No More Learning

49).
mark elliott 85
Es ist das wahrhaft Grossartige an der Gegenwart, dass so viele Vergangenheiten in ihr als lebendige magische Existenzen drinliegen, und das scheint mir das eigentliche Schicksal des Ku? nstlers: sich selber als den Ausdruck einer in weite Vergangenheit zuru? ckfu? hrenden Pluralita? t zu fu? hlen -- neben jener Pluralita? t in die Breite, jener planetarischen Kontemporaneita? t. 27
[What is truly magnificent about the present is that so many pasts lie within it as living, magical existences, and this seems to me to be the real destiny of the artist: to feel oneself as the expression of a plurality that leads back into the distant past as well as of a planetary contemporaneity that expands outwards alongside that historical plurality. ]
The significance of both Eliot and Hofmannsthal as theorists is clearly evident in their influence on German critical texts of the 1940s, 50s and 60s that explore the relationship between poet and tradition. E. R. Curtius proposes a concept of a 'timeless present' that is clearly influenced by Eliot, a poet he worked extensively on from the late 1920s onwards,28 while Walter Jens declares Hofmannsthal's concepts of 'plurality' and 'contemporaneity' to be the 'magic words of the Modern period'. 29 All the poets discussed here developed their own individual models of tradition that validated the intertextual echoes in their work as something more dynamic and creative than mere imitation or restoration.
Franz Baermann Steiner, a Prague-born Jew exiled in England from 1938, was anthropologist, poet, aphorist and fluent in numerous languages; as E. E. Evans-Pritchard remarked in Steiner's obituary, he was a polymath of 'monumental learning'. 30 This combination of erudition, poetry and theory bears all the hallmarks of a 'learned' poet, as Jeremy Adler suggests in the afterword to the collected poems: 'Steiner was proud of being a poeta doctus, a learned poet. His style [brings to mind] the Renaissance poets [. . . ], the poetics of Petrarch's and Ronsard's followers, for whom translation, imita- tion and allusion were more important than originality'. 31 The concepts of tradition and originality, however, arguably carried equal weight in Steiner's thought. Clearly engaging with Eliot's famous essay, Steiner scathingly criticizes the inability of the German critic to reconcile 'tradition' and the 'individual', to differentiate between 'continuation' and 'imitation':
27 Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Gesammelte Werke in zehn Einzelba? nden, ed. by Bernd Schoeller (Frankfurt a. M. , 1979-80), Reden und Aufsa? tze II, 1914-1924, p. 289; quoted in Walter Jens, Deutsche Literatur der Gegenwart. Themen, Stile, Tendenzen (Munich, 1961), p. 11.
28 E. R. Curtius, Europa? ische Literatur und Lateinisches Mittelalter, 10th impression (Bern and Munich, 1984), p. 25.
29 Jens, Deutsche Literatur der Gegenwart, p. 12.
30 E. E. Evans-Pritchard, 'Obituary: Franz Baermann Steiner', Man, 3 (1952), 121; quoted in Jeremy Adler, 'The Poet as Anthropologist: On the Aphorisms of Franz Baermann Steiner', Austrian Studies, 3 (1992), 145-57 (p. 146).
31 Franz Baermann Steiner, Am stu? rzenden Pfad. Gesammelte Gedichte, ed. by Jeremy Adler (Go? ttingen, 2000), p. 454. Quotations from Steiner's poems will be from this edition (= S), with page references given in parentheses in the text.
86 Poetic Dialogues with Georg Trakl in the 1930s and 40s
Denn zweierlei unterscheidet das englische vom deutschen Klein und Gross: Sinn
fu? r Tradition [. . . ] und Respekt fu? r das Individuelle.
