Outsider Writing: The Healing Art of Robert Walser

Abstract

I approach Robert Walser’s miniature pencil scripts (known as the Bleistiftgebiet) not as the symptom of a disordered mind, but as the graphic archive of a healing process: a meticulous and repetitive, meditative activity; as meticulous, repetitive, and relaxing, no doubt, as Walser’s daily routine of walking in the Swiss countryside. Thus, I use the concept of graphic medicine literally in my contribution to this special issue: the healing art (in the old Latin sense of the term: medicina) of writing-drawing (Greek graphe, graphein). I start with an overview of the path that Walser took and the struggles that he faced. I highlight the grace of walking in that path; of fostering the momentary and the small. I then turn to Walser’s cramp, his 27-year incarceration in psychiatric clinics and his singular, microscopically small pencil sketches. These sketches reveal a creativity under constraint, but they also illustrate how constraints liberated Walser from conventions of storytelling. His art of healing generates new ways of seeing, telling, and experiencing. Still, this art is not simply about opening up. It is, precisely, about hiding, diminishing, or even disappearing: about becoming—or learning to become—irrelevant. What can I take away from Walser’s penciling cure to heal my own persistent cramp?