their fundamental deficiency, namely the lack of a self-assertive impetus. By euphorically exercising a conformist ritual, the petty-bourgeois protagonist becomes oblivious to society's oppressive mechanisms and invariably secures for himself a sense of congruity with the system. Walser conceives of the petty-bourgeois irony as a response to historical conditions, more precisely, to the clash of social classes.⁴⁶ Similar to the literary product, which is an outcome of the writer's reaction to onerous experiences, this irony is the consequence of the protagonist's compulsive acceptance and approval of society's demands. Yet, whereas the act of writing constitutes itself as a means to contradict social deficiencies, the subversive potential of Walser's irony is at best implied. The desperate struggle of the protagonist who suppresses himself automatically questions the legitimacy of the given conditions. Thus the reader is made aware of the oppressive potential of external reality and the lack of prospects for social change, an awareness that, so Walser hopes, will kindle the reader's desire for change.

On the one hand the ironic strategy of acquiescence and resignation to reality could be interpreted as the glorification of conformism, which, of course, would invalidate any subversive impulse of that irony. After all, Walser himself defined the petty-bourgeois as someone who is willing and proud to exploit himself and celebrate his own misery.⁴⁷ Conversely, the positive potential of petty-bourgeois irony lies in the questions it poses, questions that challenge the given conditions to justify themselves, so that in the long run, extant forms of domination may be abolished—an admittedly utopian achievement of irony that even Walser formulates only as wishful thinking.

According to Walser, every novel gives an account of the ontogenesis of a self-identity (SI 155). As Walser's protagonists are conditioned by their petty-bourgeois background, his texts are to be understood as portrayals of petty-bourgeois consciousness. As to how this concept of irony manifests itself in Walser's novels, it will be sketched within the textual analyses. It should be noted that only Jenseits der Liebe represents an ironical novel in Walser's sense.⁴⁸ The protagonists of Walser's other novels periodically exercise the irony of self-negation without succumbing to its inexorable consequentiality that ends with the irreversible acceptance of a negative identity.

Notes

1. Roland Lang, “Wie tief sitzt der Tick, gegen die Bank zu spielen? Interview mit Martin Walser,” Martin Walser, ed. Klaus Siblewski (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1981) 56.

2. Monika Totten, “Ein Gespräch mit Martin Walser in Neuengland,” Martin Walser, ed. Klaus Siblewski, (Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 1981) 28.

3. Totten, pp. 28-29; see also Martin Walser, “Über den Umgang mit Literatur,” Martin Walser: International Perspectives, ed. Jürgen E. Schlunk and Armand E. Singer, American University Studies, Series I, Germanic Languages and Literature 64 (New York: Lang, 1987) 206.

4. Walser, “Über den Leser—soviel man in einem Festzelt darüber sagen soll” (WW 122); cf. also Ursula Reinhold, “Erfahrung und Realismus: Über Martin Walser,” Welmarer Beiträge 21.7 (1975): 99.

5. “Mythen, Milch und Mut,” Christ und Welt 18 Oct. 1968: 17.

6. Helmut Kreuzer, “Zur Literatur der siebziger Jahre in der Bundesrepublik,” Basis 8 (1978): 9.

7. “Gemeinplätze, die Neueste Literatur betreffend,” Kursbuch 15 (1968): 195.

8. Dieter Wellershoff, Literatur und Veränderung (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1969) 43.

9. This analogy marks the starting point of various reception theories. See especially George Poulet who writes at the outset of his phenomenological analysis of the act of reading: “This I who thinks in me when I read a book, is the I of the one who writes the book … As he makes us read it, he awakens in us the analogue of what he thought or felt”; “Phenomenology of Reading,” New Literary History 1 (1969): 57. Similarly, Wolfgang Iser states that the text is brought to life through the act of concretization; “Der Lesevorgang,” Rezeptionsästhetik, 1975, ed. Rainer Warning (Munich: Fink, 1979) 153.