Sinn fu? r dichterische Tradition ist dem Deutschen leider so fremd, dass er sta? ndig das Wahren einer Tradition mit dem Epigonentum der Nichtsko? nner verwechselt, das sich in der Literatur jedes Volkes breitmacht. Nicht zwischen Fortfu? hren und Nachahmen unterscheiden ko? nnen -- ist nahezu ein Charakterfehler. 32
[For two things distinguish the English from the Germans, young and old: a sense of tradition and respect for what is individual. A sense of poetic tradition is unfor- tunately so alien to the Germans that they constantly confuse the preservation of tradition with the epigonism of the amateurs which makes itself at home in every national literature. Not being able to differentiate between continuation and imitation is almost a character flaw. ]
The notion of 'continuation' here suggests linearity and thus deviates from Eliot's model, but elsewhere in the essay history is unequivocally shaped by a simultaneous 'reality of tradition' and not by discrete moments of change, such as 'turning points' or 'catastrophes'. 33 The distinction Steiner implicitly sets up between himself as 'learned' poet and inferior contemporaries, here the amateurish epigones, is a further pronounced characteristic of the poeta doctus. 34
Steiner's poetry works with a whole range of Western and Oriental tradi- tions, and abounds with literary echoes and allusions. Ho? lderlin and Rilke are the German poets that Steiner most obviously engages with, whereas his reception of Trakl is less conspicuous. Trakl features infrequently in the aphorisms, but is nonetheless highly regarded by Steiner, on one occasion alongside Heym as 'das gro? sste lyrische Genie dieses letzten Halb- jahrhunderts' [the greatest lyrical genius of the last fifty years]. 35 Similarly, a notebook entry from shortly before Steiner's death in 1952 suggests he was planning to dedicate a poem to Trakl in a collection of longer odes, provid- ing implicit evidence of his admiration for the poet's work. 36 Significantly, this was a lyrical honour that Steiner accorded only to Ho? lderlin within his lifetime, in the poem 'An Ho? lderlin' (S, 81-83). Notwithstanding the marginal existence of Trakl in Steiner's prose writing, his poetry contains numerous examples of intertextual borrowings from Trakl's work. There are a number of isolated echoes of Trakl; for example, Steiner's 'mondenes schicksal' [moonly destiny] (S, 379) combines the unusual adjective 'monden' in a collocation of adjective and noun reminiscent of Trakl's 'mondene
32 Steiner, 'Poetae Minores', Eckart, 23 (1953/54), 144-46 (p. 144). Steiner's reception of Eliot is discussed in Steiner, Selected Writings, ed. by Jeremy Adler and Richard Fardon, 2 vols (New York and Oxford, 1999), ii, 68-73.
33 Steiner, 'Poetae Minores', p. 146.
34 Barner, 'Poeta Doctus', p. 731.
35 Steiner, Feststellungen und Versuche -- Januar/Juni 1948 (Auswahl), Steiner-Nachlass, Deutsches
Literaturarchiv, Marbach am Neckar, 26 pages, p. 13. This typescript was prepared from the original manuscript by H. G. Adler.
36 Steiner, i-ii 1952 (ii), Steiner-Nachlass, Deutsches Literaturarchiv, Marbach am Neckar.
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Stimme' [moonly voice] in 'Geistliche Da? mmerung: 2. Fassung' [Spiritual Dusk: 2nd Version] (T i, 118). 37
The most sustained dialogue with Trakl can be found in the poem 'Herbstgera? usche' [Autumn Noises, 1947], which actively works with Trakl's 'Grodek: 2. Fassung' [Grodek: 2nd Version] (T i, 167). Both poems are in free verse and deal with the theme of war, juxtaposing the quiet beauty of autumn with the violent colours and sounds of battle:
Die warmen ha? nge voll roter beeren sind,
U? berall und nirgends der vo? gel vernehmliches herbstgespra? ch, Du? nnes vertrautes gezwitscher.
Schweres eisen klirrt auf dem grunde des nebeltals,
Da stampfen zu viert die mannschaften, rollen kanonen. (S, 218)
[The warm slopes are ripe with red berries, everywhere and nowhere the autumn chatter of the birds can be heard, faint, familiar twittering. Heavy iron clatters on the misty valley floor, there the four-man teams tramp, rolling cannons. ]
There are clear textual similarities with Trakl's poem: Steiner's 'rollen kanonen' recalls Trakl's 'Sonne | Du? strer hinrollt' [sun rolls gloomier hither], and the location of war 'auf dem grunde des nebeltals' echoes Trakl's 'Weidengrund' [willow-ground]. The most powerful image of Steiner's poem is the blood-infused image of 'rotes geto? n':
Es ist aus rotem geto? n ein verzuckender herbstfalter, Riesig und farbverwischt im spro? den tra? ufelnden gras.
