The intensity of Friederike Mayröcker

On 20 December this year, the Austrian poet Friederike Mayröcker would have celebrated her 100th birthday. Over the past few years, Eleonore De Felip, a Mayröcker expert from the University of Innsbruck, has been exploring the multi-layered “lyrical intensity” of the poet who possessed the well-nigh unparalleled ability to transform sensory impressions and emotions into language.

Culture and Society

December 16, 2024

The Anglo-American world often accords the term “national treasure” to people who, across society, command great respect and are considered very authentic. Friederike Mayröcker, an Austrian poet who passed away in 2021, was undoubtedly such a “national treasure”. This was not only because she was one of the most popular figures on the Austrian literary scene, but also because she, like hardly any other, stood for artistic authenticity. Mayröcker simply embodied what she did. Her “poetic existence” – a term she herself coined – was a total work of art where life and writing formed a unity. On 20 December 2024, Mayröcker would have turned 100.

“Melancholy and shy in appearance with her characteristic long black hair and quite old-school courtesy, she had the aura of a high priestess of language,” recalls the literary scholar and Mayröcker expert Eleonore De Felip from the University of Innsbruck, who was personally acquainted with the artist. “Her verses are about nothing other than her inner life. She lived her life by writing it down. This was the only way she could develop a level of intensity in her poetry that one rarely finds in literary works.” De Felip is exploring Mayröcker's “lyrical intensity” and making it a criterion for literary analysis.

In a recently completed research project, which was funded by the FWF under its Elise Richter Program, De Felip approached the phenomenon from various angles, including historical discourses on literary intensity, psychological aspects of perception and emotional sensitivity, observations on the cultural history of melancholy and approaches that combine literary studies and cognition. She also takes into account Mayröcker's philosophical and aesthetic influences, such as Jacques Derrida, and builds bridges to authors who appear to have shown a similar take on lyricism. “My work is about bringing together a large number of the jigsaw pieces that characterize Mayröcker's poetry to create an overall panorama,” notes De Felip.

The Austrian writer Friederike Mayröcker is considered one of the most important 20th century authors and poets in the German-speaking world. Eleonore De Felip, a literary scholar at the University of Innsbruck, knew Mayröcker personally and has been studying the author, especially her poetry, for years.

The first comprehensive compendium on Mayröcker has been published in German by Springer Verlag to mark her 100th birthday.

Intense light, intense emotions

In modern times, the history of the term intensity was first characterized by its use in the natural sciences, when it was employed to describe gradual differences such as in the brightness of light. In the 18th century, when European literatures were shaped by the ideas of the Enlightenment and emotional sensations, the term was applied to inner life phenomena in order to describe emotional states and sensory perceptions. Later, in the 20th century, Gilles Deleuze's philosophy of art adopted “intensities” as the key concept not only for experiencing sensations, but also for an art that seeks to go beyond the representation of reality.

With regard to lyrical intensity, De Felip shines a spotlight on Mayröcker's proximity to fellow poets of earlier eras. “She probably saw herself as a successor to Friedrich Hölderlin, whose life and work were marked by intense contrasts. In his poetry, ecstasy and despair, happiness and pain are close neighbors. But this intensity of perception can also be felt in Georg Trakl and Paul Celan,” notes De Felip. “They form a line of tradition in which Mayröcker also finds a place.”

Another common thread that leads De Felip into the essence of Mayröcker's lyrical art is that of melancholy. “Even in ancient times, one identified a 'saturnine-melancholic' type of person, who is capable of great deeds and spiritual flights of fancy, but can also succumb to deep anxiety – a characterization reminding one of modern-day bipolar aspects in people's emotional lives,” says De Felip. Neuropsychology is now familiar with the concept of highly sensitive individuals, people who perceive the world through more or fewer filters and perhaps process their impressions in a more profound way. “Such people risk being constantly overwhelmed and need a lot of rest – for me, this is also a new link to Mayröcker, whose life is characterized by this withdrawal,” says De Felip.

The Austrian writers Friederike Mayröcker and Ernst Jandl sitting in their garden (black and white photo) — Friederike Mayröcker and Ernst Jandl were united not only in art, but also shared their private lives for close to 50 years. A few days before the death of her partner, Mayröcker wrote the poem, “DIES DIES DIES DIESES ENTZÜCKEN ICH KLEBE AN DIESER ERDE.” © Austrian National Library

Fear of death, devotion to life

Using the example of a poem by Mayröcker that unites the above and other aspects, De Felip demonstrates how lyrical intensity can unfold. A few days before the death of her partner Ernst Jandl, Mayröcker wrote the highly emotional poem "DIES, DIES, DIES ...", which De Felip sees as expressing “ecstatic grief”.

Friederike Mayröcker reads

DIES DIES DIES DIESES ENTZÜCKEN ICH KLEBE AN DIESER ERDE

an dieser hinschmelzenden Erde an diesem Baldachin eines

Junihimmels dessen Bläue in Wellen gebauscht und mit tiefen

Schwalben: ich meine trunken und zuweilen verborgen, scheinen

sich zu verbergen in irgend Buchten und Malven Holunderbäumen:

(...)

This poem, which, on its surface, speaks of the beauty of a June day and describes a symphony of sensory impressions, develops a tremendous linguistic pull. “I see two opposing movements in this poem: There is the threat of death, not only of her beloved, but ultimately also of herself. In order to be able to bear it, the lyrical self reacts with absolute and mystical devotion to existence, which is symbolized in the supernatural beauty of a June day,” explains De Felip. “It's like a near-death experience in which you experience life in its totality in what you believe to be your last seconds.”

Mechanics of intensity

These apparent contrasts and contradictions create an immense tension that brings out Mayröcker's lyrical intensity. “A poem has a theme, an underlying tone. The language strains away from this underlying tone and then returns to it,” says De Felip, explaining the semantic mechanism behind intensity. “If words and content are congruent, such as in an instruction manual, we don't perceive the text as intense. But if the language moves away from the semantic center, to forge metaphors, for instance, we perceive it as poetic. The greater the distance, the greater the intensity of the text. If the distance becomes too great, however, this intensity may collapse because we cease to understand.”

Mayröcker was not just a master of transforming her extremely sensitive impressions – both in terms of physical sensations and her inner life – into language. She also had the unique talent of expanding the tension inherent in poetry into a vast expanse without losing her readers in the process.

Personal details

Eleonore De Felip studied German and Classical Philology in Vienna and Innsbruck and wrote her thesis on Ilse Aichinger's dialogues Zu keiner Stunde. Hailing from Bolzano in South Tyrol, she holds a post as senior scientist at the Institute for Classical Philology and Neo-Latin Studies at the University of Innsbruck and previously worked at the Brenner Archive Research Institute. Between 2015 and 2022, her project “On the 'poetic intensity' of Friederike Mayröcker's lyrical poetry” received EUR 310,000 in funding under the Elise Richter Program of the Austrian Science Fund FWF.