Niko Grafenauer Against the Background of Contemporary European Poetry and a Translation of a Selection of His Poetry Entitled Condition
NIKO GRAFENAUER AGAINST THE BACKGROUND OF CONTEMPORARY EUROPEAN POETRY AND A TRANSLATION OF A SELECTION OF HIS POETRY ENTITLED CONDITION
by
Jo2e Lazar
B.A., University of British Columbia, 1968
A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF
THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF ARTS
in
Comparative Literature
We accept this thesis as conforming to the
required standard
THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA
April, 1970 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study.
I further agree tha permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the Head of my Department or by his representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission.
Department of Comparative Literature
The University of British Columbia Vancouver 8, Canada
Date April 27, 1970 ABSTRACT
Slavic literary trends usually lag behind those of
Western 2ur0pe and normally transform them, lending them a specific national flavor. Ihis is also true of most twentieth-century Slovene poetic movements, especially in the period of Socialist Realism when most of the poetic styles introduced and practiced In Western Europe were almost absent from Slovene poetry. During recent years, however, styles have emerged in Slovene poetry that not only keep abreast of those of Western Europe, but also assume a cosmopolitan character. %e purpose of this thesis is to prove that
Niko Grafenauer is a West-European poet in the fullest sense, as well as to introduce his poetry to the English- speaking reader.
Through a discussion and a translation of his later poetry, an attempt is made to define his work in terms of his European contemporaries, to point to his innovations, and to suggest that his later poetry is close to what some writers call 'ideal,' 'pure,' or 'absolute poetry.*
The method of criticism is comparative. Throughout the monograph the aim is to describe and compare the authors and the works under discussion, and to arrive at synthesis by analyzing certain characteristic aspects and illustrating them by short quotations. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I should like to express my deepest thanks to Professor
Michael Bullock, Professor Zblgniev Folejewski, Professor
M.J. Yates and Professor Marketa C. Goetz Stankiewicz, as well as a number of other teachers from the Language and
Literature departments of the University of British Colum• bia, who have given me various kinds of assistance in the research and the writing of this thesis*
I am also exceedingly grateful to Professor Joseph
Paternost of the Pennsylvania State University, who kindly consented to check the accuracy of my translation, and to
Dr. M.J. Edwards for having proofread the thesis. TABLE OP CONTENTS
ABSTRACT. ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ill
TABLE OF CONTENTS iv
INTRODUCTION 1
PART ONE
NIKO GRAFENAUER AGAINST THE BACKGROUND OF CONTEMPORARY EUROPEAN POETRY
I. BACKGROUND 5
II.,NIKO GRAFENAUER: BIOGRAPHY 8
III. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN GRAFENAUER'S EARLIER AND LATER POETRY 9
IV. GRAFENAUER' S POETRY IN A SLOVENE CONTEXT 18
V., GRAFENAUER'S POETRY IN A SLAVIC CONTEXT OTHER THAN SLOVENE 23
VI.. GRAFENAUER'S POETRY IN A WEST-EUROPEAN
CONTEXT 30
VII. GRAFENAUER'S STYLE ...41
VIII. YUGOSLAV CRITICISM OF GRAFENAUER' S POETRY... .47
IX. CONCLUSION 51
PART TWO
CONDITION
traces on the skin
The Walk 57 Time and Fall 58 The House 59 Night 60 i The Speech of Silence Evening Downhill Hate The Chapter
a blade across the eyes
Fate St. Jerome A Winter Poem These and These A Blade Across the Eyes Rebirth
the trap
The Guest Peace...• The Rain. The Trap. Horror...
image s
Country.. The Flood Drought.. I Am Winter... Silence..
elohim
Alone The Vulture Fear Claws Tiredness.. Thirst The Head... vl
Widow 96 Elohim; 97 oondition
The Hand* .. 99 The Eyes 100 The Weight 101 You Are 102 The Streak 103 The Room 104
Still-Life
I 106 II 107 III 108 IV 109 V 110
Drawings
I 112 II 113 III 114 IV 115 V 116
FOOTNOTES 117
BIBLIOGRAPHY 12j6
1. Primary Sources .12j6
2. Secondary Sources 130 INTRODUCTION
Slavic literary trends usually lag behind those of
Western Europe and normally transform them, lending them a specific national flavour. This is also true of most twentieth-century Slovene poetic movements, especially the period of Slovene Socialist Realism when most of the poetic styles introduced and practiced in Western Europe were almost absent from Slovene poetry. During recent years, howeyer, styles have emerged in Slovene poetry that not only keep abreast of those of Western Europe, but also assume a cosmopolitan character. The purpose of this thesis is to prove that Niko Grafenauer is a West-European poet in the fullest sense of the word, as well as to intro• duce his poetry to the English-speaking reader.
The thesis consists of two parts: a monograph on
Niko Grafenauer's poetry and a translation of a selection of his later poetry, entitled Condition. The monograph is divided into nine sections. In the first section the main events in modern Slovene poetry that lead to the emergence of the poetry of Niko Grafenauer are discussed. In this section the appearances of Pesml stlrih (poems by the Foursome), a collection of personal and intimate poems by KoviS,
Zlobec, Menart and PavSek from 1953, and Dane Zajc's
Poggana trava (The Scorched Grass) from 1958, in which the 2
first condemnation of the Yugoslav Partisan Revolution in Slovene literature occurs, are taken as turning points
In contemporary Slovene poetry. Section two covers the most Important facts of Niko Grafenauer's life and work.
The third section presents a genetic outline of his poetry, which developed from the traditional Slovene nostalgic lyricism to a highly * impersonal' poetic idiom. In the fourth section, Grafenauer's work is eompared and contrasted to that of his Slovene contemporaries. Here an attempt is made to point out the uniqueness of his poetry and thus gain him the credit he has not yet fully received at home.
The fifth section deals with Grafenauer's poetry within a wider Slavic context; it concludes with the suggestion that Zbigniev Herbert is the only Slavic poet who writes in a style similar to that of Grafenauer. In the sixth section Grafenauer's form,,technique, and themes are discussed and compared with those of his West-European contemporaries with whom he has most in common. Here, as well as in the next section, it is suggested that the concentration of imagery connoting disintegration and alienation, some more restricted poetic forms, and some particular techniques make his poetry appear unique also within the framework of West-European poetry. The seventh section,, on Grafenauer's style, is a supplement to the 3 preceding sections. In this section Grafenauer's style is defined as a synthesis of the Imagist, Expressionist and Surrealist styles that results in a style which is
'impersonal,'*yet'subjective, * and which has been predo• minantly practised in Germany and France during the last twenty years. In section eight the Yugoslav criticism of
Grafenauer's poetry is discussed. Here it is pointed out that although much Yugoslav criticism is directed against
Grafenauer*s later poetry because of its high degree of
•impersonality' and heavy concentration of morbid Imagery, he deserves credit as an innovator in Slovene poetry. The conclusion consists of a recapitulation of the main points of the discussion and a few notes on Condition.
Part two of the thesis is a translation of a selection of Niko Grafenauer*s later poetry, entitled Condition. It is divided into eight cycles of poems. The first three come from his second book, Stlska Jezika (Language Under
Pressure), published in 1965; tne other three have appeared in magazines since then. As mentioned above, more is said about Condition ln the concluding pages of the monograph.
*Please see Appendix, pp. 133-4. PART ONE
NIKO GRAFENAUER AGAINST THE
BACKGROUND OF CONTEMPORARY
EUROPEAN POETRY I
BACKGROUND
Modern Slovene poetry began towards the end of the last century at the time when Symbolist and post-Symbol1st poetry had already been recognized in France. At this time such leading Slovene poets as Oton 2upandi5, Ivan Cankar,
Dragotln Kette and Jbsip Murn began to question the old poetic values; they retained, however, traditional poetic forms, and it was only with the advent of Futurism that new, more modern ways of expression were introduced into
Slovene poetry.
Slovene poetry between the wars reflects such European literary movements as Futurism, Expressionism, Parnassian, minor traces of Dadalsm and Surrealism as well as Neorealism, which gained ground about 1925 and developed eventually into Socialist Realism. Socialist Realism became prevalent in the late thirties* reached its peak during World War II in the Partisan poetry, and exhausted itself in the
Yugoslav reconstruction or program poetry. After 19^8, however, when Yugoslavia broke away from the East-European block, and particularly after 1950, with the beginning of the Yugoslav "self-management," pre-war themes, techniques and forms began to be re-introduced into Slovene poetry. 6
In 1953, for example, four young poets, Kajetan Kovifi*
Clrll Zlobec, Janez Menart and Tone Pavdek published Pesml gtlrlh (Poems by the Foursome), a book of poems predominantly about personal and Intimate problems. A number of poems, such as Pav5ek*s "Balada 1948," express a disappointment in the "new times."1 In addition, the poets published ln this book definitions of poetry opposing the tenets of
Socialist Realism. Pesml stlrlh was the first major break with Socialist Realism in Slovene poetry.
A further significant step in this direction occurred in 1955 when Ivan Mlnatti, the young partisan, concentration camp and socialist reconstruction poet published Pa bo pomlad prlsla (But Spring Will Gome), where he puts stress on love and nature instead of his previous social themes.
However, the real switch from rationalistic, utilitarian and propagandist poetry to a more personal, intimate or
"subjective" kind occurred in 1958. In this year a book of poetry entitled Poggana trava (The Scorched Grass) appeared; it contrasts strongly with Zlmzelen pod snegom
(The Evergreen Under the Snow), a collection of poems full of light and hope published soon after the war by the
Neoromantic Oton ZupanSiS.
The Scorched Grass was published by the daring young poet Dane Zajc at his own expense. In this book Zajc not 7
only gives precedence to personal problems at the expense of "common Interests," but also condemns the Yugoslav
Partisan Revolution. The lines, "Your young, white teeth/ were a sterile sowing, (brothei],^ are an antithesis- to
"It is beautiful, you know mother, it is beautiful to live,/ but what I died for, I would like to die for again!" by
Karl Destovnlk-Kajuh, the representative of the Slovene
Partisan poetry. Zajc's lines caused a great stir ln
Yugoslav literary and other circles. The commotion that followed is best expressed in "Spanski motlv" (The Spanish
Motif), a poem dedicated to Zajc by Mlroslav Kosuta in his MorJe brez obale (The Shoreless Sea) of 1963:
Tomorrow. Today you bellow, today you run, today you are free in this confined freedom: the pasture© is fenced with barbed wire. Tomorrow. Today you flail the sun, today you are the black bow of courage, today, among your own. Tomorrow. (Darkness will sow the pasture and you will lie somewhere. You'll feel the earth by your tired body: it will grow into you and with it you will grow, the greatest.) Tomorrow. Tomorrow they will drive you to the arena.
Bellow, black bull, darkly and moaningly bellow also for me.5 8
After the advent of the Scorched Grass and the poetry represented by it, as well as the opening of Yugoslav borders about i960, Slovene poetry went into full swing.
Today it reflects again some of the ideas as well as forms of West-European lyric. Niko Grafenauer is entirely a
West-European poet.
II
NIKO GRAFENAUER: BIOGRAPHY
Niko Grafenauer belongs to the last generation but one of Slovene poets. He was born in Ljubljana in 1940, and began to write poetry in High School. While studying
Comparative literature at the University of Ljubljana he wrote about, and translated, West-European and American poets who partly influenced his work. Particularly relevant in this respect are Rilke, Benn, Krolow and
Celan to whom he is probably most indebted. His first book of poetry vje,8er p-^ed praznlkom (On the Eve of a
Holiday), published in 196*2, was acclaimed by some critics as the best book of the year by a young poet in Yugoslavia.
With his second book Stiska jezlka (Language Under Pressure), published in 1965* Grafenauer placed himself among the outstanding young Yugoslav poets. After language Under
Pressure he published three cycles of poems: "Stanje" 9
(Condition), nTihoz*ltJa" (Still-Life), and "Rlzbe" (Drawings).
He lives in Ljubljana as a freelance writer and editor-in-
chief of Probleml, one of Yugoslavia's leading cultural
and literary reviews. Por his thesis on Rilke ne received
the University of Ljubljana MPre§em Award.*' Some of his
oritlcal work is being translated into French and Italian;
a selection of his latest poems, entitled Condition, is awaiting publication In English. Niko Grafenauer also writes humorous rhymes for children, and in this respect he succeeds Oton Supano'lS, the doyen of twentieth-century
Slovene poets, who died in 19^9. Ten thousand copies of
Grafenauer's Pedenjped. which replaces 2upanS15's Clolban, are now being reprinted.