[Out of the resounding redness a twitching autumn butterfly, giant and smudged with colour in the brittle, trickling grass. ]
The 'Es ist' construction (which occurs twice more in the poem) is highly reminiscent of the enumerative style used by Trakl in the poems 'Psalm: 2. Fassung' [Psalm: 2nd Version] (T i, 55-56) and 'De Profundis' (T i, 46). The image of 'rotes geto? n' suggests a blend of the lethal weapons that 'to? nen' [resound] in the opening line of 'Grodek' with the 'rotes Gewo? lk' [red clouds] that appears a few lines later, as well as recalling Trakl's frequent synaesthetic association of sound and colour. The colour red obviously evokes an image of blood, as in Trakl's poem, but it also recalls the red ber- ries in the opening line, making Steiner's vision more subtle and ambiguous. The adjective 'farbverwischt' similarly evokes both the natural colouring of a butterfly but also an image of being smeared with blood by the 'rotes geto? n', and the unnatural association of dryness ('spro? d') and moisture ('tra? ufelnd') suggests perhaps the grass is trickling with blood and not dew or mist. The contrasts in sound images are likewise striking. The hushed sounds of nature are marked by the use of the bound prefix 'ver-' in the adjective ('farbverwischt') which echoes the faint chatter of the birds at the start of
37 The adjective occurs frequently in Trakl's work (in total forty-three times), for example, in 'Abendland: 4. Fassung' [Occident: 4th Version] (T i, 140) and 'An den Knaben Elis' [To the Boy Elis] (T i, 26).
88 Poetic Dialogues with Georg Trakl in the 1930s and 40s
the poem ('vernehmlich', vertraut') and the tree roots that mask the soldiers' footsteps: 'Grollend und verworren schallvermummtes stapfen | U? ber das wurzelwerk' [rumbling and confused the muffled noise of trampling feet across the roots]. These muted sounds are juxtaposed with the heavy clatter of the machines of war, evoked in onomatopoeic verbs like 'klirren'. This contrast is further stressed by images both of heaviness associated with war ('schweres Eisen' [heavy iron], 'Senkblei' [plummet], 'Ankererz' [anchor ore], and the battle is rooted 'auf dem grunde'), and of ethereality associated with the serenity of nature (birdsong, the butterfly, the image of a boat 'luftig und stattlich | Schwebend und verankert' [airy and magnificent, floating and anchored]). Where the end of Trakl's poem ambiguously evokes the future with 'die ungebornen Enkel' [the unborn generations], Steiner's concludes with an image of peace in the here and now and a 'bucht' that recalls Trakl's tranquil 'blaue Seen' [blue lakes]: 'Dru? ber friedens glu? hes bild kam zur bucht' [From on high a glowing image of peace came into the bay].
Paul Celan's early poem 'Scho? ner Oktober' [Beautiful October] similarly works actively with Trakl's 'Grodek' by exploiting the association between autumn (seen traditionally as the death of nature) and war. 38 Barbara Wiedemann highlights the similarity in imagery between the two poems (autumn, war, heroism, the mourning sister), but argues that Celan's images are more vivid than the fragmentary images employed by Trakl. She further stresses the ironic, intellectual tenor of Celan's poem compared to the more immediate emotions evoked in 'Grodek'. 39 However, the poem also reveals pertinent links with Steiner's engagement with 'Grodek' seen above. For example, the idea of 'camouflage' is important to both poets. Celan writes, 'Wie scho? n du bist, Herbst! Wie schwa? rmerisch, Pauke, dein Schall! | Mit ro? tlichem Laub und mit braunem getarnt die Kanonen! ' [How beautiful you are, autumn! How enthusiastic, drum, your sound! Camouflaged with reddish and brown leaves, the cannons! ],40 and here the colours of nature camouflage ('tarnen') the machines of war ('cannons' is also used by Steiner as a metonymy for war), where in Steiner's poem the roots on the forest floor mask ('vermummen') the sound of marching soldiers. In both cases the rela- tionship between nature and war is far more immediate than in Trakl's poem, where the images of nature seem isolated. The 'autumnal forests', 'golden plains', 'blue lakes' and 'meadowed valley' are physically untouched by largely intangible images of war: the sound of gunfire, dead soldiers
38 The poem is undated, but Barbara Wiedemann suggests that it was written during the period Celan spent in Bukowina between 1939 and 1945 in her Antschel Paul -- Paul Celan. Studien zum Fru? hwerk (Tu? bingen, 1985), p. 72.
