Woolf and Beckett

 Found most interesting his high praise for Beckett and Woolf in his list of most influential writers upon his work.   

"Virginia Woolf’s language is incredibly elegant. She practises admirable wave aesthetics and employs a language that glides through consciousness without marked breaks. Her handling of characters is truly unique. The narratological questions that underpin any act of reading — “Who speaks?” “Who sees?” — become highly relevant for my own writing when she addresses them. Is it perception that is being described, or consciousness? Where lies the difference between the two? Or is there none? These are the questions that, prompted by my reading of Virginia Woolf, accompanied me when I was writing Schattenfroh."

Beckett, Woolf, Peter Weiss, Gertrude Stein, Claude Simon, Peter Handke, Kafka, and Rilke

What fascinates me about Rainer Maria Rilke is his paradoxical thinking and rhythmic gestures, and the fact that the form of his poems often has a homologous effect on their semantic levels. Rilke wrote the most incredible line I know: “Die Vögel fliegen still durch uns hindurch.” (“The birds fly silently through us.”)

The Untranslated.