Telegrams of the Soul

by Altenberg, Peter; Wortsman, Peter

• ISBN13: 9780974968087
• ISBN10: 0974968080
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-04-04
• Publisher: Archipelago

Summary

"If it be permitted to speak of 'love at first syllable,' then that's what I experienced in my first encounter with this poet of prose." So wrote Thomas Mann of the work of Peter Altenberg. A virtuoso Fin de Siecle Viennese innovator of what he called the "telegram style" of writing, Altenberg's signature short prose straddles the line between the lyrical and the narrative, fiction and observation, harsh verity and whimsical vignette. Inspired by the prose poems of Charles Baudelaire, the tales of Hans Christian Andersen and the Viennese Feuilleton, a light journalistic reflection current in his day, Altenberg carved out a spare, strikingly modern aesthetic that speaks with an eerie prescience to our own impatient time. Peter Wortsman's new selection and translation reads like a sly lyrical wink from the turn-of-the-century of the telegram to the turn-of-the-millennium of e-mail. Peter Altenberg, also known as Richard Englander, 1859a__1919, was born into a well-to-do Viennese Jewish family, lived in hotels and listed as his official address the Cafe Central, Vienna's intellectual clubhouse (also the sometime haunt of Leon Trotsky and his chess partner Vladimir Ilyich Lenin). A renowned eccentric, Altenberg pioneered the very notion of loose-fitting leisure attire, designed a line of necklaces and favored sandals, walking sticks, slivovitz and the company of prostitutes. His literary admirers included Karl Kraus, Heinrich and Thomas Mann, Robert Musil and Arthur Schnitzler. Recipient of the Beard's Fund Short Story Award, Peter Wortsman is the author of A Modern Way To Die: Small Stories and Microtales and the play The Tattooed Man Tells All. His translations from the German include Posthumous Papers of a Living Authorby Robert Musil and Peter Schlemiel: The Man Who Sold His Shadow by Adelbert von Chamisso.

Author Biography

Peter Altenberg (akaRichard Engländer, 1859-1919) born into a well-to-do, assimilated Viennese Jewish family, took advantage of a medical diagnosis of "over-excitation of the nervous system" and a consequent "incapacity for gainful employment" to devote himself heart and soul to the life of the Bohemian poet. Author of eleven books published during his lifetime and two more after his death, Altenberg also pioneered the verynotion of loose-fitting leisure attire, designed a line of necklaces, favored sandals, walking sticks and slivovitz. His long list of literary admirers included Karl Kraus, Heinrich and Thomas Mann, Robert Musil, Arthur Schnitzler and George Bernard Shaw.

Recipient of the 2012 Gold Grand Prize for Best Travel Story of the Year, Peter Wortsman is the author of A Modern Way to Die: Small Stories and Microtales, the plays The Tattooed Man Tells All and Burning Words, the recent memoir Ghost Dance in Berlin: A Rhapsody in Gray, and the forthcoming novel Cold Earth Wanderers. His translations from the German include Robert Musil¢s Posthumous Papers of a Living Author, Heinrich Heine¢s Travel Pictures, Peter Altenberg¢s Telegrams of the Soul, and Tales of the German Imagination: From The Brothers Grimm to Ingeborg Bachmann, an anthology published by Penguin Classics.

Table of Contents

Autobiography	3	(5)
Retrospective Introduction to my Book Märehen des Lebens	8	(1)
A Letter to Arthur Schnitzler	9	(2)
On Writing	11	(1)
The Koberer (Procurer)	12	(1)
Coffeehouse	13	(1)
I Drink Tea	14	(1)
Perfume	15	(1)
On Smells	16	(1)
Tulips	17	(1)
Flower Allée	18	(2)
Uncle Max	20	(1)
Uncle Emmerich	21	(1)
My Aunt	22	(2)
Career	24	(1)
The Bed	25	(1)
Celebrity	26	(1)
Poem	27	(1)
Love	28	(1)
Theater Evening	29	(2)
Poverty	31	(1)
The Little Silk Swatches	32	(1)
Day of Affluence	33	(1)
Traveling	34	(1)
In the Volksgarten	35	(1)
Marionette Theater	36	(4)
At Buffalo Bill's	40	(1)
Saint Martin's Island	41	(1)
The Kingfisher	42	(1)
The Drummer Belin	43	(2)
Twelve	45	(2)
Seventeen to Thirty	47	(2)
Schubert	49	(1)
Gramophone Record	50	(1)
A Real True Relationship	51	(1)
The Nature of Friendship	52	(1)
October Sunday	53	(1)
Fellow Man	54	(1)
The Reader	55	(1)
Modern Diogenes	56	(1)
Conversation	57	(2)
Albert	59	(1)
The Private Tutor	60	(5)
Conversation with Tioko	65	(1)
The Automaton	66	(2)
Adultery	68	(1)
Philosophy	69	(1)
Akolé	70	(1)
Complications	71	(1)
The Novice Postal Clerk	72	(2)
Conversation with a Chambermaid	74	(1)
Afternoon Break	75	(1)
The Mouse	76	(2)
The Hotel Room	78	(1)
Elevator	79	(1)
Visit	80	(4)
Little Things	84	(2)
Idyll	86	(1)
My Ideals	87	(1)
Peter Altenberg as Collector	88	(1)
On the Street	89	(1)
The Walking Stick	90	(2)
A Walk	92	(1)
Psychology	93	(2)
Discovery	95	(1)
Persecution Complex	96	(2)
January, on the Semmering	98	(1)
The Steamboat Landing	99	(2)
In Munich	101	(3)
My Summer Trip, 1916	104	(1)
My Gmunden	105	(2)
An Experience	107	(2)
In a Viennese Puff	109	(2)
Putain	111	(2)
Human Relations	113	(2)
The New Romanticism	115	(1)
Cabaret Fledermaus	116	(2)
Newsky Roussotine Troop	118	(4)
The Interpretation	122	(1)
Subjectivity	123	(1)
Aphorisms	124	(1)
The People Don't Always Feel Altogether Social-democratic	125	(1)
Big Prater Swing	126	(1)
Sunset in the Prater	127	(2)
The Night	129	(1)
Sanatorium for the Mentally Imbalanced (but not the one in which I wiled!)	130	(3)
Mood	133	(1)
July Sunday	134	(1)
In the Stadtpark	135	(1)
A Sunday (12.29.1918)	136	(3)
To Make a Long Story Short: The Prose of Peter Altenberg (an afterword)	139	(8)
P.S. (to P.A. from P.W.)	147