brütt oder Die seufzenden Gärten

Avant-Garde & Modernism Collection

by Friederike Mayröcker

»brütt«. Für Friederike Mayröcker ein Sinnbild von Schmerz und Härte, Kälte und Trauer. Wären da nicht die »seufzenden Gärten«, die den Liebesregungen, denen sie sorgsam nachspürt, ein sanftes Gegengewicht verleihen. Doch hat sie wahrhaftig stattgefunden, die Beziehung zu Joseph, oder ist sie nur ein Hirngespinst, eine reine Wunschvorstellung? Im Liebestaumel ist die Gewissheit nie greifbar. Gleichwohl vermag die Autorin ihre diffusen Seelenzustände zu ordnen, den Empfindungen Namen zu geben und dem Unerklärbaren auf die Spur zu kommen. In ihrer unverwechselbaren Sprachgenauigkeit legt sie Schicht für Schicht den zerbrechlichen Kern der Liebe frei und löst sich damit selbst aus den Ketten des Unsagbaren. In einer eindringlichen Selbststudie legt Friederike Mayröcker Rechenschaft ab über eine Liebe, in der Freude, Glück, Zweifel und Schmerzen gleichermaßen zum »schönen Erzählen« werden.

Genres: Fiction, Literature, German Literature

350 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1998

About the author

Friederike Mayröcker (born 20 December 1924 in Vienna) is an Austrian poet. From 1946 to 1969 Mayröcker was an English teacher at several public schools in Vienna. In 1969 she took a release from working as a teacher and in 1977 she retired early.

She started writing as a 15-year-old. In 1946, she meet Otto Basil who published some of her first works in his avant-garde journal Plan. Mayröcker's poems were published a few years later by renowned literary critic Hans Weigel. She was eventually introduced to the Wiener Gruppe, a group of mostly surrealist and expressionist Austrian authors.

Friederike Mayröcker is recognized as one of the most important contemporary Austrian poets. She also had success with her prose and radio plays. Four of them she wrote together with Ernst Jandl, with whom she lived together from 1954 until his death in 2000.

Her prose is often described as autofictional, since Mayröcker uses quotes of private conversations and excerpts from letters and diaries in her work.

Mayröcker describes her working process as follows: "I live in pictures. I see everything in pictures, my complete past, memories are pictures. I transform pictures into language by climbing into the picture. I walk into it until it becomes language."

A German biographical movie documenting Mayröcker's life and work was released in 2008

Reviews

[Pin · Rating 5 out of 5]

("The wind outside is writing this book," Georges Bataille)

Wanting to praise a book after having read only one page... the feeling persisted, every new page I turned... sometimes they wrecked me, sometimes they saved me, every time they did things i've no words for, any page... one hell of a beautiful ride through and far beyond this linguistic consciousness.

If you ever finish a book to find yourself staring at a single blank page lost behind the final words... trying to imagine the end turning into endlessness. This book has 3 blank pages once the words disappear, i'm still reading them... thoughts haven't been captivated this intensely since, perhaps, Rilke... endless stream of thought going nowhere.

I feel perpetual again.

("SOMEONE ELSE HAS WRITTEN MY BOOKS." quotation marks)

[Paul Bisagni · Rating 5 out of 5]

desert-island book 🥺