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Ia un ceso di rugiada
il ciarlatano del cielo
Te charlatan of Heaven
Bears a basket of dew
Magnicent. A poetic sudy of the transience of being. A deeply sensuous book.
.
Marcel Reich-Ranicki
Winner of the Alfred Dblin Prize
Vnirv vv.cnvs, red broom,
pomegranates tumbling down
the escalator seps: with these
delicately rendered details, Josef
Vinklers Natura Morta begins.
In Stazione Termini in Rome,
Iiccoletto, the beautiful black-
haired boy whose long eyelashes
graze his freckle-sudded cheeks,
seps onto the metro and heads
toward his job at a sh sand in
Iiazza Vittorio Emanuele. Te
sights & sounds of the market,
a mlange of teeming life amid
the ever present avatars of death,
is the backdrop for Vinklers
innovative prose, which unfolds
in a series of haunting images
and baroque, luxuriant digres-
sions with pitch-perfed sym-
metry and intense visual clarity.
Reminiscent of the carnal vital-
ity of Iasolini, and taking inqi-
ration from the play between
the sumptuous & fatal in the
sill lives of the late Renais-
sance, Natura Morta is a unique
experiment in writing as sasis,
culminating in the beatication
of its protagonis. In awarding
this book with the aooi Alfred
Dblin Irize, Gnter Grass
singled out Vinklers commit-
ment to the writers vocation
and praised Natura Morta as a
work of dense poetic rigor.
natura
morta
A ROMAN NOVELL A
Josef Winkler
isnx ,;si,ooa,o,
www. coxr.xuxux.xvr
Encomi ums
Natura Morta catalogues a day among vendors in
Rome & then, bubbling up out of this perfedly
rendered setting, a young boy loses his life. A natura
morta is both a sill life and a dead bit of nature,
and this hypnotic novel explores both sides of the
expression.
.
Edmund Vhite
Magnicent. A poetic sudy of the transience of being.
.
A deeply sensuous book.
.
Marcel Reich-Ranicki
natura
morta
Josef Winkler
Mutter und der Bleisift
Wortschatz der Nacht
Roppongi: Requiem fr einen Vater
Natura Morta
Domra, am Ufer des Ganges
Friedhof der bitteren Orangen
Die Verschleppung
Das wilde Krnten
In English Translation
Flowers for Jean Genet
Te Serf
When the Times Comes
Selected Other Works by
Josef Vinkler
Josef Winkler
natura
morta
A ROMAN NOVELL A
translated by
Adrian West
Natura morta: Eine rmische
Novelle Suhrkamp Verlag
Frankfurt am Main i,,s. All
rights reserved by & controlled
through Suhrkamp Verlag Berlin.
Translation aoi Adrian Vest.
Firs Contra Mundum Iress
edition aoi,.
All Rights Reserved under
International & Ian-American
Copyright Conventions.
No part of this book may be
reproduced in any form or by
any eledronic means, including
information sorage and retrieval
sysems, without permission in
writing from the publisher,
except by a reviewer who may
quote brief passages in a review.
Originally published in German
as Natura morta: Eine rmische
Novelle in aooi.
Library of Congress
Cataloguing-in-Iublication Data
Vinkler, Josef, i,,,
[Natura morta: Eine rmische
Novelle. English.]
Natura morta: Eine rmische
Novelle / Josef Vinkler;
Translated from the original
German by Adrian Ves.
s
Contra Mundum Iress
Edition
ia pp., ,xs in.
