All days

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Alle Tage is an anti-war poem by the Austrian writer Ingeborg Bachmann , which was first published in a radio recording in 1952. It is still often quoted in the 21st century.

Structure and style

Text layer

Every day consists of three rhyming stanzas with one eight and two six verses.

Sentence level

Especially in the first stanza there are enjambements between a whole series of verses . Examples like "The hero / stays away from the fighting" (verse 3/4) or "The weak / has moved into the fire zones." (Verse 4/5) show that the end on the formal level of the verse is not a substantive one End of the unit of meaning is identical. A relation to the subject of the first stanza can be established here: A formal end of the war is no guarantee of an actual end. In the last two stanzas the number of enjambements is fewer.

The second stanza is characterized by the anaphoric repetition of the temporal conjunction if characterized three times (verses 10 with 12). The structure of the third stanza is the same as that of the second: the first verses of each stanza are identical, and the third stanza also has an anaphoric repetition three times ( preposition for ). We can therefore speak of a two-part structure of the poem: the second and third stanzas can be seen as a unit in terms of form and content.

Word level: The symbol of the star

Central position in the poem

Soldiers are awarded medals that resemble stars in shape. The hero described in the poem does not wear the medal on his uniform, but rather the “star of hope over his heart” (verses 7–8) inside. While medals are awarded by earthly rulers, the virtual star is reminiscent of "the star of Bethlehem , which marks a turning point in the world". But the adjective poor makes it clear that the two stars are not identical: the sky is darkened by the “shadow of eternal armor” (verse 13). “There is no divine promise behind hope.” Nevertheless, star becomes the central concept of the poem: he is the subject of verses 7 to 20. It is not stated who awards it, but the time and reason for the award determine the second and third stanzas.

The star of hope here is an award for a “heroic policy of resistance”. "It enables human solidarity and means the thwarting of military logic and the desertion from the days of warlike emergency". The poem can be understood as an homage to the resistance against National Socialism and can itself be read as a form of resistance against the restoration that was prevalent at the time of its creation .

Reference to other texts

Within the volume of poetry, the image of the star can be found in a prominent position: The first poem of the second group of poems in the poetry volume Die gestundete Zeit is entitled Stars in March .

But there is also a connection to the two authors with whom Ingeborg Bachmann read at the groundbreaking meeting of Gruppe 47 in Niendorf in 1952: The image of the star of hope also appears in the last sentence of Ilse Aichinger's novel The Greater Hope (“About The morning star stood on the contested bridges ”). Ingeborg Bachmann ended her lecture on poetry with the image of the star from Paul Celan's poem Engführung ( one / star / probably still has light. / Nothing, / nothing is lost ).

Subject

War as an image for the absurdity of existence

The poem destroys the illusion that peace had returned with the end of the Second World War, it questions "from verse to verse one habit of thought after another". There is still war, but under previously unknown premises : a cold war , a state of affairs that "is neither war nor peace (verses 1 and 2)". "The opposites of war and peace, of the unheard of and the everyday, of combative heroism and evasive weakness no longer exist."

Revaluation of values

In an upside-down world one must react with a complete reversal of old orientations and an overthrow of the value system that applies in war. It no longer makes sense to "fight in the service of the powers of this world and to find recognition in the eyes of these powers". Heroism no longer shows itself in battle (verses 3 and 4), but in patience. "Withstanding the course of the world" and "waiting for judgment and change" will be upgraded. Medal is not earned by those who kill, but rather by those who keep some hope. Desertion , insubordination and betrayal of secrets , outlawed in the military value system, are now virtues. Renunciation of violence (v. 16) and moral incorruptibility (v. 18) are just as much a part of it as the courage to take the position of the outsider, even if this destroys supposed friendships (v. 17).

The poem took up the will to protest of the contemporary younger generation and was directed “against the covert continuation of the previously open war, against rearmament and militarization”.

Stagnation versus hope

The wrongness of the world is taken for granted, accepted as normal, so that “nothing more happens” (v. 11). Deceptive peace (verse 12), invisible enemies (verse 12) and ubiquitous latent violence determine the world in which people have established themselves.

