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Essays, Manifestos, Statements, Speeches, Maxims, Epistles, Diaristic Jottings, Narratives, Natural histories, Poems, Plays, Performances, Ramblings, Revelations, and all such ephemera as may appear necessary to bring society into a slight tremolo of confusion and fright at least.

with each clouded peak

Friederike Mayröcker

Translated from the German by Rosmarie Waldrop and Harriet Watts

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Part of 50: A Celebration of Sun & Moon Classics

Winner of the America Award for Literature

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Born in Vienna, Austria, Friederike Mayröcker (1924–2021) studied Business before being drafted as a secretary into Nazi Germany’s air force, the Luftwaffe. After World War II, she worked as a schoolteacher, and, in 1969, devoted herself to writing full time.

In 1973, she published with each clouded peak (je ein umwölkter gipfel), which she wrote by mixing memories and feelings with texts collected from various sources. The result is a magnificent collage, subject to the permutations, repetitions, and rediscoveries of everyday life. It is at once auto­biography, essay, fiction, and poetry.

Mayröcker was awarded several major literary prizes, including the Theodor Körner Prize (1963), the Georg Trakl Prize (1977), the Grand Austrian State Prize (1982), the America Award (1997), and the Georg Büchner Prize (2001).

She was the life partner of the poet Ernst Jandl.