39 Ibid. , pp. 72-73. The Trakl resonances in Celan's early poetry have also been documented by Bernhard Bo? schenstein, 'Celan und Trakl', in Antworten auf Georg Trakl, ed. by Adrien Finck and Hans Weichselbaum (Salzburg, 1992), pp. 107-19.
40 Paul Celan, Die Gedichte. Kommentierte Gesamtausgabe in einem Band, ed. by Barbara Wiedemann (Frankfurt a. M. , 2003), p. 424.
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engulfed by the night, red clouds of blood. The closing image of Celan's poem is also reminiscent of Steiner: 'wo la? ngst welk ward die Malve, | streift schwebend ein ro? tliches Blatt mein Schwesterlein Annelies' [where the mallow has long since wilted, a reddish leaf floating in the air brushes against my little sister Annelies]. 41 The use of the adverb 'schwebend' recalls Steiner's boat, 'Schwebend und verankert'. This image of airiness is the posi- tive antithesis of the 'heavy' images of war depicted and is firmly anchored in reality, suggesting constancy. The image of the 'floating leaf' at the end of Celan's poem, however, alludes to the frailty of life and death, and is far bleaker than the anticipation of the unborn generations in Trakl's, and the vision of peace in Steiner's. 42
Celan wrote unambiguously about this relationship to Trakl in a letter to Alfred Margul-Sperber of 6 July 1948, at the same time playing down the influence of Else Lasker-Schu? ler: 'Ich [habe] -- zu meiner Schande sei es gestanden -- zu Else Lasker-Schu? lers Gedichten eine viel weniger starke Beziehung als etwa zu Trakl und Eluard' [I have -- to my shame let it be known -- a much weaker affinity with the poetry of Else Lasker-Schu? ler than with the likes of Trakl and Eluard]. 43 Trakl's influence (and significantly an engagement with George and Rilke as well) is later confirmed in a letter to Walter Jens of 19 May 1961: 'Ich bin der letzte, der den Einfluss Trakls bestreiten wu? rde. (Immerhin, es gibt hier auch a? ltere Einflu? sse; Rilke und George)' [I am the last person who would dispute Trakl's influence. (Anyway, there are also older influences evident here; Rilke and George)]. 44 This letter importantly brings to light aspects of Celan's theoretical under- standing of poetic influence and tradition. The poet questions Jens's notion of literary 'archetypes', referring in particular to the Trakl resonances that Jens identifies in 'Todesfuge' [Death Fugue]. 45 Celan cryptically argues 'dass erst Wiederbegegnung Begegnung zur . . . Begegnung macht' [only after a re-encounter does an encounter become an encounter]. 46 This notion of
41 Ibid. The mallow is used elsewhere by Celan in association with death, for example 'der malvenfarbene Tod' [mallow-coloured death] (p. 30).
42 A more extensive study of Celan and Steiner in conjunction is potentially very interesting. For example, Steiner's poem 'Am Kamin' [By the Fireside, 1945/47] works with a cadaverous image of a golden-haired girl and of ash in a dying fire (S, 169).
This association of golden hair, death and ash brings to mind Celan's horrific evocation of the Holocaust in 'Todesfuge' [Death Fugue], also written in 1945, which famously ends with the iconoclastic images of 'dein goldenes Haar Margarete | dein aschenes Haar Sulamith' [your golden hair Margarete, your ashen hair Sulamith] (Celan, Die Gedichte, p. 41).