Ill
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN GRAFENAUER'S EARLIER AND LATER POETRY
Niko Grafenauer is an original, sensitive, emotive, and cerebral poet who is capable of producing manifold
concatenations of metaphors and similes suggesting the
state of mind of modern man. He depicts this state mainly through his persona and the use of nature Imagery.
There is an essential difference, however, between his
earlier and later work in terms of theme, technique and
form. While in most of his earlier poems man and nature 10
elicit a favorable response from the poet, in his later work they produce either an antagonistic or an indifferent attitude; while much of his earlier poetry is personal, evocative, and declaratory, most of his later poems are highly 'impersonal' and suggestive; while in most of his earlier poems he employs forms influenced by Futurist poetics, in most of his later ones he has recourse to more traditional modes of expression.
In "Visitors to the Park," the first poem in On the
Eve of a Holiday* Grafenauer writes:
I don't know you, visitors to the park. Night climbed on your shoulders like an old, blind pldgeon searching for its nest.
Fondle night, visitors to the park. With wide traces let your soul cry into it to exhaustion....°
In accordance with the Slovene lyrical tradition, in this poem the poet is not only evocative, but also exhibits a high degree of emotion in the lines "With wide traces let your soul cry into it / to exhaustion." In "Letter,"
"quivering from tenderness," he feels the approach of his beloved, whose "trembling hands yearn to change into a goblet of love." In the early poems, the poet seeks
"no shelter from softness." His "soul hides a poem" which
"makes itself heard at the first gentle stirring of air." 11
Nature Is a consolation to him; he searches for a place where
he "can rest (hisi soul" because he is "still the unblossomed
flower in the blood" and '•as soft as tears at tree-roots."
"Tenderness, created from undulating wheat fields, nears
its shoulders" to him.
Then images which suggest sorrow and pain begin to
appear. The poet has visions of a "sterile landscape,"
"dark nights," and "death." "Within the blinds of black-
forebodings" he is "growing up"; "the pain behind
eyelids thickens"; "fatigue" begins "to fall" on him;
"the air is thick like the fear of death"; "the cruel
serpent's ceremony begins." There is no more inner whole•
ness and harmony; silence prevails. The poet "retreats
into silence within the veil of forgetfulness." He turns
"away from himself" and seeks "a happier world." "Peace
is a blessing for which {he; searchejf." When he finds it,
he is pacified,. and "the tender beetle1s wings glisten in
the dark." In the last oyole of his first book the poet
is concerned with "the secret shudders of creation,"
which means to him "intoxication," "love," "a song,"
"light," and "revelation." He wants his "soul to blend
with a single quivering of light"—"(Softness grows in
Jhimj like a mountain.)"7 His "Softness" is characteristic
of his earlier poetry: 12
From this mountain I watch the birds, the good chambermaids of longitudes, sent to be the hearts in the chest of blueness. Beneath me is the forest: the extending plain of brass. Summer winds the banner of green leaves. I am alone in time, blue from dusk. Bent: tenderness approaches its shoulders to me created from-the song of undulating wheat. Below are the fields, open stages of autumn. A little desolate in the growing darkness. In the hands of August a book whose leaves the wind turns over. (Softness grows in me like a mountain.)"
Like the majority of poems in On the Eve of a Holiday, this poem has strong traces of the traditional Slovene poetic idiom. Such words and phrases as "chambermaids,"
"hearts," "green leaves," "tenderness," and "undulating wheat" are absent from Grafenauer's later poetry, which in most respects begins with Language Under Pressure.
In his later poetry, and especially in Language Under
Pressure, nature offers the poet no consolation. On the contrary, the "gloomy winds that bar [his] way" at the beginning of the book become "corroded," "bitter," and
"coarse," "like claws." "The peace of the forest stares like a dead eye." "The waste country greens with spreading mould." "The desert is full of blazing apparitions."
"The rubble goggles from the dead slime"; "nettles click their sharp tongues"; "lizards" are hidden "under every stone"; 13
"snakes twirl upwards like thin smoke," "On the ground
a tuft of weeds twitohes like a beetle turned upside down." The earth is a "gaping jaw" which waits to swallow
the individual.
The individual "stands alone under the sky as long as jhej lives)." He loses "as long as [he) can stand somewhere."
"By a long spittle |hej is pinned to the toes that enliven frimj." He replies "with living water" to his beloved who
"in steep silence" seems a "fleeting shadow" "on the
treacherous stage of light." He walks "without peace
through the dark city flattened by the falling snow";
its "garret-windows are patched with wicked faces";"every
door jhe leansj upon opens into the night." "Streaked with blood and cool shadows" KLohim approaches; "silence en•
tangles" them;ttlike a little forked tongue anger fla#ies in (En/ohim* s} eyes. "9
In "Condition," "Still-Life" and "Drawings," Grafenauer reduces his declaratory statement to a minimum and assumes even a more detached attitude towards the world he describes.
Here are mainly such verses as "The hand droops mutely in
the dust like a snake's slough"; "In twilight the head is like a heavy swarm of bees"; "A rotten breath clings to your face like a spider's web"; "Thick threads hang from
the sky like dead rain"; "The air is full of silent strains Ik
of birds"; and "The cold weight of shifting cripples your motions."
In terms of theme Grafenauer's later period begins with Language Under Pressure, but it has strong roots already in Qn the Eve of a Holiday ln the cycles "Like
Dying" and "Loneliness"—subtitled "The Cult of Things"— where ^The cruel serpent's ceremony begins,"10 and "Dis• integration is the final aim of everything."11 In the same manner, some of his early lyricism reaches as far as
"Images" in the latter part of Language Under Pressure where "Thick pains slice all along / the hand shining in twilight like a long beam."12 In terms of form and most techniques, however, Grafenauer's later poetry begins about the middle of Language Under Pressure. From his poem
"Rebirth," partsl and 2, he uses exclusively pre-Futurlst poetic forms, or rather those forms which the Expressionists began to employ as a reaction against Futurist "dynamism" and its de-humanization of man.
While Grafenauer never employs any of the extreme forms
Futurists used to give their poetry greater visual or auditive Impact, most of his earlier poems consist of stanzas and lines of Irregular length. In many cases, for example in "On the Theme; Love" in On the Eve of a
Holiday and "So High" in the first part of Language Under 15
Pressure, he even uses modified forms of Mayakovski•s stairway stanza. In his later poetry, on the other hand,
Grafenauer—with the exception of two poems consisting of five-line stanzas—employs exclusively traditional quatrains followed by an occasional couplet. The quatrains are either in free verse or a variation of an abab rhyme scheme. Yet, compared to his short-lined "Summer" or the "Cantos" from On the Eve of a Holiday, where he en• deavors to bring out the sing-song quality of Slovene folk-poetry and the Symbolist melodiousness, ln his later poems he employs rhyme to stress the monotony of the condition he describes. Compared, too, to the irregular and broken rhythmic patterns of his earlier poems, the rhythm of the predominantly long verses of his later poetry is even and subdued.
Another feature that distinguishes Grafenauer's earlier and later forms are his titles. While most of his earler poem and cycle titles consists of phrases and in a few cases even sentences expressing a thought, all titles of his poetry from the middle of Language Under Pressure are—in the original—one word or a number only. Such titles from On the Eve of a Holiday as "Sometimes'it is Good to be Alone," "This City is Closer to Death than to Truth," and "The Song of Departure," sub-titled
"(For Chorus and Soloists)," stand in strong contrast, 16
for example, to such later titles as "The Head," "The
Hand," "The Eyes," and "The Weight." Besides emphasizing
the repetitive nature of the human condition, these de• personalize the human attributes and foreshadow the
'impersonal' tone of the poem, which he achieves, however, mainly through his technique.
In technique there are many features which account for
the difference between Grafenauer's earlier and later work, or rather the work written after "Rebirth." The most important are the substitution of suggestive Imagery
for statements that are both evocative and declaratory;
the employment of the second person singular pronoun to denote his persona in place of his earlier first and third person singular or the Impersonal form (with the exception of the cycle "Images," which nevertheless has all the other qualities of his later poetry); the elimination of categories of people from his poetry, with the exception of the poem
"Widow"; the discontinuance of the use of the evocative
"0"; the exclamation mark; ellipses; brackets; subtitles; question marks; and a number of other features which will be discussed at a later stage. "Hate" from the first part
of Language Under Pressure and "You are" from "Condition" are
typical of Grafenauer's later poetry. However, while
"You are" represents Grafenauer's later work in terms of form, theme and technique, "Hate"represents it only 17
In terms of theme and some techniques. Perhaps these two
poems should be quoted ln their entirety:
HATE
Hate grows like the shadow of a mountain towards evening. In an invisible blaze it twists things. Madness licks consciousness like smoke.
In twilight clairvoyants are crowned with the effort of their whole life. Chained they read the world like the palms of their hands.
It is terrible, when I consider it, to depart during sleep without any weight, without resistance like beauty, when I consider it,
after all, in spite of the dead, man has experienced nothing.13
YOU ARE
You are as though made of damp earth with a veil of dust on your eyes. Traces extend from you to all sides as if a pack of dogs were stretching your entrails; quietly spreads the dark stain of blood.
The spirit has stuck to the base of your skull like spittle, none buries the bones, shadows lengthen. The teeth lie in the soil like a brood of grubs, . the slimy skin of the wind grows between your fingers.
Thus it can be seen that these two poems differ greatly not only from "Softness" in On the Eve of a Holiday, but
also between themselves. The nostalgic lyricism of
"Softness" is replaced ln the first stanza of "Hate" by 18
an attitude of antagonism. This in turn is somewhat mollified in "You Are"; furthermore, it is exemplified
only in suggestive imagery, as compared to the assertive
statements of "Hate" and "Softness." The persona of "You
Are" is denoted by *you,• compared to the 'I' of the first
two poems. The form of the three poems differs; the last poem does not mention any categories of people, etc.
While Grafenauer's earlier poetry still has traces of
the Slovene Neoromantlc lyricism and is characterized by
such lines as "(Softness grows in me like a mountain.)",1^ and "Peace is the luxurious blessing I seek,"1^ his later work is typical of the contemporary European impersonal poetry and is epitomized by such lines as "Hate grows like
the shadow of a mountain towards evening,"17 and "You are as though made of damp earth with a veil of dust / on your eyes." Both by virtue of his ^impersonal' technique and his marked tendency towards the accumulation of powerful morbid imagery, Grafenauer is an Innovator in Slovene poetry.
IV
GRAFENAUER'S POETRY IN A SLOVENE CONTEXT
Although much of Grafenauer's poetry has been moulded by the Slovene lyric tradition, he not only breaks with 19
the traditional melancholy moaning, the Necromantic idiom,
and the functional poetry of new Yugoslavia, like most
of his contemporaries, but he also introduces a high
degree of^impersonality'into Slovene poetry. While many
of his contemporaries remain poets of hope and despair,
Grafenauer appears primarily a witness to the world and man's condition.
Nevertheless, there are traces of Grafenauer's later
style in a number of his predecessors. He has in common
with all major Slovene poets from Pregern onwards the
universality of his theme. In this respect the cerebral
poet Gene Vipotnik is particularly relevant. Vipotnlk
is predominantly concerned with man's inner world, the
cosmic order, and man's position in it. Some of Grafenauer's
imagery is also found in Vipotnik's poetry; for example
in his "Visit":
A Woman sits on my prison bed tonight, ominously silent like the grass on graves,
Where eyes should be two beetles,
Where heart should be, there a dark fist
the poisonous weariness that struck me down, fades from my veins, my torpid sinews
the night will pass....3-**
However, compared to Grafenauer who merely depicts man's 20
condition, Vlpotnik's depressions are followed by positive statements about existence where the pleasure of life normally defeats its sadness*
The next Slovene poets to whom Grafenauer can be compared are the pre-World War II religious Expressionists, Vodnik,
Kocbek and Vodusek. These three poets turned later in life to alienative poetry, where they use metaphors of free association as well as Whitmanesque lines as Grafenauer does; but compared to him, they fight against alienation at the moment of crisis. Similarly, the Slovene optimistic poets of dialectical materialism, Bor and Udovi2, are concerned like Grafenauer with contemporary philosophical trends, but unlike him, they rebel against man's inevitable fate and seek consolation In a brighter future for humanity,
Grafenauer shares with KoviS, Menart, Ziobec and PavSek, on the one hand, some of their nostalgic lyricism, on the other, some of their alienation. These are still poets of hope, however. There is a still stronger affiliation between Grafenauer and the generation of poets who come after those who re-introduced intimacy into Slovene poetry after the war, namely, Zajc, Taufer, StrniSa and
Vegri. Besides being nostalgic like the previous group, these poets have some of Grafenauer's cerebral structures and alienative imagery where they deal with the shattered 21
Inner world of the individual. Yet, compared to the persona in Grafenauer's poems, the persona of these poets either finds a renewed inner wholeness or becomes a self-destroying victim. Sasa Vegri also has some of Grafenauer's Neo- surrealist imagery.
