Austrian Cultural Forum NYC

Verena Rossbacher
Excerpt from: Verlangen nach Drachen [Longing for Dragons],
Kiepenheuer und Witsch
Chapter 4: Lenau, The Confusion
Translated by Susan Schwarz

Outside an autumn storm was raging. He sat up in the tent and stared into the pitch dark, heard the groaning, the creaking of the trees, the wind yawing around the tent, rain. He groped for the flashlight, let the beam of light wander across the fabric panels, carefully wiped across the tent wall, water. He got dressed and packed his stuff into the backpack. He took the poncho from the hanger and pulled it over his head, left the tent. At this point the rain was practically pouring horizontally, Lenau fought against the wind, through the tangled field, the water slapped into his face with force, he shined the flashlight to all sides, the field, child-high, man-high, mammoth-high, the wind pulled at him, he could barely stand up, he sank to his knees and pulled the backpack off his back. He pulled his head into the poncho, spread it out over himself and the backpack. He put the flashlight in his mouth, searched through the outside pockets, nothing, emptied the backpack. He pulled out the Swiss army knife from way at the bottom, shined the flashlight on the compass, the needle rotated, wouldn't be surprised, he muttered behind the flashlight, if it wouldn't work now either, the needle finally came to rest, north. Swiss precision, he said, Swiss precision.

OK, said Lenau, if that's north, he looked up, raised up the poncho, looked around, then that's south and there's my greenhouse.
The wind became increasingly stronger, walking was out of the question now. Lenau picked up the backpack again and pushed onward, moving like a seal. Field, rain. The ground was very wet, the water from all of the previous weeks wasn't draining off any more. Swamp, rain rain, in the war it always rains, mumbled Lenau, or have you ever seen war images where the sun is smiling in the sky. In the war there's always rain. I'm always in the war. He laughed. Once he looked up, thought he saw his tent sailing past him, the camping table, chairs. He worked his way forward. Every now and then a look at the compass, north, south, the greenhouse. Sometimes he crouched down, waited. For the rain to let up or the greenhouse to come to him, for the world to stop, for Klara to come back to him, for the world to keep turning.
Then he pushed onward.
He kneeled down and shined the flashlight across the field, searching. He pulled his watch out, two and a half hours had passed since he left the tent, the greenhouse, gone. Sometimes he had crossed his snail trail, he was very cold. He let the beam of the flashlight glide across the field again, rain, everywhere rain, field. He pushed onward a little more.

When he came across the greenhouse it was four thirty, he couldn't have said that day was already dawning, he couldn't say that it looked like day would ever break again, it was raining, storming, sometimes he had been certain he had seen his tent fly past him, sometimes it came from the left, sometimes from the right, always in proper tent posture, the pegs driven into the void.
He staggered to a standing position, stumbled into the greenhouse, and pulled the door shut behind himself. The rain poured, pounded on the glass roof, it smelled like rotten fruit.
He pulled the poncho over his head and let the backpack slide to the ground. He walked over to the tomato plants and pulled the wooden crate out of the bottom shelf. He set the four petroleum lamps in front of himself, looked for matches in the crate, lit them.
He turned the flames high and distributed the lamps in the greenhouse. He looked down at himself. The rubber boots, the suit, everything was hidden under a thick layer of mud, he started to undress and cut holes into a potato sack, pulled it over his head.
The plants were dried up, there was a smell of mash hanging in the air as if someone had brewed liquor here and left the mash behind, he plucked a few mummified tomatoes from the branches and regretted that someone hadn't taken the mash with them and left the liquor behind.
He took a couple of the bales of straw he used to cover the strawberries, piled the straw into the old bathtub, and laid down.
He looked at the shadows of the petroleum lamps, looked up at the roof of the greenhouse, listened to the rain. It was cold, he scooped the straw over himself, listened to the rain. Slowly it got light.

