Renata Colorni Books

The Tongue Set Free is the first volume in Elias Canetti's three-volume autobiography. Translated from the German by Joachim Neugroschel.

«Stizzita per la scemenza dei suoi stessi oracoli e per l’ingenua credulità dei Greci, la sacerdotessa di Delfi Pannychis XI, lunga e secca come quasi tutte le Pizie che l’avevano preceduta, ascoltò le domande del giovane Edipo, un altro che voleva sapere se i suoi genitori erano davvero i suoi genitori, come se fosse facile stabilire una cosa del genere nei circoli aristocratici, dove, senza scherzi, donne maritate davano a intendere ai loro consorti, i quali peraltro finivano per crederci, come qualmente Zeus in persona si fosse giaciuto con loro». Con queste parole spigolose e beffarde ha inizio La morte della Pizia e subito il racconto investe alcuni dei più augusti miti greci, senza risparmiarsi irriverenze e furia grottesca. Ma Dürrenmatt è troppo buono scrittore per appagarsi di una irrisione del mito. Procedendo nella narrazione, vedremo le storie di Delfi addensarsi in un «nodo immane di accadimenti inverosimili che danno luogo, nelle loro intricatissime connessioni, alle coincidenze più scellerate, mentre noi mortali che ci troviamo nel mezzo di un simile tremendo scompiglio brancoliamo disperatamente nel buio». L’insolenza di Dürrenmatt non mira a cancellare, ma a esaltare la presenza del vero sovrano di Delfi: l’enigma.

LRB BOOKSHOP'S AUTHOR OF THE MONTH ONE OF THE GUARDIAN'S BEST BOOKS OF 2019 'If you haven't read Bernhard, you will not know of the most radical advance in fiction since Joyce ... My advice: dive in.' Lucy Ellmann 'I absolutely love Bernhard: he is one of the darkest and funniest writers ... A must read for everybody.' Karl Ove Knausgaard Mid-century Austria. Three aspiring concert pianists - Wertheimer, Glenn Gould, and the narrator - have dedicated their lives to achieving the status of a virtuoso. But one day, two of them overhear Gould playing Bach's Goldberg Variations, and his incomparable genius instantly destroys them both. They are forced to abandon their musical ambitions: Wertheimer, over a tortured process of disintegration that sees him becoming obsessed with both writing and his own sister, with whom he has a quasi-incestuous relationship culminating in death; and the narrator, instantly, retreating into obscurity to write a book that he periodically destroys and restarts. Written as a monologue in one remarkable unbroken paragraph, Thomas Bernhard's dazzling meditation on failure, genius, and fame is a radical new reading experience: musical, paralysing, raging, and inimitable.

In February 1940, Franz Werfel embarked on a new short novel, a departure from his earlier bestsellers, which would unfold as a tragicomic tale reflecting a world on the brink of becoming inhospitable. This narrative serves as a prelude to Holocaust literature, centering on a suppressed love triangle involving Leonidas Tachezy, a high-ranking Austrian bureaucrat; his younger wife Amelie; and Vera Wormser, a Jewish woman from his past. Leonidas had fallen in love with Vera when she was just fourteen, but after marrying Amelie, he encounters Vera again in a German university town. He promises her marriage but ultimately withdraws from her life, returning to his comfortable existence until a letter arrives, penned in Vera's unmistakable pale blue ink. In a manner reminiscent of Humbert Humbert in Lolita, Leonidas recounts his "crime" against Vera to an imaginary courtroom, revealing the characters' evasions and self-deceptions. The story captures the essence of interwar Austria, highlighting the complexities of anti-Semitism and the diverse Austrian populace. This NEA-award-winning translation makes Werfel's novella accessible to a new generation, affirming his place alongside contemporaries like Mann, Kafka, and Musil in the literary canon.