Ralph Dutli

Ralph Dutli (2010)

Ralph Dutli (born September 25, 1954 in Schaffhausen ) is a Swiss poet , essayist , novelist , biographer and translator .

Life

Ralph Dutli was born in Schaffhausen in 1954, studied Romance and Russian studies at the University of Zurich and the Sorbonne in Paris and received his doctorate in 1984. phil. From 1982 to 1994 he lived in Paris, since then as a freelance writer in Heidelberg. He was first known as the editor and translator of the works of Ossip Mandelstam , which were published in a ten-volume, annotated, bilingual complete edition for the poetry volumes by Ammann Verlag. He also wrote four books about the Russian-Jewish poet Mandelstam (1891–1938), most recently the first comprehensive work biography in the world, Meine Zeit, mein Tier (2003), which was translated into Russian in 2005 by the German specialist Konstantin M. Asadowski (has existed since 2012 also a French translation). Dutli also published highly acclaimed translations of poems and prose by the Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva and, on the 10th anniversary of the death of the Russian-American poet, essayist and Nobel Prize winner for literature, Joseph Brodsky , the volume Brief in die Oase in 2006 . Hundred poems , which for the first time in German-speaking countries offered a representative selection from all creative periods.

Dutli's volume Notebook der Grabsprüche (2002) includes his own poems from twenty years. In addition to texts written from 1982 to 1994 in Paris, near the Montparnasse cemetery (in the Shaman Parnassus department ), there are North African, Irish and Provencal memories (in raspberry blood ).

In the volume Novalis im Weinberg (2005), the wintry vineyard is traced. The cycle Petrarcha's Seven Lives (2004) in the same volume imagines seven posthumous lives for the medieval Italian poet Petrarca , the cycle From the knee the eight-leaf clover blossoms is an examination of Arnold Böcklin's painting The Muse of Anacreon (1873) and the poetry of the Greek Poet's Anacreon . The cycle salt to salt (2007) deals with the myth of salt.

The volume Nothing but Miracles is central to Ralph Dutli's poetology . Essays on poetry (2007), the essays on Provencal ( Guilhem IX. , Peire Vidal ), French ( François Villon , Louize Labé , Paul Verlaine , Robert Desnos ), English ( John Donne , George Herbert ) and Russian poets ( Anna Akhmatova , Marina Tsvetaeva , Sergej Jessenin , Alexander Pushkin , Joseph Brodsky ) united. The department Die Fliege im Bernstein creates a poetics of “poetry transmission as a magical act”, the “Poetry Diary” under the title The Poorest Place comprises 50 aphoristic-diary-like sections. There is also a self-characteristic of the author: “I am an essayist who also writes poetry. A lyric translator who cannot imagine his way of feeling without the essay, the attempt , the tactile attempt . A poet who cannot imagine not bringing poems from different times and languages and spaces to himself. Poem, essay, transference: one has fertilized the other and made it necessary ... "

Dutli's four-part audio book Russian literary history, told by Ralph Dutli (2003) is an acoustic journey through 1000 years of Russian literature , his volume Liebe Olive (2009) is a cultural history of the olive tree and its fruit, which is described in the book Das Lied vom Honig. Eine Kulturgeschichte der Biene (2012) forms a kind of cultural-historical-literary diptych. With the book Fatrasias. Absurd Poetry of the Middle Ages (2010) he tried to uncover a previously unknown root of modern poetry and absurd literature and to prove the invention of Surrealism in the 13th century. Together with the volumes Richard de Fournival Das Liebesbestiarium (2014) and Rutebeuf Winterpech & Sommerpech (2017), the volume, according to the author and publisher, forms a “Little Trilogy of the 13th Century”, which gives the German-speaking reader a previously unknown, foreign and at the same time amazingly modern wants to bring the seeming Middle Ages closer.

