Poet's life (Heinz Piontek)

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Dichterleben is an autobiographical novel by Heinz Piontek from 1976.

Achim Reichsfelder has been working for over ten years - a character he has just made up, as Piontek asserts - as a full-time translator of English prose into German. He gave up his poetry profession. Nevertheless, poetic excursions - for example to the home of the Danube in Dissingen - play an important role in the text. Even more - as a conclusion, whoever writes once, always writes.

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One month in March in Munich : Reichsfelder is on you and you with the greats of the art scene. Schlöndorff speaks to him at the Stachus . The protagonist thinks of a certain Ulla. It only appears in the second half of the novel. After the Hong Kong flu , Reichsfelder lost some weight. The poet-translator passes the time in front of the television. Occasional meetings with employees in the offices of Munich publishers are short and inconclusive.

Set pieces from the old homeland of Dissingen force their way into Reichsfelder's stories in Munich. The mother Hedda Reichsfelder, née Ellwanger, lives there. The father - Justice Inspector Ludwig Reichsfelder, a war veteran - has been missing since the winter of 1945 and remains so. At the age of 44, his father had been assigned to the east as a sergeant to fight partisans . For a long time, the mother had kept two Jewish women in the house hidden from the Gestapo - ultimately in vain . Achim had been called up for labor service, had also taken part in the war, had been captured and released. After this excursion, Heinz Piontek looks at some of the sequences that lie further back in the novel: Shortly after the war, Achim Reichsfelder will marry Konstanze Eichner, the eldest of the three daughters of a widowed cinema owner in Dissingen. He will name the wife Marie-Claire. The couple will have children, Sebastian and Marion. In the second marriage, Reichsfelder will marry the aforementioned Ulla.

Achim Reichsfelder discusses literature with his Munich friends. It starts with "descriptions of nature with its monosyllables - forest, wind, snow, valley ..." and continues with the veneration of Dostoyevsky's Myshkin . There is talk of other Dostoyevsky admirers. Grigorowitsch and Nekrasow are said to have read poor people overnight and attacked the author early in the morning with their homage to his first novel.

In the next set piece - having returned to Dissingen from Russia - the 24-year-old budding poet Achim Reichsfelder can imagine the village of Unter Finningen at the foot of the Rough Alb from his desk. Konstanze, pregnant for the first time by Achim, unexpectedly shows understanding for the poems of the father-to-be. Georg von der Vring is Achim's role model: "Pigeon sleep is like fleeing / going down through a sea of ​​grass" . Even Peter Huchels "The force of the baskets varies in space" appears as impressive. But Huchel does not reply to Achim's submissions. Actually, Achim does not suffer any hardship after the currency reform . The mother leaves him part of the rent that falls from an inherited bakery. Usually Achim gets his submissions back from the editorial team. But finally his first volume of poems Treidelwege appears . The young poet ignores the advice of his father-in-law to try a script based on the Romance in minor key.

And again there is a jump from the Swabian province to the metropolitan Munich. At the end of the 1960s, Reichsfelder had been living there separately from his family for ten years. He is now welcomed by his dentist as the “famous Reichsfelder” on the dental torture chair. Achim's volume of poems Tagmond comes out. Antschel alias Celan visits Achim in Munich. You mutually sign one of your works.

The incessant change between the two time levels past and present (1970s), sometimes unannounced, can sometimes be tied to the refereed times by the vigilant Heinz Piontek researcher: After June 17th, Brecht assures Ulbricht of his devotion. The reader is therefore in the year 1953. Achim types about one page into the machine every day. Curtius , who had praised Achim, dies. The reader has evidently reached the year 1956 at once. Ingeborg Bachmann is described as a “strong blonde” and her verse “The great freight of summer is loaded” is criticized by poets. Heinz Piontek even mixes himself with the few big ones: “P. [Piontek] should start his breakfast with sixty percent kirsch . ” Benn and Brecht die. The reader has not yet gotten through 1956. Over time, Achim is hit by a bombardment of prices and adequate gifts. When the Schiller Foundation honors him, the gentlemen miss Achim's wife. And a large sum of money comes from the “Heuss Fund”. In addition to the lyric production, Achim translates radio plays from English. The celebrated poet fell ill, took a housemaid and deflowered her for 150 marks. The successor, an au pair girl from Sweden, is cheaper, but more scratchy: You spit on and slap your face. These are now again bed stories that take place under Marie-Claire's roof. Achim's volume of poems In the shadow of the city appears. Krolow encourages the poet to "make words". Achim goes on a journey. Achim returns to Munich via the stations Vienna - VII. District , Yugoslavia , Engadin , Provence and Spain .

His second wife Ulla Roßbach (see above) calls Achim with the ambiguous name “ Dichterleben ” - hence the name of the novel. The East Prussian Ulla calls herself a "half Polack " because the maternal grandmother comes from Łomża and the mother - 62-year-old Isolde Simoneit, widow of the school board member Hermann Simoneit - comes from Angerburg . Ulla has a ten year old daughter in England - Rita Marilyn. A Mr. Shoemaker had made Ulla pregnant in Berlin. At the time, Ulla had gotten over the Intermezzo England very quickly.

