Abstract

Robert Walser’s short prose of the Berlin years is examined with respect to the acoustic performance of its characters. In the two volumes of Aufsätze and Geschichten, Walser shows a paradoxical poetic ideal of written orality which relates to his later narrative style in the decade of 1910. Although the Berlin prose is explicitly marked as textual and narrative, the foregrounded scene mostly contributes to a soundstage, that introduces acoustic effects of voices, talking modes, etc., so that telling is transformed into voicing.