SOURCE: Zimmermann, Ulf. Review of Liebeserklärungen, by Martin Walser. World Literature Today 58, no. 3 (summer 1984): 411-12.

In the following review, Zimmermann focuses on the relationship between the language and literary values expressed in Liebeserklärungen, commending Walser's wit and phrasing.

Except for the fact that the volume [Liebeserklärungen] consists exclusively of favorable reviews—being after all a collection of literary “declarations of love”—it doesn't really have any sort of unifying theme. The selections come from other volumes or from periodicals and were composed as “occasional” pieces, celebrating literary classics old and new, literary birthdays, anniversaries and prizes. They were written over the last quarter of a century (beginning with Walser's own rise to literary prominence around 1957) and reach back to recollections of his adolescent reading experiences. Fittingly, these adolescent loves are Schiller and Hölderlin, whose moral and political idealism he finds as sorely needed today...