Monday 2 July, 2007

Die Welt 02.07.2007

The Ingeborg Bachmann Prize, the prestigious German-language literary prize in which young writers read pieces written especially for the competition, was held over the weekend in the Austrian city of Klagenfurt. Elmar Krekeler is not happy with a lot of what he heard, but he very much enjoyed the winning story "TurkSib" (text here) by Lutz Seiler. "Seiler travelled through Kazakhstan with the TurkSib. His story takes us on a lurching trip through the train, and in every text compartment, in each new textual wagon, we discover ever more sub-stories and literary allusions which the true poet has slipped in almost without our noticing. Well-nigh a masterpiece of modern narrative art."


Die Tageszeitung 02.07.2007

Dirk Knipphals is content to see the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize go to Lutz Seiler, but he notes a lack of theoretical savvy among the jury members: "This jury could talk well enough about individual books, but not about literature as a whole. That may be a standard accusation against Klagenfurt juries (and come to think of it, isn't literary criticism a bit like that on the whole?). This time, however, this lack was particularly unfortunate because there was plenty of occasion for juicy controversy. For example, Ijoma Mangold, literary editor at the SZ and new in the jury, clearly undertook to side with intelligently structured, tightly-knitted and compact narrative forms, against avant-garde pretensions. With him on the one side and Iris Radisch as the protagonist of the art faction on the other, a great polemic was missed about whether Georg Büchneresque pathos is really suitable as a point of reference."


Frankfurter Rundschau 02.07.2007

Christoph Schröder has made his peace with the Bachmann Prize in Klagenfurt: "It's wonderful that Lutz Seiler's fabulous piece 'TurkSib', an absolutely classic bit of literature, brought consent in the very first jury sitting. It was the the best contribution by far, and entirely deserving of the 25,000 euro prize. That speaks highly for the Klagenfurt principle, but it does nothing to change the fact that the boundaries of what literary writing is, what passes for literature in Klagenfurt, are about to shift. And that not only since the coup last year of the Berlin Zentral Intelligenz Agentur member Kathrin Passig who, day in day out, sat in the ORF studio cafe, apparently fused with her laptop, self-importantly and ceaselessly typing out whatever popped into her head." Read Kathrin Passig's contribution here.


Saturday 30 June, 2007

Die Welt 30.06.2007

In the literature section, Dan Diner describes the Muslim efforts in America and Europe to bring Islam in line with western laws using the "Fiqh al-Aqalliyyat", the jurisprudence of Muslim minorities in the diaspora. The Jews had to undergo a similar process in the 19th century, Diner writes. "The reconciliation between the parts of their own law and those of the foreign law was successfully brought about in the Jewish diaspora tradition through the doctrine of 'Dina de-Malchuta Dina.' Can the 'Fiqh al-Aqalliyyat' as a form of collective Itjihad have a similar effect? The way things are being interpreted at the moment, it certainly looks that way."


Neue Zürcher Zeitung 30.06.2007

In the literature and art supplement, Ulrich M. Schmid remembers Russian writer Varlam Shalamov, who was forced to spend an unbelievable fourteen years in the Siberian forced-labour camp Kolyma. "The cold pole of harshness – as Alexander Solzhenitsyn described the gulag at Kolyma – where morals disintegrate along with the human will to survive. All impulses of the spirit give way to leaden apathy, even death becomes merely a final link in a long chain of humiliations. Shalamov reduces expectations for life and death to the absolute minimum: "There was a secret, impassioned desire, a last stubbornness – to die in a hospital somewhere, on a wooden bunk, on a bed, where other people will see it, even if it's only in their line of duty, but not outside, not in the cold, not under boots in the convoys, not among curses in the barracks, not in the dirt among utter indifference."


Süddeutsche Zeitung 30.06.2007

The paper dedicates an entire page to the Munich Opera Festival, where Unsuk Chin's opera "Alice in Wonderland," had its world premiere conducted by Kent Nagano. In an interview, the composer expresses dissatisfaction with Achim Freyer's staging, and explains that she has seldom composed such accessible music: "All conceivable sound material is gathered in the work, from C major right through to the most diverse noises. The music speaks directly to the listener. But the orchestral piece and the cello concert I'm now working on are going to be very different.... In the opera I purposely inserted quotes from 'Turandot' for the queen. My intention was to parody standard opera, some of which I find absolutely impossible. And there are many quotes from baroque and modern music in the guessing games scene. For me too it's a game. I have absolutely no problems with that, as long as it's done well. It can't sound as if it were meant in earnest; there's a fine line there."