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  • H. C. Artmann’s Structuralist Imagination: A Semiotic Study of His Aesthetic and Postmodernity by Marc-Oliver Schuster
  • Pamela S. Saur
Marc-Oliver Schuster, H. C. Artmann’s Structuralist Imagination: A Semiotic Study of His Aesthetic and Postmodernity. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2010. 585 pp.

Although a substantial number of scholarly studies have been published on H. C. Artmann and other members of the Wiener Gruppe, Marc-Oliver Schuster is certainly correct in pointing out that scholarly interest has been rather belated and that Artmann has never been taken as seriously as some “major” Austrian authors because of such qualities in his work as “light playfulness, the absence of social criticism or any otherwise pragmatic agenda, fantastic elements, irony and parody, stylistic versatility, and an intertextual intensity” (12). Artmann was a prolific creative writer, but his meager theoretical discussions, even when published interviews with him are added to his own writings, do not amount to much more than ten pages. Additional challenges Schuster recognizes and skillfully negotiates in his careful reading are Artmann‘s frequent use of irony and his habit of inserting foreign terms and inventing or assigning new meanings to words to the point that he has been said to use a “private language.”

The title of this book was carefully chosen. The phrase “structuralist imagination” expresses the book’s central claim that the particular nature of Artmann’s creative imagination engendered literary methods and goals that were compatible with the theories of structuralism, not that Artmann articulated or consciously followed a theory of structuralism, or indeed any theory. Similarly, the subtitle makes it clear that Schuster is identifying his own approach to Artmann‘s aesthetic as semiotic, and that he, not Artmann, is responsible for association of Artmann with postmodernism. Schuster deliberately refrains from placing the labels “structuralist,” “semiotic,” or “postmodern” on Artmann’s theoretical intentions or writing without qualification. In the introduction, he states, “I read Artmann‘s work as an example of the structuralist imagination in Austrian/German language literature and argue that his work is in concord with linguistic structuralism based on the Saussurean sign models” (11, emphasis added).

Based on his thorough knowledge and understanding of Artmann’s oeuvre, Schuster presents an analysis of Artmann’s unique artistic achievement using and consistently adhering to a collection of terms he selects, defines, and assembles for the purpose. Some are specifically designed for Artmann’s work, including concepts such as monsters, aliens, angels and white and black [End Page 155] signs. Chief among the more general terms are postmodernism, structuralism, smallness, synchrony, and arealism. The latter two combined comprise artistic autonomy. After a general introduction to the life and works of Artmann and the context of Austrian culture, Schuster presents two lengthy sections titled “Methodology: Theorizing Postmodernity” and “Artmann’s Aesthetic of Autonomy and Smallness.” In the concluding segment, he applies his theories in sections that analyze three selected works by Artmann, dracula dracula (1977), tök ph’rong sülent (1967), and Green-Sealed Message (1967), respectively. To be sure, the preceding more general and theoretical segments also contain numerous references to many of Artmann’s texts; that they comprise approximately 70 percent of the volume reflects its emphasis on theory.

Noting that Schuster often prefers partial or qualified definitions that are revisited and expanded upon later rather than definitive glosses, we can nevertheless identify partial definitions of some of the key terms he uses to analyze Artmann’s aesthetic. Schuster writes that Artmann’s work “displays numerous features that can reasonably be defined as postmodern,” such as “intertextuality, quotation, irony, parody, mannerism, the montage, the (often surreal) juxtapositon of heterogeneous texts” (103). Schuster demonstrates that Artmann was structuralist in his liberations of signs through rejection of “communicationism,” with its attendant notions of “expression, personal style, originality, innovation, authenticity,” and “moralizing” (103). On synchrony, he writes, “Static synchrony formats a sign system by putting all its elements in simultaneous co-presence, irrespective of their history [. . .] Artmann’s version of synchrony entails the motif of the surface. According to this postulate, all the important meanings are simultaneously on the same semantic display. There is no higher, more important meaning left out or...

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