The novel Soutine's Last Journey (2013) is about the life of the Belarusian-Jewish painter Chaim Soutine , a contemporary of Chagall , Modigliani and Picasso . On August 6, 1943, he hid in a hearse from the town of Chinon on the Loire to Paris . The operation on his stomach ulcer cannot be postponed, but the journey takes too long, namely 24 hours, because of the detours - to avoid the checkpoints of the occupying forces. In a stream of bizarre images that persecuted painter in temporary morphine - Delirium sees appear before him, the novel tells semi-historical, semi-fictional episodes from Soutine's childhood in Smilovichi in Minsk , the first attempts in Vilna , the dream of Paris, the world capital the painting. He describes the friendship with Modigliani, the sudden success and the end of the golden Parisian years. In several phantasmagoric chapters, the confused painter, who believes in the power of milk as the only cure, drives to a “white paradise”, where he meets a mysterious “Doctor Bog” ( Bog means “God” in Russian) who heals him for explains, but forbids him to paint.

Ralph Dutli received several prizes for Soutine's last trip ( see below ) and was nominated for the German Book Prize 2013, as well as the Swiss Book Prize . The French edition was on the longlist (Première Sélection) of the Prix Médicis étranger 2016 and on the shortlist of the Prix du Public RTS 2017 (Geneva). The book has been translated into several European languages, French, Czech, Russian, Ukrainian, Italian, etc. a. m.

The novel Die Liebenden von Mantua (2015) was selected for the longlist of the German Book Prize 2015. Based on real conditions, the earthquake in Northern Italy in May 2012 and the discovery of a Neolithic pair of skeletons that were excavated in a loving embrace near Mantua in 2007 , the novel unravels an archaeological-cultural-historical crime story with bizarre episodes. After the discovery, which caused a sensation worldwide, the skeleton pair of the "lovers" has disappeared. The writer Manu goes on a search and is kidnapped himself to the estate of an obscure count who wants to establish a "new religion of love" with the symbol of the Stone Age couple - instead of the cross symbol, the tortured Son of God. In his imprisonment, Manu, who had access to the count's strange library, which was changing its location - and finally disappearing - had to draft a “charter of love”, which should be incorporated into the love theories from Plato and Ovid to Kabbalah and alchemy to Balzac . After several deaths, the alleged founder of a religion is convicted of a madman and a murderer, and Manu regains freedom with the help of two women, Lorena and Eleonora. In a world between reality and dream, the mantua of the Renaissance flickers , the painter Mantegna is supposed to paint his famous "Room of the Weds" again, the poet Virgil flies over his hometown Mantua as an astonished observer. "A linguistically virtuoso orchestrated border crossing between novel and essay, an extremely elegant foray through ancient and modern mythologies".

Andreas Dorschel praises "Dutli's highly musical poetry". Dutli received several awards for his novels, essays and translations. Since 1995 he has been a full member of the German Academy for Language and Poetry .