Niko Grafenauer, however, is closest to his own genera• tion of Slovene poets. Among these are Marjan Kramberger,
Jo2e Snoj, Francl Zagoricnik and Tomaz" Salamun. The main tie between these poets and Grafenauer is the theme of alienation. But compared to Grafenauer's 'impersonality,*
Kramberger*s poetry eventually finds an inner wholeness based on personal will; most of the poetry of Jo2e Snoj is devoted to aestheticlsm emphasizing the Symbolist melodi• ousness and Grafenauer's early narcissism; the majority of poems by Franci Zagoricnik are thesis-poems which ' 19 lack Grafenauer's imagery; those of Tomaz" Salamun, although highly alienative, contain elements of volition.
Ferhaps Slovene alienative poetry reaches its first peak in the work of Toma2 Salamun. The degree of his alienation is best seen ln his "Eclipse 1": I tired of the image of my race and emigrated. Out of long spikes I weld the members of my new body. The entrails will be old rags. 22
The decaying cloak of a carcass will be the cloak of my solitude. From the depth of a marsh I'll pluck the eye. From pierced slabs of disgust I'll build a hovel.
My world will be a world of sharp edges. Cruel and eternal.20
Yet, compared to Grafenauer's alienative poetry, this is much more a poem of commitment. Most of Salamun's poems are poems of commitment or satirical, as those of Enzens- berger, or reistic, as nearly all those in namen pelerine
(The Purpose of the Cloak), the second book he published at his own expense. On the other hand, in contrast to
Salamun's reistic, or rather Neodadaist and Neofuturist poetry, most of Grafenauer's has strong traces of trad• itional prosody. Besides paying close attention to stanzaic form and rhythm, he also rhymes 50$ of his poems from
"Rebirth" onwards.
In spite of the similarities between Grafenauer and his Slovene contemporaries, his later poetry remains a novelty. This is due mainly to his'impersonal' technique and the heavy concentration on imagery which suggests alienation and disintegration. V
GRAFENAUER*S POETRY IN A SLAVIC CONTEXT OTHER THAN SLOVENE
The relationship "between Grafenauer's work and the rest of Yugoslav poetry seems to be similar to his relation• ship to Slovene poetry. Marked alienation is found even in such poets as Miroslav Krlfe'2a. His poem "Snow" is a good example of this:
Against the white, transparent snow all masks, all things look dirty.
-here all Is ice and greyness.
Through the snow's wise quiet I walk and feel a sterile pain.
I know all this will pass, and traces of myself will vanish even quicker than the snow beneath my feet. And none will know that I was here and then was gone.21
PetkoviS is full of gloomy moods similar to those of
Grafenauer; Desanka Maksimovidc'deals with the disintegrating inner cosmos of man; Dusan Matid is concerned with the problem of communication; and the work of such Serbian poets as Ristic-, Dedinac, VuSo and DaviCo contains much Surrealist
Imagery. Vasko Papa has some of Grafenauer's Neo-surrea- list imagery as well as some of his hermeticlsm. In the poetry of the Macedonian Gogo Ivanovski, existentialism similar to that of Grafenauer is evident. Perhaps Ivanovski's 24 poem "The Voice" is the most explicit expression of French existential thought in Yugoslav poetry. In this poem
Ivanovski writes without restraint:
I am the beginning and the end,
I am the moment, the hour, the year— time. • • Without me there is nothing.
I am the Creator; All was born in my eyes, in them it will be burled. For here, alas, I am omnipotent. z
Such lines from Macedonian poetry as Matev&ki's "stone in my hands and in the eyes, mud?"2-^ and Sopov's "From the hard jaw of the time my word proceeds / and springs 24 up in the fields with the teeth of seeds" also resemble
Grafenauer1s wo rk.
Perhaps the Slav poet who is most comparable to him
(as far as works available in English translations are concerned) is the Pole Zbigniev Herbert. Like the poetry of Grafenauer, that of Herbert is permeated with contempo• rary existential philosophy. Like Grafenauer, Herbert too is concerned with the ontological problem of the "I," the difficulties of communication, and the expressive potentialities of language. There are also similarities in their imagery, although Herbert's is not presented with 25
the same degree of ^impersonality'as that of the later
Grafenauer. The likeness between the two poets can be suggested by Juxtaposing some lines from their poetry:
Herb.: ...there is no limit to decay. All that will be left after us in the black earth will be scattered syllables. Accents over nothingness and dust.25
Graf.: Dust, which vibrates like an excess of silence, dust, rising higher than the beauty of the world, dust dust,
the axis of dust, - I recall.26
Herb.: we shall be saved each one alone2?
Graf.: Each from our own side we approach midnight.2^
Herb.: we have a common date of birth
date of death Q a common loneliness "
Gi-af.: In the dusky forest where a cool light flows through „ (the peaks everyone is as much alone as the deaf.-3
Herb.: after a loud whisper of silence this voice resounds like a spring of living water31 Graf.: silence echoes around and the evening stops like a motionless thrust into wood full of unspoken threats.32
Herb.: powerful Jaws of insects consume the silence of the earth-^ Graf.: The rain swarms into the open ear; slowly it begins to pierce the polished peace of the world.34 Herb.: We live in the narrow bed of our flesh.35 26
Graf.: The shadow that sits in you veils your every thought.36
You lean over your thoughts, as over a bleeding vein.37 Herb.: My inner voice has nothing to advise
you hear only syllables stripped of all meaning3o
Graf.: The image abandons the fleeing birds
In the emptiness that follows the unexpected fall— full of dread silence, like a precipice— they call each other without an echo.39
Herb.: slowlyythe water fills the shapes of the feet which have vanished*^
Graf.: Wherever you turn you face slimy snow into which your dark figure will one day be lmprinted.**l
There are also some essential differences between the two poets. Besides being wider ln scope,;much of Herbert's poetry is suffused with subtle irony aimed either at himself or at social and political situations. Grafenauer's work is devoid of irony, and his social and political comments are minimal. He has only one poem which can be interpreted politically. It has the ambivalent title
"These and These":
These walk roads, dust sticks to them like age, these come out of twilight 27
and loiter on thresholds. Muddy waters move "by like heavy flocks. But the forest stands as if drowned.
These disappeared in it, allowing their thoughts to take over. These in masks, faceless, waited for them with swords.
On rainy nights when lights are turned out, evil images assemble on the circumference of the country preparing Itself for new treasons.^2
This poem seems to be a comment on the Yugoslav partisan war and on the "new class" as expounded by Milovan Djllas.
However, such lines from Grafenauer's poetry as "The
country where I walk rots under the feet of strangers";
"The sickle pauses high in my consciousness";43 "A shadow pursues man like a father's curse in this country";
"Never can a hand brothered with death as with a sword /
subdue these winds...-"^ and "no one pierces the neck of the flycatcher,"^5 allow a number of poems to be read on a socio-political level. These are not unlike Herbert's
"Wringer":
The inquisitors are in our midst.
The bed-sheets., which they carry out of the wringer-shop, are like empty bodies of witches and heretics.^""
Nevertheless, neither Grafenauer nor Herbert can be
compared to such Russian poets as Yevgeny Yevtushenko, 28 who seems to continue the role of the traditional Russian poet in his fight against oppression. Yevtushenko*s
"Coliseum"**"? reminds the reader more of Spartacus, and
Horace speaking of the immortality of the poet, than of
the'impersonal' European poets who speak not for man but as men. On the whole, while comparisons can well be made between contemporary Russian poetry, as presented by George Reavey, and contemporary Slovene poetry, Gra• fenauer's later work has to be seen as an exception.
To be sure, there are similarities between Grafenauer and
'the new Russian poets.' Voznesensky, for example, has much of the same kind of idiom as Grafenauer; Sosnora has some of Grafenauer's Surrealist imagery. Many poets deal with lonliness, particularly Brodski whose ghostly city and landscape imagery resembles Grafenauer's^ But like his Slovene contemporaries, these poets are either personal poets expressing despair or hope, or committed ones, satirizing man or rebelling against society.
According to a recent article by Tsvetan Stoyanov in
Books Abroad, in Bulgaria there apparently is no poetry of note comparable to that of the later Grafenauer.
Stoyanov says that a group of poets, who were young boys during the war, began in the late fifties to discard
the "existing poetic canons and cliches," "introduced 29
new themes and problems hitherto unexplored in Bulgarian
literature," "did away with the pomposity and formality
which had stifled many poets of preceding decades,"
"and restored to poetry its intimacy and spontaneity,
that immediacy of feeling which belongs a priori to poetry."
However, Stoyanov adds that Lyubomir Levchev, the repre•
sentative of these poets, whose role is similar to that
of Yevtushenko and Voznesensky in Russia, "stayed within
the optimistic tone characteristic of modern Bulgarian
poetry.,.." Stoyanov says that Levchev has been influenced
"to a certain extent by the poetry of Mayakovskl, Lorca
and T.S. Eliot...but he remains true to his optimism
and never even approaches the morbidity and excessive
ambiguity typical of a considerable part of the 'associative'
poetry of Western literature."
Some minor comparisons can be made between Grafenauer
and the Czech poet Miroslav Holub. Such lines from Holub
as "With mouse-like teeth / the rain gnaws at stone," or
"The trees parade through the town / like prophets''^^
contain metaphors not unlike Grafenauer's. But on the
whole, Holub is a committed poet who expresses his views
on a scale which varies from subtle irony to direct attack.
Such lines as the following from Holub's "The Lesson"
are never found in grafenauer's work: 30
Under the classroom door trickles a thin stream of blood.
Por here begins the massacre of the innocents.
Still, regardless of the analogies discussed above, it is chiefly when Slavic poetry has the characteristics of We st-European * impersonal' poetry that it resembles
the poetry of the later Grafenauer.
VI
GRAFENAUER'S POETRY IN A WEST-EUROPEAN CONTEXT
Niko Grafenauer's later poetry can be best defined in terms of the characteristics of some West-European poets, particularly the German and French N impersonal' poets with whom he has most ln common. The affinities between Grafenauer and these poets are evident in his
themes and form, especially some technical devices.
Like the poetry of Gottfried Benn, who is considered by some the creator of the modernist idiom,^ Grafenauer's later poetry, although on the whole not hermetic, is addressed to no one in particular. It is not an attempt at communication, but an act of self-comprehension.
Paradoxically it does possess a general appeal to the reader's intellect as well as to his emotions. Grafenauer's 31
poems are a record of a fragment of one man's experience.
As those of Ezra Pound, they are concise and composed of condensed images. Although he uses much Neosurrealist imagery, as do the German poets who were influenced by
Georg Iraki, his poems are not the result of 'free associa• tion' as in the case of Dylan Thomas, or Jean ChStard who claims to do 'automatic writing', but are rather the result of design, as in Andre Pieyre de Mandiargues, Heinz Piontek or Karl Krolow. Like the Imagists and the German and
Frenchvimpersonal' poets, he juxtaposes Images in order to create a special effect. He chooses his words care• fully, as for example Ungaretti does, in order to make his poetry pellucid and precise.