i snx ,;si ,ooa,o,
I. Vinkler, Josef.
II. Title.
III. Vest, Adrian.
IV. Translator.
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Ia un ceso di rugiada
il ciarlatano del cielo
Te charlatan of Heaven
Bears a basket of dew
NATURA MORTA I
Nessuno, mamma, ha mai soerto tanto
E il volto gi scomparso
ma gli occhi ancora vivi
dal guanciale volgeva alla nesra,
e riempivano passeri la sanza
verso le briciole dal babbo qarse
per disrarre il suo bambino
No one, mother, has ever suered so
And his face, already dead, turned
Its sill-living eyes,
From the pillow to the window,
And sarrows lled the room
Where papa had srewn crumbs
To distrac his little boy
Virn wnirv vv.cnvs & a bouquet of red broom,
an old man ran after a crippled woman hobbling toward a
metro entrance in Stazione Termini carrying the Cronaca
vera in a clear plasic bag among her fresh vegetables, gave
her the owers, and shouted at the asonished woman,
who turned around to receive them : Auguri e tante belle
cose ! And she thanked him for his attention before care-
fully descending the seps to the metro, dragging her feet,
with her sack of white peaches, a bouquet of red broom
and the tales of broken hearts and adversities, murders
and suicides, related in the Cronaca vera. In front of the
escalator knelt a soiled beggar with a cardboard sign
reading : Ho fame ! Non ho una casa ! At his bare feet lay
a large prayer card bearing an image from Guido Reni
of the archangel Michael running his sword through
a demon lying at the edge of Iell, his face sharing the
features of Cardinal Iamphili, later known as Iope In-
nocent X. Near the prayer card, atop which lay a couple
of crumpled lire, a candle ickered in a red plasic holder.
Of the three pomegranates tumbling down the escalator,
one qlit open, qilling red pomegranate seeds over the
concrete seps. To the colorfully dressed Somali women
sanding in a group around a ower shop in the subway
x.ru. xor.
,
vesibule, who work as domesics in Roman households,
live with their acquaintances, and sill have no xed ad-
dress, a man disributed a thick sheaf of letters cover-
ed in Arabic script. A black-haired boy, around sixteen
years old, whose long eyelashes nearly grazed his freckle-
sudded cheeks and who wore a silver cross around his
neck, read aloud the scrawls on the subway sation wall :
Luisa ama Remo. Ti voglio bene da morire !
In the metro, a man kissed a woman in greeting and
patted her kneecap several times with his attened
hand, while she tapped him on the thigh with her right
s. Jus afterward, before getting out at the next sa-
tion, he kissed her balled-up s and took leave of her
with the word Auguri : A feeble-minded boy, hanging
his head, a whi of mousache on his upper lip, sat next
to his fossilized grandmother, who waved a black fan in
front of her glimmering sunglasses. Vhen he noticed
a man saring at his hips, he pawed his pants, making
sure his zipper was closed. Ie wore a bracelet with the
Roman colors on his right wris, embroidered with the
word Roma. Vith his right index nger, he touched a
hollow pivot tooth and smeared pink Labello on his lips.
Over the boys head, on a re extinguisher, LAIDS nel
mondo, il Lazio in Italia ! was written in black marker.
Te black-haired sixteen-year-old, with a silver cross
around his neck, his long eyelashes nearly grazing his
cheeks, sat under an advert for horsemeat and pulled
a white puppy to his breas, beside his younger siser
;osvr wixiv
note
Te citation that opens the book is from Giuseppe
Ungaretti, Vita dun uomo III; the remaining citations
are from Giorno per giorno by the same author.
All translations are original.
COLOPHON
NATURA MORTA
was typeset in InDesign.
Te text and page numbers are set in Adobe Jenson Pro.
Te titles are set in Charlemagne.
Book design & typesetting: Alessandro Segalini
Cover design: Contra Mundum Iress
Cover image: Meat (Taseless) aoia Olivia Jeczmyk,
Fideli Sundqvis, Joanna Lavn
Ihoto of Josef Vinkler Jerry Bauer / Suhrkamp Verlag
NATURA MORTA
is published by Contra Mundum Iress
and printed by Lightning Source, which has received Chain of
Custody certication from: Te Forest Stewardship Council,
Te Irogramme for the Endorsement of Forest Certication,
and Te Sustainable Forestry Initiative.
CONTRA MUNDUM PRESS
Contra Mundum Iress is dedicated to the value & the
indiqensable importance of the individual voice.
