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by Axel Vieregg
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Günter Eich (Photo by Hilde Zemann; used with kind permission of the copyright holder, H. Mulzer)
At last a major portion of the poetry of Günter Eich (1907 – 1972)
has been made accessible to an English-speaking readership in a new
translation.
Angina Days is the title that Michael Hofmann, the
translator and himself an acclaimed poet, gave to his selection,
quoting a line from one of Eich’s poems. Eich would have enjoyed the
ambiguity: “Angina”, in German, is a harmless tonsillitis, and so it is
in the poem, while in English it is a critical heart disease. On another
level, the difficulty any translator of poetry has with rendering not
just words but also meaning is, in this instance, resolved: “Angina” is a
cognate of “Angst” – and that is a feeling which pervades much of
Eich’s work.
In an interview of 1964 Eich stated that his main concern had been to
“make suffering visible”, to prevent it from being overlooked. He had
had high hopes after the end of the war in 1945 that a better world
would rise from the ashes. His famous
Inventur (
Inventory),
written when he was still in an American P.O.W. camp on the banks of
the Rhine ranks as one of the most striking examples of that spirit of
“Zero Hour”, which saw in a radical break with tradition the
precondition of a new beginning. Defiantly, the poem lists the writer’s
building blocks, his most basic possessions:
This is my cap,
my coat,
my shaving kit
in the burlap bag.
This tin can:
my plate and my cup.
I scratched my name
in the soft metal.
Scratched it
with this precious nail,
which I keep out of sight
of thieving eyes. [...]
The pencil lead
is my favourite:
by day it writes out lines
that come to me at night.
This is my notebook,
this is my canvas,
my towel,
my thread.
Language is here pared back to the minimum, rhyme and conventional
poetic vocabulary have disappeared. The poem culminates in the utensils
of the craft of the writer, “pencil lead” and “notebook” as if to say:
Mind will triumph over matter. The pen will be mightier than the sword.
Michael Hofmann’s judicious selection allows the reader to follow
Eich’s development as a poet in detail. It is a journey which
accompanies and reflects upon the personal, political and social issues
of his time, the Cold War, rearmament, the German “Economic Miracle”,
the Vietnam War, the suffering of the poor and oppressed. It is also an
inner journey which was going to lead Eich far away from his earlier
beginnings. Needless to say that the optimism expressed in
Inventur was not going to last.
In his poetry Eich hardly ever addresses issues directly. Rather,
they seem to loom behind his texts, affecting imagery, mood and tone –
one of the characteristics that make Eich’s later texts seemingly
enigmatic. That is a challenge, and in most cases Michael Hofmann has
met it admirably. Fluid and succinct, his translations catch Eich’s dry
and laconic sound extremely well. Problems, however, arise when
subtleties are overlooked, or when the nature of the text is such that
an adequate rendering into readable English is well-nigh impossible.
What follows here is therefore not intended as a critique, but as
annotations and footnotes meant to clarify some of Eich’s major
concerns. Too awkward in a handsome volume of poetry, they seem to me
nevertheless required in order to shed additional light on the work of
one of the leading poets of post-war Germany, who has been “unjustly
neglected in English”, as Hofmann rightly says.
Older Germans will remember the hours they spent listening to their
valve radios when a new radio play by Günter Eich was broadcast at
primetime. In the 1950s, television, in both East and West Germany, was
still a novelty and few people owned a set. Radio plays provided the
sounds that entered the mind more deeply and affected it more personally
than any TV image ever could. Voices became inner voices, dramatic
conflicts became inner conflicts. The medium suited Eich ideally: “I
perceive the world through the ear rather than through the eye”, he once
said, and his probing, questioning and searching enquiry into ever
elusive certainties and realities made for an enthralling radio
experience.
Eich’s approach was also ideally suited for the early post-war
period. There was in Germany, at a time when the Cold War was looming
and before the “economic miracle” began benefiting the individual, an
all-pervading sense of unease, of
Angst (Eich uses the word
repeatedly). There was an awareness of loss: the loss of lives, of
property, of beliefs and old certainties, even of self-worth. There was
also an underlying feeling of guilt, mostly unacknowledged and hidden
under self-pity, complacency and – almost frenzied – efforts to rebuild
one’s own life, home, and self-respect. Eich saw through such efforts,
exposed the unease and underlying guilt, but, first and foremost, he
called for vigilance to avoid a relapse into an unfeeling barbarism.
The point of departure – and often it is an actual departure – of his
“classic radio plays (1950 – 1958) is the sudden loss of the security
of empirical reality.
Träume – “Dreams”- is the characteristic
title of the first of his great post-war radio-plays (1950). It hit the
German radio audience like a bombshell and drew furious responses from
many listeners who wanted to be entertained rather than disconcerted.