In contrast to the Socialist Realists, or any other kind of committed poet, for Grafenauer, as for the majority of contemporary European poets, poetry means mainly the creation of a new language; his whole poetic process implies a search for the new and the right word. And like the Anglo-American Imagists, he goes to the 'root of the thing* in his search for the 'mot juste.' Although he attempts to stretch the limits of
w language by naming what "has no name 53 as Guillevic does, or by talking about the •,unsayablew^ like Ingeborg 32
Bachmann, his poetry is as simple and modest as that of Rene' Guy Cadou.-^ Like Krolow, who lives only "In
the company of a few / Disobedient words,"~*6 or Benn
for whom "the man of today" means "Crises of expression and bouts of eroticism,"57 Grafenauer experiences his
"deadly crisis" when "language too revolts."-^
Yet he continues to depict the world about him or rather to create his own reality, endeavouring to write as far away from himself as possible. Like the
Imaglsts, he strives for detached and impartial des• cription. But compared to the traditional poets, as well as his own early poetry where he is "strong ln the mouth,"59 Grafenauer's later poetry comes to life through his "skilfull hand."60 Like Cadou for whom "at a slide of [his] open hand / Dark silent things relive"61 or Andre' du Bouchet who goes "no farther than [his] paper"62 ln the act of creation,
Grafenauer uncoils outcries which rise "into emptiness
n 63 like a whip" "from beneath [hi sj cool fingers." Like most of the 'impersonal' poets, Grafenauer employs pre• dominantly nature imagery in his treatment of the contemporary man and his world; but as is often the case in Imagist and contemporary French and German poetry, especially that of Paul Celan, the concerns of Grafenauer's 33 later poetry are Implicit rather than explicit.
Grafenauer's major concerns are man's existential and alienated position in the world and his relation• ship with himself, other men and nature. These concerns or themes can be discussed under the following three headings: the "I," existentialism, and alienation.
THE "I"
One of Grafenauer's foremost concerns is the onto- logical problem of the "I." This concern is noticeable throughout his later poetry and is exemplified in his persistent use of the second person singular pronoun
"you"to denote his persona. Grafenauer's "you" stands for man's mythical, Intellectual and emotional concept of himself as it was sanctioned by Western tradition. It is Rimbaud's 'un autre,' except that compared to Rimbaud's
•another self,' which has Pythagorean characteristics and which is, after Descart, apparently located in the mind,
Grafenauer's 'self assumes no metaphysical proportions, has no particular location and comprises merely the persona's whole being. Thus, Grafenauer's persona has
'•grown intoDLts] skin that becomes/flabbier every day";^ it waits "within [itself] like a sentry";6^ its%ame narrows in the dark";66 _ts "skin silently laughs"^ or 6fi -i "experiences its shudder"; "A still flame gnaws [it] under the skln";69 and it is "trapped into this to-be-outside- yourself-alone."
To be sure, Grafenauer's later poetry is not devoid 34
of "stubborn forms."?! In "Rebirth" Plato Is still ln his "hand, alone, as if he combined everything / glued into a slime of ideas where a blind bird / like a blaze grasps out of the dark,"?2 but already in this poem "the dizzy consciousness returns to nature," and in "I Am," the most declaratory poem of his later poetry, Descartes' "thought" becomes "pain." The central line of the latter poem "The pain that I am 73 enters into me like a knife" epitomizes Grafenauer's stand on the ontologlcal problem of the "I"—pain, rather than thought, makes Grafenauer's man aware of his existence.
Grafenauer's concern with the identity of the "I," which has occupied poets and philosophers since
Pythagoras, is also the concern of a number of other modern and contemporary poets, including the Spanish.
Like Grafenauer's, Valejo's persona "shall not succeed in freeing itself"; 74 Neruda's "rolled over dying of its own death";75 ana that of Octavio Paz looks at itself, and what it sees is—according to con• temporary existential philosophy—its "own creation. "7<
EXISTENTIALISM
Like most contemporary West-European poetry, 35
Grafenauer's work Is suffused with existential and solipsistic philosophy. This is exemplified either in declaratory statements—particularly before the middle of Language Under Pressure—and/or in a more subtle treatment of such topics as emptiness, silence, darkness and disintegration-?-poetic symbols of a universe devoid of supernatural manifestations.
Like the personae of most poets since Nietzsche,
Grafenauer's man is "here-to-the-end-alone";^7 fce loses "as long as (he] can stand somewhere"; ^ "only death separates [him] from emptiness";^ and in On the
Eve of a Holiday he even ventures to utter: "this last thing that glows, I am: —god!"^ Like Valery's
Paust who sees "nothing alive" above or below the
"debris that coats the earth,"®1 Grafenauer's man is the sole creator of his own reality and a believer in his own experience only. He knows that under the sky "any escape Is Impossible...but it is important
On to have sufficient fuel / for the whole long winter" because "he who has nothing else quietly freezes."^ Por Grafenauer's man—as for that of Heinz Piontek 84 to whom "a spider spins its thread into emptiness"
"disarmed winds flow ...along the grey emptiness of
the gods / that resounds like thunder";®5 «»at twilight winds hang like empty sleeves";^and "the truce begun 36
in emptiness gives way."87 As for Karl Krolow's man to whom "stillness comes with wings,"®^ or Plontek's for whom wa light fantastic silence runs like coolness off the walls,"89 for Grafenaueris man "silence trickles"
"the air is full of silent exertion of birds";91 "a
flower blooms into the deaf time";92 Hawor m dangles on a thin spittle Into the stillness";93 "the flames quiver like mute moths";^ "silently pours the scurf of the dead";95 and "darkness is like pitch heaped in the silence / pouring over jhiml".^6 Like Krolow's man who sees "Darkness fremblej its lips";^ Gottfried 98
Benn's man who looks "into the night's Jaws"; °*
Georg Trakl's "dying warriors" whom "night embraces,"99
Grafenauer's man starts "slowly descending / under the surface, the sweet, soft step / into the quiet, open night";100 "a licking flame [chases himj into dark• ness";101 "blindness spreads before [himj like an in• finite possibility";102 and his "spirit bars itself into the dark."103
Grafenauer's man who already in On the Eve of a
Holiday realizes that "disintegration is the final aim of everything,"10^ continues in his later poetry, to
"take over the fleetingness of shadows"1°5 and watches with Georg Trakl's man "transient images go under."106 37
He is aware of the atomistic nature of his universe and sees the "dust at the climax when it passes from itself into emptiness, / but at the same moment sprawls again into itself, / as if burdened by a weight";10'' and he projects himself into the time when "a heavy eyelid closes over jhimj and never opens again";10** when "a blade of grass / will sprout in {his) eye";10^ and "a stone (will grow) in |Ki^ empty hand,"110 Like Dylan Thomas* persona who in "Pern Hill" is 'green and dying,' Grafenauer's man knows that "by taking you, the earth submits."111 Bit this realization partly contributes to his alienation.
ALIENATION Grafenauer's existentialism also forms part of his alienation theme*. This theme is further exemplified in his color,, sound,, smell, city and nature imagery, as well as in the treatment1 of such topics as loneliness, fatigue, dryness and paralysis.
Grafenauer's later poetry knows no colors, except those of night, twilight, shadows, and those evoked by such phrases as "greening silence," "brown fog," "pale streak" as well ss other descriptions without the use of epithets. Light appears in Grafenauer's later poetry very seldom, and then mainly in streaks or 38
or beams. In one case "full fists of light hiss through 112 the branches and strike him in the face." The same applies to sound. Grafenauer's later poetry takes place predominantly ln silence. There are,, however, a number of particular sounds or noises which "flap 113 up once in a while" throughout his later poetry.
The most common among them are "hissing," "rustling,"
"clicking," "droning," "crackling" and "squealing."
In addition, synesthesia is produced by such phrases as "silent," "dumb," and "muffled laughter," "mutters emptily," "silently pours," "a heavy uprush of air," and "mute motions,"-. The human voice has in Grafenauer's later poetry the same kind of relationship to sound as light has to darkness or twilight. It is exemplified only in "outcries" which cut occasionally into the silence with which Grafenauer's man Is "arched."H4
Except for the "scent of the soil" which "licks" Graf• enauer's man "now and then,"11^ the most common smell epithets of Grafenauer's later poetry are those which denote decay. Prevalent among them are the adjectives
"rotten," "sour," and "mouldy," as well as their derivatives. The color, sound, and smell imagery of
Grafenauer's later poetry intensifies the loneliness of his persona. 39
Like the personae of most West-European poets since
Baudelaire, Grafenauer's man is a lonely man. More•
over, he seeks no human contact. He, who in On the
Eve of a Holiday is "alone, with a heart bloating like
1- a fruit," 6 ls in Language Under Pressure "gnawed
by loneliness" which "rolls over {him| like a boulder,"11^
and in "Drawings" he is still "alone among dispersed
winds as though at a roadless crossing"11®—"Wherever
[he reaches, he is] alone."119 in silence and darkness—
or at most in twilight—he walks through the "black
canyons"120 of his city "made flat by the falling 121 snow," and watches his "shadow wavering on the 122 wall like a spectre." Like that of Georg Heym,
the city of Grafenauer's man is inhabited by strangers,
their shadows, their dead and their antagonistic objects.
Thus, Grafenauer's man halts "on the empty square...
amid the habits of foreign people" J whose "shadows
cross on the damp ground like swords,"12^ and whose
"gallows stand in [his] memory like an empty door";
"the dead," who "are like weight," keep Grafenauer's
man company, be it in his city, so "(he isjnot alone, wl26
or "beneath the cover of the earth to warn the living."1 27
During his wanderings through the "dark city,"I2®
"smeared by a slimy weight that drags (hin|, "129 "fatigue ko illumines |hlnj) sometimes, "l3° or it "falls on [hisj limbs as though they were darkening";131 the dryness of the Waste Land "floods (his) mouth and slowly chokes (him], "l32 so his "tongue protrudes from (his]mouth like a swarm of black flies";133 and " a gloomy immobility weighs
1 (him} down,-" 34 go ne "Jipreads his| history numb as in amber.wl35 AS Georg Heym's persona who "looks angrily at where far away in solitude the last houses stray into the country,"136 Grafenauen*s man flees from "this city" which "is closer to death than to truth,wl37 and seeks consolation in nature; but his landscape becomes "a blanket drawn over the dead," and as desolate, dry and sterile as that of Nerval, MallarmeV T.S. Eliot,, Montale as well as numerous West-European impersonal poets who, since Rilke, have turned to nature for the main source of their imagery. Grafenauer's alienation theme, however, is not compatible with his later forms,: which, as has been pointed out, mean a return to tradition.
Grafenauer;' s traditional poetic forms, or rather those forms which the Expressionists began to use as a reaction,tagainst the Futurist 'de-poetizatlon* of poetry,, are similar, for example, to those used by Nerval in "Fantaisle,wl38 Rainer Marie Rilke in "Die Erblindende,wl39 Paul: 2ech ln "Das Grubenpferd,f1^0 41
Georg Heym in wDer Gott der Stadt,nXMa and especially
w li 2 to that used by Alfonso Gatto in Erba e latte, " *' and Paul Celan in "Ieh bin allein."1^ On the whole, the forms used by the West-European*impersonal' poets compare well to those used by Grafenauer before: his
"Rebirth" In the middle of Language Under Pressure whereas his consistent use of more restricted forms from this point onwards makes his later poetry unique and adds a special feature to his style.
VII GRAFENAUER'S STILE
Much of what has been discussed so far concerns Grafenauer's style. In this section, therefore, at• tention will be given to those stylistic features which it was not possible to discuss previously and/or those which make his later work unique.
The most appropriate term for Grafenauer's later poetry as far as style is concerned is the label "impersonal"*in the sense in which it has been applied to the work of those German and French poets who have been influenced by Gottfried Benn and Rene Guy Cadou. It is the style of poetry practiced predominantly during the fifties and sixties in Germany and France 42
and represented mainly by Karl Krolow and Ives
Bonnefoy. Its beginnings, however, reach to pre-World
War II times,, when Benn and Cadou did most of their writings, and when the work of such poets as Lehmann, 144 Ponge, Pollain and Michaux began to appear. In 1952 Joseph Ghiari says of Henri Michaux, for example, that he is a "poet"whom one cannot link up with any tradition or group," that he "is above all a witness l4*> of his time," J and that he "believes only in sub• jective reality" and "refuses to accepti: anything which is not: personal experience."1^6 In his. introduction tor> Contemporary French Poetry. Alexander Aspel defines the poets of his anthology as "impersonal,, yet subjedtive—passionate, fascinated, or simply waking—witnesses of man's fate4**? These are the poets,, who, in the words of Gottfried Benn, strive for the "ideal poem," that is "'the absolute poem, the poem without faith, the poem without hope, the poem addressed to no one, the poem made of words which you assemble in a fascinating way.'"-1- Much of Benn's poetry and critical writing is concerned with the 'impersonal* nature of poetry, or rather with the "lost ego," "lost identity," "the loss of 149 the lyrioal 'I*" in modern poetry. .Patrick 43
Bridgwater compares Benn's poetry to "what T;S. Eliot
calls the 'first voice,'h15° as distinguished from
that of the "'second voice*"151, for example Brecht's1^2
which "is addressed to an audience...and is by defini•
tion not wholly undldactic."153 As a matter of fact,
Brecht says that the main role of the artist is to
teach, besides entertaining.1^* In the introduction
to Contemporary German Poetry, edited and translated
by Gertrude Clorius Schwebell, Victor Lange says that
the poetry of Gottfried Benn has the character of a
"private and reserved monologue"155 an<_ an "esoteric
aloofness, wl56 that it "indicates an extreme resistance
to individual Involvement in the vagaries of history...",
and that "Benn is entirely preoccupied with the
synthetic capacities of the poetic process, that is to
say, with the possibilities of finding compelling
forms of speech by which the poetic intelligence can
preserve itself alert and detached as a recorder of
detailed and fragmented images.nl57 Lange considers
"Gottfried Benn, in many ways the most widely influential modern German poet..."158 and makes the following
comments on the nature poets influenced by Gottfried
Benn in Schwebell's anthology:
The success of these German "nature" poets—the term is an ambiguous and misleading one—is due to 44
their refusal to Indulge in either bucolic genre sketches or in pseudo-metaphysical effusiveness. They are seldom deceived as to the intellectual distance of the modern poet from the idyllic song or the en• thusiastic ode; for it is not its sentimentality but a high degree of deliberate artifice that characterizes the most interesting of this recent nature poetry....
