Telegrams of the Soul
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Selected Prose of Peter Altenberg
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Selected, translated and
with an afterword by Peter Wortsman
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archipelago books
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Copyright © 2005 Archipelago Books
First Edition
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the prior written permission of the publisher.
English Translation copyright © 2005 Peter Wortsman
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Altenberg, Peter, 1859â1919.
[Prose works. Selections. English. 2005]
Telegrams of the soul : selected prose of Peter Altenberg / selected, translated, and with an afterword by Peter Wortsman.â1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN
0-9749680-8-0 (pbk.)
I
. Altenberg, Peter, 1859-1919âTranslations into English.
I. Wortsman, Peter. II. Title.
PT
2601.L78
A
6 2005
838'.91208âdc22Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 2004027895
Archipelago Books
232 Third Street #A111
Brooklyn, NY 11201
Distributed by Consortium Book Sales and Distribution
Telegrams of the Soul: Selected Prose of Peter Altenberg
Translations of “Flower Allée,” “The Mouse” and “In the Stadtpark” were first published in
Fiction.
An earlier version of “P.S. (to P.A. from P.W.)” previously appeared under a different title in
A Modern Way to Die, small stories and microtales,
by Peter Wortsman, Fromm International Publishing Corporation, New York, 1991.
Cover art: Oskar Kokoschka,
Peter Altenberg,
1909.
© 2004 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ProLitteris, Zürich
All rights reserved
This publication is made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.
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to my father's wit and my mother's soul
P. W.
Retrospective Introduction to my Book
Märchen des Lebens
Conversation with a Chambermaid
The People Don't Always Feel Altogether Social-democratic
Sanatorium for the Mentally Imbalanced (but not the one in which I wiled!)
To Make a Long Story Short: The Prose of Peter Altenberg (an afterword)
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There are three idealists: God, mothers and poets!
They don't seek the ideal in completed thingsâ
they find it in the incomplete.
Peter Altenberg
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Autobiography
I was born in 1862, in Vienna. My father is a businessman. He has one distinguishing quality: He only reads French books. For the past 40 years. Above his bed hangs a wonderful likeness of his God “Victor Hugo.” Evenings he sits in a dark red armchair, reading the
Revue des deux Mondes,
dressed in a blue robe with a wide velvet collar à la Victor Hugo. There's not another idealist like him in this world. He was once asked: “Aren't you proud of your son?”
He replied: “I was not overly vexed that he remained an idler for 30 years. So I'm not overly honored that he's a poet now! I gave him his freedom. I knew that it was a long shot. I counted on his soul!”
Yes, indeed, oh noblest, most remarkable of all fathers, for the longest time I squandered your godly gift of freedom, doted on noble and altogether ignoble women, loafed around in forests, was a lawyer without studying law, a doctor without studying medicine, a book dealer without selling books, a lover without ever marrying, and finally a poet without composing any poetry. Can these short things really be called poetry?! No way.They're extracts! Extracts from life. The life of the soul and what the day may bring, reduced to two to three pages, cleansed of superfluities like a beef cow in a reduction pot! It's up to the reader to re-dissolve these extracts with his own lust for life and stir them back into a palatable broth, to heat them up with his own zest, in short, to make them light, liquidy and digestible. But there are “soulful stomachs” that can't tolerate extracts. Everything ingested remains heavy and caustic. Such constitutions require 90 percent broths, watered-down blends. What are they supposed to dilute the extracts with?! With their own “lust for life” maybe?
Consequently, I have many adversaries, “dyspeptics of the soul,” quite simply. Bad digesters! “Finishing” is the artist's all. Even finishing with himself! And yet, I maintain: that which you “wisely withhold” is more artistic than that which you “blurt out.” Isn't that so?! Indeed, I love the “abbreviated deal,” the telegram style of the soul!
I'd like to capture an individual in a single sentence, a soul-
stirring experience on a single page, a landscape in one word! Present arms, artist, aim, bull's-eye! Basta. And above all: Listen to yourself. Lend an ear to the voices within. Don't be shy with yourself. Don't let yourself be scared off by unfamiliar sounds. As long as they're your own! Have the courage of your own nakedness!
I was nothing, I am nothing, I will be nothing. But I will live out my life in freedom and let noble and considerate souls share in the experiences of this free inner life, by putting them out in the most concentrated form on paper.
I am poor, but I am myself! Absolutely and completely myself! The man without compromises!
How far do you get with that? One hundred Guldens a month and a few ardent admirers.