"ONCE UPON A TIME" : SOME FLEETING SIDELIGHTS ON CONTEMPORARY WESTERN POETRY

Reinhold Grimm1

number of new editions since it first Once upon a time, there were literary critics appeared, and has been translated into and historians in the West, i.e., in Europe over a dozen languages. In point of fact, and in North America, who prided many people, and for many years, came to themselves on being· able to subsume the regard Die Struktur der modernen Lyrik as a entire development of modern--and kind of poetic oracle, indeed as a veritable likewise, in those bygone years , ars poetica in terms of modernism and true contemporary--lyric poetry under a single contemporaneity. all-embracing rubric. Or, to be fair, if they didn't expressly advocate such a rubric, they What were--or are, for the volume is still in surely used and proclaimed an equally print, I believe--the basic ideas, the major ambitious, equally all-inclusive principle. tenets and theses, propagated by Hugo Perhaps the most important and most widely Friedrich?2 The answer, apparently known proponent of this approach and, as it complex, is clear and unequivocal turned out, both dictatorial and complacent nonetheless. First of all, modern poetry attitude was the eminent German scholar as conceived by Friedrich originated in Hugo Friedrich, who held the chair of France, with Charles Baudelaire's Les Romance Literatures at the University of Fleurs du mal ("The Flowers of Evil") of Freiburg im Breisgau. In 1956, Friedrich 1857 and, later on, with Arthur Rimbaud authored a rather slim albeit immensely and Stephane Mallarme in particular; influential volume entitled Die Struktur der modernen Lyrik ("The Structure of Modern moreover, it continued to manifest itself, Poetry") after having published impressive according to the German scholar, as an studies and monographs on Descartes and essentially French phenomenon although, by Dante, Montaigne and Calderon, among extension over the decades, also as a others. However, not only did that novel if Spanish and Italian one. A glance at the seemingly modest book make an immediate splash, but it has also seen an amazing 2 For the following, see Hugo Friedrich, Die Struktur der modernen Lyrik : Von Baudelaire bis z ur Gegenwart (Hamburg:Rowohlt­ 1 Professor of German and Comparative Taschenbuch Verlag, 1956) !off.; I am using the Literature, University of California-Riverside. 6th edition ("76.-85. Tausend") of June 1962.

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very structure of "The Structure of Modern A threesome of principal concepts serves to Poetry"---at its quantitative layout, if I may form the multiple but unison---or, at any say so---proves to be quite illuminative in rate, most coherent---slogan of Hugo that respect. For, after a brief and both Friedrich's authoritative disquisition and historical and programmatic introduction, evaluation; differently put, these concepts roughly two thirds of Friedrich's function as a combination of touchstones, so investigation is devoted to those three to speak, for his vast and yet strangely towering French masters from the second limited subject matter. They comprise, half of the 19th century, whereas the whole firstly and in general the twin ideas of of "European Poetry in the 20th Century" "dis s o n an c e s an d a b n o r m a I i t y " (thus the already suspicious chapter (Dissonanzen und Abnormitd.t) and, heading) is accorded a bare third of it at best secondly and further generalized, the overall . . . featuring, as might be expected, the methodological conviction that solely literatures of France, Spain, and Italy once "negative categories" are capable of again. And what applies to the discursive grasping the structure (and essence) of and interpretive portions of this longtime modern poetry. While the latter can easily seminal book applies to its sizable appendix be shown to reign throughout Friedrich's of exemplary verse as well: the selection we discourse, the former, needless to say, entail are offered betrays the selfsame 'structural' a whole host of related and/or subordinate imbalance---or, I am afraid, the author's notions as his discussion unfolds. From the plain prejudice---as does the preceding text beginning, for instance, he insists that what itself. No fewer than 27 of the 30-odd basically informs truly modern poems is an poems amassed by Friedrich are of French, "obscurity" (Dunkelheit) which at once Spanish, or Italian provenance ; on the other entices and captivates as well as confuses hand, T.S. Eliot, with excerpts from The and disorients the reader. Such a Waste Land and Four Quartets, figures as co inc i d e n c e of fa s c i n at i o n a n d the lone and almost token representative of incomprehensibility naturally amounts, we modern poetry written in English; and even are told, to a genuine dissonance, or from F r i e d r i c h ' s n at i v e German-­ discordance. And it is an intentional one, astoundingly or, on closer scrutiny, not so Friedrich adds with reference to Baudelaire astoundingly, after all--just a marginal and Benn: for there lies a certain glory in couple of poems, five altogether, were not being understood; poetry aims at ultimately deemed worthy of inclusion. rendering unintelligible precisely that which (Three are by Gottfried Benn, and one each is decisive; the poet indulges in things of by Karl Krolow and Marie Luise whose significance nobody actually Kaschnitz.) No poetic utterances from deserves to be persuaded. As the Italian Slavic or the remaining non-Romance Eugenio Montale formulated it so European idioms can be found, much less provocatively : "No one would compose from non-European literatures or languages. verses if the problem of poetry consisted in

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explaining oneself in getting something J ene dissonantische Spannung des across.''3 Everywhere, says Friedrich, modernen Gedichts auBert sich auch chiming in contentedly if exaggerating (and in anderer Hinsicht. So kontrastieren contradicting himself) a bit---everywhere Zuge archaischer, mystischer, among present-day poets, one observes a okkulter Herkunft mit einer scharfen tendency towards standing aloof, as much Intellektualitat, einfache Aussageweise and as long as possible, from conveying any mit Kompliziertheit des Ausgesagten, unambiguous implications or messages. Or sprachliche Rundung mit in his own words: gehaltlicher Ungelostheit, Prazision mit Absurditat, motivische Das Gedicht will vielmehr ein sich Geringfugigkeit mit heftigster selbst geni.igendes, in der Bedeutung Stilbewegung. Das sind teilweise vielstrahliges Gebilde sein, bestehend formale Spannungen, und oft nur aus einem Spannungsgeflecht von als solche gemeint. Aber sie treten 5 absoluten Kraften, die suggestiv auf auch in den Gehalten auf. vorrationale Schichten einwirken, The tensions and peculiarities, catchwords aber auch die Geheimniszonen der 4 and alleged values here listed---mysticism Begriffe in Schwingung versetzen. versus intellectualism, simplicity versus Modern poems, according to Friedrich, complexity, precision versus absurdness, wallow in self-sufficiency, are radiant with and so on---ought to be telling and eloquent multivalent meanings, and constitute a dense enough, it seems to me ; yet no less and suspenseful network of absolute forces immediately obvious and convincing ought affecting, suggestively, the subliminal layers to be the fact that they undeniably of the mind, yet also setting the mysterious contravene poetry's age-old emotional allure zones of conceptuality vibrating. In sum, and formal equilibrium, its proverbial they lead the reader astray, to the realm of 'organic unity' handed down from Aristotle the unfamiliar and unfathomable; they to Kant and way beyond, and distinguishing, deform and distort, indeed alienate, our above all, the rich and manifold verse of German Classicism and Romanticism, the consciousness and its projection, reality. (I 6 trust I need not emphasize that this so-called Erlebnisdichtung based on "alienation" is anything but Bertolt Brecht's personal and subjective experiences. By famous Verfremdung, which has a clarifying contrast, Friedrich's representative poets of and even didactic effect; rather, it is its very modernism, he assures us, are involved in opposite.) Friedrich goes on: 5 Ibid. II. 6 See A Glossary of German Literary Terms. Second, revised and enlarged edition. Ed. E.W. 3 I am quotmg. somewhat freely, trying to give the Herd [and] August obermayer (Dunedin, N.Z. : gist of Montale's dictum; hence, compare ibid. Department of German [of the] University of 10. Otago, 1992) 82. 4 Ibid. !Of.

