Cold War Crossings
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Cold War Crossings: Border Poetics in Postwar German and Polish Literature Alexander Holt Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy under the Executive Committee of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2020 © 2020 Alexander Holt All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT Cold War Crossings: Border Poetics in Postwar German and Polish Literature Alexander Holt Focusing on transborder travel narratives by two German authors and one Polish author, “Cold War Crossings” investigates how their writing responds to the postwar demarcation of separate Eastern and Western spheres of influences. Central to each of their oeuvres is the topos of the border broadly conceived, from the material, ideological, and psychic boundaries of the Iron Curtain to the Saussurean bar of the linguistic sign. By presenting border-crossing as an act of both political and aesthetic transgression, these writers advance uniquely literary alternatives to the rigid geopolitical divisions of their age. This dissertation analyzes the way in which each author’s poetics of the border informs, among other things, their manipulation of narrative structure, their unique employment of figurative language, and their shared proclivity for intertextuality, all of which address and reorient different kinds of textual boundaries. In this way, it is a contribution to the ever-expanding field of border studies and other scholarly investigations of the discursive production of mental maps. At the same time, however, the dissertation argues by way of its three case studies for a closer examination of the formal elements of literary texts that often go overlooked in such analyses. Conceived as an interdisciplinary and comparative study, “Cold War Crossings” seeks to overstep barriers between national literatures as well as disciplines by combining cultural studies, literary criticism, and historical analysis. Furthermore, the dissertation’s joint study of German and Polish literatures also contributes to recent debates on Europe as it counteracts traditional Eurocentric approaches that disregard Eastern Europe. TABLE OF CONTENTS ABBREVIATIONS iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iv INTRODUCTION 1 I. Slipping through the Iron Curtain 1 II. Cold War Crossings 5 III. Literary Borders 11 IV. The Early Cold War 20 CHAPTER ONE: The Text as a Border Station. Uwe Johnson’s Das dritte Buch über Achim 26 I. A Writer of Neither Germany 26 II. Balancing Acts between East and West 30 III. Aesthetic Consequences of Cold War Borders 34 IV. A Novel of Incongruity 46 V. Blending of Perspectives 51 VI. Figurative Language as Grenzverschiebung 73 VII. Conclusion: The Border as Aesthetic Opportunity 99 CHAPTER TWO: The Border as the Site of Satirical Critique. Arno Schmidt’s Das steinerne Herz 101 I. Marking Territory 101 II. The Unbounded Heath 107 III. Maps and Cartographic Distortion 114 i IV. Outsider, Refugee, Wessi? 122 V. Crossing the Line 132 VI. Forgery and the Frontier 142 VII. Conclusion: Die Nachkriegsordnung eggen 160 CHAPTER THREE: Cold War Europe as a Borderland. Zbigniew Herbert’s Barbarzyńca w ogrodzie 163 I. A Dialogue between East and West 163 II. Crossing Europe 172 III. Leaving Behind Central Europe 188 IV. The Barbarian in the Garden 197 V. (Dis-)Inheriting/ (Dis-)Possessing the West 210 VI. The Ekphrastic Pilgrim 227 VII. Conclusion: Mona Lisa and the Barbarian 243 CONCLUSION 247 I. Post-Cold War Borders 247 BIBLIOGRAPHY 259 ii ABBREVIATIONS Works frequently cited have been identified by the following abbreviations: B Arno Schmidt, “Berechnungen I,” in Essays und Aufsätze, vol. 3 of Bargfelder Ausgabe III (Bargfeld: Arno Schmidt Stiftung, 1995), 163-168. BO Zbigniew Herbert, Barbarzyńca w ogrodzie (Warsaw: Zeszyty Literackie, 2004). BS Uwe Johnson, “Berliner Stadtbahn (veraltet),” in Berliner Sachen (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1975). BU Uwe Johnson, Begleitumstände: Frankfurter Vorlesungen (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1980). CP Zbigniew Herbert, The Collected Prose. 