Beneath Black Stars

by Michael Hulse, Malcolm Green

Although in the second half of the 20th century a large number of exceptional writers emerged from the small Austrian Republic, Austrian writers have felt themselves excluded from literature's mainstream. This collection provides an opportunity to sample the rich variety of post-war Austrian writing. Contributors include Thomas Bernhard, Elfriede Jelinek, Ingeborg Bachman, Erich Fried and Lilian Faschinger. Martin Chalmers lives in London where he works as a German translator. The authors he has translated include Victor Klemperer, Robert Walser and Hubert Fichte.

288 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2001

About the author

Hulse has translated over sixty books from the German, among them works by Goethe, Rilke, and Jakob Wassermann. He is nowadays most familiar as the translator of three of W. G. Sebald's books: The Emigrants, The Rings of Saturn and Vertigo. In addition, he has translated two works by Nobel Laureate Elfriede Jelinek, Lust and Wonderful, Wonderful Times and has collaborated in translating one by Nobel Laureate Herta Müller, The Appointment.

Reviews

[Tony · Rating 2 out of 5]

This anthology of short fiction from Austria consists of stories and novel excerpts from 22 writers published in German between 1963 and 1995. In that regard I suppose it's a fair sampling of postwar Austrian literature, but what I had not expected was that this sampling would be so numbingly boring. As the majority authors represented were born during or soon after WWII, I shouldn't have been so surprised that the war and guilt are recurring themes, even in stories written in the '90s. While understand that the Austrian collaboration (Anschluss) with the Nazis is a scar in the national psyche, I suspect that those with more intimate knowledge of Austria may be able to tease a little more meaning out of the stories than I was able to.

Meaning and theme aside, too many of the stories are just flat out boring. I did more or less like Heimito von Doderer's "Beneath Black Stars", narrated by a Luftwaffe officer. I very much enjoyed Hans Carl Artmann's "Blind Chance and Roast Duck", which is a brief comic farce about three gentlemen who have gambled their money away. Peter Henisch's "Brutal Curiosity" appears to be a somewhat autobiographical account of his dying father's experience as a combat photographer in WWII which reads rather well. Gert Jonke's "The Bridge" comes close to being something quite interesting, and Peter Handke's two page sketches aren't bad. The remainder of the stories utterly failed to connect with me, mostly for stylistic reasons. In many cases the writing seemed incredibly stiff, while in others, experimentation runs amok.

I had hoped to emerge from this anthology with a sense of Austria beyond the standard Vienna, Mozart, classical view, with a gritty glimpse into the more real modern Austria. These stories more or less try to do that in a variety of ways, but ultimately fail. Rather than show what's going on now, the authors are more interested in chasing the past.

[Katy Derbyshire · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good overview of some of Austria's later 20th-C writers with an excellent introduction by Martin Chalmers. I particularly enjoyed Iain Galbraith's lively translations, which stood out against an already high-standard backdrop. However, despite dating from 2002 the collection already feels significantly dated.