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their doings not as private persons but grimace, somberness, the predominance of merely as poetizing intellects: they are exceptions and eccentricities, a bent for linguistic operators, cold-blooded artists most forceful and extreme ruptures, indeed unleashing their imagination and for nothingness, and, of course, the transmutative craft at will. Instead of an inevitable obscurity, which Friedrich then appeal to the emotions and the sense of supplements, from a variety of sources with beauty, what exudes from their works cues such as dissolution of what is familiar, reveals itself, more often than not, as sheer forfeit of regularity, incoherence, aggressiveness, as wild and dramatic fragmentation, brutal suddenness, and onslaughts resulting in mental shocks as it lightnings of destruction ; to top it all off, were, and in readerly consternation and Alonso's summary dictum, first pronounced perplexity; or else, the reader is faced with, in 1932 and iterated in 1955, finally runs as and puzzled by, autonomous verbal lapidarily yet explicitly as could be : movements, meaningless series of sounds, "Nowadays, there is no expedient way of and unmeaning sequences of in-and defining our art [of poetry] other than by decreasing intensity, not unlike the abstract negative categories."7 But lest we get lost in interplay of autonomous colors and contours Friedrich's overabundance of graphic in modem painting. All of which must of details, let me quote him once more at some necessity, create the impression of utmost--­ length, because the passage in question, and in itself contradictory---abnormality, rather than simply compiling bits and says Friedrich, just as it also accounts for pieces, attempts to situate the phenomenon the c h r o n i c " n o n - a s s i m i I a b i I i t y " of modem poetry in its overall historical (Nichtassimilierbarkeit) of modem poetry as context. It reads : a whole. Bis an die Wende z u m 1 9. I could continue along these lines, Jahrhundert, teilweise dariiber enumerating sundry additional notions as hinaus, stand die Poesie im they ensue from Friedrich's key concepts Schallraum der Gesellschaft, war a{ld their common methodological erwartet als ein idealisierendes denominator. For example, that he singles Bilden gelaufiger Stoffe oder out and lauds the French pre-Surrealist from Situationen, als heilender Trost auch the late 19th century, Lautreamont, as the in der Darbietung des Damonischen, most farsighted and prolific supplier of wobei die Lyrik selbst zwar als appropriate descriptive terminology is Gattung von anderen Gattungen doubtless as expressive of his entire unterschieden, doch keinesfalls tiber approach as is hi s invocation of a 20th­ sie gesetzt wurde. Dann aber geriet century Spaniard (namely, the poet and die Poesie in Opposition zu einer mit critic Damaso Alonso) in order to seal his listings for good. Lautreamont's many pertinent characteristics, put forth in 1870, 7 See Friedrich, Die Struktur der modernen Lyrik include anguish and turmoil, disgrace and 15.

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okonaomischer Lebenssicherung primarily, already seasoned poet, and one of beschaftigten Gesellschaft, wurde the finest to boot. What I am talking about zur Klage uber die wissenschaftliche is, as you might guess, the massive 421-page Weltentriitselung und tiber die tome Museum der moderne Poesie ("A Museum of Modern Poetry") by Hans Poesielosigkeit der Offentlichkeit ; 9 ein scharfer Bruch mit der Tradition Magnus Enzensberger. He, too, proclaimed entstand ; dichterische Originalitat --once upon a time--a "global idiom" (Weltsprache) spoken by all truly modem rechtfe rtigte sich aus der Abnormitat poets ; and he, too, conceived as its des Dichters ; Dichtung gab sich als development an ever-spreading irreversible Sprache eines in sich selbst process. Further major criteria Enzens­ kreisenden L eidens, das keine berger's contribution evidently shares with Heilung mehr anstrebt sondern das Hugo Friedrich's comprise the following: nuancierte Wort ; als reinste und the idea of modern poetry's innate difficulty hochste Erscheinung der Dichtung and, thus, necessary obscurity, indeed wurde nunmehr die Lyrik bestimmt, negativity (yet with the' important die ihrerseits in Opposition trat zur modification that the reverse of every poetic iibrigen Literatur und sich zu Freiheit destruction is the construction of a new erma c h t i g t e g r e n zen I o s u n d poetics) : the dual concept of the .modem riicksichtslos alles zu sagen, was ihr lyricist as a profoundly erudite poeta docrus, eine gebieterisch Phantasie, eine ins on the one hand, but also, on the other, as a Un be w u f3 t e au s g ewe i tete mind perforce opposed to contemporary Innerlic hkeit und das Spiel mit einer society ; and, last but surely not least, the leeren Transzendenz eingaben.8 general insight that the modern poem, whenever a nd wherever it may have Any and all of these changes, Friedrich emerged, has its roots in the mid-19th persists, are most faithfully mirrored in said century, i.e., in Baudelaire's Fleurs du mal categories. of 1857 (and likewise, adds the anthologist quite matter-of-factly, in Walt Whitman's Still, it took only four years after the Leaves of Grass of 1855). "Die lautlosen publication of his book until, in 1960, a Katastrophen der Sprache," as Enzensberger second volume dealing with modern poetry, specifies with an ingenious image and aspiring to all-inclusiveness, appeared "geschehen nicht von einem Tag auf den in Germany. This time, though, it was not andern, auch nicht von einer Generation zur primarily an investigation but a huge andem. Sie bereiten sich lange vor." anthology, albeit with a sizable and weighty preface ; nor was its author a seasoned scholar but rather a fairly youthful critic if, 9 Museum der modemen Poesie, eingerichtet von Hans Magnus Enzensberger (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1960) ; for the following, see his 8 Ibid. 13f. "Vorwort," pp. 8ff.