43 Celan, 'Briefe an Alfred Margul-Sperber', Neue Literatur, 26/vii (1975), 50-63 (p. 52).
44 Paul Celan -- Die Goll-Affa? re. Dokumente zu einer 'Infamie', ed. by Barbara Wiedemann (Frankfurt a. M. , 2000), pp. 531-35 (p. 532). A large number of Celan's notes and letters are published here for the first time.
45 Paul Celan -- Die Goll-Affa? re, ed. by Wiedemann, pp. 532-33. He is referring to an essay by Jens that primarily discusses the accusations of plagiarism raised by Claire Goll against Celan: Walter Jens, 'Leichtfertige Vorwu? rfe gegen einen Dichter', Die Zeit, 9 June 1961, reproduced in Paul Celan -- Die Goll-Affa? re, ed. by Wiedemann, pp. 365-75 (p. 368).
46 Paul Celan -- Die Goll-Affa? re, ed. by Wiedemann, p. 533.
90 Poetic Dialogues with Georg Trakl in the 1930s and 40s
'Begegnung' implies that an intertextual echo sometimes only becomes such when its creator happens upon its archetype. This intertextual 'Begegnung' is a modification of the concept of 'Begegnung' found in Celan's speech Der Meridian [The Meridian, 1960], where the very existence of poetry itself is dependent on its 'encounter' with 'das Andere' [the other] or 'das wahrnehmende Du' [the perceiving thou] -- a notion consciously engaging with Martin Buber's philosophy of dialogue. 47 Both the intertextual echo and the poem itself hence exist in a kind of literary limbo until the moment of perception or recognition establishes their existence. A note in Celan's personal copy of Trakl's poems (a birthday present in 1950) aptly highlights the moment of re-encounter. 48 In the penultimate line of Trakl's 'Psalm: 2. Fassung' (T i, 56) Celan has marked the verb phrase 'spielt [. . . ] mit seinen Schlangen' [plays with his snakes] and commented 'seltsam! vgl. Todesfuge [strange! cf. Todesfuge] -- an exclamation which clearly reveals the genuine surprise of poetic 'Wiederbegegnung'. 49 Celan's self-stylized aware- ness of his relationship with tradition (and his scepticism towards Jens) is ironically encapsulated in the moniker that he uses to sign off the letter: 'Altmetaphernha? ndler' [dealer in old metaphors]. 50
Josef Weinheber, an Austrian and prominent Nazi poet, was not a scholar of Steiner's calibre (he had been a post-office clerk until achieving fame as a writer), but was nevertheless the archetypal poeta doctus. The author of numerous critical and theoretical essays, he meticulously developed and improved his own poetic talents by imitating his literary ancestors, as Albert Berger suggests with the notion of Weinheber sending himself to 'Dichterschule' [poets' school]. 51 This active engagement with tradition was, however, not just part of Weinheber's poetic schooling, but an intrinsic part of his literary identity. He claimed that borrowing and reinventing the language of his forefathers, referred to as 'die grossen Bruderexistenzen' [the great brothers], was his 'Erbrecht' [right of inheritance]. 52 Trakl was one such 'brother' whom Weinheber extolled as 'eine Art Pru? fstein, u? berdies der gro? sste o? sterr[eichische] Lyriker' [a kind of touchstone, what is more the
47 Paul Celan, Werke. Tu? binger Ausgabe, ed. by Ju? rgen Wertheimer (Frankfurt a. M. , 1996- ), Der Meridian. Endfassung, Entwu? rfe, Materialien, ed. by Bernhard Bo? schenstein and Heino Schmull with Michael Schwarzkopf and Christiane Wittkopp (1999), 9-11.
48 Trakl, Die Dichtungen, 6th impression (Salzburg, 1938), p. 65; quoted in Celan, Die Gedichte, p. 609.
49 Jens identifies this as the 'archetype' for the line 'er spielt mit den Schlangen' [he plays with the snakes] in 'Todesfuge' (Paul Celan -- Die Goll-Affa? re, ed. by Wiedemann, p. 368).
