While he convincingly shows that there was a
palpable
mood of conservatism, the underlying dialectic between regression and progression in Scha?
Trakl - ‘. . Und Gassen enden schwarz und sonderbar’- Poetic Dialogues with Georg Trakl in the 1930s and 40s
'.
.
Und Gassen enden schwarz und sonderbar': Poetic Dialogues with Georg Trakl in the 1930s and 40s
MARK ELLIOTT
Jesus College, Oxford
Georg Trakl's drug addiction, mental illness and eventual death from a cocaine overdose arguably made him a prime target in the National Socialist witch-hunt for 'degenerate' Expressionist writers and artists that took place in the 1930s. This cultural pogrom broadly censured all Modernist art as 'eine Art ju? disch-bolschewistischer Kulturverho? hnung' [a kind of Jewish- Bolshevistic cultural travesty]. 1 In exile, the conservative aesthetics of Socialist Realism and the prevailingly anti-Modernist voices within the 'Expressionism Debate' of 1937-38 likewise seriously threatened to impair Trakl's reception. Expressionism was condemned by Marxist exiles as an ideological precursor of fascism and rejected on aesthetic grounds as 'the helpless stuttering, whimper- ing and blubbering of untalented hotchpotchcubofuturoconstructivists' -- a derisive evaluation of Modernist art distinctly reminiscent of Nazi propa- ganda. 2 Existing studies have argued that Trakl was 'barely tolerated' and that his reception was 'at best subliminal' within the Third Reich; in exile this pro- cess has yet to be substantially explored. 3 His work, however, never appeared on the Liste des scha? dlichen und unerwu? nschten Schrifttums [List of Dangerous and Undesirable Writing] issued by the Reich Ministry for Literature between 1935 and 1943,4 and he was never publicly vilified to the extent that some other writers were. 5 By the same token, Trakl was never openly denounced in the 'Expressionism Debate' or elsewhere in the exile press.
1 Adolf Hitler, Die Reden Hitlers am Parteitag der Freiheit (Munich, 1935), p. 33.
2 Alfred Durus, 'Abstrakt, abstrakter, am abstraktesten', in Die Expressionismusdebatte. Materialien zu einer marxistischen Realismuskonzeption, ed. by Hans-Ju? rgen Schmitt (Frankfurt a. M. , 1973), pp. 142-56 (p. 155).
3 Walter Methlagl, 'Wirkung und Aufnahme des Werkes von Georg Trakl seit dem ersten Weltkrieg', in Londoner Trakl-Symposion, ed. by Walter Methlagl and William E. Yuill (Salzburg, 1981), pp. 13-32 (p. 31), and Diana Orendi Hinze, 'Wandlungen des Trakl-Bildes: Zur Rezeptionsgeschichte Georg Trakls' (unpublished doctoral thesis, Washington University, 1972), p. xiii.
4 See Anon. , Liste des scha? dlichen und unerwu? nschten Schrifttums. Stand vom 31. Dezember 1938 und Jahreslisten 1939-1941 (Leipzig, 1938-41; repr. Vaduz, 1979), and Anon. , Jahresliste 1942 des scha? dlichen und unerwu? nschten Schrifttums (Leipzig, 1942).
5 See Egon Schwarz, 'Rainer Maria Rilke unter dem Nationalsozialismus', in Rilke heute. Beziehungen und Wirkungen, ed. by Ingeborg H. Solbrig and Joachim W. Storck, 2 vols (Frankfurt a. M. , 1975-76), i, 287-313 (pp. 294-96).
mark elliott 81
Trakl's work did find, however, widespread and lively reception among poets of the period, notably Franz Baermann Steiner, Paul Celan, Josef Weinheber, Stephan Hermlin and Karl Krolow. This selection reflects a broad cross-section of poets representing a range of backgrounds, experi- ences and political standpoints. The reception of Trakl's work in their poetry shows continuity in aesthetic discourse across political and geographical divisions in the era of National Socialism, as well as important historical links to the poetry of the Modernist period. What is more, the highly conscious and stylized engagement with tradition exhibited by these poets suggests a reception process that was everything but 'subliminal'. Rather it was shaped by a 'learned' and theoretical awareness of the relationship between poet and tradition. What emerges is a more nuanced and coherent model of the poetry written in the 1930s and 40s that extends beyond the rigid political and period boundaries of this problematic epoch.
Within the Third Reich, Trakl's reception in the regime-controlled realm of literary histories, journals and newspapers was mixed. A few were brutally censorious in line with the prevailing anti-Modernist ideology, such as Adolf Bartels's condemnation of Trakl as the 'softest and most spineless' of Expres- sionist poets. 6 The majority, however, were ambivalent or even positive, appraising the poet's work, for example, as 'one of the purest poetic testa- ments of recent times'. 7 Similarly, the prominent Nazi critic Helmut Langenbucher was forced to concede that Trakl's 'talents [were] way above average',8 and even the Vo? lkischer Beobachter ran a brief piece commemorating the thirtieth anniversary of his death in 1944. 9 What is more, those aspects of Trakl's work and life that were incompatible with Party ideology were not flatly condemned but reinterpreted accordingly. Trakl was 'not sick', a potentially 'degenerate' characteristic, but 'a strong person with a demonic life driven by desire',10 and the 'melancholy' of Trakl's poetry had a 'mascu- line nobility', which rejected the effeminate classification of the poet as 'soft' by critics such as Bartels. 11 The anti-Expressionist invective of the exile debates similarly did not lead to a renunciation of Trakl's work along with
6 Adolf Bartels, Geschichte der deutschen Literatur, 19th impression (Braunschweig, Berlin and Hamburg, 1943), p. 702.
7 Martin Kiessig, '"Kristallene Tra? nen, geweint um die bittere Welt". Georg Trakl zum Geda? chtnis', Der Bu? cherwurm, 25/iv-v (1939), 70-73 (p. 71).