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Indeed, those "silent catastrophes" of poetic First and foremost, then, what we instantly language extend not just over years and notice in the pages and chapters of the decades but over centuries. For were they Museum der modernen Poesie is an not, in our case prefigured as early as enormous expansion compared to the around 1800 : in the thought of, say, confines of Die Struktur der modernen_ Novalis, that precocious and both visionary Lyrik, an expansion, moreover, manifesting and lucid German Romanticist? Here again, itself not merely quantitatively at large--a the contributions of the scholar and of the remarkable growth of poets and poems from poet are in full agreement. English and German letters can be observed, for instance--but doubtless amounting also, However, as I already intimated, there more momentously yet, to a vast obtain between them considerable geographical extension in especial. This is differences as well. The supposedly radical to say that Enzensberger' s assemblage of break with tradition, for instance, which modem poetry, in contrast to Friedrich's Friedrich claims to descry is viewed by lopsided French and Pan-Romance bias and Enzensberger much more dialectically--sit narrowness, 10 encompasses all but the venia verbo--and, hence, more realistically: entirety of Europe, incorporating various to wit, as a conscious and productive Slavic and Scandinavian literatures as well embracing of the past no less than a as those of Hungary, Greece, and the breaking away from it. (Federico Garcia Flemish-speaking Belgium, among others ; Lorca's and T.S. Eliot's harking back to the as a matter of fact, even Turkish lines and 17th centrury, to the poetry of Gongora and stanzas have been allowed to put in an to the Metaphysical Poets, respectively, are appearance! Still, what needs must strike us typical cases in point.) Similarly, here as by far most noteworthy is, if only at Enzensberger is firmly convinced that a first sight, the anthologist's inclusion of poetics of modern poetry cannot be disposed modem poetic activities overseas. That of in strictly normative terms ; all one can North America has been taken into due do, he maintains, is collect and display its account goes of course without saying; parts precisely as in a "museum." And however, both Central and South America hasn't he, in fact, admirably succeeded in also figure prominently, as do the West doing so? But the three most salient features Indies (represented by Aime Cesaire) and, differentiating Enzensberger's approach from behold, the African country of Senegal that of Friedrich arise from their divergent (represented by her erstwhile president, the methodological and individual attitudes: Nobelist Leopold Sedar Senghor). towards their very subject matter to begin with;.furthermore, towards its sociopolitical and historical implications; and, in the long run, towards their own persuasions and theses and the ultimate or preliminary 10 Hugo Friedrich, The Structure of Modern results they felt they had achieved. Poetry: From the Mid-Nineteenth to the Mid­ Twentieth Century. Trans. Joachim Neugroschel (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974)

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Nevertheless, there is no denying that the want to make an exception in the case of the bulk of this overseas verse, Cesaire and Turks; most of whom, after all, inhabit a part Senghor's negritude notwithstanding is a of Asia (albeit Asia Minor, granted). But basically Western, or Westernized, subgenre haven't they long been promoted to honorary of modern poetry, inspired by and in Europe; Europeans, as it were: namely, as a malicious in no way does the crushing majority of such critic might joke, ever since Turkey joined, or non-European modernists--in particular, the was admitted to, NATO? ones from Latin America- -deviate from that European mainstream seen and documented Second, and even more revealingly, there are here, for the years from 1910 to 1945, as a the diverse attitudes of Friedrich and powerful infectious process. And the rest of Enzcnsbcrger towards the historical and, Africa as well as all Asia (mind you: South, especially sociopolitical implications of the Southeast, and East Asia alike) are widespre:1d poetic phenomenon they present conspicuously absent from Enzensberger's and/or investigate and treat. The former, as 11 anthology anyhow • . . unless, that is, we must be abundantly clear, attributes no social or political relevance whatsoever to modern 11 Compare what the anthologist, under the poetry, stressing its pure isolation instead, heading "Einschrankung, has to say in this i.e., its deliberate, either sorrowful or regard: "Einzuraumen ist: Keine Rechnung, die haughty, rejection of any communication; sich an Jahreszahlen halt, kann ohne Rest thus.' in consequence thereof, he arrives aufgehen. Uberblickt man die zeitliche und himself at a suchlike position resulting in the raumliche Entfaltung der poetischen rigorous exclusion of socially or politically Weltsprache, die sich in jenen funfunddreillig committed verse in favor of an avowed Jahren [i.e., from 1910 to 1945) konstituiert hat, hern1eticism, indeed self-centeredness. so bemerkt man alsba1d, daB sie mit der Conversely if concomitantly, the latter's Entfaltung der gesellschaftlichen Produktivkrafte uberhaupt Schritt halt. Ihre position is decidedly more complex. For Zentren sind mit den Zentren der technischen him, to put it as paradoxically as possible, Zivilisation identisch. In reinen Agrarlandem, the very noncornmitment of modern poetry deren Gesellschaft noch von feudalen Normen constitutes the epitome of its commitment; bestimmt ist, tritt sie erst auf den Plan, wenn die precisely its being poesie pure turns out to Gewalt der industriellen Produktion diese render it poesie engagee (and he doesn't Normen in Frage stellt: meist mit erheblicher hesitate, in point of fact, to label the quarrel Verspatung. Insofern bedarf die These von der poetischen Weltsprache einer Einschrankung. between these two notions as a mere Schein DoB groBe Teile Asiens und Afrikas [a problem, or "shan1 problem"). Drawing on remarkable understatement] in diesem Buch the pronouncements of his philosophical vermillt werden mussen, hat hierin seinen mentor, the Frankfurt School sociologist vornehmsten Grund. Die fehlenden Lander und Theodor w. Adorno, Hans Magnus Sprachen hat der ProzeB zumeist erst in der Zeit Enzt:nsberger decreed in 1960: nach 1945 und zum Teil bis heute noch nicht erreicht." Enzensberger, "Vonvort," in Museum der modernen Poesie 14.

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DaB das Gedicht keine Ware ist, "agitprop" (i.e., "agitation" and dieser Satz ist keineswegs eine "propaganda" as practiced by Soviet idealistische Phrase. Von Anfang an literature) hasn't proved to be exceedingly war die modeme Poesie darauf aus, es helpful at any rate, Enzensberger ironically dem Gesetz des Martktes zu reminds us, for even the crudest and most entziehen. Das Gedicht is die unan'l.biguously committed verse by Vladinlir Antiware schlechthin: Das war und ist Mayakovski resists such manipulation der gesellschaftliche Sinn alter 'purely,' just as even the most audacious, Theorien der poesie pure. Mit dieser most hermetic and freewheeling teA'tS by the Forderung verteidigt sie Dichtung Dadaist Hans Arp or the Surrealist Paul uberhaupt und behalt recht gegen Eluard amount to poesie engagee by virtue jedes allzu eilfertige Engagement, das alone of the simple fact that they are poetry sie ideologisch zu Markte tragen at all: that is to say, protest against, not mochte. Ubrigens leistet der approval of, the powers that be. Or to Gegensatz von elfenbeinturm und adduce yet another outspoken declaration of Agitprop der Poesie keine guten Enzensberger's: Dienste . . . . Antiware, die sich der Manipulation 'pur' widersetzt, sind Was die Diktatur gegen s1e [i.e., noch die engagiertesten 'Fertig­ modem poetry] aufbietet beweist, fabrikate' Majakowskis. Ebenso ist welche Krafte von ihr ausgehen. So der freischwebendste TeA'! von Arp gering, statistisch betrachtet, ihre oder Eluard bereits dadurch poesie Ausbreitung ist, so unabsehbar ist engagee daB er uberhaupt Poesie ist: ihre Wirkung. Poesie ist ein Widerspruch, nicbt Zustimmung zurn Spurenelement. Ihr blofies Bestehenden. 12 Vorhandensein stellt das Vorhandene in Frage. Deshalb kann die Gewalt From the outset, Enzensberger declares, sich mit ihr nicht abfinden. 13 modem poetry has aimed at putting its products out of the market's reach and In a word, poetry, however minimal, 1s influence; the poem--any poem, he insists-­ subversive; its mere existence even as a has been "the anti-commodity absolute." It "trace element" (Spurenelement) will call is herein, according to him, that the meaning that which exists--the reference is again to and societal relevance of all those theories of the powers that be---forever in question. As poesie pure reside, each of which shelters Adorno phrased it so outright and succinctly, and ·defends poetic creation from abuse, to quote but two of his pertinent statements: including hasty engagement and ideological "Any commitment to this world must be consumption. l11e popular opposition of the canceled so as to fulfill the idea of a legendary "ivory tower" and straightforward committed work of art;and "unswerving

