Telegrams from the soul

the long version

The miniaturist Peter Altenberg (1859-1919) is a seminal but often neglected figure in the culture of "Vienna 1900." Famous as much as for a Bohemian life-style as for his writing, Altenberg has suffered neglect both because he failed to work in "major" genres and on account of his addiction to drugs, alcohol, and young girls. Barker's book, the first to attempt a comprehensive survey of Altenberg's life and work, draws heavily on the array of unpublished manuscripts in the United States and Europe, many of them in private collections, and on other long-forgotten archival material. Although it examines the nature and scope of Altenberg's literary achievement, this study is as much about a culture as a whole as a single figure within it. Above all it shows how highly the "Fool of Vienna" was regarded by such great contemporaries as Karl Kraus, Adolf Loos, Franz Kafka, Robert Musil, Oskar Kokoschka, and Alban Berg. There can be few figures whose impact has been so widely felt across the spectrum of the arts, yet whose status has remained so marginal. . In the single figure of Peter Altenberg the contradictions of a city central to twentieth-century Modernism seem summed up: anti-Semitic Jew, poet and madman, drug-addict and fitness freak, feminist and misogynist, Altenberg could be regarded as the most representative figure in this Janus-faced culture. Barker's work not only constitutes what will become a standard work on Altenberg, it is a valuable contribution to the burgeoning literature on the intensely rich, febrile environment in which he thrived and suffered.