During the 25 years of Solitude’s existence, an impressive number of writers have passed through Akademie Schloss Solitude, some spending more time at this special place, some less. Some Solituders selected their favorite book from the large amount of literature that has been produced at Solitude and then left behind by fellows. Listen to them reading a few lines from their personal favorites, which they’ve dug out of the library’s bookshelves, and read about the memories and feelings influenced their choice.
Jean-Baptiste Joly reading Eugene Savitzkaya’s Les règles de Solitude in French and German.
Les règles de Solitude is one of the nicest surprises to have happened to me in my long time at the Akademie.
The author, Eugène Savitzkaya, lived here for a year and hardly came into contact with the other guests of the house. A few months after the completion of his fellowship, a wonderful letter arrived, which he had sent to me together with a French manuscript. I began to read it with great curiosity, in the hope that it would recount his time at Solitude. Les règles de Solitude has nothing to do with the Akademie; in his prose miniatures, Savitzkaya deals with daily life and immediacy and makes the secrets of life perceptible. What could it be that one so carefully hides in darkest depths and yet reveals »so clearly and obviously in the full glare of the sun?«
(Jean-Baptiste Joly, founding and artistic director of Akademie Schloss Solitude, on Les règles de Solitude ( English title The Rules of Loneliness))