13 Ibid. 16.

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solitude is for today's intellectuals the sole ("Postface") of the two-volume paperback means of possibly edition · of his anthology, Enzensberger recanted precisely the double 'advance and improvement,' so to speak, which had evincing solidarity. "14 (None of which, distinguished his approach of 1960 as against incidentally, hindered Enzensberger in the Friedrich's geographic narrowness and least from boldly placing no fewer than apolitical isolationism of 1956 and eleven poems by Bertolt Brecht--Friedrich, afterwards. Repeating his apodictic needless to say, doesn't allow of a single one­ judgment according to which modern poetry -in the stately halls of his roomy museum always calls whatever exists into question, although, to be frank, no more than a meager the anthologist had to concede, and did so minority of those eleven texts can rightly be with. a shrug, that such a promising view termed as sociopolitically, or even amounted to an "exaggeration," to say the historically, committed verse proper.) least: the "touching belief [ruhrender Gla?tbe] in the subversive powers of Third and last, the scholar Friedrich and the literature," Enzensberger stated suinmarily, poet Enzensberger differ sharply as far as "has in the meantime been impaired to a high any re-examination and re-evaluation of their degree." And similar objections, he went on, own tenets and theses and once so proudly must be raised to that confident assertion proclaimed results are concerned. Namely, according to which there obtains something while the author of "The Structure of like a "global idiom of modern poetry." Modern Poetry" steadfastly iterated his What comes to light in such ideas, we learn, erstwhile convictions, the compiler and is but a naive "internationalism lumping commentator of the "Museum of Modern everything together."15 Poetry" was quite ready and willing to revise his position, and most drastically at that. In Let me quote some of the subsequent 1980, for example, in his "Nachbemerkung" passages in the German original once more, for Enzensberger' s 1980 recantation doubtless reveals itself as exceptionally 14 See Theodor W. Adorno, Nolen zur Literaur instructive in our context. "Die Ideologie der III (Frankfurt am Main Suhrkamp, 1965) 129 ' One World'," he says, and Theodor W. Adorno, Minima moralia: Rejlexionen aus dem beschadigten Leben von den Amerikanern wahrend des 3 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1962) 22. Zweiten Weltkriegs verkundet, von Also, compare my "Bildnis Hans Magnus den Nachkriegsdeutschen aus Enzensberger: Struktur, Ideologie und Vorgeschichte eines Gesellschaftskritikers," in durchsichtigen Grunden gerne Reinhold Grimm, Texturen: Essays und anderes zu Hans Magnus Enzensberger (New York [etc.] 15 For these and the following quotations, see : Lang, 1984) 44-96 ; here, pp. 86fT. (this essay Museum der modernen Poesie, eingerichtet von was first published in 1974). Hans Magnus Enzensberger. 2 vols. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1980) II: 786f

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akzeptiert, in den Vereinten Nationen Diese Kehrseite der Medaille ist in institutionell verwirklicht und verblal)t, dt:n letzten Jahren immer deutlicher ist politisch spatestens seit 1968 sichtbar geworden, und zwar nicht durchschaut und auf den Hund nur aus politische Grunden. Auch in gekommen. So ist auch dieses der literarischen Produktion seiher Museum, wie die moderne Poesie, die zeigt sich an, daB die Moderne rapide es ausstellt, ... von einem ahnungslosen altert. Ihre Weltsprache ist Eurozentrismus gepragt, der einzig unterdessen in zahllose Dialekte und allein die Standards der zerfallen. Weit entfernt davon, sich Metropolen gelten nach den 'klassischen' Mustern zu laBt. orientieren, ist die Poesie der letzten Jahrzehnte immer heterogener und Evidently, what is denounced here is not only regionaler geworden. Ihre the meanwhile shopworn ideology of a Ubersetzbarkeit hat ab-, ihre unified 'One World' as propagated by the Mannigfaltigkeit zugenommen. Americans and institutionalized by the United Gegen die Abstraktionen der Nations, but also the ideological bias of Ideologie, des Weltmarkts, der Enzensberger's own ambitious anthology: to Technokratie beharrt sie geradezu wit, its "ignorant Eurocentrism, which storrisch auf dem Besonderen. Fast simply and solely approves of the standards programmatisch nimmt sich ihr of the metropoles." The idea of "world Ruckzug in die Minderheit aus, in die literature" (Weltliteratur, a venerable term partikularen Interessen, ins Milieu, in coined by Goethe, as might be remembered) die Mundart, in die Subkultur und in 16 has thus degenerated, the "Postface" den Alltag. continues to explain, into an "apologetic regulation," indeed an unabashed "lever" For various reasons, both sociopolitical and (Druckmittel) in the employ of cultural literary, the celebrated monolith of a global imperialism; all it insidiously engenders is a poetic idiom had disintegrated during those kind of literary "global market," but which in twenty years. In its stead, countless effect is a "whirlpool" (Strudel) preventing "dialects" had sprung up, and they all were any genuinely indigenous, or autonomous, far from emulating the 'classical' paragons creation. And Enzensberger concluded: of modernism. Rather, poetry had become ever more heterogeneous, ever more regional worldwide; its multifariousness had steadily been on the increase while its translatability 16 See Goethes Gesprache mit Eckermann had been diminishing. Against scores of (Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 1955) 278: "Nationalliteratur will jetzt nicht vie1 sagen, die­ abstract ideological, economic, and Epoche der Weltliteratur ist an der Zeit, und technocratic odds and generalities, it almost jeder mufi jetzt dazu wirken, diese Epoche zu stubbornly persevered in that which is besch1eunigen." The entry dates from 31 particular, withdrawing near January 1827.

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programmatically to the realm of minorities, which prompted me--l was myself then the 'milieu,'. the "vernacular" (Mundart), the perhaps not engaged in, but certainly so-called subculture, and, tout court, to affiliated with, Concrete Poetry--to examine, everyday life. This and more of its ilk, as delineate, and set forth the historical Enzensberger impresses upon us, forms the root~dnes and present-day justifiability of "reverse [Kehrseite] of the medal"--things of this ' moYement' that, or so it appeared to me, which Hugo Friedrich and his followers was not merely another by-product of the never had even the slightest inkling. overall phenomenon of modern poetry but, in a way, its necessary outgrowth and indeed, And yet, interestingly enough, . there still its logical outcome and crowning result. And remains a notorious bone of contention on I felt all the more entitled to do so as I had which, no matter how strange it may sound, been invited by the Paris-based avant-garde Friedrich and Enzensberger fully agreed. journal Les Lettres speedily to submit a like What I mean is the assessment and/or contribution. So, at the behest of its editor, justification of the artistic, linguistic, and Pierre Garnier, I blithely embarked on my philosophical value of the international disquisition, choosing as its heading "13 school of Concrete Poetry. Friedrich sneered Thesen, die neue Lyrik betreffend" ("13 at it, dismissing it as a loathsome "rubble of Theses Concerning the Novel Poetry" or, syllables ground out mechanically," and because it was to be published in French, "13 therefore as of no significance whatsoever; theses [note the playful internal rhyme sur la but Enzensberger, too, rejected it, pillorying nouvelle poesie"). However, since that little its German advocates and practitioners (with essay has already appeared not only in an untranslatable pun and allusion) as the French and in France but also in English and ravmg "Movensbande."17 Both of in Italy, of all countries, and even in its original German in a German Festschrift~ 18 I 17 Unfortunately, I have to quote or cite all this shall' restrict my brief--and, as it will turn from memory. But of. Movens : Dokumente und out, somewhat abortive--report to the main Analysen zur Dichtung, bildenden Kunst, thrust of my old and, maybe, old-fashioned Musik, Architektur. In Zusamrnenarbeit mit argument. Walter Hollerer u. Manfred de la Motte hg. von Franz Mon (Wiesbaden: Limes, 1960) as well as Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Einzelheiten II:

Poesie und Politik (Frank furt am Main: 18 Suhrkamp, 1964) 71. Enzensberger' s coinage Compare Reinhold Grimm, "Treize theses sur "Movensbande" ('Moving' Gang") ironically Ia nouvelle poesie," Les Lettres 33 (1964): 22- evoked, long before the infamous "Gang of Four" 26, ''Dada--Among Other Things," Studi dell' (Viererbande) in the People's Republic of China Jstituto Linguistico [Florence] 7 (1984): 5-16, became feverishly and perniciously active, his " 13 Thesen, die neue Lyrik betreffend," in Frankonian fellow countyman Ernst Penzoldt's "Nicht aile in mit den Worten" : Festschrift fur latter-day picaresque novel Die Powenzbande: Joachim Dyck zum 60. Geburtstag~ Hg. Thomas Zoologie einer Familie Penzoldt 's Muller [et al.] (Stuttpart-Bad Cannstatt: gemeinverstandlich dargestellt of 1930. Frommann-Holzbog, 1995) 39-44.

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It is true, like Enzensberger in 1960,19 I corresponding term, 'graphopoeia,' started off by curtly observing that this designates poetry's visual extreme. And if allegedly modern poetry doubtless dates back we now add to them the concept of about a hundred years. (That was written in 'logopoeia' --since I hold we ought to go on 1963, mind you.) Then, however, I plunged the assumption that there are in fact poems headlong, as it were, into what cannot strike which do make sense--we have already us in retrospect as a thoroughly formalistic arrived at the three major constituent forces demonstration. Ever since its inception, I propelling the development of modern poetry. sovereignly declared, modern lyric poetry has Indeed they are the determinant factors of disposed of two e"-1:reme possibilities: texts poiesis in general, whether ancient or for the eye and texts for the ear. Mallarme, I modren. What distinguishes the avant­ explained, composed his "Coup de des" gardists' outpourings is but the rank and ("Toss of the Dice") almost a century ago; cantankerous growth of both graphopoeia soon thereafter, Guillaume Apollinaire and phonopoeia, while the concomitant followed suit with his Calligrammes. Just logopoeia tends to fall, more and more, into cast a glance at those poems, I said, and you desuetud~. Of course, prior to Rimbaud--to will realize that they are--though surely not return to him for a moment--a conventional exclusively--te,..,1:s for the eye. In Rimbaud, poetic language prevailed. Germmatically on the other hand, we find texts, or at least speaking, its basic model consisted of the lines, marked for the ear, some of which triad ' subject--predicate--object' ; in terms of come pretty close to being pure sound. imagery, its similes and metaphors revealed Compare, for example: "Les roses des themselves as logical comparisons or roseaux des longtemps 'translations,' based as they were on a devorees" ("The roses ofthe reeds long since proportional equation. (Example: Foot : body = x : mountain. In other words, the devoured"). Similarly, Georg Trakl wrote: relation of the foot to the entire human body " Oh, die Rosen, grollend in Donnern" ("Oh, equals that of the lowest part of the mountain the roses, roaring with thunder"). Taken to the mountain in its entirety. The phonetically--as products of 'phonopoeia,' to seemingly unknown 'x' this equation yields adopt a more dignified and scientific term-­ is, needless to say, quite familiar, in English these roses of Trakl and Rimbaud are in no less than in German: namely, 'the foothills' effect identical, no matter how different they or ' der FuB des Berges.') Such logical prove to be in all other respects.20 in1ages--first described, by the way, by none other than Aristotle--were corrunon in We owe that felicitous term, 'phonopoeia,' to everyday speech as well as in poetic Ezra Pound, as is well known. It denotes the discourse as was, in both cases, the auditory extreme in verse, just as its comentional triadic syntax. Rimbaud's "systematic disordering of all the senses" (his 19 Cf. Museum der modernen Poesie [1960] 8. famous dere'glement de tous /es sens) simply 2° For this and the following, see my meant that here a poet, for the first time, had publications Inn. 18 above.

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recognized the situation, and consciously liberation of the word--in fact, one could resolved to change it. rightfully add, that of the syllable and letter, too--as well as a kind of hitherto unheard-of This change proceeded in stages. First, it verse nourished with, and totally relying on, affected the imagery. The prevalent sheer sound. And not only did the Italian comparative mode, i.e., the logical deduction (and Russian) Futurists and the international (witting or not) of similes and metaphors, crop of Dadaism figure as the protagonists was supplanted by an immediate poetic and propagators of this impetuous vision--something Gottfried Benn would later development, but also, it goes without on call "primary proposition" (primare saying, did the German Expressionists and Setzung). "As the particle 'like' disappears," the French Surrealists even though the said Paul Claudel of Rimbaud, "the two former movements quickly came to stand in elements of the metaphor appear to him to the forefront. All over Europe and beyond, possess almost the same degree of reality." an ever-enlarging disintegration of the An excellent illustration of this transition is traditional model of poetic language was provided by Ezra Pound's justly famous taking place. Sentences, indeed individual poem "In a Station of the Metro." I trust you words and already truncated syllables, were all know it, perhaps even by heart: unraveled and fell apart. As Benn's esteemed friend Carl Einstein noted, one was The apparition of these faces in the tired of clambering about in their choking crowd; petals on a wet, black bough. web . 21 At tlus juncture, no doubt, the border zone Eventually, the metaphor became completely bern•een language and that which is beyond autonomous, and what had initially been but language has been reached. However, rather an unprecedented compression of verbal than bebboring said Brandungszone or - elements which still betrayed a logical gurtel--"surf belt," as I, poeticizing, actually connection to one another was ultimately put it--let me present, without further turned into pure alogical imagery. Yet, all commentary, some pertinent confessions and the same, this was only the first stage, for proclamations: Rimbaud, while thus unleashing the imagery of language, left its structure, i.e., grammar Nur die Destruktion der Sprache and syntax, for the most part intact. It was wird der Beilau.figkeit ein Ende the poetry produced around 1910 to 1920 machen ["Only the destruction of that took the second and final step. Its battle language will put an end to casualness cries were parole in liberta and Lautgedicht, and extraneousness"]. Thus the among others: that is to say, the total Austrian poet and translator Max Holzer, then one of the very few latter-day (and German-speaking) 21 Quoted from Museum der modemen Poesie Surrealists. [1 960] 76.

