Andreas Okopenko

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Andreas Okopenko (1974)

Andreas Okopenko (born March 15, 1930 in Košice ( Czechoslovakia ), † June 27, 2010 in Vienna ) was an Austrian writer and is considered one of the most important representatives of contemporary literature in Austria. Together with Friederike Mayröcker and Ernst Jandl , Okopenko was also an important companion of the Viennese group , but without being directly part of it, as well as not being part of concrete poetry . In 1970 he presented the first hypertext in book form with his lexicon novel , even before the Internet emerged , and is therefore regarded as a literary pioneer of hypertext.

Life

Andreas Okopenko was born the son of a Ukrainian doctor and his Austrian wife. The family lived in Vienna from 1939. After an illness interrupted study of chemistry at the University of Vienna he was until 1968 in the industry, including a paper mill operates. Okopenko published his first poems in New Paths as early as 1949 , a magazine by young Austrian authors that he himself coined in the early 1950s in the lyric editing department together with René Altmann , HC Artmann and Wieland Schmied . From 1951 to 1954 he edited the magazine founded by himself publications out in the numerous members of the Austrian avant published at that time. The "names of Artmann, Bayer , Mayröcker , Jandl appeared here for the first time" ( Franz Mon ). For Okopenko, the job of a company accountant was initially vital because he suffered a typing crisis from 1952 that lasted until the early 1960s. At this stage, Okopenko published almost exclusively in newspapers and magazines. Numerous poems from this period are collected in the volume of poetry Grüner November , which was published by the German Piper Verlag in 1957. It was not until 1968 that Okopenko gave up his job as a company account manager and from then on devoted himself exclusively to writing. Until 2010 he lived in Vienna , most recently as a freelance writer . In the last years of his life he was in a relationship with the painter Eva-Maria Geisler .

plant

Okopenko came out with both poems and prose works in which realistic descriptions of subjective impressions and sensations and language experiments enter into an idiosyncratic mixture.

Even in more radical phases of his work, Okopenko never withdrew to contradicting internal linguistic strategies. For him, writing remains fundamentally committed to life, a new construction of a kind of encyclopedia of things and thoughts , which instead of systematic rubrics contains a strongly sensual, lyrical spelling that focuses on details and color impressions, bizarre word combinations and courageous associations. The term fluidum , which he coined for literature, occupies a special position in Okopenko's work , which describes a sudden insight and can be found similarly in Marcel Proust as mémoire involontaire , in James Joyce as epiphany or in Ezra Pound as imagisme . Already in his early poetry, but also in the lexicon novel , Okopenko tried to convey the fluidic experience. For Okopenko, this unspeakable is about a phenomenon of pre-linguistic thinking, a "clear recognition of relationships between things seen or sensed before the words for them can be found". The fluid is a very strong feeling of reaction to parts of reality, a moment in which one's own embedding in the world shows itself shockingly. This sudden enlightenment, the awareness of the unique, the transformation of one's own reality of life strikes like lightning: “The moment has a nodal nature: It is related to all sides, objective and subjective. It is the here and now, the particularity of beings, the situation in what is becoming, the place in the tissue, all-connected and unique. '”In his essay Fluidum , Okopenko also notes:

“ Magical realism is a tautology . Things are magical. Through their being. Through their infinite relationships. Options. Through their association possibilities in the human brain . Your connection with the emotional life: memories and wishes. "

- Andreas Okopenko : Fluidum. Report of an extraordinary kind of experience.

Okopenko never concealed the existential dimension of his literary experiments, which was also a personal dimension, for him the aura was also an “accumulator in life”.

