The method of the Surrealists, André Breton was Brigitte Schwaiger known. In her book, “painting lesson” showed interest in the author at the meeting, which had made the painter Arnulf Rainer once with Breton in Paris. The literature of Brigitte Schwaiger reminds to the works of André Breton: to “Nadja” or “L’amour fou”.
Breton was the language of search is useful to explain coincidences, Brigitte Schwaiger from the “magical Thinking”. It perceptions are described, brief moments of experiences and memories. The style of Brigitte Schwaiger is rooted in the method of the “l’écriture automatique”, of the unconscious writing, with the higher insights about reality should be, even as phenomenology, what is described by Breton the concept of “surrealism”.
The pleasantries of the citizens, the rule of law
Brigitte Schwaiger wanted to win this “écriture” a deeper insight into their own sensations and also convey. It was a success: In its first, in 1977, published the novel “How is the salt into the sea” touched you strongly to the collective experience of that era, the late seventies. This sensation novel was a great success, about five hundred thousand copies were sold.
The writer listened to in it carefully to the voices of their surroundings and adopted their manner of speech as Material for your stories. Schwaiger the clichés of bourgeois exposes all their lies in the process of speaking, as before, in Vienna, the playwright Ödön von Horváth had done. Or the “ear witness” Elias Canetti, who wanted to highlight the “acoustic masks” into the consciousness, that they are recognized as instruments in the establishment of power structures.
A honorary grave at the Central cemetery
forces The sound of Schwaiger novel hit the nerve of that reader, which knew similar situations from their own experiences again: “mother into the dress . . . Always this shred, says father. This is not shred, says grandmother, that’s a good fabric. She rubs the hem between the fingers. Why is it always, asks mother. She has worn this dress only once, in grandfather’s funeral. It is elegant, says grandmother. The father is impatient. For an hour he is finished, yesterday was at the hairdresser’s, to the back of the neck shaving.“ Schwaiger granted in “How the salt comes into the sea,” a look into the everyday terror of a bourgeois nuclear family.
So you had a stimulating effect on the next Generation of Austrian writers, such Gertraud Klemm or Waltraud Anna Mitgutsch. Nevertheless, Brigitte failed Schwaiger to the conditions in Austria. They found the author on 26. July 2010 dead in the Danube waters. Her body was placed in the Sensengasse 2, for the autopsy by the medical examiner. The city of Vienna is granted a honorary grave at the Central cemetery, group 40, number 72. As it came to a sad end?