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of a new language"]. Thus Il faut pulveriser notre langage use' Apollinaire, the Pole and elective ["It is necessary to pulverize our Frenchman, who would hardly have worn-out language"]. Thus the made it, I suspect, under his real aforementioned Pierre Garnier, the name (which was Wilhelm A. de editor of Les Lettres and himself a Kostrowitzki). prolific concrete and experimental poet. Clearly, the five statements here assembled-­ and they could be augmented almost at will-­ Das kreative Individuum, von allzu evidence three major points: first, the truly gebahnten Ausdruckswegen international and multilingual nature of the umschlossen wie von Mauern, wirft development extending from Rimbaud to the sich in die Sprache selbst ["The present (at least, that of the 1960s); second, creative individual, hemmed in, as by the itmer unity of this whole period; third, the walls, by exceedingly well-trodden ultin1ate--i.e., positive--meaning of both. For paths of expression, launches himself what has been happening in modem lyric upon language itself']. Thus Hugo poetry, and from our perspective m von Hofinannsthal, the great and by particular, is by no means merely negative. no means avant-gardist Austrian poet and playwright, storyteller and Hence, in lieu of 'disintegration,' we had essayist from the turn of the century. perhaps better speak of 'decomposition.' But wasn't he, after all, the author of The term is uncontaminated and neutral, and that signal and .seminal "Lord it demands, of necessity, its complement: Chandos Letter." one of the earliest 'recomposition.' As Ferdinand Kriwet, a testimonies of a fundamental minor Gennan theorist, once expounded: "By skepticism towards conventional decomposition of the literary unit I mean the language? emancipation of the literary parameters." They are: "volumej pitch, tonality, and 0 fraf'cheur, oA jraf'cheur retrouvee duration of the spoken elements, as well as parmi les sources du langage ["Oh size, face, and font of type plus the freshness, oh freshness recaptured distribution of the letters." That these amidst the wellsprings of language"]. definitions, in however limited a way, mark Such is the jubilant exclamation of a the culmination of the dual process at issue-­ panegyric from the French Antilles, texts for the ear and texts for the eye, we Alexis Saint-Leger Leger, publicly recall--ought to be self-evident. known by his pseudonym of Saint­ Simultaneously and quite naturally, though, John Perse. the selfsame process aims at the dismantling of a specific language and the search for a L'homme est d Ia recherche d'un new one It is a double procedure again, occurring in two areas. One of them still lies nouveau langage ["Man is in search

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within the boundaries of language and human everything. Conversely, the language speech. In it, modem Western poetry of the Greenland Eskimos operates in transcends its preordained (mostly Indo­ exactly the opposite manner. A European) linguistic structures, the typical example of a language of the established bases of expression. What it third sort, this agglutinative tongue arrives at is either an isolating or an forms its sentences out of individual agglutinative structure of poetic discourse. words which, though very few in And I, an amateurish linguist, ventured to number, are remarkably rich in their explain: fields of meaning. Also, they are capable of carrying long chains of It is accepted practice . .. to classify affixes, with each stem absorbing a languages as being inflectional, root­ maxmmm number of referential isolating, or agglutinative. This connections. In the Eskimoan trisection purports that there are language, it is extremely difficult to languages--such as those belonging to ascertain where one word ends and the Indo-European family--which, by another begins. Indeed, one cannot means of their differentiated system of really differentiate between word and inflection, erect highly . complex sentence, because every utterance syntactic structures, whereas others consists of a continuous holophrastic either place their words, unconnected, sound. 22 alongside of each other, or link them together in continuous series or Yet how about Thai, a tonal language like chains. Classical Chinese, for Chinese but, as far as I know, not a totally example, is a root-isolating language isolating one? How does it function? I consisting almost entirely of frankly admit that I don't have the faintest monosyllabic words. It has no idea. One thing, however, is sure: Nowhere, specific forms of the kind we are despite appearances, does my own familiar with: that is to say, it Eurocentrism--once upon a time--come more possesses no lexical modifications blatantly to the fore than in such and similar which convey certain particulars such ruminations.23 as number, tense, person, or certain relations such as subject, object, Nevertheless, modem experimental poetry attribute. Any kind of grammatical (and this includes, for instance, the analysis is impossible. A single word Noigandres Group from Brazil as well as .can variously denote an action, a Japanese concrete poets) virtually abounds, condition, a quality, a direction, a thing, or a person. The function it 22 Grimm, "Dada--Among Other Things" llf. assumes at a given moment is 23 Compare esp. my "Versuch uber Lyrik und determined in part by conteA't, in part Sprachbau," in Reinhol Grimm, Strukturen: by word order. Arrangement is Essays zur deutschen Literature (Gottingen: Sachse u. Pohl, 1963) 172-96.

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both in theory and practice, with Merely two words (instead of the previous correspondences to those two non-European four) are being permuted in this nice piece of languages singled out in my venturesome satire, prejudice, and European snobbishness description. 24 Understandably enough, I can yet it is well-nigh impossible to render only hint at a few short examples; and, Gomringer's second text immediately--i.e., likewise understandably, they are derived without substantial changes--into German. from the literatures written in German. Why? Because two elements are involved Isolating, beyond dispute, is the following h~re. nouns and adjectives, not just nouns poem (or lyrical permutation) by the alone, as in the foregoing example; and Bolivian-bom Swiss Eugen Gomringer, one because English is much more of an isolating of the founding fathers of Concrete Poetry: than an inflectional language. Indeed it is, with its dearth of inflections, as closely baum (tree related to Chinese as could be . . . while baumkind tree child Gern1an in tum, bent as it is on fabricating kind child veritable verbal monsters--at least some of us kind hund child dog will .be painfully aware of them--tends to hund dog outdo even the most Eskimoan Eskimo hund haus dog house tongue with its agglutinations. Take, for haus house instance, the Austrian Konrad Bayer's haus baum house tree untranslatable tapeworm of a word: baum kind hund haus tree child dog house) mauerwerkzeugewehrlaufschrittweisen­ drahtverhautanahebeinahelmesserwacht This is about the easiest translation I have [etc.] ever done. But things are not always that simple. Consider, if you will, another poem As must be obvious to anyone conversant by Gomringer. It is one of those he with German, not only does this composed in Englisl;l to begin with: linguistic/poetic monstrosity comprise a single 21-syllable word or sentence, but its americans and apricots overlapping vocables also form, at one and american apricots the same time, a constant internal apricot americans concatenation (as, for instance, m apricots and americans gewehrlaufschritt, which contains and therefore evokes both gewehrlauf,_ "rifle barrel," and laufschritt, "double-quick," and so on). And must I expressly emphasize that 24 For an impassioned survey of and from the both Gomringer and Bayer demonstrate the heyday of that e>q>erimental poetry in general, of. Pierre Gamier, "Jungste Entwicklung der utter· puristic extremes of such branches of internationalen Lyrik," in Zur Lyrik-Diskussion~ experimentation? If you want to convince Hg. Reinhold Grimm (Dannstandt: yourself of the true lyrical value inherent in Wisser.schaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1966) 451- isolating or agglutinative poetic structures 69 (Garniers Essay was penned in 1964 ).