Works

Ossip Mandelstam - “As if I were called by my name”. Dialogue with France. An essay on poetry and culture. Ammann, Zurich 1985.
A feast with almond nuts. About caviar, bread and poetry. Ammann, Zurich 1991.
Europe's delicate hands. Essays on Ossip Mandelstam. Ammann, Zurich 1995.
Notebook of the funerary sayings. Poems 1982–2002. Rimbaud, Aachen 2002.
"My time, my animal". Ossip Mandelstam. A biography. Ammann, Zurich 2003.
Russian literary history, told by Ralph Dutli. 4 CD. Audio book, Hamburg 2003.
With the straw you drink my soul. Poems by Marina Tsvetaeva and Anna Akhmatova, read by Katharina Thalbach and Ralph Dutli. Selection and booklet essay by Ralph Dutli. 1 CD. The Hörverlag, Munich 2003.
HOTARU - the firefly buffet. A “Japanese” cycle of poems. With an etching by Bruno Ritter, Maloja / Chiavenna. Dîvân No. 10. Joseph Weiss, Mendrisio 2003.
Novalis in the vineyard. Poems. Ammann, Zurich 2005.
Nothing but miracle. Essays on Poetry. Ammann, Zurich 2007.
Thomas Strässle : Salt. The white gold. With poems by Ralph Dutli. Sanssouci Verlag / Hanser, Munich 2007.
Dear Olive. A little cultural history. Ammann, Zurich 2009. (New edition: Wallstein, Göttingen 2013, ISBN 978-3-8353-1374-3 .)
Novalis au vignoble et autres poèmes. Bilingual edition. Translation by Ralph Dutli and Catherine Dutli-Polvêche. Editions Le Bruit du temps, Paris 2009.
Fatrasias. Absurd poetry of the Middle Ages. Wallstein, Göttingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8353-0774-2 .
Bee dances. Illustrations by Katrin Laskowski. Vontobel Foundation, Zurich 2010.
Mandelstam, mon temps, mon fauve. Une biography. Editions Le Bruit du temps, Paris 2012.
The song of honey. A cultural history of the bee. Wallstein, Göttingen 2012, ISBN 978-3-8353-1374-3 .
Soutine's last ride. Novel. Wallstein, Göttingen 2013, ISBN 978-3-8353-1208-1 .
The lovers of Mantua. Novel. Wallstein, Göttingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-8353-1683-6 .
Mandelstam, Heidelberg. Poems and letters 1909–1910. With an essay on German echoes in Ossip Mandelstam's work: “I was the book that appears to you in dreams.” Wallstein, Göttingen 2016, ISBN 978-3-8353-1858-8 .
Dante's chants - device for capturing the future. Ossip Mandelstam's “Conversation about Dante”. Wallstein, Göttingen 2017, ISBN 978-3-8353-3047-4 .

Poems in anthologies

Peter von Matt / Dirk Vaihinger : The most beautiful poems in Switzerland. Nagel & Kimche at Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich / Vienna 2002.
Shells and flowers. Literary texts on works of art. Aargauer Kunsthaus u. Ammann Verlag, Zurich 2003.
Contemporary Swiss literature. In: manuskripte (Graz), No. 168, 2005.
Extract. Ten years of literature in the Herrenhaus Edenkoben 1997–2007. Edenkoben 2007.

Translations

Ossip Mandelstam : The trip to Armenia. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1983.
Ossip Mandelstam: Black Earth. Poems from the Voronezh notebooks. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1984.
Ossip Mandelstam: The Complete Works in Ten Volumes. Ammann, Zurich 2001. (The individual volumes appeared 1985–2000.)
Johannes Bobrowski : Ce qui vit encore. Poemes. Traduits de l'allemand et présentés by Ralph Dutli & Antoine Jaccottet. Edition bilingual. Editions de l'Alphée, Paris 1987. (& Collection Orphée, Editions de la Différence, Paris 1993.)
Marina Tsvetaeva : My female brother. Letter to the Amazon. Matthes & Seitz, Munich 1985/1995.
Marina Tsvetaeva / Ossip Mandelstam: The story of a dedication. Poems and prose. Ammann, Zurich 1994.
Marina Tsvetaeva: love poems. With watercolors by Leiko Ikemura. Ammann, Zurich 1997/2002.
Joseph Brodsky : Letter to the Oasis. A hundred poems. Published by Ralph Dutli. Carl Hanser, Munich / Vienna 2006.
Richard de Fournival : The love bestiary. Translated from the 13th century French and with an essay by Ralph Dutli. Wallstein, Göttingen 2014.
Ossip Mandelstam: Station concert. The Ossip Mandelstam Reading Book, ed. by Ralph Dutli. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2015
Rutebeuf : Winter bad luck & summer bad luck. The poem of the big dice: of misfortune, misfortune and all sorts. Translated from the 13th century French and with an essay by Ralph Dutli. Wallstein, Göttingen 2017