Biblical references

Jörg Hienger makes a reference to the end times announced in the Bible , in which the usual conditions on earth are overturned: The present world is wrong. The symbol of the star indicates an opposite world.

Language criticism

The new virtues are described with words from the military vocabulary of the old morality: desertion (verse 16), betrayal of secrets (verse 18) and insubordination (verse 19/20) are also terms from criminal law , where they denote "shameful crimes". The bestowal of military awards is often justified with bravery in front of the enemy . "The provocative revaluation of the first three formulas" and the irritating change in the fourth give at first glance the impression that the world is upside down. In view of the world that is already out of joint, however, the reversal of language and action are precisely ways to abolish the reversal and thus to return to the real.

Speaking situation

The literary scholar Thomas Anz examined the poem against the background of gender roles. He argues that the poem focuses on a male theme: according to the traditional constructions of gender roles, female poets are located in the field of love and nature poetry. Ingeborg Bachmann goes beyond gender boundaries not only in terms of content, but also in language: she opposes military values ​​with "concise, unfounded assertions that sound like commands" and writes in a style that is "even the close to military language ”.

Reference to the biography of Ingeborg Bachmann

Ria Endres also understands the use of metaphors as a "tribute to history, the effort to tie in with a culture, literature and language that was twisted, killed, ridiculed by National Socialism". Ingeborg Bachmann described the invasion of Hitler's troops in Klagenfurt as a deep turning point in her life.

Ria Endres emphasizes that the poet, contrary to her image, has taken a political position: Endres mentions the poet's entry into the Committee against Nuclear Armament in 1958, which Hans Werner Richter founded as a protest against an armament decision by the Bundestag . Endres also refers to Ingeborg Bachmann's signing of the declaration on the war in Vietnam in November 1965 and the poet's public advocacy against the statute of limitations for National Socialist crimes in the course of the statute of limitations debate in the same year. Ingeborg Bachmann's decision to leave Piper Verlag in 1967 was also a protest against the fact that the publisher had commissioned the translation of Anna Achmatowa's poems from former Hitler Youth leader Hans Baumann .

Position of the poem in the work

Alle Tage was published for the first time in a radio recording of the NWDR Hanover on November 3, 1952. The poem was not printed until a little later, in February 1953. It was published in Morgen. Monthly magazine for freelance academics with the university supplement 'Der Student' . In Ingeborg Bachmann's first volume of poems, Die gestundete Zeit , Alle Tage 1953 was printed in the second part as the sixth poem between Early Noon and Eine Feldherrn .

Masks of male perspectives in other works

Thomas Anz points out that Ingeborg Bachmann repeatedly used masks of male perspectives and ways of speaking. Bettina Bannasch interprets this as follows: "If women, as the French post-structuralists put it after Lacan , are excluded from the symbolic order, then the narrative perspective can only ever be a male one."

In the novel Malina , the military historian Malina makes an assertion that is related to Every Day : “There is no such thing as war and peace.” And Malina's answer to the subsequent question from the I, what it is then called is: “War.” At the end of the chapter, the female self repeats: “There is always war. There is always violence here. There is always a fight here. It is the eternal war. "

Topic of the continued war in other texts

In later texts the poet repeatedly took up the theme of the ongoing war from Alle Tage . In June 1973 she gave one of her last interviews on television. With reference to the second chapter in Malina , she also called fascism a private phenomenon: “Fascism is the first in the relationship between a man and a woman, and I tried to say that in this chapter it is here in this society always war. There is no such thing as war and peace, there is only war. ”This meant the“ hidden, psychological violence ”in everyday“ relationships between people ”, especially“ between man and woman ”. In drafts of the preface to her book Franza , Ingeborg Bachmann had stated that 1945 was not a suitable date “to go to sleep calmly”. The crimes have not disappeared in the present, "just because here murder is no longer honored, demanded, awarded and supported".

reception

Even in the 21st century, the poem has lost none of its topicality. In different contexts, titles and opening verses are still quoted. For example, in 2014 Michael Lemling, in his laudation for the journalist Glenn Greenwald , winner of the Geschwister-Scholl-Prize , formulated the poem "Criteria for the award of the Geschwister-Scholl-Prize", including moral courage and the courage to "betray unworthy secrets" caused by global surveillance.