10. Martin Walser im Gespräch mit Günter Gaus, Television Interview with Martin Walser, ARD, NDR 2 Nov. 1985.

11. See Martin Walser, Wer ist ein Schriftsteller?, p. 37; Wie und wovon handelt Literatur, p. 123; “Rascher Überblick über unser Vermögen,” Basis 5 (1975): 132-33; Anton Kaes, “Porträt Martin Walser. Ein Gespräch,” German Quarterly 57 (1984): 435; Irmela Schneider, “Ansprüche an die Romanform: Ein Gespräch mit Martin Walser,” Die Rolle des Autors: Analysen und Gespräche, ed. Irmela Schneider, Literaturwissenschaft-Gesellschaftswissenschaft 56 (Stuttgart: Klett, 1981) 103; Peter André Bloch, et. al., “Interview mit Martin Walser,” Gegenwartsliteratur: Mittel und Bedingungen ihrer Produktion, ed. P. A. Bloch (Bern and Munich: Francke, 1975) 262; Ulrike Hick, Interview mit Martin Walser, Martin Walsers Prosa: Möglichkeiten des zeitgenössischen Romans unter Berücksichtigung des Realismusanspruchs, Stuttgarter Arbeiten zur Germanistik 126, ed. Ulrich Müller, et. al. (Stuttgart: Akademischer Verlag Hans-Dieter Heinz, 1983) 292-94.

12. Kaes, p. 435.

13. Walser, “Ein Blick durchs umgekehrte Fernrohr,” Preface, Gesellschaftspolitische Aspekte in Martin Walsers Kristlein-Trilogie, by Heike Doane (Bonn: Bouvier, 1978) 1. See also Klaus Siblewski, “Martin Walser,” Kritisches Lexikon zur deutschsprachigen Gegenwartssliteratur, ed. Heinz Ludwig Arnold (Munich: Text + Kritik, 1980) 2.

    Heinz Ludwig Arnold (Munich: Text + Kritik, 1980) 2.

14. Kaes, p. 436.

15. Thomas Nolden, “Der Schriftsteller als Literaturkritiker: Ein Porträt Martin Walsers,” Martin Walser: International Perspectives, p. 181.

16. Although Bernhard's narratives are available in translation in the volume Gathering Evidence. A Memoir, trans. David McLintock (New York: Knopf, 1985), the English renditions of quotations are my own.

17. Helmut Koopmann, “Tendenzen des deutschen Romans der siebziger Jahre,” Handbuch des deutschen Romans, ed. Helmut Koopmann (Düsseldorf: Bagel, 1983) 580.

18. David Bronsen, “Autobiographien der siebziger Jahre: Berühmte Schriftsteller befragen ihre Vergangenheit,” Deutsche Literatur der Bundesrepublik seit 1965, ed. Paul Michael Lützeler and Egon Schwarz (Königstein: Athenäum, 1980) 213.

19. Cf. Frisch's 1958 essay “Öffentlichkeit als Partner,” Gesammelte Werke in zeitlicher Folge 7, ed. Hans Mayer (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1976) 244-52, where Frisch voices the opposite view, namely that he writes exclusively for his readers.

20. Linda C. DeMeritt, New Subjectivity and Prose Forms of Alienation: Peter Handke and Botho Strauß, Studies in Modern German Literature 5 (New York: Lang, 1987) 8.

21. For a most lucid explication of narrated monologue see Dorrit Cohn, Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1978) 99-140.

22. Cohn, pp. 117, 112.

23. Stanzel, Theorie des Erzählens (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1979) 246; see also Cohn, p. 126.

24. In certain instances, however, there occurs even a fusion of narrative voices, a so-called “stylistic contagion,” when the reporting syntax is maintained, but the diction seems to reflect the character's own thoughts or words; see Cohn, p. 33.

25. This time shift is not accounted for in the English translation: “And under this sky was, one knew, the Pacific. … The sight seemed almost to burst the bounds of his emotional grasp” (Br 28).