He opened his eyes, looked up at the roof of the greenhouse, the sky was clear blue. He tried to understand the pounding. It had gotten comfortably warm in the straw, he closed his eyes, felt his sleepiness, something was pounding, or was it his heart? The heart, he muttered, it's about the heart. He looked into the blue sky that couldn't be, the sun must have been somewhere, missing for weeks, on vacation, the pounding gradually became insistent, maybe he should see a doctor. The vines had climbed high up the glass walls, dry grapes hung over him in fat clusters, he had slept like a dead man, he closed his eyes again and felt the warmth, smelled the hay, the mash-
Hello, hello!
Startled, he grabbed his chest, my heart, he muttered, a doctor, I need a-
Hello!
Lenau turned his head and stared into Doctor Teupel's face pressed up against the window of the greenhouse, Hello! Teupel called from outside, he raised his briefcase and pointed to it, Hello!
Lenau shut his eyes for a brief moment, a hallucination, he mumbled, a fata morgana, Hello! Teupel rapped on the glass. Lenau looked up at the roof of the greenhouse, the sky clear blue.
Hello!
He pulled himself up out of the tub, brushed off the straw, and went to the door.
After the long rain, the three-foot-high grass in the field was matted down in a jumbled crisscross pattern, in the bright light he saw his nocturnal trail, the path of a snail.
Mr. von Lenau? Teupel stretched out his hand.
Please, don't bother with the von-
Wonderful fami-
Please please please, Lenau put both hands to his head, closed his eyes. He stroked his hair, inhaled deeply, exhaled. Thank you, he said, thank you thank you.
I've brought us a little something, you'll find it interesting, Teupel walked past him and entered the greenhouse.
Lenau looked down at himself, the potato sack, straw, he had forgotten to take off his bowtie last night, soiled and weary, it hung over his chest.
Please forgive my somewhat desperate appearance, he began, Teupel had set his briefcase on the edge of the bathtub, so, he said, let's take a look.
Lenau stood next to Teupel, watched as he shuffled around in his briefcase, he sat on the edge of the bathtub, Teupel stacked the containers next to himself on the floor, Lenau let himself slide into the bathtub, watched how Teupel set up the containers in front of him, heaped the straw over his chest. He leaned back, laid in the bathtub, the straw, the warmth, the sky clear blue, the heart, a doctor, he closed his eyes.
Really highly interesting, he said from time to time.



Verena Rossbacher was born in Bludenz/Vorarlberg, and grew up in Austria and Switzerland. She studied philosophy, german studies and theology in Zurich, as well as at the Deutsches Literaturinstitut in Leipzig. She received a daramtist's grant in Zurich in 2002, and a literature grant from the province of Vorarlberg in 2005. In the spring of 2009, her book "Verlangen nach Drachen" ("Longing for Drangons") will be published by Kiepenheuer and Witsch.


WEDNESDAY MARCH 4, 6:30 PM
KRAUTGARTEN LITERATURE FESTIVAL
MEET THE AUTHOR
With Verena Rossbacher and Klaus Nüchtern
ACF

I OFTEN ENVY YOUNG AMERICANS

INTERVIEW WITH YOUNG AUSTRIAN WRITER CLEMENS SETZ
BY MARTIN RAUCHBAUER

You said once in an interview, "No one becomes an artist because he feels like it". Why did you become a writer?

I just could not stand not reciprocating in some way the pleasure that wonderful books by other writers gave me. It is the same in erotic encounters. If you thought that you could never return the affection, you would go crazy.

In spring, your new novel of supposedly 700 pages with the title "Frequenzen (Frequencies)" will be published. Why did you choose this title?

The title refers to a motive in the book. One of the protagonists suffers from a constant whistling in his ear, a permanent noise, which changes and finally turns into a confused din of voices. I myself have been suffering from a tinnitus for years and am familiar with the problem. Besides, the novel is told from multiple perspectives, and I have thought all the time while writing of a radio tuner. The reader keeps turning the button to get to the next chapter, i.e., the next station, to the next voice.

What has changed for you after the success of your novel Soehne und Planeten (Sons and Planets), especially as far as the critics are concerned? Have you been surprised by the success?

