Julya Rabinowich (A) Jury discussion

Julya Rabinowich was proposed by Daniela Strigl and read the text "Erdfresserin".  The jury was divided, the text was "difficult", but also had echoes of Schnitzler.

Julya Rabinowich (Bild: Johannes Puch)

Author portrait
Reading
Discussion

A woman in a desert landscape, an Eastern European prostitute, who cannot stand being cooped up with mother and son and the bedridden Leo, but who she can't leave until she has her hands on the savings book. 

Jury (Bild: Johannes Puch)

Winkels: "The woman as Gorgon"

Hubert Winkels tried as the first, to approach this "difficult text"  The description of women goes hand in hand with mythical disguises and gives the whole concept a new dimension: she appears like a gorgon, as a vampire, as a Pashtun earth goddess, who wants to go "untainted" back to creation, but also as the "Black Widow" or banal witch.

It is precisely this mythological charged situation that does not work for him when juxtaposed to the the everyday circumstances of the woman. "Too many heterogeneous elements in a small space", says Winkels.

Sulzer: "Difficult to understand"

Alain Claude Sulzer also said the text was "difficult" to understand, but came to different conclusions: it is about a woman from Eastern Europe who wants to get her hands on the money of the man she is looking after - set against the mythical background, it is an interesting read.

Meike Feßmann  says, we ar dealing here with an intensively "female text", generating "strong physical images" which generate female disgust at a man's body.

Striegl: Character of the contemporary world

The text is not that difficult, said Daniela Strigl, picking up the previous thread: Diana was also mentioned in the array of mythical figures, here with the main character we are dealing with a character from the contemporary world.    This "curious" woman, who shows no hint of self-pity, carries a clenched, explosive aggression in her and at the same time is trying to hold on to her indispensability to others. 

In her "sensational sensuality" she represents herself in the blackest of colours - simultaneously the "Erdfresserin" tries to disappear back to the earth pure and undefiled, a "utopian element," said Strigl.

Paul Jandl (Bild: Johannes Puch)

Jandl: "Reminiscent of the movie 'Misery' "

For Paul Jandl the text makes it easy to take one of a multiplicity of motives, as a whole reminding him of the movie "Misery".  Its "convoluted" style suggests that the woman is trying to insert herself in a genealogy - "like an apple on the family tree", but that perhaps shows up more clearly later.

Spinnen: Reminiscent of Schnitzler

Jury chairman Burkhard Spinnen with the Rabinovic' text was reminded of Arthur Schnitzler's novel "Therese. Chronicle of a woman's life" . Here there is also a woman with an illegitimate child who is "branded" and tries to "dock" somewhere in a middle class existence, but is dependent upon the goodwill of other people.

Publikum (Bild: Johannes Puch)

The story, the plot are "actually great", said Spinnen, but followed with a very large "however": The story was so highly instrumented that little time remained in the reading to notice the wonderful  details. The "great effort" for the "structure" took him "out of the curve", he lost the "taste orientation"  "The author gives too much to her child".

Also Hildegard E. Keller found the text "over-orchestrated".

Strigl: "I want the whole buffet"

Daniela Strigl picked up the trail left by Spinnen: Schnitzler is "not a bad track", especially given that the author has published a book entitled "Herznovelle", which makes one of course think of the "Traumnovelle". She said that despite all the objections: "I want the whole buffet".

Barbara Johanna Frank

TDDL 2011