Friederike Mayröcker Dies Aged 96

Hello Gentle Reader,
 
There is no Grand Dame of German Literature quite like Friederike Mayröcker, who throughout her life cultivated gained critical reception, academic acknowledgement, cultural appreciation, and literary respect, before becoming a legend of both poetry and German language literature. Throughout her lifetime, Friederike Mayröcker was the contemporary of: Paul Celan, Ingeborg Bachmann, Günter Grass and Christa Wolf; along with Thomas Bernhard, Peter Handke, and Elfirede Jelinek; and the companion of Ernst Jandl.
 
Through the Post-War Period of European Literature and the division of German language literature, Friederike Mayröcker would become one of the most daring, concrete, and irrefutable crafts of poetry. Though mainly renowned and known for her experimental poetic works, Mayröcker also produced novels, memoirs, children’s books, plays and radio dramas. Despite an industrial output in multiple forms, Friederike Mayröcker has had little translations into the English language. Which is ironic considering that the writer, before taking early retirement in the late 1960’s, taught English as a second language in public schools.
 
Mayröcker’s poetry is renowned for testing the limitations of language, while exploitation and developing the linguistic imagination inherent in language, within her extraordinarily inventive and highly developed avant-garde poetic style, captured observations of the minute perspectives that embody the everyday, the natural world, and personal emotional states such as the duplicity of love and grief. It was form, however, that always grabbed the attention of critics, and their devoted admiration. The strict adherence to her personal poetic form of associative language (even to an almost surreal state) became the pastiche and kaleidoscope of language that gave linguistic shape to her otherwise personal obsessions.
 
In 2001 Friederike Mayröcker received one of the highest honours of German Language Literature, the Georg Büchner Prize, and the German Academy for Language and Literature provided the citation regarding Mayröcker’s contributions: “made German language richer in its very own way with its streams of language, word invention, and associations.”
 
As a writer who was born and lived preceding the Second World War, Friederike Mayröcker was inevitably exposed to the horrors that took place during the Third Reich and Nazism. At the age of seventeen she was drafted into to the Luftwaffe (the air defense of the Nazi’s military), where she worked as a secretary throughout the bombings of Vienna. After World War II, the German language required to shed its previous perspectives and prejudices, which facilitated cruelty and slaughter to an unforeseen industrial scale. The language would need to both atone and critically review the past, while progressing forward. So, where the Post-War writers of the German language, who Friederike Mayröcker counted herself amongst. Those early years of writing were renowned for their experimentation and flavour. Linguistic dexterity and reinvention were the norm. They would in practice oppose the absolute perspectives previously paraded and pontificated by the criminal former regime.
 
Throughout the 20^th Century, Friederike Mayröcker became less of an avant-garde writer, to a respected authority and figure; and by the time 21^st Century had arrived, she had already been exalted as a legend. Though few of Mayröcker’s work have appeared in the English language, a couple of collections of her poetry can be procured, such as: “Scardanelli,” and “Raving Language: Selected Poems 1946 – 2005.” A memoir was also recently published in the English language: “The Communicating Vessels.” Though these few works are small in number, they do provide a orientation to the prolific productivity of Friederike Mayröcker. Perhaps in due further translations of her wide and diverse oeuvre will be published.  
 
Sadly, Friederike Mayröcker died on June 4^th, 2021. She was 96 years old.
 
Rest in Peace Friederike Mayröcker.
 
Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary

David Diop Wins the International Booker Prize, 2021

Hello Gentle Reader,
 
The International Booker Prize for 2021 has been awarded to: David Diop with his novel: “At Night All Blood is Black.”
 
There is something to be said about dark horses when it comes to the International Booker Prize, as it appears that the International Booker Prize disregards the conventional understandings of its senior award and namesake, the Booker Prize. As the Booker Prize has the proven precedence and convention to honour previous winners and established writers.  On the contrary, however, the International Booker Prize, over the past few years have proven a disregard for such formalities or critical approval. Two prime examples include the following:
 
In 2019 the French writer Annie Ernaux was considered the critics favourite by the critics to receive the prize, with her autofiction and third-person objective memoir: “The Years.”  Despite the critical acclaim and being considered the frontrunner for the award, the 2019 International Booker Prize went to, Jokha Alharthi and her novel: “Celestial Bodies.”
 
This situation was repeated the following year, when the Japanese writer, Yōko Ogawa was shortlisted with her novel: “The Memory Police,” which was regarded as a testament to a year of isolation, of eschewed normalcy, as it was a potent reminder of the power of memory to feign off absence and loss. Despite the critical acclaim and the obvious frontrunner for the award, the 2020 International Booker Prize went to, Marieke Lucas Rijneveld with their novel: “The Discomfort of Evening.”
 
The same situation once again appears to repeat itself in 2021. The frontrunner for the award was considered the Russian literary star, Maria Stepanova and her family memoir turned autofiction work: “Memory of Memory.” Despite the critical acclaim and the speculation that Stepanova was guaranteed the award, the judges had decided otherwise, awarding the French novelist David Diop for his novel: “At Night All Blood is Black.”
 
It is not meant insultingly when it is stated that of the shortlisted writers for this year’s International Booker Prize, David Diop was the dark horse amongst them. His novel was quietly contemplated and considered, but never discussed with the open vigor that Maria Stepanova’s work was. Perhaps this lack of public image is what assisted in Diop in receiving the prize.
 
“At Night All Blood is Black,” recounts the tale of two Senegalese soldiers who fight in World War I for France, and the horrors of war, but also the witness the personal descent into madness, savagery, and cruelty during such times. The Chair of the Judges, Lucy Hughes-Hallett, referred to the novel as a “extraordinary novel,” and further recounted that the language employed by David Diop is sensual, beautiful, creative and shifting language will enchant readers, but will not censor or hide the violence, brutality and callous cruelty of war and battle; but what comes forth from the bloodshed is perhaps a sense of poetry of slaughter.
 
Congratulations to David Diop on winning the International Booker Prize for 2021. The award will be shared between himself and his translator, Anna Moschovakis.
 
 
Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary