The Schloss Leuk Foundation, which has expedited the reconstruction of the medieval castle at the same-named community of Oberwallis, has initiated a number of socio-cultural projects during the past years. The most sophisticated one of these is certainly the Spycher: Literaturpreis Leuk (Spycher: Literary Prize Leuk). The prize consists of a five-year right of residence for writers and primarily distinguishes authors whose works show a certain nearness to the special, border-crossing situation of the Wallis. Already during the Migration Period, it was a passage between northern and southern Europe – the element of the transitional belongs to the basic experience of this highly ambivalent landscape, while its alpine geology points to the durable. The Rhone valley opens bilingually towards the Lake Geneva, in German and French, and close to Italian, as well. Via the Simplon pass, it takes two hours to Milan, via St. Bernard it is the same distance towards Turin. At the Wallis, the European question arises at its most concrete.
Winners of the Spycher: Leuk Literary Award since 2001: Lukas Bärfuss, Marcel Beyer, Gerhard Falkner, Lawinia Greenlaw, Durs Grünbein, Thomas Hettche, Michael Hofmann, Barbara Honigmann, Felicitas Hoppe, Barbara Köhler, Martin Mosebach, Ulrich Peltzer, Daniel de Roulet, Gilles Rozier, Adam Zagajewski. For many authors, the unusual length of their stay has created a very special relationship to the region. The basic idea behind the award focuses on not one particular house but a whole network of places, enabling the prize-winners to live and work in very different spheres, in the Rhone valley or on a mountainside, in the Valaisian village of Raron where Rilke is buried, or at the heart of the medieval town of Leuk. The writer Felicitas Hoppe calls this ‘the most beautiful place in the world’.
Thomas Hettche
"This is the most beautiful place in the world!"
Felicitas Hoppe
"James Baldwin spent the winter of 1951-1952 in Leuk writing Go Tell It on the Mountain, a story that takes place in New York. Curiously enough, in this his first novel, it snows in Harlem and Central Park is covered with ice, as if the Leuk winter had invited itself into the Manhattan setting. You can’t stop yourself from looking out of the window when you’re writing in Leuk. That’s what happened to me with the Spycher prize."
Daniel de Roulet
This is the air where you learn to breathe deep
At the sight of white peaks, yet it aches
Like wisdom teeth sometimes beneath your jaw.
A wind to wake the dead… The cow-bells’ ring
Carries far far up, and down, the clear sound of bells
From the chapel, chocolate brown, by the village.
The stream and waterfall give off air so fresh
It makes you dizzy. The cable of the railway
Leads heavenwards directly through your stomach.
Man soon loses himself, as does the day,
The higher you climb into scree and snow.
It is the hour when the banks close
In the valley, the fairy gold loses its shine.
The cliff-face darkens and the cablecars stand still.
Durs Grünbein
"The mountains above all: an idea of space quite different to that one gets from the lowlands; perspectives expanded in multiple directions, new horizons, especially vertical, and time to see how one gets along with them. And to come again and go, to the valley. To find a language of one’s own, a language of the place, to make oneself accessible. And to retain something inaccessible, in the mind."
Barbara Köhler
"Language in the Valais, as I experience it, is first and foremost something flexible. Presumably this is the reason why I have not yet attempted to define precisely in which world I am when I am in Leuk."
Marcel Beyer
"To the west, the valley has such an epic scale that you can only measure in centuries and histories, the big pictures and big stories, and there is room for them all. It wouldn’t surprise me to see pilgrims on donkeys, Hannibal with his elephants, Charlemagne with his army, or the lion and the witch of Narnia staging their epic fight."
Lavinia Greenlaw
Translation from German: Katy Derbyshire
Pictures: © by Schloss Leuk Foundation