In “Dreams” Eich describes our waking state as a sleep “into which we
have all been lulled” while to dream means in fact to awaken in the
true reality. The listener is confronted with five endgames, each
located in a different continent and hence universal. They are parables
of man’s bleak existential situation, recognised with terror in the
dream, but immediately forgotten on awakening. The play ends with the
ever louder gnawing sound of termites and the crumbling to dust of a
world where “the ground on which we stand is just a thin skin,
everything is hollow inside.”
Eich then adds a coda which became famous as a poem in its own right
(translation Hofmann, my own closer reading in square brackets):
Wake up, your dreams are bad! Stay awake, the nightmarishness [horror] is coming nearer.
To you it is coming, though you live far from the places of bloodshed. [...]
No, don’t sleep while the governors of the world are busy!
Be suspicious of the power they claim to have to acquire on your behalf!
[...]
Do what is unhelpful [what cannot be used], sing songs from out of your
mouths that go against expectation [those songs they don’t expect to
hear from your mouths]!
Be ornery [Be obstreperous], be as sand, not oil in the thirsty machinery of the world!
Or: “Gum up the works” as Hofmann himself suggests, in his
introduction, as an alternative rendering of Eich’s ringing appeal:
“seid Sand, nicht Öl im Getriebe der Welt!” – “be the spanner in the
works” would be the closest idiomatic equivalent of the German saying. A
clear understanding of these lines is important. Because it is from
here that Eich’s concerns, his motives and motifs, as well as his
imagery can best be traced.
Few people recognised at the time to what extent the appeal owed its
intensity to Eich’s very own and very personal feelings of guilt. Not
until the 1980s, through the investigations of Glenn R. Cuomo in the
United States and those by Hans Dieter Schäfer and Wolfram Wessels in
Germany, did it become apparent that Eich had indeed been “oil in the
machinery” of Hitler’s Third Reich. The 1991 edition of his
Collected Works,
as well his correspondence which had by then become accessible, could
confirm that, with over 160 contributions to the Nazi broadcasting
system, which culminated in the 1940 anti-British propaganda play
Die Rebellion in der Goldstadt,
Eich had been one of the most prolific and popular radio authors of the
Third Reich. He was no follower of the regime, but, as the title of
Cuomo’s investigation
Career at the Cost of Compromise suggests
and his investigation then shows, had certainly not sung songs “which
go against expectations”. His ”songs” had met them rather: numerous
pieces of light, folksy entertainment, as demanded by the authorities,
precisely to “lull” the German audience “asleep”. His assertion, in his
CV of 1946 or 47, which Hofmann quotes, that in the previous “ten years I
did not write a line” (i.e. of poetry, but that, too, is not strictly
correct) rings hollow.
While Eich never revealed his involvement in Third Reich broadcasting
openly and in plain prose, much of his post-war production reflects his
attempt to come to terms with the past, to distance himself from it, to
warn against gullibility and to draw the moral and aesthetic
consequences. Fallibility and awakening, guilt and atonement, the appeal
to recognise and to mitigate suffering, self-sacrifice in the service
of others – these then become the dominant themes. Despair that so
little has been learnt, indeed that Creation itself is deeply flawed,
characterises the work of his final years.
A poem written in 1961 and dedicated to the Jewish (!) poet and
Nobel-Prize winner Nelly Sachs comes closest to a confession. It also
clearly develops Eich’s aims as a writer:
Game Paths
for Nelly Sachs
Don’t mention the hunters!
I sat by their fires,
I understood their language.
They know the world from the beginning
and do not question the woods.
You nod to their answers,
the smoke of their fires, too, affirms them,
and they are practiced
not to hear the scream
which annuls all world orders.
No, we want to be alien
and be astounded at death,
collect the breaths of the uncomforted,
cut across the tracks
and deflect the barrels of the rifles.
(translation A.V.)
It is hardly necessary to consult Nelly Sachs’ poetry for the
numerous inter-textual references Eich makes to recognise what is meant
by the hunters, their game, their fires, by the smoke. Michael Hofmann,
in his introduction, talks about Eich’s many “gestures of refusal”:
“Eich affirms one of the most ancient human freedoms, that of saying
‘no’”. This poem, which Hofmann does not include, could have served as
an illustration.
There are other, oblique references which Eich makes to his past. The
shortest is a three-line poem where the “gesture of refusal”, the
rejection of any demands made on him is dialectically linked to his
early entrapment. Unfortunately, due to the impossibility of rendering
the ambiguity in English, the reference is lost. Michael Hofmann
translates:
Thank you, but leave us.
