2023-07-01 10:11:37
The third and last day of reading as part of the 47th Days of German-language Literature in Klagenfurt started under threatening clouds and at significantly cooler temperatures than in the past few days. The morning, on which the audience braved the rain with umbrellas in the garden, brought an examination of Yevgeniy Breyger’s search for stability in language and Mario Wurmitzer’s writing in a show house settlement, which was observed by cameras.
The author Breyger, who was born in Kharkiv (Ukraine) in 1989 and has lived in Germany since 1999, started the last day of reading. At the invitation of jury chairman Insa Wilke, he read from his text “Die Lust auf Zeit”, which takes place in the waiting room of a hospital and in which the protagonist talks to his reflection while he remembers the stories of his grandfather’s war experiences. “Losing a kidney in the hospital is worse than a leg in a war, he says. Yes, Grandpa, that’s right, I say.” In her statement, Wilke referred to Tanja Malyartschuk’s opening speech, which dealt with the fear of language in view of the war in Ukraine. Breyger’s text is “regarding trying to write a stop,” says Wilke. “It’s a constant attempt to write down a body.”
Mara Delius admitted that it was a text “whose form you have to accept” and that “negotiated the motif of memory, the passing on of memory and thus its survival”. Klaus Kastberger also called for patience with the text and “not to get nervous”. The author asks “what it takes to tell a story”, it is an “extremely poetic text”. Brigitte Schwens-Harrant praised “the slowness, the poetic perspective” and the examination of the question of how to write regarding things. Thomas Strässle also found it remarkable “what happens in this moment of timelessness stretched out to infinity” and praised the “extraordinarily careful sense of language” of the author, who is known as a poet. “The trauma grips me, but I don’t know enough regarding it,” Mithu Sanyal hoped that it was an excerpt from a longer text. Only Philipp Tingler was not very convinced: “The text doesn’t reach me, it’s hermetic in itself. Somehow that’s not enough for me.” Kastberger countered: “When Mr. Tingler says a text is ‘so average’, it often wins the Bachmann Prize.”
The second of two Austrian contributions to this year’s Bachmann Prize came from author Mario Wurmitzer, who was born in Lower Austria in 1992. In his text “The Tiny House has burned down” invited by Tingler, he dedicated a first-person narrative to an author who lives for a company called “Modern Home” under video surveillance in a “Tiny House” in a model house settlement and is potential customers until a mysterious series of fires forces him to move. The jury tried hard to get involved with the topic and tonality of the text, depending on the content of the previous discussion.
Wilke found the text “very funny and entertaining and yet critical at the same time”, but ultimately the text was also a tiny house “and therefore also limited”. Sanyal took the same line: “This text goes as far as the garden fence and not beyond. The text is not designed to break out.” Delius praised the “controlled coolness” of the witty critique of capitalism. Kastberger was also pleased with the “wonderfully light, but nevertheless very clever text”, which showed that perhaps the first-person narrator as the author “is only a product of the circumstances”. He noticed that it’s not always the “most serious” texts that achieve the greatest impact. Schwens-Harrant was pleased that the subject of constant publicity “that does something with our lives” was made an entertaining topic here. Strässle also emphasized the topic of “authenticity simulation” positively, but sees “some plausibility gaps”. For Tingler, who invited the text, the literary motif of the arson is “an escalation of the ominous mood” and praised the “great lightness and subversive depth”.
On Saturday followingnoon, the readings by Laura Leupi and Deniz Utlu are still on the program before the audience can vote online for the audience award and the jury, which will award the prizes tomorrow, Sunday, thinks regarding it.
(S E R V I C E – https://bachmannpreis.orf.at/)
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