The Posthumous Life of R.W.

As Jean Frémon describes, “He muses, he mopes, he immerses himself in atlases, he recites the names of lakes, he observes insects, he listens to the sounds of fountains, he reads Leibniz. This man, known here by the initials of a name that is not his own, is not without a certain resemblance to the writer Robert Walser. He could almost be his avatar, his emanation, his apparition.” Who is he? Or, more important, who is the I of these first-person vignettes? Walser? Frémon? or the translator? This layering of voices is echoed through the bilingual presentation of these short, musing prose poems.