Two Stories

Abstract

62 WORLD LITERATURE TODAY photo : paul schirnhofer Two Stories Clemens Setz The Two Corpses Aman stood in front of a small salamander. The salamander was lying motionlessly on a boundary stone in the sun. The man knelt down, took off his straw hat, and eyed the dainty creature from all sides. “He’s lying there completely still,” the man thought. “I wonder if he’s dead . . .” He got up, patted the dust of the country road off his knees, and put his hat back on. “He is wandering restlessly through the world, his head immersed in shadows,” the salamander thought. “I wonder if he’s dead.” On the Conductivity of Monks In 1746 Abbé Jean-Antoine Nollet had 700 Carthusian monks stand in a circle in a field and wired them together. The wire led to a Leyden jar, a simple capacitor that generated electricity. The experiment was to test whether the monks would all cry out in pain at the same instant. It was a success, as it had already been once before with 180 soldiers of the National Guard. Nollet was subsequently showered with honors by the king and appointed professor of experimental physics in Paris. Translations from the German By Peter Constantine Clemens Setz (b. 1982, Graz) is one of the foremost young writers in the Germanspeaking world. He was a runner-up for the prestigious German Book Award and has received numerous prizes. Peter Constantine translates literature from many languages, including The Essential Writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, forthcoming in 2013. He has received numerous prizes and awards. Q&A with Clemens Setz tr. Peter Constantine Q: Is there a quote you like or think is particularly fitting or relevant to very short fiction, whether by a fiction writer or by someone in a field other than literature, be it the arts, sciences, philosophy , religion, or other area? A: “Just speak your self, that’s riddle enough,” the Sphinx says in the second part of Goethe’s Faust. Q: Do you have a favorite flash story or writer, or favorite book of very short fictions? A: Félix Fénéon, a French writer and journalist. He wrote what he called “Stories in three lines” for Figaro—small, dense spotlights on the inexhaustible strangeness of human interactions. One example: “Madame Couderc, of Saint-Ouen, was constantly kept from hanging herself from her window latch. At her wit’s end, she fled across the fields.” Q: What are you reading now? A: Kristin Lavransdatter, by Sigrid Undset—quite the opposite of flash fiction. Q: What does flash fiction offer readers that slow fiction doesn’t? A: The delightfully paradoxical feeling of reading that’s reflected in Hamlet’s words: “O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space.” Q: Did any of your longer work begin as a shortshort story, or vice versa? A: Yes, it happens quite often. A story only gradually divulges the form it needs to lead a life of its own. ...