New Swiss Writing New Swiss Writing
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
New Swiss Writing New Swiss Writing Solothurner Literaturtage Journées Littéraires de Soleure Giornate Letterarie di Soletta Sentupada Litterara a Soloturn Solothurn Literary Days 1 Solothurner Literaturtage Postfach 926 CH-4502 Solothurn [email protected] www.literatur.ch ISBN 978-3-9523242-1-9 © 2008, Solothurn Literary Days, Solothurn All rights reserved. No part of this book may reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the holders of copyright, authors or their publishers. This publication is made possible with the generous funding of Editor: Martin Zingg, Basel Cover and layout: achaos Bildung & Information, Solothurn Printed by ROS, Derendingen 2 Contents Kurt Aebli 5 Urs Allemann 7 Flurina Badel 10 Lukas Bärfuss 13 Bruno Blume 15 Wolfgang Bortlik 17 Arno Camenisch 20 François Debluë 23 Lisa Elsässer 27 Eugène 29 Katharina Faber 32 Andrea Fazioli 35 Anna Felder 38 Simon Froehling 41 Lea Gottheil 42 Svenja Herrmann 45 Franz Hohler 47 Annette Hug 50 Urs Jaeggi 52 Keller+Kuhn 54 Jochen Kelter 56 Tim Krohn 58 Rolf Lappert 61 Daniel Maggetti 64 Jacqueline Moser 66 Adolf Muschg 68 3 Paul Nizon 70 Maurizio Pinarello 72 Marius Daniel Popescu 74 Dubravko Pušek 77 Fabio Pusterla 79 Margrit Schriber 82 Esther Spinner 85 Isabelle Stamm 87 Peter Stamm 89 Verena Stefan 91 Jörg Steiner 93 Franco Supino 96 Raphael Urweider 99 Michel Viala 102 André Winter 105 Mireille Zindel 108 Emil Zopfi 111 Mary-Laure Zoss 114 Germano Zullo 116 Biographical Notes 119 The Translators 127 4 Kurt Aebli At both ends (Metamorphoses) This morning if morning is the right word is a grin like a letter without a stamp or the path of a scent that I photographed in my sleep with the words All the signs in the sky drift separately It is the street that allows me to speak in the tribal homeland of progress and science the street that allows me to speak the proper channels to nothingness I have little ground I have the time I spend waiting I have the miles I dont count when I walk intent on never stopping any- where so as not to be taken to task what I think I’m doing here wilted leaf brushed away by a single question I spend my day I start my day early get up at seven do nothing until approximately ten things then continue in that vein I spend my day doing nothing I watch how my day spends its day how my day spends me The pedestrian zone paved with weekend people suburb people human masses human races raw versions of personal pronouns words dropped in the graves between me and me The town too in which you wake up daily has just been some- bodys fantasy (On the day God turns into a fly you wont wake up) When I left the house all the people in the street had turned into beetles 5 At every corner the city is an entire city something boundless and yet can change at any moment into a prison One afternoon on my way along Leopoldstrasse transformation into one of those knots that disappear into thin air when you pull on both ends of the string simultaneously Translated by Donal McLaughlin From: Ich bin eine Nummer zu klein für mich (‘I am a size too small for myself’), © Urs Engeler Editor, Basel 2007 6 Urs Alleman For the lyre The hand that climbs into your breast your heart to tear out falls off. It is yours. You bend over to pick it up. Now your heart falls out. We fling ourselves to the ground to hit into what’s ours the hearts the hands the teeth. To jerk it down. Now you’re falling your head has slid from your shoulders and converts in rising flight up from inside to out as can’t be imagined but told yes. Even blood some think flowed now. Weeping a ways away. Patient the strewn all around the bones of others sound. If by chance Orpheus came by I’d sing him something shove the meat-eating lyre her part of what, like, fell after. Alcaic number six You rained. I crawled inside of an ancient book. The windshield wipers were blown away. The world was even yet the broad black ashlar round me the brick was pressed out of voices. I wasn’t reading. I was just read. And you ran beautifully down on me. We died not. When I dissolved inside the pages you existed again. Reminiscence. My Grandpa, he knew words such as synthesis. It isn’t true. He pressed the head of the child with fingers to denote by saying finger, a