DIE SEHNSUCHT NACH STILLE UND IHRE ‚ÜBERSETZUNG‘ IN POESIE BEI FRIEDERIKE MAYRÖCKER

One of the characteristics of Friederike Mayröcker’s lyrical poetry is the frequent occurrence of auto-reflexive and metapoetical moments. Hence, the paper focuses upon a lyrical text, which enacts and simultaneously reflects the process of becoming of a poem. In „»auf der Suche nach der verlorenen Stille« (John Cage)“ Mayröcker adopts John Cage‘s concept of silence (i.e. there is no absolute silence) by integrating the presence of noise and everyday sounds into the ‘silence’ of her poetical world. Her poem concerns both the longing for silence as the premise for creative writing and the transformation of silence into words. Moreover, it equally absorbs the inspiring presence of real and imagined acoustic perceptions as well as that of outer and inner voices. Within the wide-open ears of the lyrical instance, fragments of reality mutate to moments of creative ecstasy. The poem ends, after a comma, with the white ‘silence’ of the blank sheet, engulfed in the vastness of an imagined echo.