One of those classic ones
One of those classic is a poem by Rolf Dieter Brinkmann and was published in 1975 in the collection of poems Westwärts 1 & 2 . It is now considered one of the most popular examples of the poetry of the seventies .
content
The poem tells of an everyday miracle in the outskirts of the city of Cologne. Brinkmann creates the impression of an evening ( “shortly after loading / closing” ), lonely scenery, which is interrupted by the opening of a door to an inn from which music can still be heard.
It can be broken down into three successive sections: In the first, Brinkmann describes the circumstances and the reason for the poem. The dusty desolation of a late summer evening in Cologne is surprisingly broken up by a "classic // black", a bitter, joyful tango. The second section shows the attempt to put this “miracle”, limited in time, into a literary form. Brinkmann extends the subjectively perceived time by taking a breath and repeating the indicator “for a moment”. The last and decisive part is the act of writing down and recording the moment by the observing witness, who had to quickly put the experience of happiness into words before it "went out again in the cursed // hazy deadness of Cologne".
Form and language
As usual in poetic texts in pop literature, a fixed metric is dispensed with here, but some structural anomalies can still be identified. Brinkmann, for example, uses excessive verse and stanza jambements , which give the poem a very special dynamic and the individual beginnings of verse a meaningful emphasis (“black”, “dark”, “surprise”, “sigh of relief” etc.). As a result, the reading rhythm and the structure of the verse are very contradictory, creating a tension effect. The overall irregular, spontaneous shape underlines the surprising character of the moment described in the poem.
interpretation
According to Hermann Korte, the phenomenon of perception is viewed in two layers in Brinkmann's poem. In a first attempt, perception here simply means the reflection of a musical stimulus, which provokes “a surprise for a moment” as a reaction. In this first sense, the lyrical self perceives music and deals with its effect. In the sixth or seventh stanza Brinkmann then introduces an author who wants to quickly write down what has happened, thus creating a further consideration of perception. It is now not just a reflection, but a muse and an occasion for poetic work. The lyrical ego perceives its own perception in a second sense and summarizes it in poetry; it is the reflection of the reflection. From this it can be concluded that the protagonist of the poem deals self-reflexively with perception, reaction and processing.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Michael Zeller: Hyperion in the suburb. In: German poems and their interpretations. Volume 12, 2002. pp. 14-15.
- ↑ Hermann Korte: Rolf Dieter Brinkmann - One of those classic. University of Essen, 2000. ( Memento of the original from August 13, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 12 kB) pp. 2–3.
- ↑ Hermann Korte: Rolf Dieter Brinkmann - One of those classic. University of Essen, 2000. ( Memento of the original from August 13, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 12 kB) p. 1.
