LiteraturSchweiz

Reading tip

Felix Philipp Ingold, Gegengabe: Felix Philipp Ingold is author, translator and literary scholar all in one with a respectable body of work in all of these disciplines. His opulent volume «Gegengabe» (A Gift in Return) testifies this. In this book, Ingold appears as both a passionate and critical worker of words. He reflects on the craft of literature, on readings and he shares excerpts of his poetic creations. In long essays about Samuel Becket, about the «treason» of translation or about poetic «language design» he reveals himself as being a precise analyst for whom reading-writing-thinking forms an indivisible entity. One does not need to agree with him all the time, his arguments call for respect even where they provoke objection. Ingold’s unconditional preference is Classic Modernism. Between essays, poems and aphorisms the reader also gets a glimpse of more personal aspects in the form of dream scenes or walks around the quaint area of his residence in Romainmôtier. «Gegengabe» is an opalescent, stimulating and personal book of many forms. Page after page it awaits with poems, essayistic observations and remarkable anecdotes, thereby developing a strict poetic in which we can recognise the author himself. (Beat Mazenauer, transl. by Anja Hälg) See the full german version on .