8 Helmut Langenbucher, 'Georg Trakl', Bu? cherkunde, 9 (1942), 112-19 (p. 115).
9 Werner Tamms, 'Melodik des Herbstes: Georg Trakl zum 30. Todestag', Vo? lkischer Beobachter (Berliner Ausgabe), 2 November 1944, p. 2.
10 Josef Nadler, Literaturgeschichte des deutschen Volkes: Dichtung und Schrifttum der deutschen Sta? mme und Landschaften, 4th edn, 4 vols (Berlin, 1938-41), iv, 457.
11 Gerhard F. Hering, 'Der Dichter des Untergangs: Georg Trakl zum Geda? chtnis', Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, 3 February 1937. Hering is explicitly alluding to Trakl's motif of 'ma? nnliche Schwermut' [masculine melancholy] found, for example, in 'Anif', in Georg Trakl, Dichtungen und Briefe, Historisch-kritische Ausgabe, ed. by Walther Killy and Hans Szklenar, 2nd edn, 2 vols (Salzburg, 1987), i, 114. Quotations from Trakl's poetry will be from this edition (= T), with references given in parentheses in the text.
82 Poetic Dialogues with Georg Trakl in the 1930s and 40s
the rest of Expressionism. Indeed, Franz Leschnitzer's contribution to the 'Expressionism Debate' (the only article to deal with Trakl in any detail) vindicates the poet, along with Georg Heym and Ernst Wilhelm Lotz. 12 Expressionism itself, however, is treated (in line with Georg Luka? cs's influen- tial essay '"Gro? sse und Verfall" des Expressionismus' [Greatness and Decline of Expressionism, 1934]) as a period mercifully overcome, and period-specific elements of the poetry are denigrated as 'touchingly atavistic'. 13 Trakl found more favourable reception in the non-Marxist press, where Albert Ehrenstein, a contemporary of Trakl's, proclaimed 'that no Austrian has ever written such beautiful poetry'. 14 Beneath the propaganda, the poet's public reception was not as defamatory as Methlagl and Hinze suggest.
The conservative cultural programmes of both National Socialism and Marxism (as endorsed by certain left-wing writers in exile) were motivated in part by a conflict between tradition and avant-garde, as Ernst Bloch's parody of Goethe sharply illustrated at the time: 'Classicism is here healthy, Roman- ticism sick, and Expressionism the sickest of all'. 15 Broadly speaking, Expres- sionism was rejected and a restoration of 'classical' literature sought. Johannes R. Becher's speech 'Das grosse Bu? ndnis' [The Great Union] in 1934 clearly defined the official position of the Left, naming Goethe, Lessing, Hegel, Ho? lderlin, Schiller, Bu? chner and Heine -- poignantly stopping in the nineteenth century -- as architects of a 'classical culture' and 'great heritage' that can only be 'restored' and 'developed further' by the Revolution. 16 The Nazis appropriated similar canonical figures, including Schiller, Kleist and Ho? lderlin. 17 The conservative cultural agenda of both sides seems, however, to have been uncritically projected onto newer period models of the National Socialist era.
The notion of the Third Reich as cultural monolith has long since been discredited by Hans Dieter Scha? fer's pioneering work. 18 Scha? fer provisionally replaced the 1933-45 periodization with an aesthetic model of conservative 'restoration' from 1930 to 1960, within which the period from
12 Franz Leschnitzer, 'U? ber drei Expressionisten', in Die Expressionismusdebatte, ed. by Schmitt, pp. 61-74 (p. 73).
13 Ibid. , p. 64.
14 Albert Ehrenstein, 'Georg Trakl', Pariser Tageszeitung (Sonntagsbeilage), 5/6 February 1939, p. 4. 15 Ernst Bloch, 'Diskussion u? ber Expressionismus', in Die Expressionismusdebatte, ed. by Schmitt,
pp. 180-91 (p. 186).
16 Johannes R. Becher, Gesammelte Werke, ed. by Johannes-R. -Becher-Archiv der Akademie der
Ku? nste der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik, 18 vols (Berlin and Weimar, 1966-81), xv, 429-30.
17 See, for example, Deutsche Klassiker im Nationalsozialismus, ed. by Claudia Albert (Stuttgart, 1994).
18 See Hans Dieter Scha? fer, 'Die nichtnationalsozialistische Literatur der jungen Generation im Dritten Reich', in his Das gespaltene Bewusstsein. U? ber deutsche Kultur und Lebenswirklichkeit 1933-1945 (Munich, 1981), pp. 7-54.
mark elliott 83
1930 to 1945 is characterized by 'stylistic turmoil'. 19 His period model is structured around terms like 'retrogression', 'reversion', 'revival' and a 'protection of the "German heritage"'. 20 This last term in particular recalls Becher's call-to-arms in 'Das grosse Bu? ndnis' and suggests that Scha? fer assumes a direct correspondence between the cultural conservatism of the public debates and the literature itself. He argues that the overriding mood among writers after 1930, particularly within the younger generation, demanded a return to pre-Modernist forms and a rejection of the political avant-gardism of the 1920s. While he convincingly shows that there was a palpable mood of conservatism, the underlying dialectic between regression and progression in Scha? fer's period model is too rigid and broad-brush, obscuring the often more subtle and complex relationship between poet and tradition after 1930. His thesis is underpinned by an unswervingly linear concept of literary history as a sequence of discrete periods, and hence a poetic engagement with tradition is automatically deemed 'restorative'. What is more, the 1930 cut-off creates a new and unproductive period boundary that conceals potential continuities with the Modernist period.
