"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. Downloaded from Brill.com09/23/2021 05:22:32PM via free access MANUSYA: Journal of Humanities Vol. I No. I 1998 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 26 Downloaded from Brill.com09/23/2021 05:22:32PM via free access Some Fleeting Sidelights on Contemporary Western Poetry 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. 27 Downloaded from Brill.com09/23/2021 05:22:32PM via free access MANUSYA: Journal of Humanities Vol. I No. I 1998 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,