A Few More "Clips" from Walser's "Jakob von Gunten"

Definitely a "lighter" version of Kafka. Fewer stings and more smiles. Apparently Kafka knew and liked his work.

I've been busy lately, otherwise I would've posted more (lots of "electronic" dog-ears). Am almost to the end of Jakob and am already looking ahead to revisiting Gombrowicz -- a new read: Trans-Atlantyk and an old friend: Gombrowicz's Diary.


***

A few "clips" from Jakob von Gunten:

  • They're kind out of Weltschmerz and pleasant out of fear.
  • Can anyone console a Jakob von Gunten? As long as I have a healthy body, there can be no question of it.
  • If I want to, if I tell myself to, I can revere everything, even bad behavior, but it must have the color of money.
  • To be robust means not spending time on thought but quickly and quietly entering into what has to be done.
  • Oh, you little world-conqueror, out in a profession, endeavoring, achieving things, whole seas of boredom, emptiness, loneliness will yawn at you.
  • Is Herr Benjamenta a gale? It's quite conceivable, for I've often had occasion to feel the roarings and rages and dark explosions of this gale. And also he's so omnipotent, and I, a pupil, how tiny I am. Quiet now, not a word about omnipotence. One is always wrong when one takes up with big words.
  • -- sometimes I say and think things that surpass my own understanding. Perhaps, therefore, I should have been a parson, the founder of a religious sect or movement.

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