A significant amount of poetry written in the 1930s and 40s actively works with the whole range of modern German poetic tradition, from Klopstock through Goethe, Ho? lderlin and Nietzsche (as poet) to writers of the Modern- ist period, notably George, Rilke and Trakl. These last three poets formed an implicit canon of literary 'greats' from the period before 1930 which found widespread acceptance among poets at the time. 21 Significantly, this constellation was also acknowledged in the critical literature, as Kiessig remarked of Trakl's work in 1939 that 'no other, next to Rilke's and George's, has influenced the younger generation more'. 22 However, this con- scious engagement with tradition cannot simply be thought of as 'restorative' or as a literary throwback -- a notion that is especially problematic given that there are clear aesthetic continuities with the immediately preceding generation of writers. This reception process can instead be fruitfully located within the rhetorical tradition of 'learned' poetry, whereby proficiency as a poet is achieved through theory, imitation and practice. The imitation of literary 'Vorbilder' [exempla] is deemed an essential part of a poet's develop- ment in theory and in practice, it is 'the process whereby one writer con- sciously or unconsciously borrows from another text, and that borrowing
19 See Scha? fer, 'Zur Periodisierung der deutschen Literatur seit 1930', in Das gespaltene Bewusstsein, pp. 55-71, and the preliminary findings of the AHRB-funded project of Peter Davies, Stephen Parker and Matthew Philpotts: 'The Modern Restoration? Revisiting the Periodization of German Literature 1930-1960', in Words, Texts, Images. Selected Papers from the Conference of University Teachers of German, University of Oxford, April 2001, ed. by Katrin Kohl and Ritchie Robertson (Bern, 2002), pp. 111-33.
20 Scha? fer, 'Zur Periodisierung der deutschen Literatur seit 1930', pp. 60-62.
21 See Mark Elliott, 'Beyond Left and Right: The Poetic Reception of Stefan George and Rainer Maria Rilke, 1933-1945', Modern Language Review, 98 (2003), 908-28 (pp. 925-26).
22 Kiessig, 'Georg Trakl zum Geda? chtnis', p. 71.
84 Poetic Dialogues with Georg Trakl in the 1930s and 40s
effects a significant intertextual echo'. 23 As Wilfried Barner has argued, this ideal of the poeta doctus gained new prominence towards the end of the nine- teenth and beginning of the twentieth century with the French Symbolists and poets such as Vale? ry, Eliot and Benn. Barner further suggests an unex- plored 'continuity of attitudes' into the National Socialist period and beyond, significantly listing Brecht, Becher, Celan, Hermlin and Krolow as potential poetae docti of the era. 24 Barner's typology of the modern-day 'learned poet' lists five core attributes: 'Wissenschaftsorientiertheit, Traditionsbindung, Handwerklichkeit und Arbeitsethos, Exklusivita? t fu? r die Versta? ndigen, Verhaftetsein an Reflexion und Theorie' [orientation towards science, commitment to tradition, craftsmanship and a work ethic, exclusivity for the knowledgeable, and a strong tendency towards reflection and theory]. 25 A 'commitment to tradition' combined with a theoretical and stylized aware- ness of the literary past were essential characteristics of the poets from the 1930s and 40s on whom this article focuses. Working with this nexus allows a more sophisticated understanding of the intertextual dialogues with Trakl (and with tradition per se) that occur in the poetry of the period, and suggests a coherence of reception that runs counter to Scha? fer's pluralistic notion of 'turmoil' in the period between 1930 and 1945.
One of the earliest and most important theoretical essays from the Modernist period on the relationship between poet and tradition is T. S. Eliot's 'Tradition and the Individual Talent' (1919). Eliot constructs a fluid model of literary history, reconciling the conflict between tradition and the Romantic ideal of 'genius' and originality with a concept of 'simultaneous order':
Tradition [. . . ] cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must obtain it by great labour. It involves, in the first place, the historical sense, [. . . ] a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence; the historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order. 26
Eliot's 'historical sense' legitimizes a poet's engagement with 'tradition' and establishes this process as an essentially Modernist and progressive literary phenomenon. Hugo von Hofmannsthal articulates similar ideas in his third 'Wiener Brief' [Vienna Letter] to The Dial (1923):
23 Martin McLaughlin, Literary Imitation in the Italian Renaissance. The Theory and Practice of Literary Imitation in Italy from Dante to Bembo (Oxford, 1995), p. 5.
24 Wilfried Barner, 'Poeta Doctus: U? ber die Renaissance eines Dichterideals in der deutschen Literatur des 20. Jahrhunderts', in Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte. Festschrift fu? r Richard Brinkmann, ed. by Ju? rgen Brummack et al. (Tu? bingen, 1981), pp. 725-52 (p. 735).