At its best, contemporary German nature poetry what• ever its metaphors is, for this reason and others, not straight-forward or photographic but "abstract": it conveys a multidimensional view of the world that the human being must consider more as a projection than a reliable chart. Nothing is more characteristic of the best poets in this anthology than their accept• ance of a reflective—as against a prescriptive—role, and their refusal, therefore, to teach, admonish, or deplore. The poet is a solitary figure who will neither affirm—unless it be in an authoritarian Marxist context— nor profitably attack, but Illuminates the conditions, natural or cultural, of his life. It is characteristic of the younger German poets that; even when they speak, often in strident tones, of their distaste for the contemporary scene, and their distrust of all proffered forms of social harmony, they do so without self- importance, without pathos, and above all without the Utopian fervor of their Expressionist predecessors.159
Karl Krolow says of the "new German nature poetry"
that it "presents conditions, instead of reactions."1**0 When talking about Benn's 'absolute language,' Rudolf
Nlkolaus Maler says:
Absolute language is loveless. The thing entangled in Itself rejects man; it raises the claim of managing without him. Such claim prevents any ethical attitude. Autonomous language is devoid of posture (gebfirde). Hence its tendency towards the inhuman and impersonal.
What Aspel, Benn, Eliot^ Bridgwater, Lange, Krolow and Maler talk about;is what Marcel Raymond refers
to in his ^e Baudelaire au SurrealIsme when he suggests 45 that the poet's "first condition is to forget one• self, to break the limits of the self, and to go beyond personal lyricism." Raymond, for whom the 'ideal poem' means "an object existing for itself, without relation to its creator, his sentiments, or states of mind,"162 sees the seeds of contemporary West-European
'impersonal* poetry in a number of French literary move• ments of the first half of the twentieth century.
The *impersonal* poetic style is marked by an eclectic trend. It is a synthesis of the Imagist, Expressionist and Surrealist styles which combined into a unique poetic idiom, often referred to as the 'modernistic idiom.' The main features the 'Impersonal' poets took from their predecessors are the Imagists' striving for detached and impartial presentation of imagery, the Expressionists' subjectivity, and the Surrealists' probing into various spheres of the human consciousness as well as their language experimentation. Thus, modernistic poetry is 'impersonal', yet subjective; it lacks the Imagists' pretense at objectivity as well as the Expressionist moralizing content; and it is characterized by its deviation from ordinary speech in its presentation of imagery deriving from the subconscious. The apparent paradox in the phrase 46
'impersonal, yet subjective,' somewhat diminishes if
the relative nature of these two epithets is kept in mind and if 'impersonal' poetry is compared to the
traditional European melancholy longing, to the loose romantic emotionalism, to confessional, self-indulgent,
self-asserting, prescriptive, incltive, satirical, or any kind of committed poetry. In addition,
'impersonal' poetry deals with universal, rather than personal, • cosmopolitan, rather than parochial concerns.
The main aim of the 'impersonal' style Is 'pure* or
'absolute* poetry. This implies a search for truth as well as an attempt to induce a thrill; but in order to achieve both, truth must remain "at least partially clothed.1,16:3
Within the framework of contemporary West-European poetry Grafenauer's later work is quite unique for
its accumulation of morbid imagery, for its persistence
in the employment of the second person singular to
denote its persona, for its one-word titles, and for
its consistent use of restricted stanzaic forms. In
addition,- it is distinguished by an abundant use of
the simile. Compared to most German 'impersonal' poets
who since the "Duino Elegies" have been striving towards
the "absolute metaphor,wl64 Grafenauer employs the simile to a large extent. His poetry abounds in the operators "like," "as," and "as though," which make his poems direct and concrete. The combination of these features makes Grafenauer's later work highly
'impersonal' even within the framework of West-European
^Impersonal' poetry. It is mainly due to his'impersonality' and the accumulation of imagery suggesting alienation and disintegration that much of Yugoslav criticism is directed against his later poetry.
VIII
YUGOSLAV CRITICISM OP GRAFENAUER'S POETRY
Although Yugoslav critics give Grafenauer credit for his sensibility, facility of expression, his met• aphorical language, and other poetic abilities, most of them see his later: poetry as a negative phenomenon. Their main reasons for this are—in their own words— Grafenauer's "alienated" and "existential stand," his "solipsism," "narcissism," "self^-feeling," and "self-enjoyment," his "lack of social comment" and "lack of solutions," his "coldness," the "narrowness of his themes," and his "proneness to native and foreign influence." Not all of them agree on all points, however. Most critics are of the opinion that Gott- 48
fried Benn is Grafenauer's "god-father," that Heidegger influenced his philosophy, and that Gregor Straisa is his main native influence, but they present opposing views when they discuss the character of Grafenauer's poetry and his treatment of the difficulties of com• munication. While France ForstneriS, Taras Kermavner and France Vurnik state that Grafenauer's poetry "has not"been experienced," that "it lacks emotion," and
that "it is the work of the head rather than of the heart,"^^ Milivoje MarkovlS and Herman Vogel emphasize
the "poet's powerful emotions," "his inner tensions," and "the artistic force" which "give rise to such
emotional poetry."l6^ While Boris Paternu, the most
authoritative Slovene critic, implies that in Language
Under Pressure, whose literal translation is "The
Crisis of Language," Grafenauer's main problem is his
"own crisis," that is, he has nothing to say1**?
(Kermavner repeats approximately the same thing in
his discussion of On the Eve of a Holiday). Vogel
and Markovld deal at great length with Grafenauer's main concern in Language Under Pressure, they stress
the need to deal with the difficulties of communication
in our world, they say Grafenauer is concerned with
"vital issues," and they consider him a "true representative k9
of his age."16^ France ForstneriS also considers Grafenauer "a convincing poetic herald of his own generation," but he, like vurnik, thinks that to write about alienation means to "alienate oneself," that is,
"to foster alienation,"1''0 ForstneriS, Vurnlk, Paternu and Kermavner in general assume a negative attitude towards Grafenauer's later poetry.
In the light of the available sources, it becomes evident, however, that Niko Grafenauer occupies a unique and important position in contemporary Slovene poetry. Besides having introduced into Slovene poetry a high degree of'impersonality'and an aggregate of imagery suggesting the morbid state of mind of modern man, he forms a significant link between those poets who re-introduced personal concerns into post-World War II Slovene poetry and the appearance of Reistlc, or rather Neofuturist and Neodadalst poetry in recent years. It is the kind of poetry represented by Dane Zajc, Niko Grafenauer and Tbmaz Salamun that paved the way for the appearance, in Slovene print lately, of modes of expression unthinkable a decade ago. Vladimir Jerman's "Kava denikotin" (Deniootlnized Coffee) in a recent issue of Probleml is a good example of this. This poem contains, among various avantgarde statements, 50
a corruption of Ivan Cankar's 'sacred* words "Home• land, you are like health,". Jerman changes these
to:
o
homeland
you
are
like
a
whore171
Hegardless of its aesthetic value, such a statement
pre-supposes greater freedom of expression for the
Slovene artist.
During recent; years Yugoslav criticism has been moving rapidly away from the generalizing dogmatic
to the less normative analytical method of criticism.
In respect to their didacticism, there is only a difference in degree between these two methods, as
there is between analytical and comparative criticism.
With his later poetry Niko Grafenauer has joined those poets who endeavor not to influence the reader's point of view. Perhaps the critic too will one day devise a method of criticism whereby the imposition of his 51
views on the reader will be reduced to a minimum.
IX
CONCLUSION
During the last twenty years most of the poetic techniques, themes and forms which were almost absent from Slovene poetry in the period of Socialist Realism have been re-introduced. In addition,-a number of other styles, such as the * impersonal', the reistic, and that of those committed poets who combine Benn's and Brecht's techniques, have been introduced into
Slovene poetry. The credit for the introduction of the 'impersonal' poetic style is due mainly to Niko
Grafenauer.
Grafenauer is an original, sensitive, cerebral and emotive poet capable of producing manifold conglomera• tions of metaphors and similes suggesting the state of mind of modern man. His poetry has developed from the traditional Slovene Neoromantiolsm and Neoexpres- sionism to thevimpersonal' poetry which has been predominant• ly practiced during the last twenty years in Western
Europe. While his work up to his "Rebirth" in the middle of Language Under Pressure compares well, on the whole, with contemporary Slovene and Slavic poetry, 52
particularly that of Zbigniev Herbert, from this point onwards it is more comparable to modern and contemporary
West-European poetry, especially that of the German and French 'impersonal' poets with whom he has most in common. The affinity between Grafenauer and the latter poets is particularly evident in his technique and themes. Like that of the'impersonal'poets, Grafenauer's technique implies a detached and Impartial, yet sub• jective description of the world about him; his themes suggest a concern with man's existential and alienated position in the world, and the relationship with him• self, other men and nature. This concern is exemplified in his treatment of such topics as silence, loneliness, darkness, emptiness, disintegration, dryness, fatigue, gloom, the ontological problem of the "I," the difficulties of communication, the potential expressibility of lang• uage, and the creative process. Like much contemporary
West-European poetry, Grafenauer's poetry takes place in silence and twilight or darkness. His man is aware of his existential position and assumes either an antagonistic or an indifferent attitude towards his world. Grafenauer's perseverance in the employment in his later work of techniques most characteristic of'impersonal' poetry and his intensification of morbid 53
Imagery make his poetry from the middle of Language
Under Pressure onwards unique. Although much Yugoslav
criticism is directed against Grafenauer's later poetry,
he deserves credit for helping pave the way for greater
freedom of expression In Yugoslav print and for introduc•
ing into Slovene poetry a style whose aim is 'pure'
or 'absolute' poetry. Grafenauer's merit is exemplified
in Condition.
Condition is a selection of Grafenauer's later poetry
prepared especially for publication ln English. It
has been oompiled and translated ln collaboration with
the author and under the supervision of Michael Bullock,
Michael J. Yates and Professor Zbigniev Polejewskl.
Professor Joseph Paternost of Pennsylvania State
University has kindly consented to check the accuracy
of the translation. Condition consists of fifty-two
poems divided into eight cycles entitled "Traces on
the Skin," "A Blade Across the Eyes," "The Trap,"
"Images," "Elohlm," "Condition," "Still-Life," and
"Drawings." The first five cycles come from Language
Under Pressure: the last three have not yet appeared
in book form. While the last five cycles have been
included Intact, the poems in the first two have been
selected from the first half of Language Under Pressure 54
and partially re-grouped. Nevertheless, all poems
remain in chronological order. In the selection of
the poems the aesthetic, stylistic and thematic criterion
has been applied. Thus, no poem from On the Eve of
a Holiday has been included in this selection.
Condition forms a whole and comprises Grafenauer's
best work. The author expects to publish his poems
in this form also in Slovenian. In translating this
selection, the principle of "olosest approximation"
has been adhered to. It is hoped that most qualities
of the original have been transcribed or substituted
in one way or another in English. Most of what has
been said about Grafenauer's later poetry applies
also to Condition. But aesthetic attributes are the ultimate quality of his poetry. PART TWO
CONDITION traces on the skin 57
THE WALK
Slowly,
as If veiled
by a dying urge,
I walk among sombre winds
that bar my way.
