"Jakob von Gunten, Diary" is the third novel by Robert Walser. It was published in 1909. The eponymous character of the novel comes from a wealthy family. Jacob leaves his family and decides to dedicate his life to serving others. To learn the trade of a servant, he enrolls in a vocational institute, run by the Banjamentats, a brother and sister with a strange relationship with the students and each other. Between rebellion and submission, the search for identity and self-realization, Jacob records this unusual experience in his diary, moving from reporting events to dreamy contemplation. The premises of the narrative seem simple, but beneath the surface lie powerful existential tensions and multiple layers of meaning.
A little about the author of the novel:
Robert Walser (1878-1956), was a Swiss poet and writer of the German language. Although he was appreciated during his lifetime by contemporaries such as Hesse, Benjamin, Kafka, he always had difficulty living through writing, which forced him, throughout his life, to perform dozens of poorly paid professions, as a servant, copyist, clerk. He had a simple and suffering life. He entered and exited many mental health institutions, and throughout his life he suffered from hallucinations and severe nervous crises. Walser was a recluse and a lover of long walks, an activity that he practiced until the day he was found dead, in 1956, in a snowy field not far from the psychiatric hospital where he had lived for years. His body, photographed on the snow, repeated a picture accurately described by a character in one of his novels.
Walser's popularity was especially consolidated in the last three decades of the last century, when writers such as Thomas Bernhard, WG Sebald, and Peter Handke placed him among the most important writers of the 20th century.
