Stories from My Life (Studies in Austrian Literature, Culture, and Thought Translation Series)

The author was one of the major Expressionist painters of the first half of the 20th century, and also wrote a number of plays, poems, and stories. These autobiographical writings, first written for his wife, are an intense evocation of incidents and moments which reveal his spiritual development. This title is translated from "Das schriftliche Werk".Oskar Kokoschka's "Stories from My Life" is not a traditional autobiography. There is no attempt to produce a comprehensive account of the details of his life, to record where he went, what he did, or whom he met. Instead he has given us, Kokoschka says, 'a random selection of stories from my life, just as they occur to me'. 'Random' is perhaps an exaggeration. What these stories do provide is an inner autobiography, an intense and vivid evocation of incidents and moments which, while often apparently trivial in themselves, reveal the spiritual development of an artist who was not only one of this century's great painters, but also one of its great humanists.