25 Ibid.
While he convincingly shows that there was a palpable mood of conservatism, the underlying dialectic between regression and progression in Scha? fer's period model is too rigid and broad-brush, obscuring the often more subtle and complex relationship between poet and tradition after 1930. His thesis is underpinned by an unswervingly linear concept of literary history as a sequence of discrete periods, and hence a poetic engagement with tradition is automatically deemed 'restorative'. What is more, the 1930 cut-off creates a new and unproductive period boundary that conceals potential continuities with the Modernist period.
A significant amount of poetry written in the 1930s and 40s actively works with the whole range of modern German poetic tradition, from Klopstock through Goethe, Ho? lderlin and Nietzsche (as poet) to writers of the Modern- ist period, notably George, Rilke and Trakl. These last three poets formed an implicit canon of literary 'greats' from the period before 1930 which found widespread acceptance among poets at the time. 21 Significantly, this constellation was also acknowledged in the critical literature, as Kiessig remarked of Trakl's work in 1939 that 'no other, next to Rilke's and George's, has influenced the younger generation more'. 22 However, this con- scious engagement with tradition cannot simply be thought of as 'restorative' or as a literary throwback -- a notion that is especially problematic given that there are clear aesthetic continuities with the immediately preceding generation of writers. This reception process can instead be fruitfully located within the rhetorical tradition of 'learned' poetry, whereby proficiency as a poet is achieved through theory, imitation and practice. The imitation of literary 'Vorbilder' [exempla] is deemed an essential part of a poet's develop- ment in theory and in practice, it is 'the process whereby one writer con- sciously or unconsciously borrows from another text, and that borrowing
19 See Scha? fer, 'Zur Periodisierung der deutschen Literatur seit 1930', in Das gespaltene Bewusstsein, pp. 55-71, and the preliminary findings of the AHRB-funded project of Peter Davies, Stephen Parker and Matthew Philpotts: 'The Modern Restoration? Revisiting the Periodization of German Literature 1930-1960', in Words, Texts, Images. Selected Papers from the Conference of University Teachers of German, University of Oxford, April 2001, ed. by Katrin Kohl and Ritchie Robertson (Bern, 2002), pp. 111-33.
20 Scha? fer, 'Zur Periodisierung der deutschen Literatur seit 1930', pp. 60-62.
21 See Mark Elliott, 'Beyond Left and Right: The Poetic Reception of Stefan George and Rainer Maria Rilke, 1933-1945', Modern Language Review, 98 (2003), 908-28 (pp. 925-26).
22 Kiessig, 'Georg Trakl zum Geda? chtnis', p. 71.
84 Poetic Dialogues with Georg Trakl in the 1930s and 40s
effects a significant intertextual echo'. 23 As Wilfried Barner has argued, this ideal of the poeta doctus gained new prominence towards the end of the nine- teenth and beginning of the twentieth century with the French Symbolists and poets such as Vale? ry, Eliot and Benn. Barner further suggests an unex- plored 'continuity of attitudes' into the National Socialist period and beyond, significantly listing Brecht, Becher, Celan, Hermlin and Krolow as potential poetae docti of the era. 24 Barner's typology of the modern-day 'learned poet' lists five core attributes: 'Wissenschaftsorientiertheit, Traditionsbindung, Handwerklichkeit und Arbeitsethos, Exklusivita? t fu? r die Versta? ndigen, Verhaftetsein an Reflexion und Theorie' [orientation towards science, commitment to tradition, craftsmanship and a work ethic, exclusivity for the knowledgeable, and a strong tendency towards reflection and theory]. 25 A 'commitment to tradition' combined with a theoretical and stylized aware- ness of the literary past were essential characteristics of the poets from the 1930s and 40s on whom this article focuses. Working with this nexus allows a more sophisticated understanding of the intertextual dialogues with Trakl (and with tradition per se) that occur in the poetry of the period, and suggests a coherence of reception that runs counter to Scha? fer's pluralistic notion of 'turmoil' in the period between 1930 and 1945.
One of the earliest and most important theoretical essays from the Modernist period on the relationship between poet and tradition is T. S. Eliot's 'Tradition and the Individual Talent' (1919). Eliot constructs a fluid model of literary history, reconciling the conflict between tradition and the Romantic ideal of 'genius' and originality with a concept of 'simultaneous order':
Tradition [. . . ] cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must obtain it by great labour. It involves, in the first place, the historical sense, [. . . ] a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence; the historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order. 26
Eliot's 'historical sense' legitimizes a poet's engagement with 'tradition' and establishes this process as an essentially Modernist and progressive literary phenomenon. Hugo von Hofmannsthal articulates similar ideas in his third 'Wiener Brief' [Vienna Letter] to The Dial (1923):
23 Martin McLaughlin, Literary Imitation in the Italian Renaissance. The Theory and Practice of Literary Imitation in Italy from Dante to Bembo (Oxford, 1995), p. 5.
24 Wilfried Barner, 'Poeta Doctus: U? ber die Renaissance eines Dichterideals in der deutschen Literatur des 20. Jahrhunderts', in Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte. Festschrift fu? r Richard Brinkmann, ed. by Ju? rgen Brummack et al. (Tu? bingen, 1981), pp. 725-52 (p. 735).
25 Ibid. , p. 728.
26 T. S. Eliot, 'Tradition and the Individual Talent', in The Sacred Wood. Essays on Poetry and Criticism, 7th impression (London, 1959), pp. 47-59 (p. 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.
mark elliott 87
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?
MARK ELLIOTT
Jesus College, Oxford
Georg Trakl's drug addiction, mental illness and eventual death from a cocaine overdose arguably made him a prime target in the National Socialist witch-hunt for 'degenerate' Expressionist writers and artists that took place in the 1930s. This cultural pogrom broadly censured all Modernist art as 'eine Art ju? disch-bolschewistischer Kulturverho? hnung' [a kind of Jewish- Bolshevistic cultural travesty]. 1 In exile, the conservative aesthetics of Socialist Realism and the prevailingly anti-Modernist voices within the 'Expressionism Debate' of 1937-38 likewise seriously threatened to impair Trakl's reception. Expressionism was condemned by Marxist exiles as an ideological precursor of fascism and rejected on aesthetic grounds as 'the helpless stuttering, whimper- ing and blubbering of untalented hotchpotchcubofuturoconstructivists' -- a derisive evaluation of Modernist art distinctly reminiscent of Nazi propa- ganda. 2 Existing studies have argued that Trakl was 'barely tolerated' and that his reception was 'at best subliminal' within the Third Reich; in exile this pro- cess has yet to be substantially explored. 3 His work, however, never appeared on the Liste des scha? dlichen und unerwu? nschten Schrifttums [List of Dangerous and Undesirable Writing] issued by the Reich Ministry for Literature between 1935 and 1943,4 and he was never publicly vilified to the extent that some other writers were. 5 By the same token, Trakl was never openly denounced in the 'Expressionism Debate' or elsewhere in the exile press.
1 Adolf Hitler, Die Reden Hitlers am Parteitag der Freiheit (Munich, 1935), p. 33.
2 Alfred Durus, 'Abstrakt, abstrakter, am abstraktesten', in Die Expressionismusdebatte. Materialien zu einer marxistischen Realismuskonzeption, ed. by Hans-Ju? rgen Schmitt (Frankfurt a. M. , 1973), pp. 142-56 (p. 155).
3 Walter Methlagl, 'Wirkung und Aufnahme des Werkes von Georg Trakl seit dem ersten Weltkrieg', in Londoner Trakl-Symposion, ed. by Walter Methlagl and William E. Yuill (Salzburg, 1981), pp. 13-32 (p. 31), and Diana Orendi Hinze, 'Wandlungen des Trakl-Bildes: Zur Rezeptionsgeschichte Georg Trakls' (unpublished doctoral thesis, Washington University, 1972), p. xiii.
4 See Anon. , Liste des scha? dlichen und unerwu? nschten Schrifttums. Stand vom 31. Dezember 1938 und Jahreslisten 1939-1941 (Leipzig, 1938-41; repr. Vaduz, 1979), and Anon. , Jahresliste 1942 des scha? dlichen und unerwu? nschten Schrifttums (Leipzig, 1942).
5 See Egon Schwarz, 'Rainer Maria Rilke unter dem Nationalsozialismus', in Rilke heute. Beziehungen und Wirkungen, ed. by Ingeborg H. Solbrig and Joachim W. Storck, 2 vols (Frankfurt a. M. , 1975-76), i, 287-313 (pp. 294-96).
mark elliott 81
Trakl's work did find, however, widespread and lively reception among poets of the period, notably Franz Baermann Steiner, Paul Celan, Josef Weinheber, Stephan Hermlin and Karl Krolow. This selection reflects a broad cross-section of poets representing a range of backgrounds, experi- ences and political standpoints. The reception of Trakl's work in their poetry shows continuity in aesthetic discourse across political and geographical divisions in the era of National Socialism, as well as important historical links to the poetry of the Modernist period. What is more, the highly conscious and stylized engagement with tradition exhibited by these poets suggests a reception process that was everything but 'subliminal'. Rather it was shaped by a 'learned' and theoretical awareness of the relationship between poet and tradition. What emerges is a more nuanced and coherent model of the poetry written in the 1930s and 40s that extends beyond the rigid political and period boundaries of this problematic epoch.
Within the Third Reich, Trakl's reception in the regime-controlled realm of literary histories, journals and newspapers was mixed. A few were brutally censorious in line with the prevailing anti-Modernist ideology, such as Adolf Bartels's condemnation of Trakl as the 'softest and most spineless' of Expres- sionist poets. 6 The majority, however, were ambivalent or even positive, appraising the poet's work, for example, as 'one of the purest poetic testa- ments of recent times'. 7 Similarly, the prominent Nazi critic Helmut Langenbucher was forced to concede that Trakl's 'talents [were] way above average',8 and even the Vo? lkischer Beobachter ran a brief piece commemorating the thirtieth anniversary of his death in 1944. 9 What is more, those aspects of Trakl's work and life that were incompatible with Party ideology were not flatly condemned but reinterpreted accordingly. Trakl was 'not sick', a potentially 'degenerate' characteristic, but 'a strong person with a demonic life driven by desire',10 and the 'melancholy' of Trakl's poetry had a 'mascu- line nobility', which rejected the effeminate classification of the poet as 'soft' by critics such as Bartels. 11 The anti-Expressionist invective of the exile debates similarly did not lead to a renunciation of Trakl's work along with
6 Adolf Bartels, Geschichte der deutschen Literatur, 19th impression (Braunschweig, Berlin and Hamburg, 1943), p. 702.
7 Martin Kiessig, '"Kristallene Tra? nen, geweint um die bittere Welt". Georg Trakl zum Geda? chtnis', Der Bu? cherwurm, 25/iv-v (1939), 70-73 (p. 71).
8 Helmut Langenbucher, 'Georg Trakl', Bu? cherkunde, 9 (1942), 112-19 (p. 115).
9 Werner Tamms, 'Melodik des Herbstes: Georg Trakl zum 30. Todestag', Vo? lkischer Beobachter (Berliner Ausgabe), 2 November 1944, p. 2.
10 Josef Nadler, Literaturgeschichte des deutschen Volkes: Dichtung und Schrifttum der deutschen Sta? mme und Landschaften, 4th edn, 4 vols (Berlin, 1938-41), iv, 457.
11 Gerhard F. Hering, 'Der Dichter des Untergangs: Georg Trakl zum Geda? chtnis', Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, 3 February 1937. Hering is explicitly alluding to Trakl's motif of 'ma? nnliche Schwermut' [masculine melancholy] found, for example, in 'Anif', in Georg Trakl, Dichtungen und Briefe, Historisch-kritische Ausgabe, ed. by Walther Killy and Hans Szklenar, 2nd edn, 2 vols (Salzburg, 1987), i, 114. Quotations from Trakl's poetry will be from this edition (= T), with references given in parentheses in the text.
82 Poetic Dialogues with Georg Trakl in the 1930s and 40s
the rest of Expressionism. Indeed, Franz Leschnitzer's contribution to the 'Expressionism Debate' (the only article to deal with Trakl in any detail) vindicates the poet, along with Georg Heym and Ernst Wilhelm Lotz. 12 Expressionism itself, however, is treated (in line with Georg Luka? cs's influen- tial essay '"Gro? sse und Verfall" des Expressionismus' [Greatness and Decline of Expressionism, 1934]) as a period mercifully overcome, and period-specific elements of the poetry are denigrated as 'touchingly atavistic'. 13 Trakl found more favourable reception in the non-Marxist press, where Albert Ehrenstein, a contemporary of Trakl's, proclaimed 'that no Austrian has ever written such beautiful poetry'. 14 Beneath the propaganda, the poet's public reception was not as defamatory as Methlagl and Hinze suggest.
The conservative cultural programmes of both National Socialism and Marxism (as endorsed by certain left-wing writers in exile) were motivated in part by a conflict between tradition and avant-garde, as Ernst Bloch's parody of Goethe sharply illustrated at the time: 'Classicism is here healthy, Roman- ticism sick, and Expressionism the sickest of all'. 15 Broadly speaking, Expres- sionism was rejected and a restoration of 'classical' literature sought. Johannes R. Becher's speech 'Das grosse Bu? ndnis' [The Great Union] in 1934 clearly defined the official position of the Left, naming Goethe, Lessing, Hegel, Ho? lderlin, Schiller, Bu? chner and Heine -- poignantly stopping in the nineteenth century -- as architects of a 'classical culture' and 'great heritage' that can only be 'restored' and 'developed further' by the Revolution. 16 The Nazis appropriated similar canonical figures, including Schiller, Kleist and Ho? lderlin. 17 The conservative cultural agenda of both sides seems, however, to have been uncritically projected onto newer period models of the National Socialist era.
The notion of the Third Reich as cultural monolith has long since been discredited by Hans Dieter Scha? fer's pioneering work. 18 Scha? fer provisionally replaced the 1933-45 periodization with an aesthetic model of conservative 'restoration' from 1930 to 1960, within which the period from
12 Franz Leschnitzer, 'U? ber drei Expressionisten', in Die Expressionismusdebatte, ed. by Schmitt, pp. 61-74 (p. 73).
13 Ibid. , p. 64.
14 Albert Ehrenstein, 'Georg Trakl', Pariser Tageszeitung (Sonntagsbeilage), 5/6 February 1939, p. 4. 15 Ernst Bloch, 'Diskussion u? ber Expressionismus', in Die Expressionismusdebatte, ed. by Schmitt,
pp. 180-91 (p. 186).
16 Johannes R. Becher, Gesammelte Werke, ed. by Johannes-R. -Becher-Archiv der Akademie der
Ku? nste der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik, 18 vols (Berlin and Weimar, 1966-81), xv, 429-30.
17 See, for example, Deutsche Klassiker im Nationalsozialismus, ed. by Claudia Albert (Stuttgart, 1994).
18 See Hans Dieter Scha? fer, 'Die nichtnationalsozialistische Literatur der jungen Generation im Dritten Reich', in his Das gespaltene Bewusstsein. U? ber deutsche Kultur und Lebenswirklichkeit 1933-1945 (Munich, 1981), pp. 7-54.
mark elliott 83
1930 to 1945 is characterized by 'stylistic turmoil'. 19 His period model is structured around terms like 'retrogression', 'reversion', 'revival' and a 'protection of the "German heritage"'. 20 This last term in particular recalls Becher's call-to-arms in 'Das grosse Bu? ndnis' and suggests that Scha? fer assumes a direct correspondence between the cultural conservatism of the public debates and the literature itself. He argues that the overriding mood among writers after 1930, particularly within the younger generation, demanded a return to pre-Modernist forms and a rejection of the political avant-gardism of the 1920s. While he convincingly shows that there was a palpable mood of conservatism, the underlying dialectic between regression and progression in Scha? fer's period model is too rigid and broad-brush, obscuring the often more subtle and complex relationship between poet and tradition after 1930. His thesis is underpinned by an unswervingly linear concept of literary history as a sequence of discrete periods, and hence a poetic engagement with tradition is automatically deemed 'restorative'. What is more, the 1930 cut-off creates a new and unproductive period boundary that conceals potential continuities with the Modernist period.
