Light-hearted Despite the Effort:
Evelyn Schlag Returns to New York
Interview by Sigrid Polster and Marianne Dobner
When was the first time you were published?
My first real publication was a piece of experimental prose for a competition sponsored by the Austrian paper Die Presse thirty years ago. The topic of the competition was "Oh you my Austria." I won the third prize.
What attracted you to the title? Were you drawn to describe your relationship to Austria?
When I wrote the piece I assembled all of the famous Austrians, Austrian phrases, and Austrian clichés I could gather. The title was partially ironic, after all, otherwise I probably wouldn't have dared to touch it. My relationship to Austria changes almost every day. But there is a love of nature, of the environment I live in, that is different from my love to other places. It is a rapport with the way nature expresses itself here in southwestern Lower Austria, where "the fruit trees froth in May," as I once wrote in a poem. The Baroque poet Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg, who didn't live far from here, described the same apple tree blossoms - except that she was driven by the rhapsodic, religious impulse that defined her life.
You are known both for your prose and your poetry. In which genre do you feel most comfortable?
Working on poetry is fundamentally different from writing prose. When I write poems, it is a process that usually takes a couple of months. During that period I can't work on a novel because my concentration span is focused differently and I think in other categories. The inner logic of a poem is somewhat different from the logic that you use to steer the plot of a novel and allow it to unfold. My lyrical language is different, too; the language itself plays a much more central role in the work, and at the same time my intervention requires more restraint and decisiveness. Mistakes in poems have less far-reaching consequences because the text is more manageable. They can be more easily corrected.
Do readers of your novels appreciate your poetry and vice versa?
The audience for poetry is usually different; poetry attracts people who focus on language. They have no expectations of getting a story, and they have a different mode of concentration that is selectively deeper. At the same time, they don't have to retain larger contexts in their memory.
Which of your fiction characters do you identify with most closely?
It's always the ones who happen to be trying to write a novel with me, regardless whether they are male or female.
new york marathon
good afternoon paula radcliffe flying high.
every step of the way in your head at the line
a late autumn on fleeing soles. asphalt
is the sky that you tread with your feet.
your white gloved hands (minnie mouse)
slice the seconds in two for that long
breath. good afternoon paula radcliffe. born in a
blizzard. your head throws back every stride
over your shoulder for the one on your tail:
can she use it? and now into the final mile
no time for what has slipped away. the men
would never have caught you, not in eighty races
around the world. good afternoon paula radcliffe.
i scan for my brother's face at the side of the road.
is he waving at me or at you? your little baby takes
you in its arms
In the poem reprinted here you address your personal relationship with New York. What does this city mean to you?
My father went to New York for a year in 1957 in order to train as an anesthesiologist. He was able to stand in the third row during the birth of Caroline Kennedy. My mother followed him three months later, and I stayed with my grandparents during this time. Because I missed my mother so much, I asked my grandfather to teach me how to write. He took many photographs of me, developed them himself, and I wrote messages to my mother on the back. I didn't come to New York myself until 1999; afterwards I wrote a poem about this strange relationship with a city that on the one hand had caused me great pain and on the other put my writing in a context of strong yearning and inspired me to write into being from the very outset.
So is your journey to New York a renewed encounter with an emotionally charged place?
It's an eventful place. Definitely. You can interpret that however you like. The recent marathon poem for Paula Radcliffe understands how to show the reality of a miracle: the sense of light heartedness despite all the effort.
What do you think about translations of your works? Does one have to be familiar with the Austrian background to understand your writing?
No. Poetry is harder to translate, especially if narrative threads are in the background and the language takes liberties that follow their own logic. This doesn't mean it is less logical. In prose, I often use Austria as a location, but with a few exceptions, such as the story about Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg, the untranslatable local qualities are not overbearing.
Do you personally participate in the translation process, for example into English?
Karen Leeder from Oxford is an ideal translator. We take a lot of time to discuss details by email. She never loses patience, and she is always prepared to keep looking, to find a new approach to a line, for example, to coax a different meaning from it without revealing the double entendre of the original. She has often found astonishing solutions. And in effect she is the most accurate editor as well because she really has to rethink every line, every sentence.
Many of your works have to do with illness, weakness, and the relationship between doctor and patient. Do your own experiences play a role here?
In my novel Quotations of a Body (Die Kränkung) I drew on my own experiences with pulmonary tuberculosis. In my poetry readings in Graz, I paid especially close attention to writers with TB and explored the relationship between doctors and patients, including doctors who were also writers. Illness is one of the big subjects in literature, like anything that can dramatically change people and shape their lives.
