Cyrill’s Mutter: Marianne Fritz’s Last Work

The keystone to Marianne Fritz’s compelling trilogy Naturgemäß was left unfinished in 2007 due to the premature death of the 58-year-old Viennese recluse author. As a result, not only the end of the typescript of Naturgemäß III is missing; from the very first of its 660 pages the text starts leaping into the void. A poetic maelstrom of personal myths, its narrative is frequently disrupted by blanks. This tremendous challenge for readers proved unsolvable until Fritz’s papers – an overwhelming terra incognita – were made accessible. And that’s when silent Cyrill began to mutter.

The lecture provides crucial genetic elements to reassemble the work and thereby to experience the inmost voice of Austrian literature’s towering female author.

Dagmara Kraus holds the position of Junior Professor in the Literature Institute at University of Hildesheim, where she has been teaching and working on poetry and translation since 2021. She published a series of books and sound pieces including “Poetics of the Leap” (Urs Engeler 2023), “Frembdsch” (with Marc Matter, 2022), “liedvoll, deutschyzno” (kookbooks 2020), “wehbuch” (roughbooks 2016). She was awarded Erlanger Preis für Poesie als Übersetzung, Basler Lyrikpreis, Lyrikpreis Meran and Ehrengabe der Deutschen Schiller-Stiftung. She is a member of the Berliner Akademie der Künste.