Sometimes fatigue illumines me like a dark flame.
Tree-roots
clench a handful of earth.
Owls shudder in their sleep like heavy clocks and their wailing cries
flail into the night.
Summer is a vigorous stir of light.
Phantoms bloom in a long beam. 58
TIME AND: PALL.
You live among discordant layers of time and break the shoulders of light that lashes you; the alien window where you press your cheek is coming into sight; only death separates you from emptiness.
Then the earth softly stirs: and with muffled laughter shakes off the last cry wavering in the heavy up rush of air. 59
THE HOUSE
The house where you think things oven is growing tense like a darkening day*
Memories close in
as if you were dying with gloomy dignity.
Silence shines upon the Immobility you take from the dead.
Loneliness gnaws you like verdigris.
In the narrow crack of permitted consciousness projecting itself like a beam into dusk, moths quiver;
Love throws your enlarged shadow against the wall.
With a clammy key I step towards the threshold.
I call from the verge of black forebodings
into emptiness* Silence is your language. I grow quiet,, but within me, as in late autumn, sounds flutter, almost tears.
The house where you think things over
is like the beginning of all that goes away. 60
NIGHT:
You approach by the road running into you like a sword.
Peace surrounds you with all that it conceals. like invisible company.
The shadow sitting in you veils your every thought.
Behind you like doom steals autumn which comes with conviction and thunder on its tongue. Silence calls you by what you are, not by a name.
The world gives up its contours and steps out of itself towards night into the opening place of:horror. You are alone at its bottom crossed out by the owl's eye following you like the grain of truth in the wisdom of the dead.
I accept you, surrounded by my habits as by lynxes.
When you reach me, it is night. 6i
THE SPEECH OP SILENCE
Stubborn forms still! subdue you and all that is ancient in you, I mean these dark forces full of passionate spittle and feverish night sweat that burn in gusts of confusion like a shudder; and then you are so unencumbered when you walk without:peace through the dark city flattened by the falling snow, you can sing within like a hard crust of bread in a bony fist..
Sometimes a black slit yawns on the wall and through it comes the smell of mould, winter fruit, urine and homeliness and slowly disperses in the bristling cold.
They accompany you Into the deaf underworld of earth 62
with the words you drank from all your life and now too when the moist eyelid rises slowly and beneath it the hunger of the earth gapes at you. no man has spoken of. it yet.. because with it only shadows talk. yet that moment of parting rings out louder than all the rest— the speech of silence. 63
EVENING
Wearily the mud parts its dead eyelids, behind them, as though darkness were falling, the truce begun in emptiness gives way, the smoking rays of wind are born of words that stand for them and die on the bristling ground,
silence echoes around and the evening stops like a motionless thrust into wood full of unspoken threats. 6U
DOWNHILL
The moss is like a carpet: of ants.
It grows over your mouth
so you face the world speechless.
Peace slowly covers you like the evening snow.
The hand quietly loosens itB grip,, the heavy hand on earth; it parts with autumn
swarming with living brown, and Its narrow shadow brings to life threatening scenes*
Fog is coming down, the dear fog of this world; man has to be so cautious*
When the dead bell tolls its hour, measuring out the fate of. the living, you gaze at the ground blossoming at your feet;
Slowly you start descending under the surface, the sweet, soft step
into the open quiet nights 65
HATE
Hate, grows like the shadow of a mountain towards evening*
In an invisible blaze it: twists things*
Madness licks consciousness like smoke*
In twilight clairvoyants are crowned with the effort of; their whole life.
Chained between silence and fasting they read the world like the palms of their.hands.
It is terrible,, when I consider lt,s to depart^ during sleep without any weight, without resistance like beauty,, when I consider it,,
after all, in spite of the dead, man has experienced nothing. 66
THE CHAP TEE
The wrinkled face is veiled by corrosive winds full, of constant solitude weighing on its every move as words withheld weigh on the attentive ear;
out of the moist consciousness rises a shadow and begins to rule through the power of a name.
The image abandons the fleeing birds carried by a dying Impulse on the high,, dead point of air. In the emptiness that follows the unexpected fall full of dread silence like a precipice, they call each other without an echo.
Slowly memory opens on the face fixed ln immobility, as in the deaf glare of history we use to justify our acts, and illuminates the darkest chapter. a blade across the eyes 68
PATE
You stand like a dark streak in the winds.
The past is forgotten to the point where night blends with things.
A swift serpent's head rises quickly and sways before your eyes.
When it curls out of the ashes in the darkening air, you can hear the soft rustling.
You walk, engulfed by the smell of soil as by a licking flame chasing you into darkness.
Within it heavy blades guard the burned dust of the dead.
You occupy all shadows and abandon your image.
Memory fails. A blade of grass springs from it and stops in the winds. Serpents lay their heads on the boulder and coil up into dark plots.
A heavy fruit falls like a bird into the gaping jaw.
Soundlessly the heavy blades move lighting up like a sharp cry in the dark, and thus pass the years. 69
ST.. JEROME
Exhaustion licks your every move.
The desert is full of blazing apparitions.
A curse gathers in your mouth like bitter slime.
Dust covers you darker and darker when you descend and a shadow falls into the dry silence lighting you up as though with a sombre flame.
You remain motionless like everything to which you return.
Then St. Jerome comes with the lions, he who has his own thoughts* 70
A WINTER POEM
You are alone In the cold cavern of winter full of gloomy stains and glazing lichens.
Home is when it grabs you by the neck, as you are leaving*
Then night blocks your way like a precipice that a blind man stares into as long as he lives.
You never cross the threshold sleeked down by the feet of ancestors.
Lizards lie upon it like dead streaks. Wherever you turn you face slimy snow into which your dark figure will one day be imprinted. 71
THESE AND THESE
These walk roads, dust sticks to them like age, these come out of the dusk and loiter on thresholds*
Muddy waters move by like heavy flocks.
But the forest
stands as if drowned.
These disappeared in it, allowing their thoughts to take over.
These in masks, faceless, waited for them with swords.
Oh rainy nights when lights are turned out, evil images assemble on the circumference of the country preparing itself for new treasons. 72
A BLADE ACROSS THE EYES
A cool blade across the eyes
and you see: the world is like memory growing dark on the horizon.
You lose as long as you can stand somewhere.
When you fall you lose everything,
and yourself.
Insects grow over you.
A blade of grass
sprouts in your eye.
By taking you, the earth submits.
Darkness is like pitch heaped in the silence pouring over you.
9 73
REBIRTH
1
After every crisis the world twists its sneer.
The soil between your teeth chokes your mad laughter.
Torn away from the chain of silence the wolves* shadows sweep by like echoes on stormy ground.
The day: closes like a tuning eye.
Far behind your back your home grows dark.
You stand framed in twilight like a rambling ghost appearing to travellers at the end of their strength. 74
2
This dead escape and thought stepping into nothingness, and Plato in your hand, alone, as If he combined everything glued into a slime of ideas where a blind bird like a blaze snatches out of the dark*
Yet the final rebirth within the threat of time:
the boa constrictor squeezing the world into a bee's head,
the circle of a tree ungirdling into dust,, and the dizzy consciousness returning into nature. the trap 76
THE GUEST
You are trapped, quiet guest of solitude like a victim in a deep shadow that grows darker and darker.
You fall apart within, and as if you were dead, moss grows overryour open eyes.
Out of the quiet blue a bird is falling like a stone into your empty, inturned sight.
A still flame gnaws you under the skin, you burn like a pale vision.
Into the firm silence after the rain as after a>ceremony slips the stroke of the dock shaking hands with time.
The world, frozen into a wrapped look, sings back to it in its darkest voice.
Thick pains slice all along the hand shining in twilight like a long beam. Prom beneath the cool fingers you uncoil an outcry which rises into emptiness like a whip. 77
PEACE
The peace of the forest gazes like a dead eye.
Ants ticktock over it and the dust corrodes it.
In the concordance of stones rests the word you use to name all. as night does: darkly.
Echoes slough on the shields of the mountains, black clouds of animals rush into midnight.
Gloomy reflections interweave here with thoughts that give them power.
Whatever is coming greens like silence.
Seasons sleep at the base of the skull of the sky..
From the verge of consciousness illuminating things, a cuckoo calls into the dusk.
Weariness grinds at your peaceful temples. Like a beam of light the wind sifts through the peaks.
Thirst throttles you and time,.like the alphabet, slips blindly by. 78
THE RAIN
The rain swarms caught In your open ear, slowly It begins to pierce the polished peace of the world.
Behind the eyelids your stiff body loosens, and you sink into earth that softens your sight..
The barren water tunes your dead voice till it blackens like the smell of woods.
The times are full of inimitable shudder,, you listen to the earth with your bones..
From time to time seasons flash in your eyes.
A grey veil of spiders clings to you.
Finally the sound of a bird occurs in a woof of dreams and strews dark seeds into the world.
The oily yarn of the wind taking root in the cloudy southern slopes comes with new habits and blooms of memory seeping into the summer dust. 79
THE TRAP
Snow is a leafy echo of autumn rustling silently toward twilight.
The world curls up with its quiet meanings.
Dark chains hinder the step in sleep.
You near the house lit by rays of darkest thoughts seeking a threshold.
Foggy air sniffs at the wall where a shadow wavers like a specter.
Inside: digging. Your name narrows in the dark.
You sink through thought to death which comes as if summoned by palmistry.
In a blaze of silence you burn to the end.
When you try to run, the place stands on end like a trap.
You are your own victim, captive of your own thoughts.
The steps of birds, your measure of the earth.
A lava of wickedness and hate erupts blindly inside. 80
HORROR
Sounds sleep ln the black spangle of tightening waters*
Now and then they flap up a noi se like a man awakening from sleep.
Shadows blend with misunderstanding.
You lean over your thoughts as over a bleeding vein.
Your hair sprouts ln the wind like grass when you rub your hands and pant into the ovary of horror flaming up in the middle of the night.
You are alone and time surrounds you like the circles of a tree. Like a deep echo the world confronts you. You go and your evening image goes slowly dark, a sinking into forgetfulness.
Silence shatters at your touch.
Dust beneath your toes unclenches its numberless fists. Rage licks the bristling adder threatening you like god's finger in your home. images 82
COUNTRY
Before me, but undefined, dawns painfully a country.
At the edge of the rustling forest appears a woman harvester.
As after a pause, things strengthen their meanings.
Summer folds around the cuckoo*s call.
The eyes repeat everything they see into forgetfulness.
When birds encounter them, they abandon their names.
Their outcries remain caught in the silence like a pendulum. i In a draught I copy the world down to Its Ineffable kernel.
Never can a hand brothered with death as with a sword subdue these winds. The unfurled smells augur a thin crop.
Whoever comes out of his house tarnishes like brass.
A shadow pursues man like a father*s curse in this country. 83
THE FLOOD
During nights full of awned rain waters overflow and take the country with a deadly foam on their tongue.
Spiders advance ln herds, the wall before me darkens.
In deep flight, every thought is an outcry.
Loneliness rolls over me like a boulder.
The soil squeezes my head between its black jaws.
Motionless I wait within myself like a sentry.
Words on my mute lips change into grass.
Final peace passes over me like a dry wing.
Midnight;rises into the eyes to crown death.
I lie upon the bottom, a stone grows in my empty hand.
Spiders flow away,-like a honeycomb I am pierced. 84
DROUGHT
The country where I walk rots under the feet of strangers.
Sharp winds seize the bristling grass.
Claws clutch at"me from behind, I walk in a trap.
The landscape is like a blanket drawn over the dead.
Summer pours black thunder on the heavy seals.
Dryness floods my mouth and slowly chokes me.
The sickle pauses high in my consciousness.
I halt in flight, cast in a flash of lightning.
Time opens like the avid teeth of a wolf bitten into the quivering world with the rapacity of cold.
Thirst swells slowly in my mouth like a poisoned fruit.
At the table when memories dusk over I read ruin from the [palm of my hand. 85
I AM
Noon at midsummer is cruel as clear consciousness.
Whatever escapes numbness only ln form Is cut for prey.,
Snakes twirl upward like wisps of smoke.
It is growing dark, autumn is distant and is drawing near.
With the laws of the dead I established freedom in order to subdue it and ascertain everything.
Winds girdle me, it's a long climb.
The pain that I am enters into me like a knife.
Behind me full of evil composure lurks silence.
The fall is long like an outcry that dies ln the distance.
Lost in silence I seek strength for a new venture, but everything seems to rot in the grip of darkness. 86
WINTEB.