To concrete poetry (whose reference point is not reality, but the language is) to Okopenko early could not count. For his reluctance to face their idea of ​​an “absolute texture that detaches the partial world of language, writing or other signals from the world to which it is related”, he chose the term concretionism . This second poetological key term Okopenkos is derived from his intention to reproduce the “fluidically” experienced reality as “concretely” as possible. He rejects Concrete Poetry as an area of ​​application for merely “internal language” processes, but sees “opportunities for collaboration” where “the 'concrete' (or, analogous to absolute painting, better called 'absolute') texture is suitable as a means of expression for a non-linguistic world relationship”. Without falling into traditional poetry of experience , Okopenko insists on the transferability of “experienced reality” into language and even strives for a “total realism ”, which however includes dream reality as well as “ surrealism from inside and outside”. Even the "poetic language criticism" by Peter Handke or Michael Scharang in the 1960s, Okopenko, as he stated in a lecture at the University of Vienna in 1978 , is "linguistically confused and speech-impaired", since "out of sheer embarrassment for the worn-out use of language" the poetically acceptable vocabulary had extremely reduced. Okopenko was on friendly terms with all groups of the avant-garde of his time, but in his own poetology remained skeptical of both the Graz group and the Viennese group and in a certain way a loner.

In Okopenko's lyric poetry, the fluid is evident in captivatingly simple poetic vignettes :

The sun warms scrap metal in the morning.
A red gate sign makes us childlike again.
The winter days are all gone.

and also in more complex formations:

five eighths of a stratocumulus , the roof of the galvanizing plant rosy,
full of the smell of milk, over there below, dark blue and white nurse curtain

(Both excerpts in: Andreas Okopenko: Gesammelte Lyrik , 1980)

Another branch of Okopenko's lyrical work were ironic nonsense poems and parodies , which he subtitled in his volume Why are the latrines so sad? called whimsy songs from 1969 . These verses combine the pleasure in meaning-disguising language games with cultural and social satire . In Der Akazienfresser (1973) the author brings parodies of fellow writers, from Georg Trakl to Gerhard Rühm , but also homages to Ramón Gómez de la Serna, whom he admires . He published other literary parodies and games with forms and possibilities of language in Loose Poems (1983). However, Okopenko's poems never get lost in the playful language. With regard to his loose poems , Okopenko emphasized that they were relieved of ethical and literary responsibility as well as self-criticism. Nevertheless, they too embody a poetics of the moment and are related to Okopenko's need to communicate the value of the immediate experience when he uses the forms of the diary extract in “games with what has been lived” with the aim of communicating what has been experienced and through a “subjective reproduction of the For the moment [...] to bring about a related feeling in the reader ”. The playful, ironic manner of the loose poems is shown, for example, when Okopenko corrupts the prime example of a natural poem , Wanderer's Night Song by Goethe , under the title Sennenlied , and thus irritates the relationship between the lyrical self and nature with a disillusionment :

Above all the treetops,
the cow angrily eats
its butter croissants
and risks a horn.

(From: Andreas Okopenko: Lockergedichte , 1983)

Andreas Okopenko
Eva-Maria Geisler , 2003
Colored pencil and oil pastel on paper
49.4 x 42.0 cm
Vienna

Link to the picture
(please note copyrights )

Okopenko saves his “lyrical attitude” into the form vessels of other genres. For example, in the story Die Belege des Michael Cetus (1967) or in the encyclopedia novel (full title: Lexicon of a Sentimental Journey to the Exporters' Meeting in Druden ) from 1970, narrative uniformity is replaced by a montage of "concrete" particles, of protocols , Letters, notepads, encyclopedia articles, scraps of conversation and linguistic "postcards". The unusual arrangement (each section is provided with a lexical keyword and can be read in any order) does not impair the readability of the work. The subject of the “exporter's trip ” can be understood as a fusion of the traditional symbols of a journey as a symbol for life and world experience with “trading” as a metaphor for transfer and circulation, especially the transfer activity of the poet.

