Zum Nobelpreis für J.M. Coetzee

hier ein Auszug aus einem Essay Coetzees über Robert Walser (New York Review of Books, 17, Nov. 2000):

Was Walser a great writer? If one is reluctant to call him great, said Canetti, that is only because nothing could be more alien to him than greatness. In a late poem Walser wrote:

I would wish it on no one to be me.
Only I am capable of bearing myself.
To know so much, to have seen so much, and
To say nothing, just about nothing.

/ 2.10.03