thing I had learned from him. 7 You rain no longer. Squall, I am hiding now. You sleep me, boa. Scale off my skin of words. There’s nothing underneath. The word wound swallows the word that means wonder. Bird shit. Asclepiadic number five You will crush the heel or the heel will crush you raw to mangle the head if out of dust it snakes thrusting, vertical, upward thickly to slur an antidote none were paralyzed all over and if of two one were always the foot, one were the mouth so that grounded it for no reason sung away and is sinking on till one another us to paradise’s screams screaming above it, mouth open in which the reptile screams is afraid of choking on the fruit to the dust of peach From Holder die Polder. Oden Elegien Andere (© Urs Engeler Editor, Basel 2001) 8 censure The black bar set in front of the genitals. The night air out of which such a bar is cut. The ebony, the even layers’ quiet reflection so none looks back. The axe that – how! – cracks gorgeously in your hand. We are the splinters. Graft back into the tree what in your eye, between your legs or up in the heavens the sun is hurting. From schoen! schoen! Poems (© Urs Engeler Editor, Basel 2003) Translated by Ann Cotten 9 Flurina Badel a big field – no no I don’t want out outside I’m staying here lying in bed waiting I can see out-there through the window after all it’s like a picture on the wall the picture moving within the picture trembling the golden leaves on the tree a ray of sun playing on them casting its shadow on my duvet I have the markings of a magpie I’m not going outside after all comes in to me the sound of a scythe being sharpened the sour smell of cut grass mixing with that of my ironed cotton sheets and with that of me from last night I’m staying here I know after all what outside looks like I’ve been before I know the birch trees that surround the entire field rustling gently 10 birches like clouds like cushions they stand there the birches I know the big field at this time of year it is reaped new tufts of grass have grown in bilious green continue to push the field is wet from the last rain I’d sink in with every step tractor wheels have left behind their furrows the ground broken up torn up black tormented earth mucky tired where the furrows are deepest puddles have formed lukewarm water the sky reflected in it and a birch the leaves of the birch tremble when a spider crosses the surface I’m not going out I’d look up after all 11 and miss the birch reflection a field like any other green-yellow-orange-red-brown birch-leaves lie on the earth thrown there without a thought with ease I’m not going I know the wounds it’s the scars I don’t yet know – Translated by Donal McLaughlin 12 Lukas Bärfuss One Hundred Days Why are you here then, my dear friend, you and your splendid managers? We were sitting, after a Sunday in the Akagera, at the campfire in front of the bungalows, eating roast antelope. In the swamps, we’d seen stilts, snipes and crowned cranes, and had taken a logboat out to the island in Lake Ihema, to the seat of the old King of Mubari, where, in March 1877, Stanley had spent ten desperate days in his futile search for the source of the Nile. Why are two hundred different organisations working in this country? Why’s there not a single hill without an aid and development project? Why the incredible urge to cushion the President’s bum with our money? What do you think? If these volunteers are so altruistic, so concerned about human welfare, why don’t a few pack their things and travel across to Katanga? I’ve been there, and I can tell you: it’s hell. Children are dropping dead in the streets: are dying of diarrhoea; of malaria; some, of a common cold, just. Death, you can find on every corner. Illness, everywhere you look. Depravity and helplessness, in every face you see. You’ll not find a single volunteer there, though. Just a bunch of nuns, long turned grey, who delight in washing the feet of the terminally ill and lepers. Why don’t a few, at least, pack their cases and - instead of getting in each other’s way here - travel to where the squalor is? I’ll tell you: no one, not even the world’s greatest philanthropist, exchanges paradise for hell, voluntarily. And he was right. Here, there were no mosquitoes, there was no malaria, it was never too hot, never too cold.