…und das soll Dichtung sein: Untersuchungen zur ‘neuen Sprache’ in Lyrik und Kunst seit den 1950er Jahren by Andreas Hapkemeyer (review)

Andreas Hapkemeyer’s useful book opens in 1950s Vienna. This was where Ingeborg Bachmann began her search for what, years later, in her story “Das dreißigste Jahr,” she called a “neue Sprache.” And during the course of the decade, Austrian writers like H.C. Artmann and Friedrich Achleitner began their experiments with concrete poetry and Dialektdichtung. Despite being a point of convergence, Vienna wasn’t a site for harmonious co-existence, as Hapkemeyer shows. In her Frankfurter Poetikvorlesungen held in 1959 and 1960, Bachmann ridiculed the avant-garde’s efforts as “Basteleien” and “Fingerübungen.” The avant-garde felt similarly about her. Oswald Wiener gave an ironic reading of Bachmann’s “Anrufung des großen Bären” at the Wiener Gruppe’s December 1958 cabaret (this is his recollection: “ich bemühte mich sehr, dieses schöne und moderne gedicht der grossen österreicherin bachmann dem publikum zu vermitteln, aber die leute verstehen nichts und lachten, sodass ich aufhören musste;” other polemical targets of the evening included Wittgenstein, Sartre, and Pasternak). Hapkemeyer also mentions a public discussion in the Galerie St. Stephan in Vienna between Paul Celan and Gerhard Rühm that, according to Rühm, didn’t go so well: “nach wenigen Worten versickerte das Gespräch, noch bevor es eigentlich begonnen hatte, und Celan wurde nicht mehr gesehen.” This non-conversation is emblematic of the avant-garde’s relations with more conventional literary strains.

A half-century later, Bachmann, Celan, and the tradition that they represent seem dominant, and, Hapkemeyer writes, the postwar avant-garde might appear to be a “kaum mehr relevante Parenthese.” This seems especially true in German studies. A quick survey of the coverage of postwar literature in German courses and Germanistik journals in the US confirms this suspicion; writers like Handke, Grass, Sebald, Timm, Ransmayr, and Wolf dominate, leaving little place for the rich spectrum of post-45 avant-garde writing in German. Even the few venues focused on contemporary literature seem to share Bachmann’s view of experimental writing.

One of the many strengths of Hapkemeyer’s book is its coverage of both sides of the divide. He discusses a full range of postwar poetry and art; he interprets poems by Bachmann, Marie Luise Kaschnitz, and Erich Arendt, as well as texts by the avant-garde writers Rühm, Heinz Gappmayr, Heimrad Bäcker, and Emmett Williams and art works by Cy Twombly, Jochen Gerz, and Raymond Pettibon. Hapkemeyer is uniquely placed to do justice to all these kinds of writing. He is the author of scholarly and popular studies of Bachmann, and he is the director of research at Museion, Museum for Modern and Contemporary Art in Bolzano, where he has curated dozens of exhibitions that focus on avant-garde works on the border between art and literature. It is Hapkemeyer’s intimate knowledge of the textual-visual works in the Museion collections, as well as his close working relationships with many of the writers and artists discussed, that sets this book apart from other recent studies of contemporary art and poetry.

Hapkemeyer’s book has three sections, each grouped around a central tension. The first four chapters explore the conflict between traditional and experimental poetry; the second section, made up of six chapters, addresses the question “Dichtung oder Kunst?” in its interpretations of art that looks like poetry and poetry that looks like art; and the final section, an excursus, is a discussion of the relation between advertising, design, poetry, and art.

Hapkemeyer takes as his starting point the thesis that “unerwartete Formen des Lyrischen heute vor allem in Bereichen zu finden sind, die man gewöhnlich nicht oder nur bedingt der Literatur zuschreibt.” This includes concrete poetry but also art by Twombly, Pettibon, and Piero Manzoni. If their works are considered to be lyrical, then it might be possible to reconsider the relevancy of the avant-garde...