Selected Poetry and Prose

by Ilse Aichinger

Logbridge-Rhodes, First Edition, 1983. Hand-written dedication by Allen. I bought this book in a secondhand store, but it is still in excellent condition. No markings.

Genres: Poetry

141 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1983

About the author

Ilse Aichinger (born 1 November 1921) is an Austrian writer noted for her accounts of her persecution by the Nazis because of her Jewish ancestry.
Aichinger was born in 1921 in Vienna, along with her twin sister, Helga, to a Jewish doctor (her mother) and a Christian teacher. Her mother's family was assimilated, and Aichinger was raised a Catholic.[2] She spent her childhood in Linz and Vienna, where her family was subjected to Nazi persecution starting in 1933. Aichinger began to study medicine in 1945, working as a writer on the side. In her first novel, Das vierte Tor (The Fourth Gate), she wrote of her own experience under Nazism.

After studying for five semesters, Aichinger interrupted her studies in medicine again in 1948 in order to finish her second novel, Die größere Hoffnung (The Greater Hope).

In 1953, she married the German writer Günter Eich.

In 1955, Aichinger was awarded the Immermann-Preis by the city of Düsseldorf and in 1956, she joined the Akademie der Künste of Berlin. In 1957, Aichinger won the Literaturpreis der Freien Hansestadt Bremen. In 1963, Aichinger moved to Großgmain, near Salzburg. In 1971, she was awarded the Nelly-Sachs-Preis.

Reviewing a 1957 volume of her short works in translation, The Bound Man and Other Stories, Anthony Boucher described Aichinger as "a sort of concise Kafka," praising the title story for its "narrative use of multi-valued symbolism."[3]

She was honered the German international literary Petrarca-Preis in 1982. After 1985 Aichinger increasingly retreated from public life.[citation needed] In 1987, she received the Europalia-Literatur-Preis, and in 1991, she was awarded the Großer Literaturpreis of the Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste|Bayerischen Akademie der Schönen Künste. Other honors included the Großer Österreichischer Staatspreis für Literatur in 1995 and the 2001 Joseph-Breitbach-Preis, which she received along with W. G. Sebald and Markus Werner.

Aichinger is the aunt of artist Ruth Rix.

Reviews

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poems...

I've gotten used to this window
and to the snow falling through my eyes,
but who has followed the lost ones
through the open garden gate,
who left his seal upon what was there,
the rain barrel
and the moon as moon,
every frozen blade of grass?
Who rocked before dawn,
and made the ropes crack,
who lays his wax hand on the kitchen window,
lay down in whiteness
and accepted me myself?

- Glimpse from the Past, pg. 19

* * *

The sun wants to move before me
into my tranquililty,
jumps, pushes, moves childishly,
doesn't wait for me.
And for that reason
I'm leaving this tranquility,
this lovely tranquility
in the shade
to go to my lovely swine,
who alone know how
to be suffocated
violently and calmly enough
in our dull water,
according to the command
and according to the commandments
swine which no sun overtakes
and destroys,
which remain uppermost only after the end.
My kings.

- New Alliance, pg. 27

* * *

Rejoice
the seconds
along the bed's edge,
thus do rejoice,
I say to you,
in the name of the city
Newcastle upon Tyne,
of sheep shearing,
during which you watched
so valiantly,
of the new breed
which makes you
superior to the pigs,
even more superior,
of the pretty whistles
from Scotland,
back and forth,
do not stand petrified
in the morning,
rejoice.

- Words Addressed to a Man Who Remained in Bed Twenty-Three Years and then Got Up, pg. 35

* * *

The day on which you
came into the ice without shoes,
the day on which
the two calves
were driven to slaughter,
the day on which I
pierced my left eye,
but no longer,
the day on which
the butcher's newspaper read,
life goes on,
the day on which it continued.

- Enumeration, pg. 45

* * *

If the mail came at night
and the moon
shoved insults
under the door:
They would seem like angels
in their white garments
and would stand quietly in the vestibule.

- Correspondence, pg. 47

* * *

For what would I do,
if there weren't the hunters, my dreams,
which in the morning
climb down the back side of the mountains,
in the shade.

- Mountain Crest, pg. 61

Prose...

