be fifth

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Being fifth is a poem by the Austrian poet Ernst Jandl . It is dated November 8, 1968 and appeared for the first time in September 1970 in Jandl's volume of poetry, the artificial tree . In the consistent structure of its five stanzas , the situation of a waiting person is described, who moves up place by place in the queue. Only the last line reveals the goal of waiting. Being fifth is considered to be one of Jandl's most famous poems and has been adapted as a picture book and play for children.

content

The first stanza begins with the lines:

door on
one out
a purely
fourth

The following four stanzas repeat the structure of the first stanza and count downwards ("third", "second", "next") to the last lines:

himself purely
day doctor

Text analysis

The poem being fifth consists of a total of five stanzas, four of which are completely identical and only change a single word. The last stanza also has the same structure, but the "tagherrdoktor" written together breaks through the rhythmic structure and is thus emphasized as the punch line of the poem. The sentences are ellipses ; instead of “the door opens” it says “door open”, the adverbs “in” and “out” are also abbreviated. The reduced language and the two-word sentences are reminiscent of children's language acquisition , the structure of the poem of children's counting rhymes .

The stanzas are formed from paired rhymes , with the pair “on” - “out” forming an impure rhyme . The iambus of the first line is followed by two anapastes in the two middle lines, followed by a dactyl with an emphasis on the ordinal number that counts down . Each stanza has only one and always the same verb at the end, the copula verb “to be”. The continuous lower case as well as the almost identical printed image of all stanzas also translates the content monotony visually.

interpretation

The elliptical sentences of the poem can be read as scraps of thought from a person waiting, with the aim of waiting until the resolution in the last line remains unknown. His observations are shortened, he is distracted. What really worries him is the stressed counting down: “being fourth”, “being third”, “being second”, “being next”. The waiting person is defined by his position in the queue, he becomes a mere number. The view is directed from the waiting room behind the door, where the actual action takes place without being described.

The infinitive in the title “being fifth” invites the reader to identify with the speaker. Counting down to the final variation “being next” increases the reader's curiosity from verse to verse. Involuntarily and without concrete clues, the uniformity of the process in the reader gives rise to a negative premonition. István Eörsi described his fantasies: “What are those waiting for? Execution? On torture? [...] The soothing punchline does not make you forget what the structure suggests: we are at the mercy, sit there with terrible premonitions and wait, and anything can happen to us. "

The last line offers the solution to the poem, which is as astonishing as it is commonplace: it describes a doctor's waiting room. Even the greeting “tagherrdoktor” seems nervous in the combination of its words, said quickly, reveals the patient's getting into it. The tension of the waiting was inadequate to the significance of the actual process, which is all the more true for the threatening associations that have spread in the reader in ignorance of the facts. The structure of the poem follows the scheme of a joke : tension - solution - well-being.

Ernst Jandl emphasized in a conversation with Peter Huemer : “This surprising punchline does not refute what was before. A process that has already run one, two, three, four times, has been represented with the same words, only the numerals change, so nothing else has been created in any place than the last line. But you can destroy the poem by adding 'tagherrdoktor' to every stanza. "

reception

The poem being fifth was dated November 8, 1968 by Jandl. In September 1970 it appeared for the first time in the collection of poems, the artificial tree, as Volume 9 of the new Luchterhand Collection series in paperback format. The volume of poetry reached a print run of 10,000 copies in its first year and was counted by Jandl as one of his three standard works in the mid-1970s.

being fifth is considered one of Jandl's most famous poems. It has been included several times in Jandl's own anthologies for children, such as ottos mops hopst in 1988 , where the illustrator Bernd Hennig illustrated the tension of the poem with a row of waiting mice, for which a grinning cat lurked behind the door. Norman Junge designed the poem as a picture book with several broken toy figures and a teddy bear in a doctor's waiting room. Although it already betrayed the actual punch line of the poem graphically, the individuality of the individual patients came to the fore in its implementation. Anna Wenzel turned the picture book into a play for children, which premiered on February 7, 2003 in Dortmund.

For a theoretical treatise on the canonization of Austrian literature, the editors modified the recurring motto from being fifth : Some out - others in . They particularly emphasized: "The editors feel obliged to the initiator Ernst Jandl in many ways and want to express this implicitly in the title."

expenditure

  • Ernst Jandl: the artificial tree . Luchterhand, Neuwied 1970, p. 65.
  • Ernst Jandl: to be fifth . In: Ernst Jandl: Poetic works . Volume 4, Luchterhand, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-630-86923-8 , p. 67.
  • Ernst Jandl, Norman Junge : to be fifth . Beltz, Weinheim 1997, ISBN 3-407-79195-X .

The film adaptation, directed by Alexandra Schatz, served as the template for the latter issue. On behalf of SWF Baden-Baden , the poem was graphically implemented by Norman Junge as a contribution to the children's magazine “ Die Sendung mit der Maus ”. The book, which was developed using images from the film, was nominated in 1998 in the "Picture Book" category for the German Youth Literature Prize and in 2012 in the "Special Illustration Prize" category. Radio Bremen already awarded it the “ Lynx of the Year ” in 1997, followed by the “ Bologna Ragazzi Award ” in 1998 .

literature

  • Anne Uhrmacher: Varieties of the comic. Ernst Jandl and the language. Niemeyer, Tübingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-484-31276-0 (German Linguistics, Volume 276), pp. 69-74.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ernst Jandl: to be fifth . In: Ernst Jandl: Poetic works . Volume 4, Luchterhand, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-630-86923-8 , p. 67.
  2. ↑ To the section: Watchmaker: Varieties of the comic. Ernst Jandl and the language , pp. 70, 72, 73.
  3. ↑ István Eörsi : Jandl as a political poet . In: du 5/1995, p. 69.
  4. ↑ To the previous three paragraphs: Watchmaker: varieties of the comic. Ernst Jandl and the language , pp. 70–74.
  5. ↑ I very much love the German spoke. Peter Huemer in conversation with Ernst Jandl . In: Wasp's Nest . Journal for Useful Texts and Images 125, 2001, pp. 22–30, here p. 27.
  6. ↑ Andreas Brandtner: About game and rule. Traces of style in Ernst Jandl's ottos mops. In: Volker Kaukoreit, Kristina Pfoser (Ed.): Interpretations. Poems by Ernst Jandl . Reclam, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-15-017519-4 , SS 73-89, here pp. 73-74.
  7. ↑ I very much love the German spoke. Peter Huemer in conversation with Ernst Jandl . In: Wasp's Nest. Journal for Useful Texts and Images 125, 2001, pp. 22–30, here p. 26.
  8. ↑ Ernst Jandl: ottos mops hops . Ravensburger, Ravensburg 1988, ISBN 3-473-51673-2 , p. 26.
  9. ↑ Uhrmacher: Varieties of the comic. Ernst Jandl and the language , pp. 71, 73.
  10. ^ Being fifth by Ernst Jandl and Anna Wenzel in the Theaterstückverlag.
  11. ↑ Wendelin Schmidt-Dengler , Johann Sonnleitner, Klaus Zeyringer (eds.): Some out - the others in . Erich Schmidt, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-503-03075-1 , p. 7.
  12. ↑ Being fifth: Lyrical picture book . Retrieved October 2, 2013.
  13. ^ German Youth Literature Prize . Retrieved October 2, 2013.
  14. ↑ Lynx of the year 1997 - Ernst Jandl / Norman Junge (illustrator) . Archived from the original on October 5, 2013. Retrieved October 2, 2013.
  15. ↑ Category Fiction Infants . Retrieved October 2, 2013.