2023-09-16 19:17:25
Christine Lavant Prize 2023
SUN | 08 10 2023 | 11:00 o’clock
Large broadcast hall
Admission: EUR 17,–
Discounts:
ORF RadioKulturhaus card 50%, Ö1 Club 10%
VIDEO-LIVESTREAM
ORF III TV recording
“My daily life” – as Christine Lavant, aged 42, wrote in a letter in 1957 – “consists of people who, if they read anything at all, prefer pulp magazines to any other material. But they all have a sense of humor and a lively comprehension most educated people lack.” After five book publications in Germany and a volume of poetry in Salzburg’s Otto Müller Verlag, she had gained experience with the “educated”, especially with those in the literary world. The letter goes on to say that she was only able to gain a “lightning overview” of her life “with the help of humor and mysticism,” only to then state: “I’m just a curiosity and my mental situation is outside of any norm “My curiosity is burning with philosophy, psychology, metaphysics, mysticism…” Christine Lavant could be very self-confident.
But the image of the strange chain smoker from the Carinthian province, who grew up in poor conditions and was afflicted with numerous illnesses and suffered from severe depression and suicidal fantasies, has long obscured the view of the fascinating, multifaceted and stubborn work. In the last twenty years it has been expanded through a number of new editions. The poet’s extensive estate was made accessible for the first time. The four-volume edition contains 1,100 pages of poetry and twenty-four stories.
Christine Lavant © Ernst Prokop
Christine Lavant (c) Ernst Prokop
The author’s new attention is also due to the International Christine Lavant Society, founded in 2015, which stimulates a new engagement with Lavant’s work through a variety of activities. The Christine Lavant Prize, worth 15,000 euros, is also awarded every year; most recently this was awarded to Maja Haderlap (2021) and Alois Hotschnig (2022).
It is often said today that Christine Lavant must be given equal status alongside Ilse Aichinger and Ingeborg Bachmann. Sure, Christine Lavant belongs in the canon of Austrian literature after 1945. But her work, in which children, young people and women grow up in inhumane conditions, in which emotional destruction and humiliation are described in a shocking way, and at the same time a surprising defiance, is a contradiction against the social narrowness and the “educated” can be experienced, this work defies comparison. Christine Lavant claims love, care, kindness, beauty and wit as opposing forces; she defends human dignity and celebrates his right to happiness. Or, to put it with the writer Monika Rinck: “With Christine Lavant you experience the tremendous transformation of pain and suffering into a large, powerful and at times immensely funny work.”
Especially in the year of the fiftieth anniversary of Lavant’s death, this tribute to writers who combine high aesthetic standards with a humane attitude and a socially critical perspective in their literary work is of particular importance.
Text: Klemens Renoldner
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