[ Consiglio per un libro di Sagy Maayan ] Jakob von Gunten arrives at the Benjamenta Institute with one goal: to rid himself of his noble background and become a nobody. Just a nobody, one big zero, a dot of human existence, free of any obligation to modern society’s behaviour codes, seeking only to serve the world around him humbly, as best he can. Benjamenta Institute trains its students to be servants, but seems to be slowly dying itself: there are hardly any students, only one teacher – all others having mysteriously disappeared – and the only lesson taking place is repeated daily. Yet Jakob chooses to attach himself to the place and admires its principal, the beautiful teacher, even his class-mates. In his spare time he writes down his musings and thoughts, his emptying dreams, and yearns for the moment when he will be sent to serve his new masters.
Leaving aside the rather static plot, Walser's writing hypnotizes the reader. The stream of thoughts flooding the hero is often confused and seems illogical, but it is a precise reflection of his turbulent soul. Written in 1909, the book is in many ways a description of ‘the world of yesterday’, which came to an end with the outbreak of World War I; it is not a yearning poem but, rather, a farewell to a world full of vanities in which it was very difficult to live. The man who wrote it undoubtedly felt himself to be the victim of a society cramping its members with rigid expectations and a complex system of pointless niceties. He was filled with revulsion at the sight of the alienation and hypocrisy he witnessed frequently in the parlours of the European nobility, where fashion and morals were worshipped without the backing of action.
It is no surprise that Kafka and Musil defined Robert Walser as a source of inspiration, but his fate was not as happy as that of the writers he influenced. Walser's personal story was similar to those of his heroes, and like them he too felt loss, detachment, and a desire for the world to free him of his social obligations. Indeed, not long after completing his last novel, Walser sentenced himself to absolute anonymity: he committed himself to a Swiss mental institute and remained there for about thirty years; he never wrote again. It is hard to ignore this biographical detail when reading the story of the apprentice Jakob von Gunten, who willingly gave up his social class and fought against his will in order to subjugate his vanity and identity until they were completely erased. As a self-fulfilling prophecy as well as a fictional story, this short novel will leave its readers moved.

[ Informazioni sul libro ] Walser, Robert : Jakob von Gunten. Jakob von Gunten. (original language: German) מגרמנית: אילנה המרמן. עם עובד , תל אביב , 1989 . ISBN: 965-0639-13-4.