Beschreibung
The essays in this volume record journeys which are improbable in every sense. Writing in Viennese cafés on whatever paper is to hand, Ilse Aichinger travels into history, into memory, into the present and into her imagination. She traces the life story of her great-grandfather “Dziadzio”, recalls the cramped apartment in post-war Vienna where she sat at a “little whitepainted kitchen table and started writing The Greater Hope,” ponders “the limits of what could be comprehended” after the 11th of September 2001, and pictures Astrid Lindgren’s Pippi Longstocking riding on Vienna’s No. 71 tram, “although she’s anarchic enough to be barely imaginable ‘where we live.’” As Rüdiger Görner comments in his introduction to this first English translation of Unglaubwürdige Reisen, Aichinger’s remarkable journeys “pulsate with life and wisdom, with joy in exploring and in the myriad possibilities of meaning.”
Contents:
Foreword to the English Translation – Foreword – I Improbable Journeys – A Cigar With Churchill – The Early Glimpses Into Institutional Gardens – Like When A Film Breaks – New York Surfaces – The Blue Milk of Grünangergasse – Pippi Longstocking in a Car on “the 71” – Excursion Into Vienna’s Anatomy – Through the Caucasus – Happiness on Sunday in Hetzendorf – The High Seas in the Middle of Vienna – Hofmannsthal and the Viennabikes – Hope in Odessa and Hernals – A Journey Into Boredom – To Brigittenau With Franz Grillparzer – A Journey to “Away” – Danzig, For Günter Grass’ Birthday – From the History of Separations – In Praise of England – Canetti in the Wet English Wind – Saying Goodbye to Christmas – Into the Snow Which Has Disappeared – To Moravia – A Novel of a Family – The End of Living Anywhere – Hesitant Affection – From the Everyday War to the Capuchin Crypt – In the Eye of the Storm: The “Demel” – Unwilling Schoolgirls – The Delta in Singerstrasse – Freud’s Neighbours Who Disappeared – II Shadow Plays – Unspectacular Endings – Museum Landscapes For Murders – Gentle Memory, Surrounded By Violence – The Aberdeen Game – The Gloomy Christmas Game – For the New Year – Dying at the Film Casino Cinema – Permission for a Grave Next to Marlene Dietrich Withdrawn – Hills and Gentle Cardinals – For Richard Reichensperger – “Sleep Is My Great Experience”– Graÿzyna – The Last Guests – Shadow Play Radio – Memory with a String of Green Beads – The Nanny From Linz – Do-It-Yourself – Semolina-Dumpling Soup From Morzin Square – Experiences Guaranteed for Viennese Travellers in Shanghai – Poor Tom – Nobel Sun – The Required Joy – III Ilse Aichinger: “I consider my existence entirely unnecessary” – Translator’s Note – Afterword – Ruth Rix – Acknowledgements.
The translator:
Geoff Wilkes is a Senior Lecturer in German Studies at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. He has previously translated Ilse Aichinger’s Die größere Hoffnung and Film und Verhängnis. Blitzlichter auf ein Leben into English for K&N.