1948-1998, ed. Alissa Valles (New York: HarperCollins, 2010). DBA Uwe Johnson, Das dritte Buch über Achim (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1973). MD Zbigniew Herbert, “Mistrz z Delft” i inne utwory odnalezione, ed. Barbara Toruńczyk (Warsaw: Zeszyty Literackie, 2008). SH Arno Schmidt, Das steinerne Herz: Historischer Roman aus dem Jahre 1954 nach Christi, in Bargfelder Ausgabe I, vol. 2 (Bargfeld: Arno Schmidt Stiftung, 2013). SS Arno Schmidt, Schwarze Spiegel, in Bargfelder Ausgabe I, vol. 1 (Bargfeld: Arno Schmidt Stiftung, 2013). WZ Zbigniew Herbert, Wiersze zebrane, ed. Ryszard Krynicki (Kraków: Wydawnictwo a5, 2008). iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation would not have been possible without the guidance of my advisors Oliver Simons, Erk Grimm, and Chris Caes. Oliver Simons has enthusiastically supported this project since its beginning; the decision to write a dissertation on Cold War borders in literature began in an independent study with him in which we read and discussed many of the authors and works treated here. His rigorous form of close reading, innovative mode of interpretation, theoretical and methodological sophistication, and focus on the specifically literary qualities of texts have been a constant source of inspiration for me during my work on this project. Erk Grimm has been a close, kind, and supportive reader of chapter drafts and has drawn my attention to secondary scholarship that has proved invaluable to me, while also providing detailed feedback on my own writing. In his advising and in his courses on nineteenth and twentieth century Polish literature, Chris Caes has provided me with an encyclopedic overview of modern Polish culture and history and helped me become a more historically informed reader of literary texts. I have been very fortunate to have such a devoted committee of close and careful readers for this dissertation. All errors, inaccuracies, and infelicities are, of course, entirely my own. I would like to thank Holger Helbig, Antje Pautzke, Katja Leuchtenberger, and the rest of the Uwe Johnson-Gesellschaft who have been a consistent source of guidance during my research at the Uwe Johnson-Archiv in Rostock and residence in Wieck am Darß, both of which were made possible by the Gesellschaft’s generous financial support. These experiences, alongside the precise feedback of these dedicated scholars, helped me contextualize Das dritte Buch within Johnson’s larger body of work while also providing a visceral impression of the author’s environment and mode of working. I would also like to thank Ulrich Klappstein and Dietmar Noering for their feedback on my work on Arno Schmidt at an annual conference of the Gesellschaft der Arno- iv Schmidt-Leser. A grant from the Humanities War and Peace Initiative at Columbia University allowed me to conduct research on Zbigniew Herbert at the National Library in Warsaw. At Columbia University, Claudia Breger read an early version of the introductory chapter and provided me with valuable feedback, encouraging me to speak more directly to the theoretical and scholarly backdrop of my work, which I hope I have done here. Among the many wonderful graduate students in the Department of Germanic Languages and the Department of Slavic Languages, I want to mention Claudia Kelley, Tomasz Kurianowicz, Evan Parks, and Sophie Schweiger, all of whom have been sources of inspiration and invaluable interlocutors for me during the writing of this dissertation. I would also like to thank the students of my class on literature and film in the German-speaking borderlands for their brilliant approaches to the concept of “borderlands” and their enthusiasm for and interest in this increasingly relevant topic. Lastly, I would like to thank my family members and my “European family.” Hanna and Jacek Penza have taught me what it means to care for and shelter others, those with whom we cannot even communicate; I am glad that my increasing knowledge of Polish has chipped away at this linguistic border. Paweł and Zofia Gabler gave me my first book of Zbigniew Herbert’s poems and showed me how to travel. My parents, Jeff and Susan, my brother Ryan, and my nephews Henry and Walker have been constant sources of support, guidance, and joy for me throughout my time as a graduate student. And finally, I would like to thank Kate Kelley for being the best interlocutor and travel companion one could ever ask for, as well as an inexhaustible wellspring of artistic and intellectual inspiration. v INTRODUCTION I. Slipping through the Iron Curtain Though published in 1958, Wolfgang Koeppen’s travelogue Nach Russland und anderwohin: Empfindsame Reisen was broadcast over the radio on November 12, 1957, as Alfred Andersch had commissioned it as part of his Radio Essay series for the Süddeutsche Rundfunk Stuttgart.1 Koeppen’s collection of travel essays, containing descriptions of the author’s trips to Spain, the Netherlands, Russia, and London, arose out of a state-sponsored project meant to orient West German listeners to the still unfamiliar circumstances of postwar Europe.2 As a contributor to this project, however, the author begins his trip through East Germany, Poland, and the Soviet Union by drawing the most dominant geopolitical symbol of his time into question: Ich wollte aber nicht fliegen, [...] ich wollte mit dem Zug fahren, ich wollte Tag und Nacht die Räder rollen hören, [...] ich wollte spüren, wie es nach Osten geht, ich wollte merken, wie die Sonne und die Stunden mir entgegenwandern, ich wollte mich langsam dem verschlossenen