Telegrams of the Soul

Praise

The freest soul of the epoch. —Karl Kraus

In his small stories his whole life is mirrored. And every step, every movement he makes confirms the truth of his words. Peter Altenberg is a genius of nullifications, a singular idealist who discovers the splendors of this world like cigarette butts in the ashtrays of coffeehouses. —Franz Kafka

If it be permitted to speak of “love at first sound,” then that’s what I experienced in my first encounter with this poet of prose. —Thomas Mann

Some [of Altenberg’s pieces] are like steel projectiles, so tightly enclosed in themselves, so complete and precise in their form; and like projectiles, they pierce the breast; you are struck and you bleed. Some are like crystals and diamonds, sparkling in the multicolored reflections of the light of life, gleaming with captured rays of sunlight and glittering with a hidden inner fire. Some are like ripe fruits, warm with the waft of summer, swollen and sweet. —Felix Salten

Altenberg seems singular even when compared to his nearest literary kin: less austere and allegorical than Baudelaire, and more involved with society than Robert Walser, his short prose approaches form in ways that are uncannily relevant now. —James Guida, The New Yorker