George Saiko: Nachlass - Werk - Wirkung

The year 2002, the 110th anniversary of the Austrian writer George Saiko`s birth and at the same time the 40th anniversary of his death, presents a fitting opportunity to reevaluate the author and his work and thus bring his accomplishments to the attention of a wider reading public. Saiko`s name, largely unknown at the time of his death in 1962, still sounds unfamiliar in his homeland even today, despite a number of attempts to make his output more accessible to the public, such as the five-volume edition of his collected works published by the Salzburg Germanist, Adolf Haslinger from 1987 to 1992, or the exhibition at the Wiener Stadt- und Landesbibliothek in 1992 to mark the 100th anniversary of the artist`s birth. The starting point for this research project will be Saiko`s estate, which was acquired by the Österreichische Literaturarchiv in 1997. Contained in eleven crates, the estate comprises the author`s literary and art-historical papers, his correspondence with friends and acquaintances as well as with publishers, photographs on subjects of art history, and materials from various journals. Particular emphasis shall be placed on aspects of Saiko`s work which have hitherto received little attention or remained unnoticed entirely. Comprehensive and detailed research on Saiko`s stories and essays will highlight the author`s subtle literary method, pointing this out more clearly than has thus far been possible with the philological work done on his novels (the demanding form of which is one reason, among others, that these complex socio- historical and artistic analyses have attracted so few interested readers). The results of the research project will be documented in a monograph on Saiko and presented to a broad public. Furthermore, it would also be beneficial to make the project results visible and thus more readily accessible in the form of an exhibition.

This project aimed to make the Austrian writer George Saiko and his oeuvre more accessible. The new perspectives it offers were developed with reference to the collected works and a thorough analysis of Saiko`s literary estate which is kept at the Austrian Literature Archives. Beginning with a critical survey of previous research on Saiko highlighting the basic knowledge gaps and misunderstandings to date, a reception history showed how ambivalently Saiko`s works and influence have been perceived and interpreted by the reading public, literary critics and academics. This helps explain why Saiko remains a largely unknown author who felt misunderstood by literary critics, and therefore provided his own retrospective interpretations and extensive explanations of his difficult narrative technique. Alongside this literary sociological analysis, the project also focused on Saiko`s theoretical and creative works in their interaction with each other, as the complexity of his poetology was and obviously still is the reason for his ambivalent reception and the difficulties caused by his style. A thorough text analysis of Saiko`s essays exposed the clear relationship between his theoretical reflections and the art scene and cultural debate in the early 20th century. It revealed that the study of the trends of modern age is useful for understanding the author`s literary theory. A detailed examination of the results in his literary work and estate showed that for the most part Saiko`s concept of art is based on the application of formal aesthetic principles in literature. Thus the analysis put forward a new point of view: not only his discursive and narrative work can be seen in a new context, but it also becomes more accessible, paving the way for new readings and new interpretative possibilities.