50 Celan to Jens, 19 May 1961, in Paul Celan -- Die Goll-Affa? re, ed. by Wiedemann, p. 533.
51 Albert Berger, Josef Weinheber 1892-1945. Leben und Werk -- Leben im Werk (Salzburg and Vienna, 1999), pp. 81-82.
52 Josef Weinheber, Sa? mtliche Werke, ed. by Friedrich Jenaczek, 5 vols (Salzburg, 1970-96), iv, 617. This edition (= W) is used wherever possible and referred to (by volume and page numbers) in parentheses in the text.
mark elliott 91
greatest Austrian poet],53 and whom he located in a constellation of 'great' Modernist poets with George and Rilke (W iv, 219). 54 Weinheber's most extensive engagement with Trakl occurs in the collection Vereinsamtes Herz [Lonely Heart, 1935] (the title itself evoking a loneliness and melancholy reminiscent of Trakl) which contains a large number of poems written in the early 1920s. Indeed, as Weinheber himself declared in 1938, his most intensive reading of Trakl occurred in these years: 'Mit dreissig [i. e. in 1922] schwor ich auf Trakl als auf den einzigen Lyriker der Deutschen' [at thirty I swore by Trakl as the only German poet] (W iv, 594). There are clear Trakl resonances here, for example, in 'Spa? therbst' [Late Autumn, 1919] (W ii, 256-57) and 'Versunkene Stadt' [Sunken City, 1923] (W ii, 232), as Albert Berger has already demonstrated. 55 Of these early poems, 'Friedhof im Schnee' [Cemetery in the Snow, 1922, but unpublished in Weinheber's lifetime] (W iii, 264-65) reveals the most significant dialogue with Trakl's poetry. Berger draws a brief comparison with Trakl's 'Psalm: 2. Fassung', where Weinheber's use of the noun 'Scha? delsta? tte' [place of skulls] is the most substantial link. The graphic imagery of those killed in battle and clear textual similarities, however, again more convincingly bring to mind Trakl's 'Grodek'. For example, Weinheber's 'eingebrochene Brust des Erschlagnen' [smashed chest of the slain] echoes Trakl's 'zerbrochene Mu? nder' [shattered mouths], and the line 'Es ordnen sich in weissen Kleidern | zum Reigen die Ungebornen' [clothed in white the unborn arrange themselves for the roundel] evokes an image of the innocent unborn that recalls the closing image of 'Grodek'.
This reception of Trakl can, however, be traced into the 1930s with the poem 'Kirchenplatz in Tarascon' [Church Square in Tarascon, 1931] from Vereinsamtes Herz:
. . Und Gassen enden schwarz und sonderbar, und tra? ge Katzen schleichen krumm und schmal, und dieser Turm steht an die tausend Jahr,
und schwarzer Ba? ume Astwerk u? berbaut
mit Schatten wirr die Mauerfluchten kahl,
wo in den Winkeln sich der Unrat staut,
und schwarze Frauen mit Gesichtern fahl betreten ohne Hast und ohne Laut
den toten Platz und schwinden im Portal . . (W ii, 247)
[And streets end black and strange, and languid cats creep hunched and thin, and
this tower has stood almost a thousand years and overbuilt with the branches of
53 Weinheber, Sa? mtliche Werke, ed. by Josef Nadler and Hedwig Weinheber, 5 vols (Salzburg, 1953-56), v, 396 (7 January 1939). The letters do not appear in the more recent Jenaczek edition. 54 Weinheber's reception of George and Rilke is discussed in Elliott, 'Beyond Left and Right',
pp. 917-19 and 924.
55 Berger discusses the earlier versions of these poems from the 1920 collection Der einsame
Mensch [The Lonely Man] (Berger, Josef Weinheber, pp. 87-90).