We have already been to the caves
of the rat catchers.
Whereas Eich really says: “Long ago we had already been
inside the caves / of the Pied Pipers”, (“
in
den Höhlen der Rattenfänger“). It is a “Once bitten twice shy”, or, as
the equivalent German saying goes: “Gebranntes Kind scheut das Feuer”, a
burnt child shies away from the fire. That is the meaning of “the burnt
children” – “die gebrannten Kinder” – in the poem
Brothers Grimm, an allusion which the literal translation in
Angina Days also cannot convey. German 20
th ct. history is indeed a Grim(m) fairy tale!
Increasingly, Eich developed a cryptic, hieroglyphic style of
writing. “Templates for meditation” he called his late texts. The reader
is sent on a quest for meaning – through empathy, through following
cross references and deciphering key words, through unravelling plays on
words. This presents a daunting challenge to any translator. Michael
Hofmann translates the last lines of
Bestellung (
Order) as follows:
hurry up and serve the dishes
that don’t exist,
and uncork the marvels!
Then we won’t mind
opening our mouths
and paying what we owe.
Lost in this translation is Eich’s play on words in the last line,
and lost with it is the theme of the poem: “was wir schuldig sind”
translates not just as “what we owe” but as “for what we are guilty of”.
Currency is the obolus for Charon: “the penny under the tongue”. An
early draft of the poem underscores the context of guilt and atonement.
One of the “marvels” the speaker wants “uncorked” is a “brandy distilled
from tears”. A similar constellation occurs in the earlier poem
Andenken, (
Memorial).
While the fires are out, their smoke still lingers: “The wind is full
of black dust. / It scours the names off the gravestones / and etches in
ours / on this day today” – and not “etches this day into us” as
Michael Hofmann translates.
Eich’s “gestures of refusal” focus on the opposition to all forms of
“Einverständnis”, i.e. agreement, acceptance, assent and affirmation. In
Dreams and in its coda, or in
Wildwechsel, the
emphatic “no” can be understood as a largely political and social
protest. Gradually, however, Eich’s rejection of any “establishment”
widens into an all-embracing existential revolt, a revolt against God:
“I am mad at the establishment, not just the political, but the
establishment of Creation”, he said in 1970 in an interview with
students from a Berlin High School. Or again in 1971, a year before his
death: “Today I no longer accept nature: even although it is
unalterable. I am against acceptance [das Einverständnis] of things in
Creation. It is always the same thought process: acceptance no longer
[das Nichtmehr-einverstandensein].”
Such a rejection of consent calls for persistent questioning, for a rejection of “answers” to which one simply “nods”, as in
Wildwechsel.
“With my verse I raise questions. My faith in answers is minimal, my
agreement [Einverständnis] is lacking.” The ultimate question for Eich
is that which, with the black humour so characteristic of his late work,
he calls the “Schlupfwespenfrage (I, 341), i.e. the
“ichneumon-question”. It is, of course, the age-old philosophical
problem of theodicy, the question why God allows evil and suffering to
exist. A passage from the project of a requiem (1957) which remained
unpublished during Eich’s lifetime illustrates what is meant:
[...] you can add Creation,
tally-ho and feast of slaughter,
the mouse between the teeth of the cat,
eggs of the ichneumon
in the paralysed body of the caterpillar,
the harmony of horror…
The ichneumon-fly with its sting paralyses the caterpillar, lays its
eggs into its body, which is then eaten alive by the larvae. That, for
Eich, made Creation a scandal. Such is the scandal that it makes even
the dead stir in protest: “the shaking of the gravestones / when the
caterpillar arches under the paralysing sting” (
Two in the Afternoon). But this is not what the reader finds in
Angina Days.
Michael Hofmann’s translation fails to evoke the significance of this
central concept of Eich’s, and so the line reads instead: “the crippled
caterpillar wriggles” – which eliminates the sting, and with it the
ichneumon-fly.
Such a scandalous state of the world convinced Eich that any seeming
harmony and beauty in nature were just a thin veneer, a ploy even, to
make us acquiesce, so as to obtain our “Einverständnis” with the world
as it is: “In the evenings / the sunsets are intended to reassure you”,
he wrote already in 1955. In his late subversive prose pieces, the
Maulwürfe (“moles”, because they undermine all accepted tenets), Eich revisits his themes in a self-mocking theatre of the absurd. In
Hausgenossen
(“Flat Mates”) “Mother Nature” enters, her mouth smeared with blood,
and proudly displays her latest model: “Here, the praying mantis. While
his abdomen copulates with her, she gobbles up his thorax. Yuck, mama, I
say, you are unappetising. But the sunsets, she giggles.”