The cold thickens, everyone steps his own way.
The world has curled itself up, it's a long winter.
Sometimes the wind flashes like the blow of a hand.
Meandering the dark pantomime begins.
Into the scent;of the earth I sink and decay.
Consciousness drags in the dust like a heavy wheel.
The western horizon stands like a blind door where become imprinted those who enter the night.
Shadows of passengers cross on the ground like swords.
At the edge, far away from home, dusk presses them to its bosom.
Fatigue darkens the limbs.
Snakes:coil beneath every surface, anguish grows. 87
SILENCE
The word silence has settled into silence like a stone.
The world wavers in the brown fog, quietly the roads have (closed. Time arises ln the thoughts of the living like a wall.
Spring will come full of serpent1s spittle and traces of (moisture.
A late rain colors the landscape with a grey weight.
Everything silent pierces me quietly like a sword.
The earth on which I stand rises toward me like a woman.
Thin light outlines objects in the dead eye.
I run around inside a mousetrap, dust curls like a sneer.
There is no shelter to swallow me like a black blaze.
Steep Immobility on the horizon eclipses the world.
The word silence has settled into silence like a stone. elohim 89
ALONE
With a single Jerk everything falls away from you, you confront the world alone-here-to-the-end.
Clouds pass over you like a threat.
Sounds come vaguely, the dust clings.
Every door you lean upon opens into the night, worms slither over you like bobbins.
In the breeze nettles snap their sharp tongues, thoughts stiffen, fear scatters you to all sides. 90
THE VULTURE
The rats drown squealing, silence congealed above the dwarfish world, still strums the fleshy lip of (the mud. In the dead air an invisible insect tightens a droning string, by the wayside grass glows like sharp cries.
The dry light does not twinkle, things seem absences, your eyelids pinch their long beams.
Dark tongs puncture your soft memory where scene after scene disintegrates into a blaze of blackness.
Among the shadows of visions, like a dark streak, the vulture [waits, you watch it, In fixed hate it bristles Its poisonous head.
Your face is like a threadbare rag which glistens as you leave home among the trees Imbedded in the night. 91
PEAR
The house is the dim shell at the end of all roads into which you vanish like a turtle.
Its stern garret windows are patched with wicked faces.
Fierce looks pierce you in the dark.
From far away you seem a cleft ln the wall.
By a long spittle you are pinned to the toes that enliven you, you writhe in cold dampness; like a dark brooch a spider lowers itself down the tender seam.
A sour smell trails from you as you retreat.
Your skin falls off your face like a foolish mask, a heavy eyelid closes over you and never opens again, the dark house mutters emptily, a spider toils ln the corner. 92
CLAWS
You have spread your thoughts over the pale beings
as If the shadow of an invisible net laid on them.
The rubble goggles at you from the dead slime, you flee,
a dark figure at the slippery edge of consciousness.
You are far away in cold regions; hardened, as If from age, you want to return, but you are trapped into this to-be- (putside-your self-alone. Silence sinks, black tongues liek the dust,
with gloomy mildness claws bloom in March. 93
TIREDNESS
Winds bloat on the branches like a long restrained urge.
Silently you sink into the shadow-streaked forest where winter petrifies the birds tearing themselves to pieces for their bleary significance, your spirit circles like a baby (monkey•
It is growing dark, the gallows stand like an empty door in their shadow falls in your way. Tiredness looms Dehind your (back; If you glance across your shoulder, evil phantoms arise from it, the waste country before you greens with spreading mould. 94
THIRST
In the autumn twilight eaten by dim fires the landscape threatens like an open jaw.
Every step in the sand burns, behind you lies a spoor of nettle leaves.
Your tongue protrudes from your mouth like a swarm of black (flies,, with its tip it tastes the sweetness of the last .smoke.
One-eyed walls close quietly and with a dead glare begin to gaze at you.
Thirst in your mouth snares like a dark knot you can't spit out, for a wide radius about you, you are alone, 95
THE HEAD
On every road a oold skull of soil decays, shackled in a long chain of steps.
Dead an/fes like dried drops of blood bulge
In the gloomy eyes which stare at you.
You run among the trees, full fists of light hiss through the branches and strike you in the face.
Lizards shrink in the dust like fingers of a dying man, shadows cut your way of escape.
Now and then a coarse musk of soil licks you.
Silence mirrors itself in the moist Cyclopean eye. 96
WIDOW
A widow is the silent shadow of a dead man behind a faraway window, outside night meshes.
Damp scenes materialize and fade upon the walls.
The wind butts the door like a heavy ram.
She is alone among darkening impulses, the wood in the room [groans.
Her movements settle like pleats of air.
The dusk congeals in her soft spirit, beneath her fingers a cigarette dies, crackling like a louse. 97
ELOHIM
With a single thrust he rips the world's paralysis, dim he (stands before you. Everything around him scabs over like a s§ore.
He approaches streaked with blood and cool shadows.
On the ground a tuft of weeds twitches like a beetle turned (upside down.
His eyes stare at you like the heads of two snakes, silence entangles you, you draw closer to one another.
It grows dark behind the windows, your home crumbles Into a (cloud of dust. Like a little forked tongue, anger flashes in his eyes. condition 99
THE HAND
The hand droops mutely in the dust like a snake's slough.
Wherever you reach you are alone.
In twilight the head is like a heavy swarm of bees, around It time is open to the eyes.
By streaks you are pinned to the ground, you lie as if cracked from age that cools you.
A worm dangles on a thin spittle into the stillness.
The fire glues to the ground like a soft rag.
Dark hooks remain behind those who come with mute motions. 100
THE EYES
Your eyes are like tiny damp clods of earth, the snail's track shines on them.
The spirit has barred Itself into the dark, Images sink as if in a slowly darkening mirror.
You lie among yellow tusks of candles, the flames quiver like mute moths.
The wind drags its heavy wing through the dust.
The flies on your eyes gather into black scabs. 101
WEIGHT
Seams on the head tear like threads of smoke. the spirit blooms. Silently pours the scurf of the dead. at twilight winds hang like empty sleeves.
A putrid breath clings to your face like a spiders web.
The one with a flattened body battened on you biting your consciousness like a cabbage leaf; it is growing damp, winter is gloomy and long, no one travels.
During sleep,, when you fuse with night, weight gathers like a puddle beneath you. 102
YOU ARE
You are as though made of damp earth with a veil of dust on your eyes. Trails extend from you to all sides as if a pack of dogs were stretching your entrails; quietly spreads the dark stain of blood.
The spirit has stuck to the base of your skull like spittle, none buries the bones, shadows lengthen.
The teeth lie in the soil like a brood of grubs, the slimy skin of the wind grows between your fingers. 103
THE STREAK
Cool wrinkles cover you slowly,,
the dead are like weight, you are not alone*
A prickly shell of sounds revolves in the ear.
On the damp ground shadows swarm like bugs.
Cold bacteria spread over you.
Thick threads hang from the sky like dead rain.
Time is invisible, mutely it melts your motions when you set out on a heavy flight.
In the house behind you remains a pale streak which darkens on rainy days. 104
THE ROOM
Tour face moulders like an empty rag*
On the cold ground in a long look amid the heavy imprint of shoes the earwig roams.
The walls stand like dark* stony waterfalls.
Like a beam of light at dusk the hand weighs its motions, silence trickles,, the hours squeeze you more and more.
Cracks in the wall sprout like tails of mice,, outside the yawning jaw protrudes. still-life 106
STILL-LIFE
I
The mould of age covers your limbs
and the sky above is like a pale imprint.
The day extends as usual, winter is hard as a bone, while It lasts.
Splinters screech in your head, nails straddle like fists;
all slime begins here
and teeth decay into dust.
On top of your skull rot grows like baldness,
smoke swirls in the cross-beams of light.
Then the splinter frees Itself and shows,
a shadow marks the glory of creation. 107
II
You are smeared with a slimy weight that drags you.
Your bones are sterile umbels, the cold soil sticks to them lamely like a black heap of dead flies.
The wind pastes the fields, like soft knots the hours link in the dusk, but the dry squealing doesn't cease, no one pierces the neck of the flycatcher. 108
III
The day rots among days* breathing does not save you, and henry moore sees far, having made a hole*
But now is carving time, never mind if it is evening and the timber creaks.
The house surrounds you like the body of an eclipse, trade flourishes outside, the heavy motions in the wormy background lag, and beneath the cover of the earth lie the dead with decayed eyelids to warn the living. 109
IV
A long road is sewn into your pale memory.
Every move is exhausted as on a painting at twilight.
Shadows quarrel on the damp ground.
Blindness spreads before you like an infinite possibility.
Grasped by thoughts as by claws of birds, the merry skein of your head rotates incessantly.
You have grown into your skin that becomes flabbier every day, you can't get past.
Rain covers you like measles when you leave and are long away.- 110
V
Under the skin, gathered Into muffled laughter, you are safe:
ant-roads stretch everywhere.
Peace is spilled in the sky
licked deeply down by seasons, relief drags; on,
this is followed by the death of the Capuchin.
The severity of winter burdens every motion,
on the empty square, in the pale gleam of day
you halt: among the habits of foreign people.
The cold goggles and is bright like the eye of a fish,
and he who has nothing else quietly freezes. drawings 112
DRAWINGS
I
You grow out: of secret;strength and out of dust only feigning oblivion, stench spreads,
the winds are torn threads of earth and dry/spittle, nothing is yet discovered.
Behind the monastery door,murmur quiet days, memories rot under
the midnight rock and the bird decays on the glove of remote love.
But"man wanders like a shadow on bright metal,
withered senses and flowers embitter the air;
the new crosses with the old, thus; formulae are born
and more than the eye can see. 113
II
The days are clear like a chalk drawing, far away is the dry fern autumn.
Like the touch of a thumb on chafed skin the cold bites, hard and bony.
The houses are like berries gathered in a look that reaches into times withered long ago, and as if uttered by dead mouths verdigris grows over the living.
You are alone among scattered winds as though at a roadless crossing.
Winter gnaws you with the teeth of mice, hunger thickens in the hollows of your eyes. 114
III
Night is for long journeys in the frozen eye of imagination.
You-are-alone-wlthin-your self, beneath the blind sky visions sprout like cracks.
The air is full of the silent exertion of birds akin to breath on the pane of day.
The trees, spaced out in windy autumn, wearily reveal themselves leaf after leaf.
r
Noon burns you with a steep gaze, the prickly thistle blossoms in your spirit.
As if from numerous contacts with snow, the coarse skin silently laughs. 115
IV.
A bird cowers in the sky like a dead letter, the light of day skulks ln houses.
The cold bristles, a flower blooms into the deaf time as if from mouldering memory.
Oblivion falls on things that shrink into themselves, your face wrinkles into the deep rings of a tree.
Your gaze gives way, time is insignificant like gloves dropped long ago.
The world is displaced in the refraction of day as though quietly rolling on its hip.
The cold weight of shifting cripples the motions, everything prepares for the frog1 s;: jump. 116
V
The evening chars you Into a memory
that time gnaws to the bone.
Shadows cleave to your motions,
the cold shoots like cracks in a dark painting.
You are nailed, weight is the form relentlessly poured into bronze.
Limits lattice the sky and the sword lurks deeply like an urge.
In swarms the senses blacken things
from which each licks its meaning.
Night is pressed into your eye,
a gloomy immobility weighs you down. FOOTNOTES
1. Kajetan Kovic", et al, Pesml stlrlh. (Ljubljana: Slovenski knjizni zavod, 1953), p. 12?. 2. Boris Paternu, et al, eds., Slovenska knjigevnost 1945-65. (Ljubljana: Slovenska Matioa, 1967), p. 112.
3. Dane Zajc, Poggana trava. (Ljubljana: Samozalogba, 1958), p. 23.
4. KaJuhove pesml. (Ljubljana: Drgavna jj&alozba Slovenije, 19547TTp. 93. 5. Miroslav Kosuta, Morje brez obale. (Koper: Zalogba Llpa, 1963), p. 44.
6. Niko Grafenauer, VeSer pred praznlkom. (Ljubljana: Drgavna zalogba Slovenije, 1962), p. 7.
7. Ibid.. passim; Paternu, et al, eds., op. cit., pp. 209-12. 8. Grafenauer, Veder pred praznlkom. p. 21.
9. Grafenauer, Stlska Jezlka. (Ljubljana: Drgavna zalogba Slovenije, 19&5), passim; Paternu, et al,.eds., op. cit., pp. 210-12.