Ulla is writing a novel. Ulla probably inherited the literary streak from her father, a standard bearer of Ernst Wiechert . The talented woman enters her third marriage with Achim. Achim receives thirty thousand marks from the sale of the house owned by his former wife Konstanze and spends the money carelessly together with Ulla.

During Achim's years in Munich, Mr. Marcel Reich-Ranicki's slips were targeted from Lodsch . Blocker's attack on Group 47 and Enzensberger's counter-attack are discussed . And again it is Ingeborg Bachmann's turn - this time with a Munich story. The topic is short and sweet: Baumgart and Bachmann at Piper .

After all, Achim makes his poems heard in the Prinz-Carl-Palais . He is about to join the academy. Ulla and Achim have already been asked by von der Vrings. The host then talks more about himself; brings his critic Wilhelm Lehmann up for discussion. On January 19th (the year is not communicated), almost 40-year-old Ulla gives birth to little Thomas after almost five years of marriage. The 37-year-old Achim, a " Ostschwabe or half Bayer", father of five children, meanwhile, is pleased can sell as his professional colleague Ulla a short story. He have luck. Konstanze doesn't ask anything for the three children they share. Achim can't stand it at home. Ulla accommodates him in a hotel room in Dorf Tirol . His products sell badly. With a heavy heart Achim has to sell the library.

Armstrong enters the moon. It's 1969. Achim moves furnished to the north of Munich into a residential building and translates “A Long and Happy Life” by Lionel Wellcut. Achim ponders about as in daz mêr a slac . The conversations with the landlady, the widow Ulrike Schubert, affect the sexual, but bounce off the solid castle of Ms. Schubert.

One of Achim's friends publishes an article about the poet Achim Reichsfelder. The friend claims to have registered that Achim is already being noticed by some German scholars. Regardless, it is clear to the poet and translator that he lives “on the side of the weak”. Nonetheless, he continues to work on the poem Wiepoldstein . The 78-year-old mother Hedda Reichsfelder still transfers part of her monthly rental income to her son.

Finally, the "weirdo Achim Reichsfelder" compares himself with Simplex Teutsch : "You were the same simple."

In Munich, Achim was almost beaten to death on the Hardthofer Promenade. The perpetrators had mistaken the poet in the dark for their enemy. The end of the novel appears to be open. In response to an anonymous call, the Schwabing hospital could just be Achim's rescue.

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  • "There are no clear victories in literature."

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The interwoven two time levels occasionally cause concern for the reader who wants to know exactly (see above). The reader cannot accept some sentences; For example: "Where did he get the security from as a writer?"

The text teems with allusions to works of art and artists. For example, Achim quotes from Rilke's Requiem for Paula Becker : “Because somewhere there is an old enmity ...” And Walther must not be missing: as in daz mêr ein slac (see above).

literature

Text output

  • Heinz Piontek: Poet's life. Novel. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1976, ISBN 3-455-05906-6 , 315 pages (first edition).
  • Heinz Piontek: Poet's life. Novel, new version. Bergstadtverlag Wilhelm Gottlieb Korn, Würzburg 1996, ISBN 3-87057-184-5 (edition used).

Secondary literature

  • Peter Huchel: Poems . Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1948, 100 pages
  • Georg von der Vring: The poems. Complete edition of the published poems and a selection from the estate. With an afterword by Christoph Meckel . Edited by Christiane Peter and Kristian Wachinger. Langewiesche-Brandt, Ebenhausen 1989, 534 pages, ISBN 3-7846-0142-1

Remarks

  1. ↑ There is no dissingen on the Danube. Piontek has slightly alienated the name of the place. He means the old university town of Dillingen .
  2. ↑ However, Ulla is always mentioned once (see, for example, the edition used on p. 72).
  3. ↑ Achim Reichsfelder's grandfather on his father's side still lives in Bavaria on the Württemberg border. In recent years he had made a name for himself in the construction of railway lines in East Prussia . Achim's father had inherited his enthusiasm for Prussian from the railway pioneer; had even held the BZ .
  4. ↑ First of all, Achim Reichsfelder's mother succeeded in releasing her father from military service at the military district command - albeit for a high price. Achim had seen her mother disappear with an Obersturmbannführer of the Waffen-SS in the study of his parents' house (edition used, p. 58 center).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Edition used, p. 378, 11. Zvo
  2. ↑ Edition used, p. 39, 1. Zvo, p. 54, 4. Zvo
  3. ↑ Edition used, p. 176, 8. Zvu See for example also edition used, p. 40, 12. Zvu, p. 48, 2. Zvo
  4. ↑ Edition used, p. 96, 7th Zvu
  5. ^ "Sleep of the pigeons", p. 287 in Georg von der Vring
  6. ↑ p. 52 in Peter Huchel
  7. ↑ Bachmann: The great freight
  8. ↑ Edition used, p. 188, 3rd Zvu
  9. ↑ Edition used, p. 217, 15. Zvo
  10. ↑ Walther von der Vogelweide on pinselpark.org . Retrieved February 17, 2019.
  11. ↑ Edition used, p. 370, 18. Zvo
  12. ↑ Edition used, p. 369, 18. Zvo
  13. ↑ Edition used, p. 262, 10. Zvo
  14. ^ For a friend (Paula Modersohn Becker) Paris 1908