Improbable Journeys
Translated from the German by Geoff Wilkes
Published in April 2019
Book
Paperback/Softback
218 pages
978-3-8260-6642-9 (ISBN)
Description
The essays in this volume record journeys which are improbable in every sense. Writing in Viennese cafés on whatever paper is to hand, Ilse Aichinger travels into history, into memory, into the present and into her imagination. She traces the life story of her great grandfather "Dziadzio", recalls the cramped apartment in post-war Vienna where she sat at a "little whitepainted kitchen table and started writing The Greater Hope," ponders "the limits of what could be comprehended" after the 11th of September 2001, and Pictures Astrid Lindgren's Pippi Longstocking riding on Vienna's No. 71 tram, "although she's anarchic enough to be barely imaginable 'where we live.'" As Rüdiger Görner comments in his introduction to this first English translation of Unglaubwürdige Reisen, Aichinger's remarkable journeys "pulsate with life and wisdom, with joy in exploring and in the myriad possibilities of meaning."
More details
Persons
The translator, Geoff Wilkes, is a Senior Lecturer in German Studies at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. He has previously translated Ilse Aichinger's "Die größere Hoffnung" and "Film und Verhängnis. Blitzlichter auf ein Leben" into English for K&N.
Content
Foreword to the English Translation - Foreword - I Improbable Journeys
- A Cigar With Churchill - The Early Glimpses Into Institutional Gardens -
Like When A Film Breaks - New York Surfaces - The Blue Milk of Grünangergasse
- Pippi Longstocking in a Car on "the 71" - Excursion Into Vienna's
Anatomy - Through the Caucasus - Happiness on Sunday in Hetzendorf - The
High Seas in the Middle of Vienna - Hofmannsthal and the Viennabikes -
Hope in Odessa and Hernals - A Journey Into Boredom - To Brigittenau
With Franz Grillparzer - A Journey to "Away" - Danzig, For Günter Grass'
Birthday - From the History of Separations - In Praise of England - Canetti
in the Wet English Wind - Saying Goodbye to Christmas - Into the Snow
Which Has Disappeared - To Moravia - A Novel of a Family - The End of Living
Anywhere - Hesitant Affection - From the Everyday War to the Capuchin
Crypt - In the Eye of the Storm: The "Demel" - Unwilling Schoolgirls - The
Delta in Singerstrasse - Freud's Neighbours Who Disappeared - II Shadow
Plays - Unspectacular Endings - Museum Landscapes For Murders - Gentle
Memory, Surrounded By Violence - The Aberdeen Game - The Gloomy
Christmas Game - For the New Year - Dying at the Film Casino Cinema - Permission
for a Grave Next to Marlene Dietrich Withdrawn - Hills and Gentle
Cardinals - For Richard Reichensperger - "Sleep Is My Great Experience"-
Gra?zyna - The Last Guests - Shadow Play Radio - Memory with a String of
Green Beads - The Nanny From Linz - Do-It-Yourself - Semolina-Dumpling
Soup From Morzin Square - Experiences Guaranteed for Viennese Travellers
in Shanghai - Poor Tom - Nobel Sun - The Required Joy - III Ilse Aichinger:
"I consider my existence entirely unnecessary" - Translator's
Note - Afterword - Ruth Rix - Acknowledgements.
- A Cigar With Churchill - The Early Glimpses Into Institutional Gardens -
Like When A Film Breaks - New York Surfaces - The Blue Milk of Grünangergasse
- Pippi Longstocking in a Car on "the 71" - Excursion Into Vienna's
Anatomy - Through the Caucasus - Happiness on Sunday in Hetzendorf - The
High Seas in the Middle of Vienna - Hofmannsthal and the Viennabikes -
Hope in Odessa and Hernals - A Journey Into Boredom - To Brigittenau
With Franz Grillparzer - A Journey to "Away" - Danzig, For Günter Grass'
Birthday - From the History of Separations - In Praise of England - Canetti
in the Wet English Wind - Saying Goodbye to Christmas - Into the Snow
Which Has Disappeared - To Moravia - A Novel of a Family - The End of Living
Anywhere - Hesitant Affection - From the Everyday War to the Capuchin
Crypt - In the Eye of the Storm: The "Demel" - Unwilling Schoolgirls - The
Delta in Singerstrasse - Freud's Neighbours Who Disappeared - II Shadow
Plays - Unspectacular Endings - Museum Landscapes For Murders - Gentle
Memory, Surrounded By Violence - The Aberdeen Game - The Gloomy
Christmas Game - For the New Year - Dying at the Film Casino Cinema - Permission
for a Grave Next to Marlene Dietrich Withdrawn - Hills and Gentle
Cardinals - For Richard Reichensperger - "Sleep Is My Great Experience"-
Gra?zyna - The Last Guests - Shadow Play Radio - Memory with a String of
Green Beads - The Nanny From Linz - Do-It-Yourself - Semolina-Dumpling
Soup From Morzin Square - Experiences Guaranteed for Viennese Travellers
in Shanghai - Poor Tom - Nobel Sun - The Required Joy - III Ilse Aichinger:
"I consider my existence entirely unnecessary" - Translator's
Note - Afterword - Ruth Rix - Acknowledgements.