10..Grafenauer, VeSer pred praznlkom. p. 57.
11. Ibid., p. 35.
12. Grafenauer, Stlska Jezlka. (Ljubljana: Drgavna zalogba Slovenije, 1965), p. 38.
13. Ibid.. p. 20.
14. Grafenauer, "Stanje," Probleml. stev. 39 (Junlj 1966), P. 231.
15. Paternu, et al, eds., op. cit., p. 210.
16. Grafenauer, Veder pred praznlkom. p. 39.
17. Paternu, et al, eds., op. cit., p. 210. 118
18. Janko Lavrln., ed., An Anthology of Modern Yugoslav Poetry in English Translation. (London: John Calder, 1962), p. 66. 19. Paternu, ed., op. cit., passim.
20. Toma2 Salamun, poker. (Ljubljana: Samozalo2ba, 1966), p. 9.
21. Lavrln, ed., op. cit., p. 105«
22. Ibid., p. 189.
23. Ibid., p. 194.
24. Ibid., p. 188.
25. Zbigniev Herbert, Selected Poems. (London: Penguin
Books, 1968), p. 64.
26. Grafenauer, Stlska Jezlka. p. 27.
27. Herbert, op. cit., p. 35.
28. Grafenauer, Stlska Jezlka. p. 9-
29. Herbert, op. cit., p. 103.
30. Grafenauer, Stlska Jezlka. p. 26.
31. Herbert, op. cit., p. 35. 32. Grafenauer, Condition, see below, p. 63. Subsequently referred to as "Grafenauer, Condition." N.B. Some quotes from Condition have been slightly modified.
33. Herbert, op. cit., p. 40.
34. Grafenauer, Condition, p. 78.
35. Herbert, op. cit., p. 120.
36. Grafenauer, Condition, p. 60. 119
37. Ibid., p. 80.
38. Herbert, op. cit., p. 113.
39. Grafenauer, Condition, p. 66.
40. Herbert, op. cit., p. 55.
41. Grafenauer, Condition, p. 70.
42. Ibid., p. 71.
43. Ibid., p. 84.
44. Ibid., p. 82.
45. Grafenauer, "Tihoz'itja," Problem!, stev. 54 (Junij 1967), P. 753.
46. Herbert, op. cit., p. 72.
47. George Reavey, ed. & tr., The New Russian Poets. 1953 to 1968: An Anthology. (New York: October House, 1968), p. 119. 48. Tsvetan Stoyanov, tr. Vladimir Phillipov, "Lyubomir Levchev and modern Bulgarian Poetry", Books Abroad (Winter 1969), PP. 29-31.
49. Mrloslav Holub, Selected Poems. (Penguin, 1967), P. 51.
50. Ibid., p. 69.
51. Patrick Bridgwater, ed., Twentieth-Century German Verse, (London: Penguin, 1963), p. lxix. 52. Jean Chatard, Letter to Dirk Wynand, U.B.C, Creative Writing 415, 1968/69.
53. Alexander Aspel, et al, eds. Contemporary French Poetry. (University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor Paperbacks, 1967), p. 93. 54. Bridgwater, op. cit., p. 297. 120
55* Aspel, op, cit., p. 13.
56. Gertrude Clorius Schwebell, ed. & tr., Contemporary German Poetry; An Anthology. (New York: New Directions Book, 1964), p. 83.
57. Willis Barnstone, et al., eds., Modern European
Poetry, (New York: Bantam Books, 1966), p. 146.
58. Grafenauer, Sti ska .lezlka. p. 24.
59. Grafenauer, VeSer pred praznlkom, p. 67.
60. Grafenauer, Stiska Jezlka. p. 24.
61. Aspel, op. cit., p. 111.
62. Ibid., p. 125. 63. Grafenauer, Condition, p. 76.
64. Ibid., p. 109.
65. Ibid., p. 83.
66. Ibid., p. 79.
67. Grafenauer, "Rizbe," (MSS, 1969), p. 3.
68. Grafenauer, Stiska jezlka. p. 12.
69. Grafenauer, Condition, p. 76.
70. Ibid., p. 92.
71. Ibid., p. 61.
72. Ibid., p. 74.
73. Ibid., p. 85.
74. Barnstone, et al. eds., op. cit., p. 504.
75. Ibid., p. 578.
76. Octavio Paz, Excerpts from Blanco, tr. by George McWhirter, (U.B.C: Creative Writing #15, Xerox, 1968/9), section 4. 121
77• Grafenauer, Condition, p. 89.
78. Ibid., p. 72.
79. Ibid., p. 58.
80. Grafenauer, Veder pred praznlkom. p. 70.
81. Paul Valery, "My Faust", Collected Works Ed. by Jackson Mathews, (New York: Pantheon Books, ca. 1956), P. 151.
82. Grafenauer, Stiska Jezika. p. 34.
83. Grafenauer, Condition, p. 110.
84. Schwebell, op. cit., p. 129.
85. Grafenauer, Sti ska Jezika. p. 18.
86. Grafenauer, Condition, p. 101.
87. Grafenauer, Stiska Jezika. p. 16.
88. Bridgwater, op. cit., p. 261.
89. Ibid., p. 290.
90. Grafenauer, Condition, p. 104.
91. Ibid., p. 114.
92. Ibid., p. 115
93. Ibid., p. 99.
94. Ibid., p. 100.
95. Ibid., p. 101.
96. Ibid., p. 72.
97. Barnstone, op. cit., p. l6l.
98. Ibid., p. 141. 122
99. Bridgwater, op. cit., p. 121.
100. Grafenauer, Condition, p. 64.
101. Ibid., p. 68.
102. Ibid., p. 109.
103. Ibid., p. 100.
104. Grafenauer, Veger pred praznlkom. p. 35.
105. Grafenauer, Sti ska .lezika. p. 22.
106. Bridgwater, op. cit., p. 114.
107. Grafenauer, Stlska Jezika. p. 19.
108. Grafenauer, Condition, p. 91.
109. Ibid., p. 72.
110. Ibid., p. 83.
111. Grafenauer, Condition. p. 72.
112. Ibid., p. 95.
113. Ibid., p. 80.
114. Grafenauer, Veger pred praznlkom, p. 25.
115. Grafenauer, Condition. p. 95.
116. Grafenauer, Veger pred praznlkom. p. 26.
117. Grafenauer, Condition, p. 83.
118. Ibid., p. 113.
119. Ibid., p. 99.
120. Grafenauer, Veger pred praznlkom. p. 17•
121. Grafenauer, Condition, p. 6l.
122. Ibid., p. 79. 123
123. Ibid., P. 110.
124. Ibid., P» 86.
125. Ibid., P. 93.
126. Ibid., P. 103.
127. Ibid., P. 108.
128. Ibid., P. 61.
129. Ibid., P. 107.
130. Ibid., P. 57.
131. Grafenauer, Stlska .jezlka. p. 48.
132. Grafenauer, Condition, p. 84.
133. Ibid., p. 94.
134. Ibid., p. 116.
135. Grafenauer, Stlska .jezlka. p. 26.
136. Bridgwater, op. cit., p. 105.
137. Grafenauer, Ve5er pred praznlkom. p. 16.
138. Angel Plores, ed., An Anthology of French Poetry From Nerval to Valery ln English Translation. (New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1958), p. 138.
139. Rainer Maria Rilke, Translations from the Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, by M.D. Herter Norton. (New York? W.W* Norton & Cb., 1962), p. 164.
140. Bridgwater, op. cit., p. 69.
141. Ibid., p. 105.
142. C.L. Gollno, ed., Contemporary Italian Poetry; An Anthology. (University of California Press, 1962), p. 142. 124
143. Bridgwater, op. cit., p. 267.
144. Ibid., passim; Schwebell, op. cit., passim; Aspel, op. cit., passim.
145. Joseph Chlari, Contemporary French Poetry. (Manchester
Univer si ty Press, 1952), p. 155.
146. Ibid., p. 157.
147. Aspel, op. cit., p. 18. 148. Bridgwater, op. cit., pp. Iv-lvi; Gottfried Benn, "Probleme der Lyrik," Essays. Reden. Vortrage. Gesammelte Werke. (Wiesbaden: Limes Verlag, 196l), p. 524.
149. Schwebell, op. cit., pp. 11-13; Gottfried Benn, "Epilog und lyrisches Ich," Autoblograph- ische and Vermlschte Schrlften. Gesammelte Werke, (Wiesbaden: Limes Verlag, 1961), pp. 7-14.
150. Bridgwater, op. cit., p. lvi.
151. Ibid., p. lxiv.
152. Ibid., p. lxiii.
153. Ibid., p. lxiv.
154. Bertolt Brecht, "Das Epi sche Theater," "Gesammelte Werke. Band 15, (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1968), pp. 265-267.
155. Schwebell, op. cit., p. xxili.
156. Ibid., p. xxiv.
157. Ibid.. pp. xxli-iii.
158. Ibid., p. xxi.
159. Ibid.. pp. xxx-xxxi.
160. Karl Krolow, Aspekte zeltgengsslsoher deutscher Lyrik, (Mflnchen: List Bflcher, 1963), p. 30. 125
161. Rudolf Nikolaus Maler, Paradles der WeitloslakeIt: Untersuchungen zur abstrakten Dlchtung selt 1909t (Stuttgart: Ernest Klett Verlag, 1964), p. 129. N.B. Quote translated by Professor Michael Bullock.
162. Marcel Raymond, De Baudelaire au Surreallsme, (Paris: Librairie Jose Cbrti, 1966), p. 334. N.B. Quotes translated by Dr. M.J. Edwards.
163. Wallace Fowlle, The Age of Surrealism. (U.S.A.: Swallow Press and William Morrow and Co. Inc., 1950), p. 128.
164. Bridgwater, op. cit., p. xlvii.
165. Prance Porstneric, "Pesnlsko bivanje stiske in gnusa," Dlalogl. stev. 6 (Leto *66), p. 337; Taras Kermauner, "Samocutenje in samouz'ivanje," Dlalogl. stev. 3 (Leto 68), p. 153; "Dialikticna anatomlja," Problem! 69-70, passim; Prance Vurnik, "Niko Grafenauer, Stiska jezika," Sod- obnost. stev 4 (Leto 1966), p. 430.
166. Milivoje MarkoviSi "Lutanja 1 nedogledi," KnjlSevne novlne. Broj 271 (Mart 1966), p. 3; Herman Vogel, "PesniSki svet Nlka Grafenauer." Polja. 94-95 (juni-juli 1966), God. xii, p. 13.
167. Boris Paternu, op. cit., p. 212.
168. Kermauner, "SamoSutenje in samon2ivanje," p. 153.
169. Vogel, op. cit., p. 13; MarkoviS, op. cit., pp. 3-4.
170. ForstneriS, op. cit., p. 339.
171. Vladimir Jerman, "Kava denlkotin," Problem!, stev. 75,(1963), p. 205. BIBLIOGRAPHY
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The term 'Impersonal1 is used here in a technical sense to denote the style of Niko Grafenauer's later poetry as well as that of some of his West-European contemporaries with whom he is most closely affiliated. This style is distinguished not only from the 'personal,' 'confessional,*
'satirical,* 'prescriptive,* or any kind of *committed* style of poetry, but also from the 'universal* style with which the * impersonal' style of the past Is often equated.
Compared to some epic or Imagist poetry, for example, where an attempt at 'objectivity' is made, contemporary 'impersonal' poetry is of a highly solipsistic nature. The employment of the term 'impersonal* in this thesis is, therefore, limited in that it refers mainly to the apparently detached attitude many contemporary West-European poets assume towards themselves and their world.
It may be also mentioned that in "Tradition and
Individual Talent" T. S. Eliot elaborates on the "depersona• lization" and "impersonality" in art in the following manner:
There remains to define this process of depersonalization and its relation to the sense of tradition. It is in this depersonalization that art may be said to approach the condition of science. I therefore invite you to consider, as a suggestive analogy, the action which takes place when a bit of finely filiated platinum is Introduced into a chamber containing oxygen and sulphur dioxide. 134
The poet has, not a 'personality' to express, but a medium, which is only a medium and not a personality, in which impressions and experiences combine in peculiar and un• expected ways. Impressions and experiences which are important for the man may take no place in the poetry, and those which become important in the poetry may play quite a negligible part in the man, the personality.*
*T. S. Eliot, "Tradition and Individual Talent," Selected
Essays;(London; Faber and Faber Limited, 1958), pp. 17-20.