I now no longer use better words. The rain which pounds against the window. Formerly something quite different would have occurred to me. Not this is sufficient. The rain which pounds against the windows. That's adequate. Anyway, I just had another different expression on the tip of my tongue, it was not only better, it was more precise, but I forgot it, while the rain was pounding against the windows or was doing that which I was in the process of forgetting. I'm not very curious what will occur to me during the next rain, be it a kind of shower or a heavy downpour, but I presume that a turn of phrase for all kinds of rain will be adequate. I won't worry whether one can say pound when it only lightly touches the window panes, whether that isn't then an overstatement. Or whether it is an understatement when it is about to break in the window panes. I'll leave it at that, I'll stick to pound, others can worry about the rest.
Dragging along downfall in front of one, that occurred to me too, it is certainly more assailable than the pounding rain, for one drags nothing in front of himself, one pushes it or kicks it, carts, for example, or wheelchairs, while one drags along other things like potato sacks, other things, but by no means downfalls, they are promoted some other way. I know that, and already the better phrase was again just on the tip of my tongue, but only to slip my mind. I'll not mourn its loss. Dragging along downfall in front of one or better downfalls, I'll not insist on one or the other, but I'll stick to the latter. Whether one can say, I decide on it is questionable. Up to now usage hasn't allowed one to use decision in those instances when there is a question of only one possibility. One could discuss it, but I am fed up with these discussions - they are usually held in taxis on the way out of town - and I make do with my assailable expressions.
Naturally I'll not be able to sell them, but I feel sorry for them just as I feel sorry for prompters and opera glass manufacturers. I begin to acquire a weakness for the second and third best expression in front of which the good hides quite cleverly, and is seen often by the public even if only when taking the fourth best into consideration. One can't take exception to that, the public expects that, the good has no choice. Or has it? Could it not hide from the public and turn up in those expressions which are possible bu weaker? One has to wait and see. There are enough adequate devices - complicated to learn thoroughly - and if I lean heavily on those which are inadequate, that's my affair.
I have become careful also in the formation of correlations. I don't say, while the rain pounds against the windows, we drag downfalls along in front of us, but I say, the rain which pounds against the windows and dragging downfalls along in front of one and so forth. No one can demand that I produce correlations as long as they are avoidable. I am not indiscriminate as life is, a better designation for which has also just escaped me. Let's call it life, perhaps it deserves nothing better. Living is not a special word and dying isn't either. Both are assailable, disguising meaning instead of defining it. Perhaps I know why. Defining borders on undermining and exposes one to the grip of dreams. But I must not know that. I can make do. Indeed I can easily make do. I can stick with it. Surely I could say living to myself so often than I would get sick of it and would see myself compelled to go to another designation. And dying even more often. But I don't do it. I restrict myself and make observations, with that I am sufficiently occupied. I also listen, bu that has certain dangers. Doing that, ideas can easily occur to one. Not long ago it was said, gather the downfall, it sounded like a command. I wouldn't like that. If it were a request, then one could think it over, but commands frighten me. For that reason also I changed to second best. The best is commanded. Therefore, I don't let myself be frightened anymore. I have had enough of that. And I have had more than enough of my ideas which are no mine at all because they formally meant something different. The can be called my castoffs but not my ideas. Of, well, it doesn't matter what they are called. We have had sufficient proof of that. The lease best expressions can defend themselves. The come into the world and are immediately surrounded by everything that is inadequate to surround them. Before they can turn their heads, meanings inspired by their own names are attributed to them which are inappropriate. They are already easily discernible in lullabyes. Later that process becomes more massive. And I? I could defend myself. I could easily keep track of the best instead of next-best, bu I don't do it. I don't want to be obvious, I like rather to blend in unobtrusively. I observe. I watch ever and each thing assume its speedy and incorrect designation, recently I've been joining in. The only difference is: I know what I'm doing. I know that the world is worse than its name and that therefore its name too is inferior.
Gather the downfall - that sounds too good to me. Too sharp, too precise, too much like bird calls late at night, a better designation for pure truth than pure truth is. I could attract attention with that, could be lifted from my position in the ranks of name-givers which had been acquired with time and effort, and lose my observation post. No, I'll give that up. I'll remain with my rain which pounds against the windows, in the area of suitable cock-and-bull stories - and if there are to be downfalls, then such ones that one drags along in front of himself. The last is almost too precise, perhaps one should leave downfalls out of the picture altogether. They are too close to that for which they stand, quiet decoy bids that circle around the norm. The norm is good, it is in any case imprecise enough, the norm and the rain, which pounds, all first and last names, the process is endless and one remains the quiet observer, that one would like to be, by chance observer from one direction or the other, while one leaves his fists in his pockets and leaves the downfalls to themselves, leaves them out, leaves them be, that is good. Leaves them be is again too well expressed, ridiculously well expressed, no, leave out the downfalls, they attract undesired precision and do not occur in any lullabye.
The rain which pounds against the windows, there we have it again, we'll leave it, it leaves everything in its improper perspective, we'll stay with that, in order the we remains we, in order than everything remains what it is not, from the weather to the angels.
In this way one can live and in this way one can die, and if that is not inaccurate enough for someone, let him quietly try to go further in this direction. For him there are no limits.

- Inferior Words, pg. 65-67