At the beginning of the lexicon novel , the author wanted to "disturb himself and the readers from the snoring flow", in which Okopenko refused to tell unquestioning stories and, with the alphabetical arrangement of keywords, exploded fable , time continuum and psychological credibility requirements. Okopenko points out the freedom of reading and invites the reader to stroll through the text:

“You just have to read all over my dictionary, just as you can remember your sergeant, your first bottle of milk and your future room in the old people's home. This is world. To cast prescribed glances in the prescribed order, on the other hand, is classic reading [...] I want to - let's try - free you from reading into the world . "

- Andreas Okopenko : Lexicon novel

The fact that the end of the novel is not at the same time the end of the book and cannot even be precisely identified reinforces the impression of a literary experiment when reading, which tries to show what cannot be represented in the context of conventional literary representations. The story is reassembled and continued when you read it again. The emphasis on the decision-making competence of the reader also leads to an intensive examination of the peculiarities of the literary reception itself, the rules of which are no longer dictated by the text, but depend on the reader himself and on how he leafed through the book . Okopenko himself spoke of a “novel of possibility”: instead of reality as the benchmark for art, there is possibility and to that extent a prose that has even been detached from the author and allows the reader to become active himself. Okopenko's prose here is “absolute” in a sense that points beyond the term “absolute” that Gottfried Benn still associated with the possibilities of prose. Among other things, Benn had called for a prose "outside of space and time": "The style of the future will be robot style, assembly art ."

The lexicon novel becomes a literary forerunner of hypertext through the poetic experimentation . It anticipates numerous processes that decades later characterize digital text communication: text modules , various reference structures ( links ), the possibility of taking your own reading paths ( pathways ) and also activating and involving the readers ( users ). For example, Okopenko waived the literary “patent” of the lexicon novel under the keyword “Lexicon novels”. Instead, there is a call to readers to write their own texts based on the example of this one. The fact that the lexicon novel basically already follows the HTML logic of websites is also shown by the later adaptation of the book in electronic form. The novel was published in 1998 in cooperation between the author, the collective Libraries of the Mind and the composer Karlheinz Essl as ELEX - Electronic Lexicon-Novel on CD-ROM. Among other things, Essl composed a lexicon sonata using algorithms , which is approximately an implementation of the hypertext principle in music . It goes beyond the scope of a conventional piano piece in many ways in that there is no score , it changes in real time, there are no repetitions and the duration is basically infinite. At various points in the lexicon novel, the reader is asked to enter their own memories, nuances of impressions, poems, entire dissertations , paintings and drawings and much more. Some of these diverse interaction options, such as copying images in, could not be built into ELEX. Reasons for this were, on the one hand, the technically limited possibilities of 1998, and on the other hand, fundamental differences between the various media. In a way, the lexicon novel offered even more opportunities for interaction than ELEX.

The songwriter Ulrich Roski set some of his “Spleengesänge” (1969) to music and published them on his LP “So did nature want it” (TELDEC 6.23548, 1978).

Okopenko proved his lack of concern for the zeitgeist when he published his second novel Meteoriten in 1976 - at a time when most of his colleagues had established new approaches to an epic obligation - in which the principle is again an alphabetical series of vocabulary. In contrast to the lexicon novel , the keywords here are no longer taken from a substantive repertoire, but a large part of the novel - "articles" are introduced in a chaotic sequence by prefixes, pronouns, circumstance and adjectives. After an introduction called " Prelude and Fugue ", the reading instruction follows in Meteoriten :

“Any readers of my“ lexicon novel ”, perhaps neurotic in the use of my books from back then, will be reassured that the“ meteorites ”can be read without any rules. Freedom is now inconspicuous and total. It is most faithful to the material if you just leaf through this book, but of course you can also read it from beginning to end or according to some kind of private mathematical habits. "

- Andreas Okopenko : meteorites

In the course of the digitization of the humanities , which has led to the new institutionalized research field of digital humanities and whose area of ​​responsibility includes, among other things, the application and reflection of new digital forms of communication, new areas of application and methods in research and teaching, but also contemporary archiving and networking, are Okopenko's diaries have been published digitally and in print since 2018. The aim of this publication is to show how communication can remain independent from a digital point of view by not leaving the fluidic thinking to the algorithms and the navigation concretely not to the domains .