As a catchy label for German-language literature in the Cold War era, the entry lines have already been used as titles for university courses.

Quotes from Alle Tage can also be found in journalistic texts on the subject of war in the 21st century and confirm that the poem is topical. A comment by Carolin Emcke , winner of the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade , on the civil war in Syria from 2015 begins with the first verses of Alle Tage .

Every day is also the title of a novel by Terézia Mora from 2004. The name goes back to a biographical event: Mora reports on reading Bachmann's poem by chance when she was writing her novel. "I read these lines and suddenly I saw clearly why my book couldn't work."

The important Austrian composer Thomas Larcher , who has already dealt with Ingeborg Bachmann's work on several occasions, composed the symphony for baritone and orchestra Alle Tage from 2010–2015 . It begins with an orchestral introduction, followed by three movements with baritone to the poems Ingeborg Bachmann's Invocation of the Great Bear , Mein Vogel and Heimweg . The composer assigns a prominent position to the following sentence on Every Day : "Clearly more political and concrete than the three previous poems, this poem and thus the last movement at the same time represents the spiritual center of this work as well as its end point."

Text output

  • First printing in: Morgen. Monthly magazine for freelance academics with the university supplement 'Der Student'. 8th year, volume 5, issue 2, Vienna, February 1953, p. 7.