In Michael Hofmann’s selection all these aspects are present, but,
unfortunately, his translations frequently obscure or ignore them. In
Poor Sunday he
gives a splendid English rendering of Eich’s mocking picture of the
good citizens, all dressed up for their Sunday outing: “it’s hoist all
sails and nipples / erect and health here we come.” Basking in
self-satisfaction it is their hour: “hour of the magnificent” (“Stunde
der Prächtigen”), and one might well hear an echo of “Lorenzo der
Prächtige”, Lorenzo the Magnificent, Medici banker. (Before the advent
of leisure-wear, conservative Germans used to don their “Sunday Best” –
“hoist all sails” – for a stroll through the park; that was then to
become designer sportswear.) These are the yes-men, those who have all
the answers. But Hofmann translates the line as “hour of splendor” and
so the people and the allusions disappear. For Eich, after all, it is
but a “poor Sunday”. He mocks the show of wealth and jollity which
cannot hide the existential void, nor can the beauty of nature, in this
case that of the “sycamore glades”. Their “abgekartete Schönheit” does
not translate as “hand-me-down beauties”, as Hofmann has it, but as a
beauty “rigged”, a beauty “connived”. Consequently, a useless reject, it
can now be consigned to “the museum of consolations” [where] “the
drooling sun / points at the merry dust.” Dust to dust – it is a poem
about the vanity of all things, a mockery of all solace.
There is a similar derision in
Ohne Unterschrift where Eich
does list “The answers: caterpillars under the bark / of felled poplars
[...] // A world order of cut flowers / and the pleasing line of forest
edges. [...] // no more questions now, assent [Einverständnis]…” But,
with the caterpillars, the ichneumon is not far. These answers are not
his answers: he refuses to subscribe to such cheap and naive satisfaction. The title translates as
Unsigned. Rather, these answers are those of “my enemies / with their assent”, as he says in
Zwei [
Two]:
“die Feinde / mit ihrem Einverständnis.” Here, however, Michael Hofmann
translates: “with their common purpose”. Consistency is lost and with
it a central element of Eich’s thinking.
Eich’s late work is steeped in utter pessimism: “Vain the cruel hope /
that the screams of the tortured / might pave the way for a brighter
future” (
Topography of a Better World). Vain also – Eich had
come to realise – was any hope that his writing, intended “to make
suffering visible”, could have any consequences. The optimism expressed
in the
Inventory of 1945 is refuted in a poem from 1966, not
included by Hofmann. The similarity of its minimalism makes it almost
look like a companion piece, but this time it is a balance sheet – with
nothing under the bottom line:
Less
Fewer goals
and smaller,
rice-grain sized.
Not lavish,
most things
in meditations.
Already suited
for poverty and
toothlessness.
Brief screams still
across the tarmac,
unnoticed.
Told or
untold,
and rice-grain sized.
(Translation A.V.)
The “screams” of the suffering which Eich wanted his readers to hear in so many of his texts (cf.
Game Paths)
still re-echo, but whether “told or untold”, it makes no difference. By
now, Eich had reached his ultimate position: that of the Oriental sage,
withdrawn into his “rock garden”, meditating over a grain of rice: “I
have been here / and here / I could have / gone there too, or stayed at
home. / You can understand the world / without leaving home. / I
encountered Lao Tse / before I met Marx.[...]”. (
Delayed, from
Occasions and Rock Gardens) Eich had indeed studied Sinology.
The “meditations” are reflected and passed on in what became Eich’s
final literary triumph, the anarchic short prose texts of his “
Moles”, “
Maulwürfe”,
most of them still waiting to be translated into English. They are
cackling deconstructions of any form of “Einverständnis”, of acceptance,
including that of logic and grammar, a rejection of and reduction to
absurdity of a world gone awry. A poem written shortly before Eich´s
death, and definitively rendered by Michael Hofmannn, points the way:
AND
Fog fog fog,
hair
in my ears, a
noncommittal
friendliness
and
and
and Raissa’s sweet laugh.
Experience tells
what belongs with what
what belongs with and,
only with and.
No rationale.
It will last
as long as the and doesn’t
slip my mind like the other words.
It’s enough, thanks, it’s plenty.
Günter Eich: Angina Days. Selected Poems
Translated and introduced by Michael Hofmann
Princeton University Press, Princeton 2010.
ISBN-13: 978-1-4008-3434-1
Cloth, 216 pages, US$24.95
Axel Vieregg has written extensively on Günter Eich and edited Vols. I and IV of his Gesammelte Werke
(Collected Works), 1991. He lives in Palmerston North, New Zealand,
where he was a professor of German literature at Massey University.
(c) 2011 The Berlin Review of Books.