Okopenko was a member of the Graz Authors' Assembly from 1973 to 1985 ; since 1999 he has been a member of the Austrian Art Senate .

He was buried in an honorary grave at the Grinzinger Friedhof (group 24, row 8, number 5) in Vienna. Andreas Okopenko's estate is kept in the literary archive of the Austrian National Library.

Awards and honors

Works (selection)

  • Green November , Munich 1957
  • Strange days , Munich a. a. 1963
  • The documents of Michael Cetus , Salzburg 1967
  • Why are the latrines so sad ?, Spleengesänge , Salzburg 1969
  • Lexicon of a sentimental journey to the exporters' meeting in Druden , Salzburg 1970
  • Places of changing unease , Salzburg 1971
  • The acacia eater , Salzburg 1973
  • Death bed with cardboard lids , Vienna a. a. 1974
  • Warning of Ypsilon , Salzburg 1974
  • Meteorites , Salzburg 1976
  • Four essays , Salzburg a. a. 1979
  • Collected poetry , Vienna a. a. 1980
  • Don't dig on your own! , Linz 1980
  • Johanna , Baden 1982
  • Relaxed poems , Vienna 1983
  • Children's Nazi , Salzburg a. a. 1984
  • Joint work , Siegen 1989 (together with Ernst Jandl and Friederike Mayröcker )
  • Schwänzellieder , Vienna 1991
  • Whenever I rain heavily , Vienna 1992
  • Dream reports , Linz u. a. 1998
  • Affenzucker , Vienna a. a. 1999
  • Collected essays and other outbursts of opinion from five decades , Klagenfurt a. a.
    1. In the scene , 2000
    2. Confrontations , 2001
  • Petting chaos - spontaneous poems , Klagenfurt u. a. 2004
  • Memory of Hope - Collected Autobiographical Essays , Vienna 2008

Editorial activity

  • Publications by a Viennese group of young authors. Vienna, H. 1.1951 - 8.1953
  • Hertha Kräftner : Why here? Why today? Graz 1963 (together with Otto Breicha)
  • Ernst No : Street of Odysseus. Vienna 1994

literature

  • Andreas Okopenko. Texts and materials , ed. v. Klaus Kastberger . Vienna: special number 1998. (= research / Austrian literature archive; 2) ISBN 3-85449-130-1 .
  • Andreas Okopenko , ed. by Konstanze Fliedl and Christa Gürtler (= Dossier No. 23). Graz - Vienna: Literaturverlag Droschl 2004. ISBN 3-85420-673-9
  • Andreas Okopenko . In: Walther Killy (Ed.): Literaturlexikon. Authors and works in German . tape 8 . Bertelsmann-Lexikon-Verlag, Gütersloh & Munich 1990, ISBN 3-570-04678-8 .
  • The lyric work of Andreas Okopenko . In: Walter Jens (Ed.): Kindlers New Literature Lexicon . tape 8 . Komet, Frechen 2001, ISBN 3-89836-214-0 .
  • History of German Literature: The Austrian Contemporary Literature . In: Viktor Žmegač (ed.): History of German literature from the 18th century to the present . tape 3 . Beltz Athenaeum, Weinheim 1994, ISBN 3-570-04678-8 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  • Paul Geyer , Claudia Jünke (Ed.): From Rousseau to Hypertext . Subjectivity in modern theory and literature. Königshausen and Neumann, Würzburg 2001, ISBN 3-8260-1996-2 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  • Monika Schmitz-Emans : Encyclopedic Fantasies . Knowledge-conveying forms of representation in literature - case studies and poetics (= Monika Schmitz-Emans [Hrsg.]: Literature - Knowledge - Poetics . Volume 8 ). Georg Olms Verlag, Hildesheim / Zurich / New York 2019, ISBN 978-3-487-15640-8 , E - Narrated encyclopedias. The lexicon novel as a representation of world knowledge. Linguistic inventory: Andreas Okopenkos Lexikonromane, p. 215–235 ( limited preview in Google Book search).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Andreas Okopenko , ed. by Konstanze Fliedl and Christa Gürtler (= Dossier No. 23). Graz - Vienna: Literaturverlag Droschl 2004. ISBN 3-85420-673-9
  2. ↑ a b c d e History of German Literature: The Austrian Contemporary Literature . In: Viktor Žmegač (ed.): History of German literature from the 18th century to the present . tape 3 . Beltz Athenaeum, Weinheim 1994, ISBN 3-570-04678-8 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  3. ↑ a b c d The lyric work of Andreas Okopenko . In: Walter Jens (Ed.): Kindlers New Literature Lexicon . tape 8 . Komet, Frechen 2001, ISBN 3-89836-214-0 .
  4. ↑ Olga Hochweis: literature to build yourself. In: Deutschlandfunk Kultur. April 24, 2008, accessed March 2, 2019 .
  5. ↑ a b c Christian Zolles: Hypertext pioneer now in hypertext. In: ORF Science. December 17, 2018, accessed March 2, 2019 .
  6. ↑ a b Okopenko, Andreas: Diaries 1949–1954. Digital edition. Roland Innerhofer, Bernhard Fetz , Christian Zolles, Laura Tezarek, Arno Herberth, Desiree Hebenstreit, Holger Englerth, Austrian National Library and University of Vienna, accessed on February 28, 2019 .
  7. ↑ Eva-Maria Geisler. In: e-radl.at. Retrieved December 28, 2017 .
  8. ↑ a b c d Andreas Okopenko . In: Walther Killy (Ed.): Literaturlexikon. Authors and works in German . tape 8 . Bertelsmann-Lexikon-Verlag, Gütersloh & Munich 1990, ISBN 3-570-04678-8 .
  9. ↑ Szilvia Gellai: Editor's Cut? The attempt to edit a novel on Andreas Okopenko's lexicon novel . Assembly as a reception process. In: Marc Caduff, Stefanie Heine, Michael Steiner (eds.): The art of reception . Aisthesis, Bielefeld 2015, ISBN 978-3-8498-1069-6 ( kit.edu [PDF; 687 kB ]).
  10. ^ Andreas Okopenko: Fluidum. Report of an extraordinary kind of experience . Protocols (1977). Quoted from: Szilvia Gellai: Editor's Cut? The attempt to edit a novel on Andreas Okopenko's lexicon novel . Assembly as a reception process. In: Marc Caduff, Stefanie Heine, Michael Steiner (eds.): The art of reception . Aisthesis, Bielefeld 2015, ISBN 978-3-8498-1069-6 ( kit.edu [PDF; 687 kB ]).
  11. ↑ In: Andreas Okopenko: Four essays: Ortsbestetermination einer Einsamkeit , 1979
  12. ↑ Thomas Poiss : His Fluidum . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . June 29, 2010, ISSN  0174-4909 .
  13. ^ Andreas Okopenko: Four essays. Location of a loneliness. Salzburg 1979. Quoted from: Andreas Okopenko . In: Walther Killy (Ed.): Literaturlexikon. Authors and works in German . tape 8 . Bertelsmann-Lexikon-Verlag, Gütersloh & Munich 1990, ISBN 3-570-04678-8 .