92 Poetic Dialogues with Georg Trakl in the 1930s and 40s
black trees tangled with shadow the rowed walls bare, where in the corners rubbish collects, and black women with ashen faces without haste or sound enter the dead square and vanish in the archway. ]
The opening line is a 'Kontrafaktur' of the famous line from 'Grodek': 'Alle Strassen mu? nden in schwarze Verwesung' [All roads flow into black decay] (T i, 167). Weinheber's narrow streets lead into blackness (and implicitly death) as well, but the adjective 'sonderbar' suggests an eeriness less graphic than Trakl's image of death. The scenes evoked in the poem are associatively linked as marked by the repetition of the conjunction 'und', an enumerative style particularly common in Trakl's earlier work, for example, 'Die Junge Magd' [The Young Maid] (T i, 12-15). The colour 'black' (and with it the leitmotif of death) recurs twice more, and the hushed sibilant sound of 'schwarz' resonates in all but the penultimate line, where the ghostly silence implicit in the poem is explicitly referred to, as the women move 'ohne Laut'. The motif of death culminates in the corpselike pallor of the 'black' women ('fahl' is an adjective used by Trakl some fifteen times in his work) and the image of the 'dead square' -- the ultimate destination of Weinheber's 'Gassen'. These intratextual echoes of sound and colour act like a refrain and structure the poem, a technique that was central to Trakl's poetry, where such internal resonances gave coherence to apparently unlinked strings of words and images. Weinheber uses one of Trakl's most powerful lines of poetry as the starting-point for his own melancholic reflection on the death embedded in Tarascon's mythical history. 56
Stephan Hermlin was a Marxist exiled all over Europe and the Middle East from 1936, who returned to Germany in 1945 and eventually settled in the Soviet Occupied Zone of Berlin in 1947. He significantly engaged with an array of traditions, as Wolfgang Ertl's study reveals: Ho? lderlin, the French Surrealists (such as Apollinaire), the nature poetry of Loerke and Lehmann, and the Grossstadtdichtung of Naturalism and Expressionism, particularly that of Heym. 57 Trakl receives only a very brief acknowledgement from Ertl. 58 Hermlin, however, claimed a strong personal affinity with Trakl, stating retrospectively that his 'name was, with few others, always central to my thinking and feeling, even though life has led me in a direction that is appar- ently far removed from the world expressed in his poetry'. 59 The poet indeed reworked a number of themes and motifs borrowed from Trakl's work in his earliest collection Zwo? lf Balladen von den grossen Sta? dten [Twelve Ballads of the Big
56 Tarascon in Provence is famous for the legend of the Tarasque, a mythical amphibious mon- ster (daughter of Leviathan) who terrorized and killed the inhabitants of the village before herself being killed by Saint Martha. A church was then built in Martha's honour, possibly the one to which Weinheber refers here.
57 Wolfgang Ertl, Stephan Hermlin und die Tradition (Bern, 1977).
58 Ibid. , p. 123.
59 In Antworten auf Georg Trakl, ed. by Finck and Weichselbaum, p. 71. See also the essay 'Georg
Trakl', in Stephan Hermlin, Lektu? re. U? ber Autoren, Bu? cher, Leser (Berlin, 1997), pp. 197-201.
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Cities, 1944]. The leitmotifs of dream, sickness, death and loneliness, as well as biblical imagery and dystopian scenes of nature, are characteristic of Trakl, and the desolate cityscapes recall Heym. Hermlin's world is 'verloren', 'vergessen', 'verdorrt', 'verflucht' [lost, forgotten, withered, damned], the bound prefix 'ver-' often used by Trakl to convey a melancholic sense of loss and passing. The poem 'Die toten Sta? dte' [The Dead Cities] from 1940-41, in particular, integrates into its depiction of the destruction of the 'city' by war a complex of themes that are characteristic of Trakl, as the sixth strophe illustrates:
Senkt sich des Abends Ku? hle Auf die traumsu? chtige Welt, [. . . ]
Geistert die Klage der Ha? hne In der Fiebernden Ruh, Fliegen die Ungebornen
Dem Asphodelenhain zu. 60
[When the evening's coolness sinks onto the dream-addicted world, when the cock- erels' ghostly laments echo in the quiet of those ill with fever, the unborn fly towards the Fields of Asphodel. ]
The tone of the poem is characteristic of Trakl: dusk, a dream-like or fevered reality that seems on the threshold of consciousness is typical of Sebastian im Traum [Sebastian Dreaming, 1914], the adjective 'traumsu? chtig' is used by Trakl in noun form in the poem 'Unterwegs: 1. Fassung' [Travelling: 1st Version] (T i, 293), and the ominous biblical motif of the crowing cockerel. The refer- ence to the 'Ungebornen' alludes to the closing image of Trakl's 'Grodek'. However, where Trakl looks ambiguously to the future generations, Hermlin's vision is far more despairing, as the unborn are sent to their deaths in the Fields of Asphodel -- the common man's resting place in the Greek underworld.
