Autoren, die von 2009 bis 2014 Gast waren bei den Europäischen Literaturtagen.

[ Buchtipp von Europäische Literaturtage ] An atlas is an atlas. But what is a sand atlas? This is the title of a new volume of poetry by Mila Haugová, 2001, published in the “Edition Korrespondenzen” in Vienna.
So what is a sand atlas?
The answer is a 176-page volume of poems by Mila Haugová from Bratislava. This bi-lingual book is also appealing for readers without any knowledge of Slovakian and the original texts reveal the flavour of the poems’ colourful language. The reviewer moves on unfamiliar terrain and searches for orientation on the atlas of images, which pour through his hands like sand, if he is inattentive. An atlas of souls, not an arid desert of words, spreads out and has to be slowly, carefully explored.
The static and immovable element is mankind’s original ground and the fundamental lack of precision of boundaries surrounding this inner core, so it seems, circles around the poems by Haugová.

They are route markers, which are almost shocking to be rediscovered, and they point the way ahead in an uncertain direction. The poems incorporate intertextual references to Bachmann, Celan, Trakl and others. And the repeatedly recurring word spans the divide from the animate to the inanimate.
The verb is the strength of this language. In many poems, the lack of clarity is the main theme. In the “Sphinx”, turned to stone, temporarily formed by the artist, and long since decaying to reddish sand, the pictures merge into a single entity: the mythological, weathered, words, sentences, which collapse, the uncertain traces, the maze, the provisional formlessness of drifting sand.

Halb verwitterte Sphinx [Half-weathered Sphinx
im rötlichen Sand in reddish sand
Die Mauern der Sätze stürzen ein the walls of phrases collapse
Spuren anonym in mir traces anonymously within me
Irrgarten der Geraden the maze of straight paths]

The sand atlas is a work that can only be gradually accessed. Whoever traverses the map rapidly with a finger will fail. This “atlas” is no route marker for those who aim to arrive safely at a destination. Mila Haugová shows once again how the journey is the destination because the destination only exists as a mere supposition.

<i> Rainer Wedler</i>

[ Lieblingszitat ] Sebastiana hier in der Schlinge des Wortes

beobachtend beobachtet inneres steinernes Tor
)schweres Aufbrechen des Wortleibs( das Atmen der Innereien
Lumineszenz der Vokale jeden Nachmittag
sich niederlegen mit ihm und nichts wissen von ihm

fast vollkommene Botschaft
wie die Trauer um einen Ort
den wir verlassen wo wir nicht liebten
Flügel ausgespannt ausgebrannt
Wasserabgrund
Wasserhaus

Un-ver-decktheit

[ Info ] Haugová, Mila: Sandatlas. Zweisprachig. (original language: Deutsch) Aus dem Slowak. von Angela Repka. Edition Korrespondenzen, Wien, 2001 . ISBN: 3-902113-03-0.