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Night Train
English (translation)Original German
126 pages, Hardcover
First published May 1, 1992
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About the author
Friederike Mayröcker
110 books52 followersFriederike 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
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
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
February 28, 2024
Friederike Mayröcker is a genius, there's something so specific and emotional in her prose (prose poetry) that I'm able to connect with & feel so deeply! Happy 100 years <3
Typing out a just a few of the many many passages I especially loved:
"What happened to the lemon, I say, to the color yellow, what happened to the time, I say, where did it always go, how was it really, I say, how should how could one still find rest there or come to one's senses, my word in the blood gutter, suddenly something sprang from the table: things act on their own accord! two pieces of bread came to lie on the floor, presumably having fallen from the breakfast table, incarcerated between the windows a fly buzzes – I would probably have to free it, a mobile made of clothes hangers, an approximate distance to everything, a lemon lies on the table: a beauty! it lies there, I say, as if it wanted to prepare itself to be painted."
"I am already very light, in life, it's a long time ago I was a child and it snowed a lot, I remember, thus I reflect on value and the absence of value, beauty and ugliness and how they seem interrelated, truth and deception, seduction and finding the way, the subject matter is always unreal like the waves of the sea, over the deepest treasures, understand if you can!"
"We sat facing each other, my gaze suddenly strayed to his crotch, glided seemingly accidentally over it, I don't know how, I came back to it again and again, but he smiled about it or he laughed it off, I ate standing up, we made love standing up, he stalked up and down in the room with me, and rejoicing with me in the flower room, up and down, and lifted me onto his feet, trotted around with me, namely on stork legs, a so-called happiness in love, there was an aviary with a swarm of birds in it, and I heard it unremittingly whizzing, an aura has power, I call, I heard it buzzing in my head."
Typing out a just a few of the many many passages I especially loved:
"What happened to the lemon, I say, to the color yellow, what happened to the time, I say, where did it always go, how was it really, I say, how should how could one still find rest there or come to one's senses, my word in the blood gutter, suddenly something sprang from the table: things act on their own accord! two pieces of bread came to lie on the floor, presumably having fallen from the breakfast table, incarcerated between the windows a fly buzzes – I would probably have to free it, a mobile made of clothes hangers, an approximate distance to everything, a lemon lies on the table: a beauty! it lies there, I say, as if it wanted to prepare itself to be painted."
"I am already very light, in life, it's a long time ago I was a child and it snowed a lot, I remember, thus I reflect on value and the absence of value, beauty and ugliness and how they seem interrelated, truth and deception, seduction and finding the way, the subject matter is always unreal like the waves of the sea, over the deepest treasures, understand if you can!"
"We sat facing each other, my gaze suddenly strayed to his crotch, glided seemingly accidentally over it, I don't know how, I came back to it again and again, but he smiled about it or he laughed it off, I ate standing up, we made love standing up, he stalked up and down in the room with me, and rejoicing with me in the flower room, up and down, and lifted me onto his feet, trotted around with me, namely on stork legs, a so-called happiness in love, there was an aviary with a swarm of birds in it, and I heard it unremittingly whizzing, an aura has power, I call, I heard it buzzing in my head."
April 5, 2017
Friederike Mäyrocker, the treasure I needed to find in this day and age, at this point in this lifetime.
Incapable, of doing her work any justice with my "parrot language" review, still can't get myself, to leave these review pages blank, have to attempt, to share the treasure with any other, treasure seekers.
So... what to write, feels like anything will do, that is the effect of the work, write it all, write anything, but not in here, not for whoever will read this "right now", I'll write it somewhere else, while I board the night train and journey to my own destination.
Can only, leave the rest of this review to the author... but still... just with this personally selected fragment that merely captures a tiny glimpse, of the experience that is, reading a writer...
"To be able to begin again now, my God in my thirty-third year for example, then when we saw each other for the first time!
The truth is that we often got into a stalemate in later years, didn't know in from out, gloated over the weaknesses that became apparent in the other. And if our children had lived, then now at our age we would not have to love each other instead of a child-
only piecemeal am I in a position to live, only piecemeal am I in a position to read, nor do I know where it will take me, what I'm supposed to think of it all, I feel disoriented, also indifferent toward everything that goes on, I can't organize anything in my head anymore, can't retain anything, everything dissolves, vanishes, I sense confusion namely disunity and fear, an utmost discontent, depravity, can you follow me?
sometimes I'm afraid that soon it won't be possible for me anymore to react to people and to the world, I catch myself sometimes trying to think, without finding an answer, what reaction would be appropriate in this or that situation, often I actually wait for someone to come to my help, to whisper something to me, to prescribe and suggest my reactions, so that I can then nod my head in satisfaction and can say yes!"
Incapable, of doing her work any justice with my "parrot language" review, still can't get myself, to leave these review pages blank, have to attempt, to share the treasure with any other, treasure seekers.
So... what to write, feels like anything will do, that is the effect of the work, write it all, write anything, but not in here, not for whoever will read this "right now", I'll write it somewhere else, while I board the night train and journey to my own destination.
Can only, leave the rest of this review to the author... but still... just with this personally selected fragment that merely captures a tiny glimpse, of the experience that is, reading a writer...
"To be able to begin again now, my God in my thirty-third year for example, then when we saw each other for the first time!
The truth is that we often got into a stalemate in later years, didn't know in from out, gloated over the weaknesses that became apparent in the other. And if our children had lived, then now at our age we would not have to love each other instead of a child-
only piecemeal am I in a position to live, only piecemeal am I in a position to read, nor do I know where it will take me, what I'm supposed to think of it all, I feel disoriented, also indifferent toward everything that goes on, I can't organize anything in my head anymore, can't retain anything, everything dissolves, vanishes, I sense confusion namely disunity and fear, an utmost discontent, depravity, can you follow me?
sometimes I'm afraid that soon it won't be possible for me anymore to react to people and to the world, I catch myself sometimes trying to think, without finding an answer, what reaction would be appropriate in this or that situation, often I actually wait for someone to come to my help, to whisper something to me, to prescribe and suggest my reactions, so that I can then nod my head in satisfaction and can say yes!"
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews