German II: German Poetry

Session Coordinator: Jefford Vahlbusch

University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire

vahlbujb@uwec.edu

Bertolt Brecht and the Insufficiency of Irony

Bertolt Brecht frequently encloses his works of the 1920's in frames, beginning at least as early as Im Dickicht der Städte (1922) and achieving the most obvious use in the Hauspostille, in 1927. These frames, especially in the closing, use irony to call into question the apparent meaning of the enclosed contents. This structure even appears in the microcosm of poems, where the final verse, the refrain or even the final line of a verse ironically comments on the poem's topic or stanza. Such destabilizations have often been regarded as youthful attempts to be provocative or tongue-in-cheek, but their continuation into Brecht's burgeoning experimentation with epic modes of theater and with politicized poetry invites a consideration of the relationship between ironic endings and Brecht's theoretical claims regarding drama. In this paper I elaborate on the connection between irony and intended message by reading the "Salomon-Song" from the Dreigroschenoper; first as a poem in its different incarnations, then in its contextualization within the play.

I describe how the poem uses irony to problematize characteristics held in esteem by cultures in the historical world, including the faculty of artistic creation itself, and how its irony functions within the narrative. The concluding position of the ironic comment in this poem mirrors the structure of the play, so that the three Dreigroschenfinalen that end each act and the deus ex machina ending of the play all undermine ideas that appeared to be positively advocated in the course of the play.

K. Scott Baker

University of Missouri-Kansas City

bakerks@umkc.edu

Poets on Poetry: Anna Mitgutsch, Kerstin Hensel, and Evelyn Schlag Reading Christine Lavant

While much of the literature on the Austrian poet Christine Lavant concentrates on the formal richness of her poems, or attempts to decipher the complex codes of her imagery, the responses of these three poets seem much more urgent. Mitgutsch speaks in her 1984 essay of Lavant’s “rebellion”; Hensel writes in 1995 of “the rage of the beggar”; and in 2005 Schlag explores her “radicality.” These writers understand that Lavant’s poetic achievement originates in her fundamental exclusion from the world and the wrath this produced. This presentation will examine and compare these three responses with each other and with the more scholarly discussion of Lavant, concluding that any analysis of her poetry must start by accepting her uncompromising cry of despair—and not, for example, a search for faith—as the governing metaphysics of her texts.

Geoffrey C. Howes

Bowling Green State University

ghowes@bgsu.edu

What’s Fresh in German Poetry? A Look at two Contemporary Movers and Shakers

This paper will introduce two prominent voices in recent German-language poetry, Ursula Krechel (1947) and SAID (1947). While an author in multiple genres, Krechel is first and foremost a leading poet in Germany. A native of Trier, she published a seminal new work, Stimmen aus dem harten Kern, in 2005. This long poem, composed of twelve sections with twelve parts each, and each containing twelve lines, focuses on an imaginary troop of soldiers as they careen through battlefields over many centuries and historical and mythical eras. I will present an overview of Krechel’s powerful vision and assess the impact of her book on the lyric genre as well as on the socio-political climate surrounding war today.

Krechel’s contemporary, the Iranian-German poet SAID, was born in Tehran in 1947 and emigrated to Germany at the age of 17 for political reasons. His volume Wo ich sterbe ist meine Fremde (2000) offers keen insight into his life as an exile in Germany since the sixties and his brief return to Iran between the fall of the Shah and the ascension of Khomeini. Former president of the German PEN Association and 2006 recipient of the Goethe-Medal, SAID stands out as an exemplary German-language poet engaged with issues concerning displaced writers and his ongoing attempt to negotiate the assumption of a lyric voice in the language of his adopted homeland.

Amy Kepple Strawser

Otterbein College

astrawser@otterbein.edu

On the Place of Poetry in the Undergraduate Curriculum

This paper uses a critical description of German 498: German Poetry, a course taught in regular rotation in UW-Eau Claire's German program, to argue that we should return poetry to a point at or near the center of advanced undergraduate work in German.

German 498 features a two-week introduction in which students first learn to read and discuss English and American poems; weekly workshops for which students and instructor prepare by each translating the same short poem into English; and a seminar format that depends on each student becoming expert in the work and life of a different poet. Excepting the first two weeks, the course is taught and taken completely in German.

Despite the difficulties of "selling" literature courses today--to students, certainly, and sometimes to colleagues and administrators--teaching 498 has convinced me that such courses are indispensable for upper-level students. Working on poetry in such a context offers students chances for intellectual, emotional, linguistic, and scholarly growth often far more difficult to achieve in other sorts of advanced courses.

Jefford Vahlbusch

University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire

vahlbujb@uwec.edu