A significant amount of poetry written in the 1930s and 40s actively works with the whole range of modern German poetic tradition, from Klopstock through Goethe, Ho? lderlin and Nietzsche (as poet) to writers of the Modern- ist period, notably George, Rilke and Trakl. These last three poets formed an implicit canon of literary 'greats' from the period before 1930 which found widespread acceptance among poets at the time. 21 Significantly, this constellation was also acknowledged in the critical literature, as Kiessig remarked of Trakl's work in 1939 that 'no other, next to Rilke's and George's, has influenced the younger generation more'. 22 However, this con- scious engagement with tradition cannot simply be thought of as 'restorative' or as a literary throwback -- a notion that is especially problematic given that there are clear aesthetic continuities with the immediately preceding generation of writers. This reception process can instead be fruitfully located within the rhetorical tradition of 'learned' poetry, whereby proficiency as a poet is achieved through theory, imitation and practice. The imitation of literary 'Vorbilder' [exempla] is deemed an essential part of a poet's develop- ment in theory and in practice, it is 'the process whereby one writer con- sciously or unconsciously borrows from another text, and that borrowing
19 See Scha? fer, 'Zur Periodisierung der deutschen Literatur seit 1930', in Das gespaltene Bewusstsein, pp. 55-71, and the preliminary findings of the AHRB-funded project of Peter Davies, Stephen Parker and Matthew Philpotts: 'The Modern Restoration? Revisiting the Periodization of German Literature 1930-1960', in Words, Texts, Images. Selected Papers from the Conference of University Teachers of German, University of Oxford, April 2001, ed. by Katrin Kohl and Ritchie Robertson (Bern, 2002), pp. 111-33.
20 Scha? fer, 'Zur Periodisierung der deutschen Literatur seit 1930', pp. 60-62.
21 See Mark Elliott, 'Beyond Left and Right: The Poetic Reception of Stefan George and Rainer Maria Rilke, 1933-1945', Modern Language Review, 98 (2003), 908-28 (pp. 925-26).
22 Kiessig, 'Georg Trakl zum Geda? chtnis', p. 71.
84 Poetic Dialogues with Georg Trakl in the 1930s and 40s
effects a significant intertextual echo'. 23 As Wilfried Barner has argued, this ideal of the poeta doctus gained new prominence towards the end of the nine- teenth and beginning of the twentieth century with the French Symbolists and poets such as Vale? ry, Eliot and Benn. Barner further suggests an unex- plored 'continuity of attitudes' into the National Socialist period and beyond, significantly listing Brecht, Becher, Celan, Hermlin and Krolow as potential poetae docti of the era. 24 Barner's typology of the modern-day 'learned poet' lists five core attributes: 'Wissenschaftsorientiertheit, Traditionsbindung, Handwerklichkeit und Arbeitsethos, Exklusivita? t fu? r die Versta? ndigen, Verhaftetsein an Reflexion und Theorie' [orientation towards science, commitment to tradition, craftsmanship and a work ethic, exclusivity for the knowledgeable, and a strong tendency towards reflection and theory]. 25 A 'commitment to tradition' combined with a theoretical and stylized aware- ness of the literary past were essential characteristics of the poets from the 1930s and 40s on whom this article focuses. Working with this nexus allows a more sophisticated understanding of the intertextual dialogues with Trakl (and with tradition per se) that occur in the poetry of the period, and suggests a coherence of reception that runs counter to Scha? fer's pluralistic notion of 'turmoil' in the period between 1930 and 1945.
One of the earliest and most important theoretical essays from the Modernist period on the relationship between poet and tradition is T. S. Eliot's 'Tradition and the Individual Talent' (1919). Eliot constructs a fluid model of literary history, reconciling the conflict between tradition and the Romantic ideal of 'genius' and originality with a concept of 'simultaneous order':
Tradition [. . . ] cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must obtain it by great labour. It involves, in the first place, the historical sense, [. . . ] a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence; the historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order. 26
Eliot's 'historical sense' legitimizes a poet's engagement with 'tradition' and establishes this process as an essentially Modernist and progressive literary phenomenon. Hugo von Hofmannsthal articulates similar ideas in his third 'Wiener Brief' [Vienna Letter] to The Dial (1923):
23 Martin McLaughlin, Literary Imitation in the Italian Renaissance. The Theory and Practice of Literary Imitation in Italy from Dante to Bembo (Oxford, 1995), p. 5.
24 Wilfried Barner, 'Poeta Doctus: U? ber die Renaissance eines Dichterideals in der deutschen Literatur des 20. Jahrhunderts', in Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte. Festschrift fu? r Richard Brinkmann, ed. by Ju? rgen Brummack et al. (Tu? bingen, 1981), pp. 725-52 (p. 735).
