Incentives – la nouvelle littérature d’Autriche

readme.cc propose un accès en plusieurs langues à la littérature autrichienne la plus récente. Réalisée en collaboration avec la Maison de la littérature à Vienne, cette plateforme de lecture offre un aperçu de l’actualité littéraire du pays.

Des critiques littéraires – journalistes et/ou universitaires – présentent des ouvrages qui viennent de paraître, de courts extraits permettent de se faire une première idée, des notices biographiques complètent la présentation.

Pour l’instant, ces informations sont disponibles en cinq langues : allemand, anglais, français, tchèque et hongrois.

Le projet « Incentives » cherche à promouvoir l’internationalisation de la littérature autrichienne et la traduction de textes récents.

Réalisation : centre de documentation pour la nouvelle littérature autrichienne (comptes rendus, notices biographiques) – association des traducteurs (traductions) – readme.cc (infrastructure).

http://www.literaturhaus.at

[ Recommandation de Incentives ] The three novellas in Von den Himmel compose a literary “triptych” on the theme of fault and failure. Taking the art history term for a three-paneled (altar) picture literally, we can visualize three tableaus; in the middle is Alberta Perlmutt in a large meadow, a dog by her side. The trees and grass blue; the sky grey from converging clouds. On the panel to the left is the artist N., falling into the picture, sliding on an avalanche; to the right is the stonemason Lamper, who has run into a mirrored surface in the middle of the woods.

The author’s highly individual imagery easily facilitates this vision. The connections between these “pictures” become clear only when events have run their course. Until then, the reader has the detective’s pleasure of following the author to sites attractive not for their idyllic qualities, but for their insidiousness: a sanatorium, an atelier, a Roman well, an abandoned village. At these sites, power plays between man and woman emerge that develop into imaginative variations as the book progresses. Within the individual novellas, similar motifs flash like lightning within the artful construction: The male protagonists use women’s bodies for the creation of their art and react to women’s inaccessibility or unpredictability with destructive rage. The whole story about why the artist N. is fleeing from a mental institution, why the jogging stonemason Lamper kidnaps a woman he doesn’t know, and how the female counterparts develop from victim to avenger and– in the case of the seamstress Alberta Perlmutt – to discerning visionary, is not unraveled until the third part.

The theme of fault and failure is taken up with a refreshing love of verbal experimentation and packaged in the play of innumerous artful interconnections – even the most complex method of painting could not provide as much originality as Gabriele Petricek’s writing.


Abbreviated review by Silvia Sand. English translation by Laura Radosh.
Complete version in German: http://www.literaturhaus.at/index.php?id=7449

[ Info ] Petricek, Gabriele: Von den Himmeln. Triptychon. (original language: Deutsch) Sonderzahl, Wien, 2009 . ISBN: 978-3-85449-323-5.