Web links

Notes and individual references

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Jörg Hienger: Alle Tage. In: Jörg Hienger, Rudolf Knauf (Hrsg.): German poems from Andreas Gryphius to Ingeborg Bachmann. An anthology with interpretations. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1969, pp. 204-206.
  2. ↑ a b c d Hans Höller: The deferred time. Text history and composition of the volume of poetry. In: Monika Albrecht, Dirk Göttsche (ed.): Bachmann manual. Life - work - effect. Verlag JB Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-476-01810-5 , pp. 57-67.
  3. ↑ Christine Koschel, Inge von Weidenbaum, Clemens Münster: Ingeborg Bachmann. Works. Volume 1: Poems, radio plays, libretti, translations. Piper Verlag, Munich 1978, ISBN 3-492-02774-1 , p. 38.
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Thomas Anz: Alle Tage. In: Marcel Reich-Ranicki (Ed.): Hundred poems. Insel Verlag, Berlin 2000, pp. 346-348. Thomas Anz: On Ingeborg Bachmann's poem "Alle Tage" - planet lyrik @ planetlyrik.de. In: planetlyrik.de. March 6, 2016, accessed December 30, 2016 .
  5. ↑ a b c Ria Endres: The truth is reasonable for people. On the poetry of Ingeborg Bachmann. In: New Rundschau. 92/4, 1981. Quoted from: Annemarie van Rinsum, Wolfgang van Rinsum: Interpretations. Poetry. Bayerischer Schulbuchverlag, Munich 1986, ISBN 3-7627-2146-7 , p. 257.
  6. ↑ Ingeborg Bachmann in an interview with Gerda Bödefeld. In: Brigitte. Year 27, 1971, p. 62. Quoted from: Uwe Johnson: Eine Reise nach Klagenfurt. 2nd Edition. Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1974, pp. 32-33; full text there: “There was a certain moment that shattered my childhood. The invasion of Hitler's troops in Klagenfurt. It was something so terrible that my memory began on this day: through a pain that was too early, as I may never have had it later in this strength. Of course, I didn't understand all of this in the sense that an adult would understand it. But this tremendous brutality that was palpable, this roaring, singing and marching - the emergence of my first fear of death. "
  7. ↑ 1965: Declaration about the war in Vietnam from November 1965 ... In: protest-muenchen.sub-bavaria.de. Accessed December 31, 2016 .
  8. ↑ Andrea Stoll: Ingeborg Bachmann: The dark shine of freedom. Bertelsmann, Gütersloh 2013, ISBN 978-3-570-10123-0 , p. 295.
  9. ↑ a b c Christine Koschel, Inge von Weidenbaum, Clemens Münster: Ingeborg Bachmann. Works. Volume 1: Poems, radio plays, libretti, translations. Piper Verlag, Munich 1978, ISBN 3-492-02774-1 , p. 645.
  10. ↑ Christine Koschel, Inge von Weidenbaum, Clemens Münster: Ingeborg Bachmann. Works. Volume 1: Poems, radio plays, libretti, translations. Piper Verlag, Munich 1978, ISBN 3-492-02774-1 , p. 46.
  11. ↑ Bettina Bannasch: The thirtieth year - Poetics of a Babylonian language confusion. In: Mathias Mayer: Interpretations. Works by Ingeborg Bachmann. Reclam-Verlag Stuttgart, 2002, ISBN 3-15-017517-8 , pp. 140–155, p. 151.
  12. ↑ a b Ingeborg Bachmann: Malina. In: Christine Koschel, Inge von Weidenbaum, Clemens Münster: Ingeborg Bachmann works. Volume 3: Types of Death: Malina and Unfinished Novels. Piper Verlag, Munich 1978, p. 185.
  13. ^ Ingeborg Bachmann: Malina. In: Christine Koschel, Inge von Weidenbaum, Clemens Münster: Ingeborg Bachmann works. Volume 3: Types of Death: Malina and Unfinished Novels. Piper Verlag, Munich 1978, p. 236.
  14. ↑ a b Christine Koschel, Inge von Weidenbaum (Ed.): Ingeborg Bachmann. We have to find true sentences. Conversations and interviews. 4th edition. Piper Verlag, Munich / Zurich 1991, ISBN 3-492-11105-X , pp. 143-146.
  15. ↑ Ingeborg Bachmann, quoted from: Joachim Hoell: Ingeborg Bachmann. dtv Verlag, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-423-31051-0 , p. 139.
  16. ^ Ingeborg Bachmann: The Franza case. Unfinished novel. In: Christine Koschel, Inge von Weidenbaum, Clemens Münster: Ingeborg Bachmann works. Volume 3: Types of Death: Malina and Unfinished Novels. Piper Verlag, Munich 1978, p. 341.
  17. ↑ Geschwister-Scholl-Prize. In: Geschwister-scholl-preis.de. December 10, 2013, accessed January 1, 2017 .
  18. ^ University of Vienna: Course of the Institute for German Philology at the University of Vienna in the summer semester 2013, Günther Stocker: Newer German literature: "The war is no longer declared, but continued." (2013S) . Austrian literature in the shadow of the Cold War. In: ufind.univie.ac.at. Retrieved January 1, 2017 .
  19. ↑ Christoph Farkas: Thinking about an emergency: What do we care about the war? In: taz.de . May 23, 2014, accessed January 1, 2017 .
  20. ↑ Carolin Emcke : True lie. About an oppressive interview with Syria's dictator Bashar al-Assad and what one can learn from it about autocrats and mass murderers. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . No. 37, 14./15. February 2015, p. 5.
  21. ↑ Terézia Mora: The author's masks. For Ingeborg Bachmann's eightieth birthday. In: Literatures. Issue 1/2, 2007, p. 31. Quoted from: Elke Brüns: Literarian Wegelagerei. Terézia Mora's homage to Ingeborg Bachmann. In: Brigitte E. Jirku, Marion Schulz (Ed.): 'Mitten ins Herz.' Artists read Ingeborg Bachmann. Peter Lang Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften, Frankfurt am Main 2009, pp. 141–152.
  22. ^ A b Thomas Larcher - World premieres: "Alle Tage" - Symphony for baritone and orchestra. (No longer available online.) In: ophelias-pr.com. October 13, 2015, archived from the original on January 1, 2017 ; accessed on January 1, 2017 .