Pathos and Swallow

Friederike Mayröcker had to spend the summer months of 2015 in hospital. For weeks she is cut off from her writing cave, the legendary paper enclosure of her poetic work. Writing in the strange, unfamiliar environment is impossible, not because the annoying physical infirmities prevent the poet from doing so, but because she cannot hear the continuous whispering and stirring of the sheets of paper nestled against each other, from which those distillates of words and sentences that create Mayröcker’s unique sound are perceived. The poet manages in her own way, with constant »scribbling«, a protocol of the monotonous days: »spend the days reading sleeping eating«. As soon as she is back in her refuge, she spins and weaves the notations into that incomparable poetry that is »as dense as rock and as tender as the most delicate of membranes« (Klaus Kastberger, Die Presse).

Pathos and Swallow is radical and stubborn, is abundance and precision. And it is the moving attestation to a life that knows but one goal: »i would have to have the entire day to myself to be able to write with abandonment, shouting I mean.«

»Brilliant and painful, Pathos and Swallow talks about the sharp cliffs of old age, a great song of joy and lament, in which the beauty of existence and the fear of parting are joined ... « Meike Fessmann, Süddeutsche Zeitung

»By showing how she continues to rebalance herself with the help of and against the uncontrollable forces of language in her trilogy, she has once again created a writing style of breathtaking beauty […], which she continues in Pathos and Swallow [...] while at the same time reinventing it in every aesthetic survey of her environment.« Christian Metz, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

»With their syncopations these texts sound like jazz. They bear witness to the historical moment that had a decisive influence on her ideas and structures ... In the rush of time, Friederike Mayröcker still knows how to shake up her readers and remind them of the possibilites of great poetry.« Eberhard Geisler, taz. die tageszeitung

»We would like to be loved just like Friederike Mayröcker loves the world, full of love for language and devotion.« Süddeutsche Zeitung

»With Pathos and Swallow, Friederike Mayröcker continues her solitary poetic record of existence that breaks with all kinds of conventions.« Kurt Neumann, Die Presse

»It is not what is communicated in language that is of central importance in Pathos and Swallow, but rather it is the language itself that makes this text an extraordinary event.« Michael Opitz, Deutschlandfunk Kultur

»With this book, Mayröcker proves once again that she is one of the greatest avant-gardists of our time.« ORF

»Friederike Mayröcker’s book Pathos and Swallow is a passionate, unsparing record. Ruthless is its language and equally ruthless is Mayröcker’s existence that is bound to language.« Cornelia Jentzsch, Deutschlandfunk