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imposed on, or gleaned from, inflectional have envisaged from the beginning. German, I suggest that you study Georg Language, dissolved into its vanous Trakl on the one hand, 25 or even the elements, here vanishes and reappears extremist August Stramm, and on the other, continually. The static artifact has given Else Lasker-Schuler or even the monomaniac way to a dynamic process. Hence, isn't it Arno Holz. Specifically for holophrastic precisely that zone which every text of verse, I recommend Lasker-Schuler's Concrete Poetry, in the vein of Futurism and wonderful poem "Ein alter Tibetteppich" Dadaism in particular, needs must strive to ("An Old Tibetan Rug") with that equally attain, hoping to blend with it completely? untranslatable line which runs Such poems no longer transcend in alien "maschentausendabertausendweit." As to nonetheless preexisting linguistic structures, isolating poetry, any mature line by Trakl but rather in novel and artificial ones, n? will speak for itself. matter how crude and uncouth they may be. Even more so, this applies, mutatis The other area through which our general mutandis, to ~e ensuing crossover into development proceeds lies already beyond the picture or sound. In conclusion, its overall frontiers of language. Gradually, a twofold gist was rephrased by me, a reticent transformation takes place during this Gern1an, in duly grandiloquent French style process: a) one from letter to picture; b) one (for, as you will remember, this whole from phoneme to sheer sound. In the end, the youthful disquisition of mine was conceived poem, an erstwhile verbal construct, has and penned for publication in an enthused become a piece either of graphic art or of avant-garde journal in France). So, please, modern music of sorts, indeed of unmitigated bear with me: noise. (Abstract, aleatory, and arbitrary designs as well as sundry kinds of cackles Just as the first forms of orgaruc life and cacophonies have the upper hand, originated in the shallows between the warm needless to say.) Of course, instead of primordial sea and the slowly emerging speaking of the 'frontiers of language,' I contments, so, too, has the modern might as well have spoken of the 'general experimental poem--whether concrete or linguistic [and, above all, poetic] front line' : visual or acoustic, or what have you--come both terms, or images, allude to the selfsame into being, and finally into its own, between fertile strip between language and what is language and language's 'other.' In lieu of beyond any language. But let's face it, this 'language' and, more correctly again, 'what is, as often as not, a pretty comic strip, if is beyond any language,' one can, of course, only ip.voluntarily. On the other hand, quite simply say 'meaning' and 'sound' or, however, it likewise is that very "surf belt," as the case may be, 'letter.' In fact, one has that pathetically wide border zone, which we to. 'We must never forget that the composition of the acoustic poem is a dialectical composition, the two poles of 25 Compare my ·'Georg Trakls Sonne," in which ar\.! sound and meaning." This insight Grimm, Strukturen 146-7 1.

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of one of my former students (now himself a concept of diversity not dissimilar to that of professor long since) is universally valid. the self-critical anthologist Hans Magnus Whoever attempts to overrate, or turn into an Enzensberger, and, moreover, to have absolute, any of these poles--either meaning, propounded it, in no uncertain terms, not on the one hand, or sound and/or letter, on only then but also in 1984 and, once more, in the other--is prone to killing the poem. And 1995. What has sorely been missing, though, to kill the poem inevitably leads to in these ideas of mine put forward since 1964 barbarism. Any reduction of the word to is an insight, comparable to that gained by nothing but a prograrrunatic message, an Enzensberger in retrospect, into their naive empty sound or noise or a self-satisfied and tmconscious Eurocentrism; besides, and graphic design, will render it equally quite unlike Enzensberger's theorizing again, inhuman. No poem, I proclaimed, without mine never did engage in a discussion of the SENSE . . . nor, to be sure, without sociopolitical aspects and implications of SENSES! And thus pontificating and, modem poetry. Nor is there-- and, worse luckily, declaring myself against any modish yet, neither in my " 13 Theses" of 33 years excesses--poetic, pseudopoetic, or otherwise­ ago nor in Enzensberger' s "Preface" of 1960 -! concluded by pointing out that, to all or even "Postface" of 1980--any mention intents and purposes, more than enough whatsoe\'er, except in passing or implicitly, poetry was still being produced within the of the ancient and nowadays widely boundaries of conventional language, even rejuvenated assistant role of literature's traditional imagery. There have always been Schwesterkunste ("sister arts," as Bertolt many varieties of it, ranging from didactic Brecht used to call them) of music, on the and iconic verse to song and ballad, and one hand, and fine art, on the other. (That actually constituting the overwhelming Hugo Friedrich didn't dream, much less think majority of the entire Western--and, I am or talk, of a suchlike sisterhood goes without altogether positive about that, not merely saying.) Still, hasn't the influence of graphic Western--lyrical output. To believe that and musical components on modem and, solely and exclusively te}..1:S of one's own abo\'e all, contemporary verse been growing persuasion are possible, or ' progressive,' at a and expanding for decades? Isn't the role given time has been a fundamental delusion they play, being combined and, in fact, of any and all poetic isms, both previously merging with lines and strophes, ever so vital and more recently. in present-day poetry? Whether as old­ fashioned iconic poems and newfangled Well, however pompous and 'francophone' patterned ones or as chansons and ballads, tlus disquisition turning into self-criticism plain songs and protest songs, and even rap: may have sounded at first, it was and is, at 26 those hybrid genres have now long become long last, rather serious all the same. Without fail, I can claim to have arrived, as early as 1964, and in spite of my avowed sympathies, at a fairly sound and realistic 26 Cf. , for instance, Christoph Ribbat, "Borrowed Beats and Native Tongues

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an integral part oftoday's literary scene, and vague, it might be. What is all-important, decidedly not just on its Western boards, so however, in our context is the indisputable to speak, but on an international level, too fact that this concept, as reduced as it is, (none other than modern Thai music and holds true for modern and contemporary poetry would most probably offer, from all I poetry in the United States and, to a lesser can judge, an especially striking example of degree, the United Kingdom as well, and that an accomplished non-European song culture the situation it so aptly characterizes hasn't ... and, perhaps, likewise of its problems, its changed a bit, in those English-speaking risks and perils). However, both genres, or countries as little as in the German-speaking subgenres, in question require in-depth and community. Diversity, I repeat, reigns sizable investigations of their own, as I shall everywhere, and it reigns supreme. This is try to demonstrate in the last of my five particularly manifest in the literature of the lectures, the one devoted to "Poems and/as United States. An up-to-date survey Pictures";27 the interplay of poetry and cont:).ined in one of the best and most reliable music, unfortunately, has to be set aside here reference works begins, placing the category and passed over for obvious lack of time and of "difference" equaling diversity at its very spate. center, with sweeping statements such as the following: Diversity, I said, reveals itself as the overarching concept that can be gathered Minoritatenangehorige und Fraluen from Hans Magnus Enzensberger's ( unterprivilegierte gesellschaftiche retrospection of 1980 as well as from my Gruppen) finden zunehmend much more limited but continued Berucksichtigung. Die zertrale explorations and modest proposals. Granted literaturwissenschaftliche Kategorie that it doesn't amount to that easy and heiBt derzeit 'Differenz.' Die convenient all-inclusive principle anymore Vorstellung von einem nationalen which we were wont to espouse once upon a kulturellen Erbe weicht der Idee von time, yet it still provides a workable rubric or einer kulturellen und darnit auch heading or, if you wish, common literarischen Vielfalt auf denominator, no matter how loose, or even sprachlicher, ethnisher, geschle c h ts s p e zi fi s·cher Is exueller, popularer/elitarer und klassen-, Multicultural Rap in Germany," German­ regional und · rnillieubedingter American Cultural Review (Spring 1997) : 14- Grundlage. 17. 27 See Reinhold Grimm, ·'Poems and/as Pictures: A Quick Look at Two an a Half According to Jean-Franvois Lyotard, whose Millennia of Ongoing Aesthetic Intercourse," in influential treatise La condition postmoder1:1e From Ode to Anthem: Problems of Lyric Poetry. of 1979 is approvingly invoked in the survey, Ed. Reinhold Grimm and Jost Herrnand our present age and literature in their entirety (Madison and London: University of Wisconsin Press, I 989) 3-85.