  14. ↑ a b Katrin Kohl: Long live the cliché! Variations of a frowned upon stylistic device at Ernst Jandl , Andreas Okopenko and Oskar Pastior . In: Karen Leeder (Ed.): Switching point: new German poetry in dialogue . Rodopi, Amsterdam, New York 2007, ISBN 978-90-420-2282-9 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  15. ↑ Wendelin Schmidt-Dengler : fault lines volume 1 & 2 in one volume. Lectures on Austrian literature from 1945 to 2008 . Residenz Verlag, St. Pölten 2012, ISBN 978-3-7017-4313-1 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  16. ↑ Quoted from: Andreas Okopenko . In: Walther Killy (Ed.): Literaturlexikon. Authors and works in German . tape 8 . Bertelsmann-Lexikon-Verlag, Gütersloh & Munich 1990, ISBN 3-570-04678-8 .
  17. ↑ Wolfgang Wiesmüller: Nature and Landscape in Austrian Poetry since 1945 . In: Régine Battiston-Zuliani (Ed.): Function of nature and landscape in Austrian literature . Bern / Berlin / Oxford / Vienna 2004, ISBN 3-03910-099-8 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  18. ↑ Quoted from: Wolfgang Wiesmüller: Nature and landscape in Austrian poetry since 1945 . In: Régine Battiston-Zuliani (Ed.): Function of nature and landscape in Austrian literature . Bern / Berlin / Oxford / Vienna 2004, ISBN 3-03910-099-8 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  19. ↑ Monika Schmitz-Emans: Encyclopedic Fantasies . Knowledge-conveying forms of representation in literature - case studies and poetics (= Monika Schmitz-Emans [Hrsg.]: Literature - Knowledge - Poetics . Volume 8 ). Georg Olms Verlag, Hildesheim / Zurich / New York 2019, ISBN 978-3-487-15640-8 , E - Narrated encyclopedias. The lexicon novel as a representation of world knowledge. Linguistic inventory: Andreas Okopenkos Lexikonromane, p. 216 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  20. ^ Lexicon of a sentimental journey to the exporters' meeting in Druden , Salzburg 1970
  21. ↑ Christoph Benjamin Schulz: Poetiken des sheets . Georg-Olms-Verlag, Hildesheim / Zurich / New York 2015, ISBN 978-3-487-15256-1 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  22. ^ Jürgen H. Petersen : Absolute prose . In: Gerhard P. Knapp, Gerd Labroisse (Ed.): Changes in the concept of literature in the German-speaking countries since 1945 (=  Amsterdam contributions to recent German studies . Volume 27 ). Rodopi, Amsterdam 1988, ISBN 90-5183-041-6 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  23. ↑ Dirk Frank: Narrative Mind Games. The metafictional novel between modernism and postmodernism . Deutscher Universitätsverlag, Wiesbaden 2001, ISBN 3-8244-4449-6 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  24. ↑ Steffen Scholl: Music - Space - Technology: for the development and use of the graphic programming environment "Max" . Transcript, Bielefeld 2014, ISBN 978-3-8376-2527-1 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  25. ^ Karlheinz Essl : Composing in the field of tension between intuition and algorithms . In: Reinhard Neck Christiane Spiel (ed.): Automation: Interaction with art, science and society . Böhlau, Wien / Köln / Weimar 2018, ISBN 978-3-205-23189-9 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  26. ^ Bernhard Metz: Non-linear Readings. The Dictionary Novel as a Visual Genre . 3. Andreas Okopenko, Dictionary Novel of a Sentimental Journey to the Exporters' Meeting at Druden (1970). In: Ronja Bodola, Guido Isekenmeier (Ed.): Literary Visualities. Visual Descriptions, Readerly Visualizations, Textual Visibilities . De Gruyter, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-11-037794-1 (English, limited preview in the Google book search).
  27. ↑ Jürgen H. Petersen : The German novel of modernity : foundation - typology - development . JB Metzler, Stuttgart 1991, ISBN 3-476-00782-0 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  28. ↑ Quoted from: Jürgen H. Petersen: The German novel of modernity: Foundation - Typology - Development . JB Metzler, Stuttgart 1991, ISBN 3-476-00782-0 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  29. ↑ Christian Zolles, Laura Tezarek, Arno Herberth: Thinking about the rise of the digital humanities with Andreas Okopenko. In: medien & zeit 33 (2018), 2. pp. 32–40, in: H-Soz-Kult , 23.09.2018. Thomas Ballhausen, Christina Krakovsky (Working Group for Historical Communication Research), accessed on March 9, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Okopenko, Andreas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian writer
DATE OF BIRTH March 15, 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH Košice
DATE OF DEATH June 27, 2010
Place of death Vienna