by Robert Walser

My elation at my (belated) discovery of German writer Robert Walser knows no bounds. What a glorious , amazing, moving artist! What wizardy [sic] translations!...How to characterize his tone? Beneath the whimsy lies a scream; beneath the scream, what? One is not surprised to learn, form Susan Sontag's introduction, that Walser influenced Kafka, Beckett and Walter Benjamin.