The eighth strophe again recalls Trakl's line that begins 'Alle Strassen mu? nden . . . ', as Hermlin's streets lead explicitly into a powerful image of death:
Zickzack gleich Flederma? usen Falln wir in Strassen hinein: Todes murmelnde Schleusen, Tra? ume von Blut und Wein.
[Zigzag like bats we drop into streets, into murmuring floodgates of death, dreams of blood and wine. ]
The colon accentuates the moment of entering the street and creates, as it were, a visual river-mouth that flows into the noun 'death' in the following line. The inversion of the genitive subject ('Todes') makes the encounter with
60 Stephan Hermlin, Gedichte und Nachdichtungen (Berlin and Weimar, 1990), p. 19.
94 Poetic Dialogues with Georg Trakl in the 1930s and 40s
death all the more abrupt and unexpected. The noun 'Schleuse' evokes the vivid image of a street swimming with death as does Trakl's use of the verb 'mu? nden' [flow into]. The placement of the 'gate' image at the end of the line again leaves the reader on a threshold, the movement of 'hinein' has yet to be fulfilled. This occurs in the next line where the scene shifts from the brutal reality of the war-torn city into a sinister dream world of 'Blut und Wein'. This is a parody of the bread and wine of the Eucharist, and an intertextual echo of the motif that can be found throughout Trakl's work (it occurs some thirteen times) and famously in the title of Ho? lderlin's poem 'Brod und Wein' [Bread and Wine].
Metapoetic references to earlier poets and the theme of imitation in Zwo? lf Balladen reflect Hermlin's highly developed engagement with tradition. For example, he envisages himself as part of a 'Poeten Bru? derschaft' [brother- hood of poets], similar to Weinheber's 'Bruderexistenzen' above, elsewhere naming 'Percy, Friedrich, Wolfgang'. 61 He equally parodies the classical motif of 'virgin soil' (a metaphor for originality dating back as far as Horace): 'O wie ist die Wanderung weit | Auf spurenlosem Pfad! ' [O how far the journey is on untrodden paths! ]. 62 Hermlin's theoretical stance on the rela- tionship between poet and tradition is clearly evident in a speech given later in 1964: 'Er [der Schriftsteller] arbeitet unweigerlich in einem Universum, das von den Ausstrahlungen und Spuren all seiner Vorga? nger und seiner Zeitgenossen erfu? llt ist' [The writer unavoidably works in a universe that is filled with the emissions and traces of all his predecessors and contemporar- ies]. 63 This conception of tradition clearly suggests a 'simultaneous order', but the poet's engagement with the past is 'unavoidable', which recalls the inevitability of the artists' relationship with the past in Hofmannsthal. This makes the dialogue with tradition more passive than Eliot's model, whereby tradition can only be obtained 'by great labour', and reflects Hermlin's more subtle use of allusion that invites recognition by the reader, in contrast to the more conspicuous use of montage in Eliot's work.
Karl Krolow, one of Scha? fer's younger generation of 'non-National Socialist' writers, critically explored his own relationship with his poetic forefathers retrospectively in the essay 'Literarische Vorbilder' [Literary Exempla, 1968]: 'man [ko? nne] sich literarische Vorbilder nicht aussuchen [. . . ], wie man sich auch literarische Tradition nicht aussuchen kann. Man findet sie vor, diese grosse, nicht abreissende Entwicklungskette, in die man sich einfu? gen wird, der man nicht entrinnen kann, die einen bei der eigenen Arbeit einholt, wie sie vor Beginn der eigenen Arbeit da war' [you cannot
61 Ibid. , pp. 28 and 58. Hermlin is referring here to Shelley, Ho? lderlin and Mozart (see p. 389).
62 Ibid.