Literature: People pay attention

Dance of language – she has always mastered this floating way of writing. If there was an effort to formulate it as precisely as possible, she probably also enjoyed it. Prose from a poet who cannot be broken down into simple names, but always means a feeling for the world that needs to be explored. »The world building must be built. You want to live somewhere”: Defiant in the old spelling, the title already expresses a determination that concerns the world and at the same time the self. The here and now becomes, as it were, a springboard into the universe, and even beyond space and time.

The starting point would be – as in her previous books by Angela Krauß – her apartment in Leipzig, where the freight yard is within earshot and you can see the flashing of the postal planes when looking at the night sky. There she had a disturbing dream that night. A fairy (or whatever it is) pointed her to the end of her life. First. In the end she gets in touch with a completely different message. But in the morning the postwoman came, a “blonde angel,” and later “the dancer” appeared as a powerful figure.

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The attempt to somehow retell this lyrical prose is in vain. How to live in this crazy world? How do we deal with the finitude of life, which everything contradicts? A vague feeling of being threatened is the linchpin of the text. »The whole thing is becoming inexorably bigger, more mysterious. Sometimes a feeling of wonder penetrates into the spoken messages. People notice. He feels that something remains unsaid: We live in uncertainty. A feeling that many people are familiar with. “Fear and suspicion thinned the air to breathe.” The Corona period as a precursor to today: “The great transformation of existence, it was announced in a worldwide pause.”

How pointedly contemporary diagnoses flash up in the lyrical word fabric is, as I said, just a springboard for the poet. It is a pleasure to read how real things always take on a symbolic meaning and become ambiguous. Like the “wallpaper door,” behind which one can glimpse a disturbing “world in the background” and also something comforting. Angela Krauß has to think about her mother’s aging and death – she manages to create unforgettable scenes.

The everyday becomes meaningfully meaningful and sometimes even philosophically charged. What should I do? What can I know? What can I hope for? One can’t help but think of Immanuel Kant’s big questions.

But don’t think it’s difficult to read. Rather, it is a great pleasure to let yourself be carried by the author’s linguistic waves. Mental movement – ​​this is the only way to overcome frightening rigidity. Contagious courage. Floating and insight – reading gives you wings so that you can look at the world and yourself from above.

For this purpose, says the poet, residential buildings used to be crowned with turrets, “little playful observatories.” And then she says goodbye to us at midnight. »I see a sparkling area from a great height. The mail fleet has awakened like an exotic, shimmering, nocturnal bird species and is rapidly crossing the sky above my horizon.«

Angela Krauss: The world building must be built. You want to live somewhere. Suhrkamp, ​​110 p., hardcover, €20.

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