Works Texts

Werner Hamacher had an aversion against ending too soon
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It is said that you emerged at the heart of Europe, that you are an invention of the old continent in the same way as democracy or the smallpox vaccine, or for that matter the thumbscrew and biometrics, that your origins are the medieval romance but that you, since newspapers began serialising you, have appeared in most conceivable guises, from family sagas replete with sabre-rattling and samovars to recluses who stuff their mouth full of stones by some godforsaken shore, though personally I dream of you as water, limitless yet ductile and containable, just as often dirty spume as aphrodisiacal slop, because I believe you can assume most forms without being lost, which is to say that you contain multitudes, like water in water . .
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The front teeth were those of a predator. At first their setting was a damp cave of just a few centimetres. Back then there was only a lump of flesh there, which sat upon ineffable treasures like the dragon in the fairytale, entrenched behind a bulwark of milk-coloured dentine. If the creature wanted to amuse or deceive, it wiped its tip across the balustrade; if it felt fear or rage, it withdrew itself, tip aquiver
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There are times when literature even has to play dead. But coldheartedness, too, is a way of declaring one’s color. Mallarmé’s azur may play even across lips bitten by frost
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I leave Russia empty-handed, with cold feet and my heart in my mouth. The assignment seemed so simple at first: cultivate your attentiveness, document what you see, detect the cracks and fissures in reality. What could be easier for a writer? But with each passing day, my presence became more of an embarrassment. In the end I had no choice: it was me or St. Petersburg
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Who can say what synergies two communicating craniums are capable of?
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As usual, they met after lunch. Now several hours had passed, the sun melting behind the spidery tangle of antennas on the neighboring roofs. Once more, the day eased into that tender haze, with patches of buttery yellow, which, as far as she was concerned, could last an eternity. The white gauze veiling the open window moved indolently, as if an unknown god, silent and sagacious, breathed behind the curtains
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When I press my palms against the sides I sense the chill behind the poorly planed boards. Between two of them, muddy water is seeping in. And behind the casing is a smooth, low-key sort of turbu­lence, soft, virtually silent, as if engaged in forgetting
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Now hear this. This is me. Come here. It is me. The recycler. I am here. Come hear. This is me
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