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"Now available in English for the first time, Austrian satirist and polemicist Karl Kraus's Third Walpurgis Night was written in immediate response to the Nazi seizure of power in 1933 but withheld from publication for fear of reprisals against Jews trapped in Germany. Acclaimed when finally published by Kösel Verlag in 1952, it is a devastatingly prescient exposure, giving special attention to the regime's corruption of language as masterminded by Joseph Goebbels. Bertolt Brecht wrote to Kraus that, in his indictment of Nazism, "You have disclosed the atrocities of intonation and created an ethics of language." This masterful translation, by the prizewinning translators of Kraus's The Last Days of Mankind, aims for clarity where Kraus had good reason to be cautious and obscure"--

The book explores the modern attitudes that are articulated in the texts "Third Walpurgis Night" (1933) by Karl Kraus and "Prodromos" (1905) by Peter Altenberg. Following Foucault's discourse analytical approach and his concept of self practice, it asks with what types of subject and truth the two literary works break open the structures of enunciation in which they are historically embedded. The result is not a biographical or philological comparison, but a report on the experience of a performative reading that makes an archaeological section of the writings and reconstructs their genealogical line. - Das Buch erforscht die modernen Haltungen, die sich in den Texten "Dritte Walpurgisnacht" (1933) von Karl Kraus und "Prodromos" (1905) von Peter Altenberg ausdrücken. Im Anschluss an Foucaults Verfahren der Diskursanalyse und sein Konzept der Selbstpraxis wird die Frage untersucht, mit welchem Typus von Subjekt und Wahrheit die literarischen Werke jene Strukturen des Sagbaren aufbrechen, in denen sie historisch verankert sind. Das Ergebnis ist kein biografischer oder philologischer Vergleich, sondern der Erfahrungsbericht einer performativen Lektüre, die den archäologischen Schnitt und die genealogische Linie der Schriften nachvollzieht.

Abstract
Ms. I.33 is not only the oldest of the known fencing treatises in European context, it is also the only one showing a woman fighting equally with contemporary men. The author presents her research about the garments this female fencer wears, including her shirt, dress and overdress, hairstyle and footwear. Special consideration is given to the questions whether Walpurgis wears a belt, the length and hem circumference of her garments as well as the methods of draping them in the way depicted. The results of the analysis are compared with contemporary pictorial and archaeological sources of the early 14th century. Some personal insights gathered by the author while fighting in this kind of clothes shed light on the possibilities of moving without being disturbed by them. The clothes and hairstyle worn by Walpurgis, give clues about her social status and thus help to understand the context and dating of the whole manuscript.

Cover -- Title Page -- Dedication -- Contents -- My mother's house -- Miss Bowerman and the hot water bottles -- Swimming with our fathers -- Day breaks in dressing gowns -- Wedding car -- Eyebrows, toenails -- Slippers -- Amy in hospital with broken wrists -- Ironing shirts -- A fall of hair -- Tidying away the china -- An apple tree for Ruby -- Ruby and fruit -- The body of a little girl -- Meeting the Pope -- Cat night -- The wedding party of animals -- Night horse -- Blaming the horse -- Alice and the carrots -- Lying in the long grass between two black Labradors -- Ruby and the Labradors -- Morning blackbird on the lawn -- Coup de foudre -- Winged Victory: the Louvre -- Picasso's tenderness -- At the ballet -- The rosin box -- Re-reading Emma -- A friendship through books -- Two books, two bookmarks -- Three Willow Pattern bowls -- Holding hands -- Consolation -- Putting a line through addresses -- Tonia's cemetery -- Roadworks -- Driving with Amy in the MG -- Gold and dust -- A landscape of shining leaves -- Tenderness -- The mountain -- Perigee moon -- Spring bulbs -- Flying over Spain -- 8 little poems about Canberra -- Hay bales -- The tablecloth -- Oysters -- An extra oyster for the Doctors -- The name in the freezer -- The Filipina maid makes the bed -- The strangeness of purple -- A gift of spotted tights -- Wearing fur -- After a gastroscopy -- Ukulele for a dying child -- Young woman at an open casket -- My mother visits me in hospital -- The heart heals itself between beats -- Acknowledgements -- Copyright Page