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are distinguished by the "universality of called 'high modernists' following in their heterogeneity. "28 footsteps . The course American verse has Doubtless, these and other societal and taken from the rnid-1950s onward is thematic differences--the emergence of sufficiently known: it started off with the formerly underprivileged sections such as e:\:troverted 'beatniks' (think of Allen minorities and women, the assertion of Ginsberg's Howl) and the introverted ethnic, linguistic, and gender-specific 'confessional poets' as best represented by (feminist, gay, lesbian) as well as of popular, Robert Lowell, then led to the ' Black regional, and subcultural multifariousness-­ Mountain' and 'deep image' groups headed all are applicable to contemporary American by Charles Olson and Robert Bly, poetry to the full extent, indeed almost respl:ctivdy, and has since come to a beyond measure, but they also are, and no preliminary end, it seems, with the 'New less undoubtedly, reminiscent of that global York School of Poetry' under John Ashberry diversity identified by Enzensberger in his and the amorphous mass of what laconically reassessment, as are their accompanying figures as 'language poetry. ' 29 Upon my formal and structural differences suggestive word, the portrait could hardly be more of those multifarious modes of expression variegated, more motley, could it? Or as the identified by myself. In point of fact, even survey quoted above has already sununed it the general trend I have sketched with regard up, both briefly and nicely as well as quite to present-day poetry's \vorldwide soberly: ·'Vermeidung des Programmatischen development, in theory and practice alike, und Fehlen eines Epochenstils kennzeichnen and to its towering modem antecedents can die jungste Phase der amerikanischen Lyrik . inunediately and fully be discerned in , 30 American poetry as it has developed since about the end of World War II. For just as Indeed, the "avoidance of setting up the critic and historian Hugo Friedrich once progran1s"--for all the engaged vacillation at went back to Baudelaire and the subsequent work--as well as the "absence of a [uniform] French and Pan-European modernism, so, epochal style!" But such are likewise, no too, did American New Criticism go back to question about it, two of the major Ezra Pound and T.S. Elisot, and did the so- characteristics of present-day poetry written in Gem1an. If unalloyed hem1etic and nonpolitical verse in the strongly seductive 28 Compare Dieter Meindl, ··Die wake of Gottfried Benn had been dominant in Gegenwartsliteratur der USA," in Kritisches the 1950s and early 1960s, and if hosts of Lexikon zur fremdsrachigen Gegemvartsliteratur. Hg. Heinz Ludwig Arnold (Munchen: Edition Text + Kritik, 1983ff.) VII: 1-31; here, p. I. As ~9 For more details and some critical remarks, for contemporary poetry in the United Kingdom, see David Rigsbee, "The Materialist Muse: which is far less typical anyway, see Thomas Theory 3nd Language Poetry." Pembroke Kulhnann, "Die englische Gegenwartsliteratur," Magazine 28 (1996): 64-87. 30 in ibid~ 1-33 (all entries in this lexicon have Meind l. "Die Gegenwartsliteratur der USA" separate pagination). 2S.

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Downloaded from Brill.com09/23/2021 05:22:32PM via free access Some Fleeting Sidelights on Contemporary Western Poetry equally one-sided sociopolitical poems in end of the spectrum, and German poesie the wake of Bertolt Brecht had bee rampant engagee, at the other, have continued near in the late 1960s and a good deal of the unabatedly nonetheless, as have the 1970s, a wholly new movement, after some count I e s s s t r u c t u r a 1 and thematic wavering back and forth had nonchalantly manifestations and variations of verse established itself by 1980. Yet can it really extending in between. Once again, then, the be called a 'movement' at all? What is this rest is diversity. alleged 'New Subjectivity' (as it proudly labeled itself, or was labeled by eager Hence, what are the results we have critics) other than a formless, unrestrained, ultimately achieved by way of our fleeting and totally private and personal outpouring sidelights on contemporary Western poetry? of marginal babble and prattle--in most of its Am I advocating a sort of wishy-washy numerous instances, at any rate--or else, in mishmash, after all? The answer cannot but the hands of gifted poets such as Jurgen be a resounding No! To avail myself of a Becker and Nicolas Born, a highly pertinent dictum from the work of Benn, an problematic lyrical practice both in the first 31 autobiographical and truly programmatic place and in the long run? For even to statement dating back to the year 1949: them, the shibboleth of poetic creation appears to have been an indiscriminate Aber wenn der Mann danach ist, notion like 'anything goes.' As Rolf Dieter dann kann der erste V ers aus der Brinkmann, one or the fiercest and most Kursbuch sein und der zweite eine determined proponents of such verses and Gesangbuchstrophe und der dritte non-verses, phrased it as early as 1969: ein Mikoschwitz und das Ganze ist doch ein Gedicht.33 Each and everything [schlechthin alles] that one perceives or that one deals with can be made into a poem, provided one views it with adequate exactitude and renders it with alles, was man sieht und womit man sich adequate directness. beschaftigt, wenn man es nur genau genug sieth und direkt genug wiedergibt, ein Gedicht werden And this rather cheeky confession, mind kann ..." ; Rolf Dieter Brinkmann as quoted in you, expressly and gratefully refers to a Klaus Schuhmann, Lyrik des 20. Jahrhunderts : modem American poet: namely, to Frank Materialien zu einer Poetik (Reinbek bei O'Hara.32 Still, German poesie pure, at one Hamburg : Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, 1995) 339f.

33 Gottfired Benn, Gesammelte Werke in vier 31 For an early and both critical and historical Banden, hg. Dieter Wellershoff (Wiesbaden: evaluation, compare Hiltrud Gnug, "The Limes, I 958ff.) IV: 164; cf. also ibid. 448. The Supposedly New Subjectivity: On German Lyric respective chapter, which is dated "6/9/1949," Poetry of the Late Seventies," in From Ode to bears the oddly reversed title "Zukunft und Anthem 182-92. Gegenwart" ("Future and Present"). 32 "Dankbar bin ich ... den Gedichten Frank 0' bears the oddly reversed title "Zukunft und Haras, die mir gezeigt haben, daB schlechthin Gegenwart" ("Future and Present").

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Downloaded from Brill.com09/23/2021 05:22:32PM via free access MANUSYA: Journal of Humanities Vol. I No. I 1998

Of necessity, the translation of this hymn while the third may be a silly marvelous definition boils down to a mere or dirty joke, and the whole thing approximation: will still amount to a poem.

Yet if the poet is competent enough In short, it is the great poet who produces (has the stature, the talent, the great poetry, today as always, in Western or felicitous touch), then the first line non-Western literature, and regardless of may stem from the railroad time any doctrines whatsoever. table and the second from a church

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