Contra Mundum Iress will be publishing titles from all the
elds in which the genius of the age traditionally produces
the mos challenging and innovative work: poetry, novels,
theatre, philosophy including philosophy of science &
of mathematics criticism, and essays.
Upcoming volumes include Mallarms Te Book,
Sndor Tars Our Street, and Josef Vinklers
Te Graveyard of Bitter Oranges.
For the complete lis of forthcoming publications, please visit
our website. To be added to our mailing list, send your name
and email address to: info
@
contramundum.net
Contra Mundum Iress
I.O. Box i,ao
New York, NY ioa;o
USA
info
@
contramundum.net
Other Contra Mundum Press Titles
Gilgamesh
Ghrasim Luca, Self-Shadowing Prey
Rainer J. Ianshe, Te Abdication
Valter Jackson Bate, Negative Capability
Mikls Szentkuthy, Marginalia on Casanova
Fernando Iessoa, Philosophical Essays
Elio Ietri, Vritings on Cinema & Life
Friedrich Nietzsche, Te Greek Music Drama
Richard Foreman, Plays with Films
Louis-Auguse Blanqui, Eternity by the Stars
Mikls Szentkuthy, Towards the One & Only Metaphor
Josef Vinkler, When the Time Comes
Villiam Vordsworth, Fragments
Some Forthcoming Titles
Fernando Iessoa, Te Transformation Book
Mikls Szentkuthy, Prae
Remy de Gourmont, Te Problem of Style
about the author
Josvr Vixiv is the author of nearly twenty
books, among them the award-winning trilogy
Das wilde Krnten. Iis major themes are suicide,
homosexuality, and the corrosive inuence of
Catholicism and Nazism in Ausrian country life.
Vinner of the aoos Bchner prize and current
president of the Ausrian Arts Senate, Vinkler lives
in Klagenfurt with his wife & two children.
about the translator
Ai.x Vvsr is a writer and literary translator
from the wesern Romance languages and German.
Iis work has appeared in numerous journals in print
& online, including McSweeneys, the Brooklyn Rail,
Words Without Borders, and 3:AM. Ie lives with
the cinema critic Beatriz Leal Riesco.
acknowledgements
Ve would like to express our gratitude to
Olivia Jeczmyk, Fideli Sundqvis, & Joanna Lavn
for graciously oering their image to us.
www.oliviajeczmyk.com
www.f idelisundqvist.com
www.joannalaven.se
a
t
u
r
a
o
r
t
a
J
o
s
e
f
W
i
n
k
l
e
r
Ia un ceso di rugiada
il ciarlatano del cielo
Te charlatan of Heaven
Bears a basket of dew
Magnicent. A poetic sudy of the transience of being. A deeply sensuous book.
.
Marcel Reich-Ranicki
Winner of the Alfred Dblin Prize
Vnirv vv.cnvs, red broom,
pomegranates tumbling down
the escalator seps: with these
delicately rendered details, Josef
Vinklers Natura Morta begins.
In Stazione Termini in Rome,
Iiccoletto, the beautiful black-
haired boy whose long eyelashes
graze his freckle-sudded cheeks,
seps onto the metro and heads
toward his job at a sh sand in
Iiazza Vittorio Emanuele. Te
sights & sounds of the market,
a mlange of teeming life amid
the ever present avatars of death,
is the backdrop for Vinklers
innovative prose, which unfolds
in a series of haunting images
and baroque, luxuriant digres-
sions with pitch-perfed sym-
metry and intense visual clarity.
Reminiscent of the carnal vital-
ity of Iasolini, and taking inqi-
ration from the play between
the sumptuous & fatal in the
sill lives of the late Renais-
sance, Natura Morta is a unique
experiment in writing as sasis,
culminating in the beatication
of its protagonis. In awarding
this book with the aooi Alfred
Dblin Irize, Gnter Grass
singled out Vinklers commit-
ment to the writers vocation
and praised Natura Morta as a
work of dense poetic rigor.
natura
morta
A ROMAN NOVELL A
Josef Winkler
isnx ,;si,ooa,o,
www. coxr.xuxux.xvr