Blau schillernde Käfer, pelzige Nachtfalter, mutige Heuschrecken und flirrende Libellen sind die Held*innen von Barbara Frischmuths neuen Erzählungen. Doch wenn wir genauer hinsehen, so geht es der Autorin nicht nur um sorgfältig beobachtete Insekten: Es geht um fein gezeichnete Symbiosen von Mensch und Natur, um seltene Mischwesen zwischen Mädchen und Käfer, um sprechende Libellen oder um das, was wir uns von den schlauen Heuschrecken abschauen können. Mit liebevollem Humor zeigen uns diese Geschichten, wie sehr wir Menschen Teil der Natur sind. Denn, so wird die Gärtnerin und Dichterin Barbara Frischmuth niemals müde zu betonen: Nur in einem Zusammenleben mit der Natur, das von Respekt und Achtsamkeit geprägt ist, haben wir alle eine Überlebenschance.

Die leidenschaftliche Gärtnerin Barbara Frischmuth weiß, dass sie immer nur zu Gast sein wird in ihrem Garten. Mit Rechen, Schaufel, Gartenschere und einigen anderen über die Jahrtausende entwickelten, oft ganz schlichten Gerätschaften bearbeiten wir Erde und Pflanzen, graben um, schneiden, setzen, ordnen, verteilen und ernten. Vor allem aber dürfen unsere Hände Gartengeräte nutzen, um mit den eigentlichen Bewohnern des Gartens in Austausch zu treten: mit Gräsern und Insekten, Blumen und Würmern, Wurzeln und Schnecken. Die Geschichte der Gartengeräte ist die Geschichte unserer Beziehung mit der Natur und allem, was in ihr lebt. Voller Dankbarkeit erzählt Barbara Frischmuth von dem, was ihre Hände im Garten brauchen.

Nature and culture cannot be kept separate. They continuously intertwine, visibly and invisibly, but not always harmoniously. From the outset, humankind has tried to tame and subjugate nature. And the more spectacularly successful we are in doing this, the less we think about how dependent on it we still are. This shows most clearly in the language we use to try and label and describe nature – be it in the fictional, poetic, factual or scientific context. In her essay, Barbara Frischmuth seeks to illustrate how nature is discussed in literature, culture, science and in everyday life. To underestimate nature would be perilous. To value and even love it equals human enlightenment. The essay series UNRUHE BEWAHREN (Keep Uncalm) is a response to an increasingly uncomfortable present tendency. At the heart of modern-day progress lies a wasteful unrest, while the past is progressively devalued and the future is robbed of substance. This is opposed by the principle of anachronism. Engaged contemporaneity should be coupled with the courage for caution and a passion for the outmoded. UNRUHE BEWAHREN is therefore also the theme to which the spring and autumn lecture series at Akademie Graz are dedicated. Edited by Astrid Kury, Thomas Macho, Peter Strasser Advice: Harald Klauhs

Barbara Frischmuth's stirring début: the narrow world of a Catholic boarding school, the pupils and their aspirations, the teachers and their rules – the expression of a strict upbringing designed to restrict freedom of feeling, thought and action.

Barbara Frischmuth is a master of stylistic abundance: full of compassion she takes a sometimes down to earth, sometimes humorously-grotesque look at the trials and tribulations of human interaction. Frischmuth tells of hellos and good-byes. From the story of a lovesick young archeologist who goes into hiding at her sister’s house and lives through a cathartic experience to a substitute fight between a grandmother and her granddaughter over a misplaced nail file. With her playful narration Frischmuth gives us glimpses of a simple truth: Time and again, reality is an experiment.

When Henriette Stanley dies, the family standing at her grave is no longer large: There is Harry, her “mentally disturbed” son, on whom the shipowner family from Antwerp had once placed all their hopes. There is her daughter Ann with her German husband, whose marriage Henriette was unable to prevent even though it cost her Belgian inheritance after the War. And then there is the sister of her husband, who disappeared under suspicious circumstances many years before. Nobody speaks to her, even though she is the only one to know what happened to her brother and what the Antwerpian will really said. And she also knows that every attempt to forget is futile. This novel is a magnificent painting and Evelyn Gill proves her mastery with it. She recounts the story of a marriage, a novel about a family full of cracks, which reveal the chasms of an entire century.

A poet embarks on a journey. We accompany him on his path through all kinds of natural and cultural landscapes, which his words smoothly adapt to. The accuracy of his gaze and his perspective allow us to take part in the visual adventures and broadening horizons he encounters. With him we witness the Czar’s homecoming to St. Petersburg, wander through a Japanese forest and through modern Moscow, visit the Museum of the Revolution in Hanoi and admire the Windcatchers of Yazd in Iran. A collection of poetically condensed moments, lifted out of their everyday rut by our senses and illusions.