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Jakob von Gunten
Robert Walser

Jakob von Gunten dissects the remote and vulnerable regions of human brain, the dramatic tensions between the fluctuating demons of inner self and the savage realities of outer world carves out an enigmatic reality which pierces your heart and thrusts yourself through the crests and troughs of an assorted compendium of human emotions. Written during a period which transformed German fiction, when refined, compact elementary forms of prose were taking shape, when prose was becoming more analytic, Jakob von Gunten could be said as an exemplary achievement in that sense; in fact could be named an analytic soliloquy. The prose of Robert Walser has got something very primal in nature, it reveals the naivete of an expressionist artists whose soliloquy unites the gleam of imagination and reality.

Jakob, an ambiguous creature has noble faith in simple ideas but the idea of 'God' deludes him. A pedantic, didactic, sanctimonious upstart, Jakob strangely combines arrogance and humility; an un-sleeping accurate dreamer who banters drowsing map of his routine activities. The book consists of his reflections on the education he receives in the school—an education in humility. The humility taught by the Benjamentas is not of the religious variety. Their graduates aspire to be serving men or butlers, not saints. Jakob is not like other pupils, his consciousness forbids him to surrender himself to the follies carried out in Benjamenta, for him the lessons in humility have a deep personal resonance. One learns very little here, observes young Jakob von Gunten after his first day at the Benjamenta Institute, where he has enrolled himself as a student. The teachers lie around like dead men. There is only one textbook, What is the Aim of Benjamenta’s Boys� School?, and only one lesson, How Should a Boy Behave? All the teaching is done by Fräulein Lisa Benjamenta, sister of the principal. Herr Benjamenta himself sits in his office and counts his money, like an ogre in a fairy tale. In fact, the school is a bit of a swindle. Walser's design of improvisation assumes its impression on Jakob's sensibility, his passion for surprise, paradoxes remains in a constant flux of fact and fantasy. The bourgeois runaway from elite lifestyle wants to become zero- to start from all the way down. As suggested by Sartre in Being and Nothingess - one has to get rid of his projections to reach to the core of being where from the true existence of a person emanates.

Though Walser and Jakob has much in common but the book can't be mistaken for a self-portrait. Jakob von Gunten could be said as a new creation, if not then its parody for sure, in the German wave of blending self and nobility -German Idealism- to venture social and cultural reforms. He is highly self-critical perhaps to the extent of Dostoyevsky' s character in The Underground Man and Confessions of Rousseau. One may get awestruck to note the discretion with which the pomposity of maturity and intellectualism are annihilated but without savageness. It would not be appropriate to keep Walser in the breath of literature in which we put Kafka, Sartre, Nietzsche and others since Walser has not been an 'intellectual' author- once it was said for him that he is 'comic Kafka'.

Jakob says:-
I value the way in which I open a door..... The generations of men losing the joy of life with all their treatises and understandings and knowledge.....I like running down stairs. What a lot of talk!

The prose is an escapade built around idea of tales full of surprise, adventure and paradoxes; probably a mischievous blocking of dramatic thrust, also a parody of epic breath. Walser's prose is a dance rather than a walk through words, small dialogue nuances in Jakob's monologues vibrate back and forth. The use of different vocabulary for different characters creates a distinct effect which seems to form vivid experience of nonrepresentational art. Kraus's vocabulary embodies an impression which seems to shape out his character of humility, servitude.

Kraus to Jakob:-
You, you've got yourself pregnant with silly ideas. What a notion. Do something! Work, then you won't notice anything. You snooper. Snooping around for opinions and thoughts. Go away. I'm beginning to hate the sight of you.


The reader constantly finds him/ herself in an ever-churning vortex of reality and imagination, you sometimes wonder whether Jakob himself is disturbing the holy brane of space and time to carve out something which can be taken for reality or it’s one of his fantastical follies emanating from the profundity of his brain. When he arrives in Benjamenta, he gets fascinated with the idea that there is a mystery at the heart of the institute, the mystery which, when one traverses through the deep cervices of it, may introduce oneself to the elementary realities of life. But once Jakob penetrates in to the conundrum, he finds a mere goldfish; however, an initiation seeds an enchantment before this, perhaps in Jakob’s mental space if not in physical space.
The book demands constant attention of the reader, for sometimes it may occur as highly condensed interior monologue and during other, it may simple be a mystical tale created out of contradiction and juxtaposition of words. It’s not like those creations of art which you may like or dislike instantly in entirety. One may get caught up with a strange feeling of irresoluteness about the book, it may take time to sink in.