“Many journals seek to bring exposure to underrepresented international artists, but none of them succeed in doing so to the extent of M&L.” —Culture Trip
Digital editions of Music & Literature are available through Exact Editions
Music & Literature no. 9 features immersive portfolios on two artists who, despite critical achievement in their respective forms, remain largely unknown beyond their native countries—and outsiders within them.
The Swiss-German writer Peter Bichsel is one of the best short-prose stylists of his generation and has earned a devoted following in the German-speaking world for his charming, melancholic stories—yet his work is all but unpublished in English. This portfolio announces the great writer in our own literature through a generous selection of works spanning his entire career, from his short fiction and an excerpt from his enigmatic first novel, translated by Michael Hofmann, to his incisive and often poignant newspaper columns in Lydia Davis’s translation. Candid interviews and a compilation of essays offer insight into the nature of Bichsel’s artistry as it has developed over nearly six decades, highlighting the themes to which he returns time and again: the peculiar history and attitudes of the Swiss, the struggle for inner freedom and the rights of minorities, and the pleasures of reading. A special tribute by Claire-Louise Bennett rounds out this comprehensive introduction to one of Europe’s most outstanding contemporary storytellers.
Over the past twenty years, Canadian poet Sylvia Legris has quietly built a remarkable, multilayered body of work worthy of deep exploration and appreciation. An artist of relentless evolution and experimentation, Legris’s poetics compress and expand, infusing elements of dance, botany, and human machinery into new structures and imagery that is at once wildly imaginative and deeply visceral. Alongside a retrospective selection of her poetry, capped by a series of new and unpublished works, is an exclusive conversation with fellow pioneer Will Alexander that dives into the mystery of “poetic ignition.” Essays and tributes by several leading young poets imagine—and reimagine—the prismatic Legris across her many forms and permutations, completing our most eclectic portfolio to date.
CONTENTS
I. PETER BICHSEL
Selected Works of Peter Bichsel
There Is No America / Peter Bichsel, trans. Caroline Schmidt & Daniel Levin Becker
A Table Is a Table / Peter Bichsel, trans. Lydia Davis
Interview Excerpt: On Children’s Stories, trans. Donna Stonecipher
The Goshawk / Peter Bichsel, trans. Madeleine LaRue
Interview Excerpt: First Time in Berlin, trans. Donna Stonecipher
An Excerpt from The Seasons, trans. Michael Hofmann
Interview Excerpt: On Winning the Gruppe 47 Prize, trans. Donna Stonecipher
Introduction to Peter Bichsel’s Columns
A Story Told at the Wrong Time / Peter Bichsel, trans. Lydia Davis
Stupidity Is Power / Peter Bichsel, trans. Lydia Davis
I Don’t Want You to Die / Peter Bichsel, trans. Lydia Davis
Interview Excerpt: We Live in a Society that Suppresses Death…, trans. Donna Stonecipher
Nothing Occurs to Me / Peter Bichsel, trans. Lydia Davis
To Tell about Paris / Peter Bichsel, trans. Lydia Davis
An African Winter Fairy Tale / Peter Bichsel, trans. Lydia Davis
Interview Excerpt: Whenever I See Two People Embracing…, trans. Donna Stonecipher
Johnson Isn’t Coming Today / Peter Bichsel, trans. Lydia Davis
Shall I Translate It for You? / Peter Bichsel, trans. Lydia Davis
My Long Trips to Biel / Peter Bichsel, trans. Lydia Davis
At the End of the Year 2014 / Peter Bichsel, trans. Lydia Davis
A Swiss among Swiss / Peter Bichsel, trans. Adrian Nathan West
The Grammatical Future / Peter Bichsel, trans. Kurt Beals
How German Are the Germans? / Peter Bichsel, trans. Shaun Whiteside
Knowledge Is Resistance / Peter Bichsel, trans. Anne Posten
The Absent War / Peter Bichsel, trans. Kurt Beals
Interview Excerpt: Writing for Willi Ritschard, trans. Donna Stonecipher
Stories of Beginnings and Endings / Peter Bichsel, trans. Anne Posten
Reading / Peter Bichsel, trans. Shaun Whiteside
The Right to Biography / Peter Bichsel, trans. Adrian Nathan West
The Road to Evordes / Peter Bichsel, trans. Donna Stonecipher
Children’s Questions / Peter Bichsel, trans. Donna Stonecipher
Interview Excerpt: Balinese Hinduism, trans. Donna Stonecipher
My Little Farewell to the Great Walser / Peter Bichsel, trans. Anne Posten
Interview Excerpt: Bad Luck, No Regrets, trans. Donna Stonecipher
Wit and Wile and Love / Peter von Matt, trans. Madeleine LaRue & Daniel Levin Becker
Peter Bichsel Is a Poet / Dorothee Elmiger, trans. Shaun Whiteside
A Little Band of People / Claire-Louise Bennett
[untitled] / Peter Bichsel, trans. Philip Boehm
II. SYLVIA LEGRIS
Selected Works of Sylvia Legris
The Wit of Their Strange Appearance / Aaron Peck
Language Seems to Stoke Itself: A Conversation with Sylvia Legris / Will Alexander
A Selection of Poetry / Sylvia Legris
“Not a notch but a note”: from circuitry of veins to The Hideous Hidden / Rachael Allen
Typus Fever / Nora Collen Fulton
Sylvia the Gardener / Guy Vanderhaeghe
Writing the Body / Jesse Ruddock
Seven Attempts at Describing Sylvia Legris / Shazia Hafiz Ramji
Language at Its Most Distilled / Chuqiao Yang
Some Short Forms for Sylvia Legris / Laura Broadbent
Banner image by and courtesy of Sylvia Legris