25 Ibid.
While he convincingly shows that there was a palpable mood of conservatism, the underlying dialectic between regression and progression in Scha? fer's period model is too rigid and broad-brush, obscuring the often more subtle and complex relationship between poet and tradition after 1930. His thesis is underpinned by an unswervingly linear concept of literary history as a sequence of discrete periods, and hence a poetic engagement with tradition is automatically deemed 'restorative'. What is more, the 1930 cut-off creates a new and unproductive period boundary that conceals potential continuities with the Modernist period.
A significant amount of poetry written in the 1930s and 40s actively works with the whole range of modern German poetic tradition, from Klopstock through Goethe, Ho? lderlin and Nietzsche (as poet) to writers of the Modern- ist period, notably George, Rilke and Trakl. These last three poets formed an implicit canon of literary 'greats' from the period before 1930 which found widespread acceptance among poets at the time. 21 Significantly, this constellation was also acknowledged in the critical literature, as Kiessig remarked of Trakl's work in 1939 that 'no other, next to Rilke's and George's, has influenced the younger generation more'. 22 However, this con- scious engagement with tradition cannot simply be thought of as 'restorative' or as a literary throwback -- a notion that is especially problematic given that there are clear aesthetic continuities with the immediately preceding generation of writers. This reception process can instead be fruitfully located within the rhetorical tradition of 'learned' poetry, whereby proficiency as a poet is achieved through theory, imitation and practice. The imitation of literary 'Vorbilder' [exempla] is deemed an essential part of a poet's develop- ment in theory and in practice, it is 'the process whereby one writer con- sciously or unconsciously borrows from another text, and that borrowing
19 See Scha? fer, 'Zur Periodisierung der deutschen Literatur seit 1930', in Das gespaltene Bewusstsein, pp. 55-71, and the preliminary findings of the AHRB-funded project of Peter Davies, Stephen Parker and Matthew Philpotts: 'The Modern Restoration? Revisiting the Periodization of German Literature 1930-1960', in Words, Texts, Images. Selected Papers from the Conference of University Teachers of German, University of Oxford, April 2001, ed. by Katrin Kohl and Ritchie Robertson (Bern, 2002), pp. 111-33.
20 Scha? fer, 'Zur Periodisierung der deutschen Literatur seit 1930', pp. 60-62.
21 See Mark Elliott, 'Beyond Left and Right: The Poetic Reception of Stefan George and Rainer Maria Rilke, 1933-1945', Modern Language Review, 98 (2003), 908-28 (pp. 925-26).
22 Kiessig, 'Georg Trakl zum Geda? chtnis', p. 71.
84 Poetic Dialogues with Georg Trakl in the 1930s and 40s
effects a significant intertextual echo'. 23 As Wilfried Barner has argued, this ideal of the poeta doctus gained new prominence towards the end of the nine- teenth and beginning of the twentieth century with the French Symbolists and poets such as Vale? ry, Eliot and Benn. Barner further suggests an unex- plored 'continuity of attitudes' into the National Socialist period and beyond, significantly listing Brecht, Becher, Celan, Hermlin and Krolow as potential poetae docti of the era. 24 Barner's typology of the modern-day 'learned poet' lists five core attributes: 'Wissenschaftsorientiertheit, Traditionsbindung, Handwerklichkeit und Arbeitsethos, Exklusivita? t fu? r die Versta? ndigen, Verhaftetsein an Reflexion und Theorie' [orientation towards science, commitment to tradition, craftsmanship and a work ethic, exclusivity for the knowledgeable, and a strong tendency towards reflection and theory]. 25 A 'commitment to tradition' combined with a theoretical and stylized aware- ness of the literary past were essential characteristics of the poets from the 1930s and 40s on whom this article focuses. Working with this nexus allows a more sophisticated understanding of the intertextual dialogues with Trakl (and with tradition per se) that occur in the poetry of the period, and suggests a coherence of reception that runs counter to Scha? fer's pluralistic notion of 'turmoil' in the period between 1930 and 1945.
One of the earliest and most important theoretical essays from the Modernist period on the relationship between poet and tradition is T. S. Eliot's 'Tradition and the Individual Talent' (1919). Eliot constructs a fluid model of literary history, reconciling the conflict between tradition and the Romantic ideal of 'genius' and originality with a concept of 'simultaneous order':
Tradition [. . . ] cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must obtain it by great labour. It involves, in the first place, the historical sense, [. . . ] a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence; the historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order. 26
Eliot's 'historical sense' legitimizes a poet's engagement with 'tradition' and establishes this process as an essentially Modernist and progressive literary phenomenon. Hugo von Hofmannsthal articulates similar ideas in his third 'Wiener Brief' [Vienna Letter] to The Dial (1923):
23 Martin McLaughlin, Literary Imitation in the Italian Renaissance. The Theory and Practice of Literary Imitation in Italy from Dante to Bembo (Oxford, 1995), p. 5.
24 Wilfried Barner, 'Poeta Doctus: U? ber die Renaissance eines Dichterideals in der deutschen Literatur des 20. Jahrhunderts', in Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte. Festschrift fu? r Richard Brinkmann, ed. by Ju? rgen Brummack et al. (Tu? bingen, 1981), pp. 725-52 (p. 735).
25 Ibid. , p. 728.
26 T. S. Eliot, 'Tradition and the Individual Talent', in The Sacred Wood. Essays on Poetry and Criticism, 7th impression (London, 1959), pp. 47-59 (p. 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.
mark elliott 87
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?
