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4.0 

Telegrams of the Soul

By Peter Altenberg & Peter Wortsman
Telegrams of the Soul by Peter Altenberg & Peter Wortsman digital book - Fable

Publisher Description

"If it be permitted to speak of ‘love at first sound,’ then that’s what I experienced in my first encounter with this poet of prose." So said Thomas Mann of the work of PeterAltenberg. A virtuoso Fin-de-Siècle Viennese innovator of what he called the "telegram style" of writing, Altenberg’s signature short prose straddles the line between the poetic and the prosaic, fiction and observation, harsh verity and whimsical vignette. Inspired by the prose poems of Charles Baudelaire and the Feuilleton—a light journalistic reflection of his day—Altenberg carved out a spare, strikingly modern aesthetic that speaks with an eerie prescience to our own impatient time. Peter Wortsman’s new selection and translation reads like a sly lyrical wink from the turnof-the-century of the telegram to the turn-of-the-millennium of email.

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2 Reviews

4.0
“There are certain things I cannot abide, especially when he talks about young ladies, but his prose is beautiful and the sketches are funny, whimsical, and often haunting. The final sketch was masterful, and tragic. A poignant way to end his writing, and this collection.”

About Peter Altenberg

Peter Altenberg (akaRichard Engländer, 1859-1919) born into a well-to-do, assimilated Viennese Jewish family, took advantage of a medical diagnosis of "over-excitation of the nervous system" and a consequent "incapacity for gainful employment" to devote himself heart and soul to the life of the Bohemian poet. Author of eleven books published during his lifetime and two more after his death, Altenberg also pioneered the verynotion of loose-fitting leisure attire, designed a line of necklaces, favored sandals, walking sticks and slivovitz. His long list of literary admirers included Karl Kraus, Heinrich and Thomas Mann, Robert Musil, Arthur Schnitzler and George Bernard Shaw.

Recipient of the 2012 Gold Grand Prize for Best Travel Story of the Year, Peter Wortsman is the author of A Modern Way to Die: Small Stories and Microtales, the plays The Tattooed Man Tells All and Burning Words, the recent memoir Ghost Dance in Berlin: A Rhapsody in Gray, and the forthcoming novel Cold Earth Wanderers. His translations from the German include Robert Musil¢s Posthumous Papers of a Living Author, Heinrich Heine¢s Travel Pictures, Peter Altenberg¢s Telegrams of the Soul, and Tales of the German Imagination: From The Brothers Grimm to Ingeborg Bachmann, an anthology published by Penguin Classics.

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