Pathos und Schwalbe

In the summer months of 2015, Friederike Mayröcker has to spend time in the hospital. For weeks, she is cut off from her paper writing nook, the legendary shell of her poetic work. Writing in the unfamiliar, foreign environment is impossible, not because the bothersome physical ailments prevent the poet from doing so, but because the constant whispering and rustling of the sheets of paper, which are pressed against each other, is not audible. It is from these word and sentence concentrates that the unique Mayröcker sound is eavesdropped upon. The poet manages in her own way, with a constant scribbling, a record of the monotonous days: "spending the days reading, sleeping, eating." Hardly back in her study, she spins and weaves the notes into that incomparable poetry, which is as solid as a rock and as delicate as the most fragile membrane.