26. The narrative ambiguity resulting from the shift from narrated monologue to the present tense is discussed perceptively by Jean-Maurice Martin, Untersuchungen zum Problem der Erlebten Rede. Der ursächliche Kontext der Erlebten Rede, dargestellt an Romanen Robert Walsers, Europäische Hochschulschriften, Series I, Deutsche Sprache und Literatur 1009 (Bern: Lang, 1987) 125-26.

27. Cohn has termed this the “consonant type of psycho-narration [that] displays disparity of values even less than disparity of knowledge [between narrator and character]” (32).

28. Cohn uses the term “unsignaled quoted monologue” (111).

29. See Anton Kaes, “Porträt Martin Walser. Ein Gespräch,” Interview with Martin Walser, German Quarterly 57 (1984): 437.

30. See Thomas Beckermann, “‘Ich bin sehr klein geworden’: Versuch über Walsers Entblößungsverbergungssprache,” Martin Walser: International Perspectives, ed. Jürgen E. Schlunk and Armand E. Singer, American University Studies, Series 1, Germanic Languages and Literature 64 (New York: Lang, 1987) 22; also Ursula Reinhold, “Zu Walsers Romanen in den siebziger Jahren,” Tendenzen und Autoren: Zur Literatur der siebziger Jahre in der BRD (Berlin: Dietz, 1982) 298.

31. “Nachruf auf einen Verstummten,” Martin Walser, ed. Klaus Siblewski (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1981) 54-57.

32. Thomas Beckermann, “Entblößungsverbergungssprache,” p. 20.

33. Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, p. 146.

34. Sybille Brantl, “Martin Walser: Sein Leben spricht Bände,” Interview with Martin Walser, Cosmopolitan (German edition) Oct. 1986: 35.

35. For details on its reception see Hans Erich Struck, Ein fliehendes Pferd, Oldenbourg Interpretationen 27 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1988) 79-84.

36. See Monika Totten, “Ein Gespräch mit Martin Walser in Neuengland,” Martin Walser, ed. Klaus Siblewski (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1981) 37.

37. Roland Lang, “Wie tief sitzt der Tick, gegen die Bank zu spielen? Interview mit Martin Walser,” Martin Walser, ed. Klaus Siblewski (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1981) 53.

38. Urs Jaeggi, “Zwischen den Mühlsteinen: Der Kleinbürger oder die Angst vor der Geschichte,” Kursbuch 45 (1976): 162.

39. Die Angestellten: Aus dem neuesten Deutschland, 1930 (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1971) 25.

40. Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, p. 256.

41. Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, p. 144.

42. Ursula Reinhold, “Gespräch,” Interview with Martin Walser, Tendenzen und Autoren: Zur Literatur der siebziger Jahre in der BRD (Berlin: Dietz, 1982) 290. As for details on Walser's own background, see Anthony Waine, Martin Walser, pp. 7-11; furthermore Michael Winkler, “Martin Walser,” Dictionary of Literary Biography 75: Contemporary German Fiction Writers Second Series, ed. Wolfgang D. Elfe and James Hardin, (Detroit: Gale, 1988) 243.

43. Hans Magnus Enzensberger, “Von der Unaufhaltsamkeit des Kleinbürgertums: Eine soziologische Grille,” Kursbuch 45 (1976): 4, 6. Enzensberger also refers to the petty-bourgeois citizen's lack of self-confidence and political influence, as well as his enthusiastic conformism and unquestioning propensity to consumerism.

44. See Totten, p. 34.

45. See Geständnis auf Raten, pp. 26, 34, 80-81, 88, 94, 104.

46. Cf. Walser's statements in an interview with Peter André Bloch, Gegenwartsliteratur: Mittel und Bedingungen ihrer Produktion, ed. P. A. Bloch (Bern and Munich: Francke, 1975) 265.

47. Ursula Reinhold, “Gespräch,” Interview with Martin Walser, Tendenzen und Autoren: Zur Literatur der siebziger Jahre in der BRD (Berlin: Dietz, 1982) 290.

48. Heike Doane has investigated the ironic style of that novel in her essay “Martin Walsers Ironiebegriff: Definition und Spiegelung in drei späten Prosawerken,” Monatshefte 77 (1985): 195-212.