Every success is a surprise, especially coming from the critics. That's because they are so unpredictable. I assume this is no different in America. You think you know how a person will react to a book, and then he says the exact opposite. The biggest difference is that they are serious about me now. They accept my attending certain events, festivals, readings, etc.

Your novel Sons and Planets touches on great existential subjects and is replete with literary and philosophical allusions without being boring. Can good literature be entertaining?

If it were not entertaining, it would not be good literature. No reader has deserved to suffer when he turns the pages of a book. Existential and philosophical speculations as such are quite often comical, even without the use of alienation effects or refractions. You know that when you listen at a party to two intellectuals engaged in a heated discussion about Heidegger. They really mean whatever they say, but you stand next to them and chuckle.

You are a translator yourself and speak five languages. Do you think your literature could be translated? Are there any concrete plans for that?

Well, I understand five languages fairly well; I can't speak all of them perfectly. I do think that my stories and novels could be translated. However, so far there are no concrete plans.

You translated John Leake's Entering Hades, the carefully researched story about the Austrian serial killer Jack Unterweger. Why the fascination with this subject?

It is a strange undertaking to kind of bring back an English book about an Austrian case into the linguistic surroundings in which the story originated. My translation of Entering Hades is practically the German-language view of the American view of an Austrian phenomenon. Quite an intricate construct!

What is your relationship to American literature? Are there any US authors that influence you?

Like many other young authors who write in German I often envy the many young Americans whose first novel is translated immediately into German and displaces all others on the season's bestseller list. The dominating position of the Americans on the international book market can be intimidating, but one has to admit that the most interesting books are presently written in the United States. In the German speaking world there is not a single author who could be compared to Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon or David Foster Wallace. William T. Vollmann and Dennis Cooper are two authors whose works have made a lasting impression on me, but both are still comparatively unknown in Europe.

You were born in Graz and live there, too. Graz is considered the secret capital of Austrian literature since the foundation of the "Forum Stadtpark". Have these surroundings been important for you in order to write?

Today the Forum Stadtpark is rather a place for political discussions, symposiums and events. Literary readings are no longer the main focus. But nevertheless, one still feels the presence of that glorious past which is the measure for everything that young writers produce. We are reproached quite often that we are not as provocative and avant-garde as the "Old Masters", but on the other hand, if somebody is provoked by our non-provocative attitude that suits us just fine.

You are studying German literature and mathematics. The first seems obvious for a writer, the second not so much. Does the exact analytical approach of math help you with the writing?

Mathematics make patient. Often you sit for days over a small paragraph and stare at the characters which persistently refuse to make any sense. It is exactly this patience which helps you when you write novels. To sit and finally solve the problem, that is something you have to master sooner or later.

You play jazz piano and know a number of magic tricks. In all your activities is there any connection to your writing, or are you just a multitalented person?

What you kindly call "multitalented", I would call "dissatisfied, driven". I always need a project of my own, some craft which I can learn to master. Why it is like that, I don't know. Maybe, I want to distract myself from something terrible that would be noticeable only if I were not doing anything for a few weeks.


Clemens J. Setz was born in Graz, Austria, in 1982. Since 2001 he has been studying math and German language and literature at Karl Franzens University in Graz. Overtone singer, translator, (founding) member of the literature group Plattform. Has three cats. Published poems and short stories in magazines and anthologies including manuskripte, Lichtungen, Jahrbuch der Lyrik 2007, and Stimmenfang (2006) as well as on radio. Söhne und Planeten ("Sons and planets," 2007) is his first book-length publication and was nominated for the aspekte literature prize. In 2008, Setz was awarded the Ernst-Willner-Preis at the 32nd Tage der deutschsprachigen Literatur festival. His second novel, Die Frequenzen ("Frequencies"), will be published by Residenz Verlag in spring 2009.

THURDSAY MARCH 5, 6:30 PM
KRAUTGARTEN LITERATURE FESTIVAL
MEET THE AUTHOR
With Clemens Setz and Klaus Nüchtern
ACF