falamaleikum

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falamaleikum is a poem by the Austrian poet Ernst Jandl . It was written on July 14, 1958 and published in 1966 in Jandl's volume of poems Laut and Luise by Walter Verlag . The title of the poem refers to the Arabic greeting Salem Aleikum ("Peace be with you"), which is alienated by the exchange of letters until a statement about the fallen in the war is finally made . The poem is classified as a phonetic poem or, as Jandl prefers, as a “ spoken poem ”, which unfolds its effect primarily in the lecture.

Content and form

Ernst Jandl
falamaleikum
Link to the video of a reading of the poem
(please note copyrights )

The poem consists of seven lines, whereby the first line - "falamaleikum" - can also be understood as a title. Jandl himself therefore spoke of six lines. Each line seems to contain just one long word. As is often the case with Jandl, there are no capital letters; the punctuation marks in the last two lines are unusual for him: a period and a question mark.

At first glance, no semantics can be made out in the lines , but the reading makes it clear that the rows of phonemes contain individual semantic components that merge into one another without spaces. The words are changed from line to line. While only one consonant was swapped from the first to the second line - "falamaleitum" - there are first sound shifts in the third line - "falnamaleutum". For Hermann Helmers, the fourth, central line turns the sub-semantics into semantics, the abstract into a concrete poem . “Fallnamalsooovielleutum” can be translated from the Viennese dialect as “but so many people fall over”. In the following three lines, too, the sequences of phonemes are still written one after the other without separation, but the words are clearly recognizable here: “But once the war is over long enough, everyone is back. Or is one missing? "

It is only from the second half of the poem that the trivializing “falling over” of the “people” as having fallen in the war can be recognized. Even the tone of "missing someone" like the "people" before are now reminiscent of military jargon . The unrealistic statement of the penultimate line, after which all those involved returned at the end of the war, encourages the listener to think about the content of the poem, which is reinforced by the final question. For Ulrich Gaier, in the end the listener is encouraged to make an independent decision. His answer will be very different, whether he understands the question to the effect that the fallen are missing as individuals in post-war society, or whether he understands them as a question about the moral "fallers" of the war, which when the war merely " long enough ”, have long been“ back ”and have achieved something in society.

interpretation

incantation

The Arabic greeting Salem Aleikum (“Peace be upon you”) resonates in the title falamaleikum . The alienation through the consonant "f" arouses a wide variety of associations (hearing defects, speech defects, conscious or unconscious modification of the original formula) in the first time listener, which leads to uncertainty that makes the audience react to Jandl's readings with laughter. However, incantations also sound . Lisa Kahn traces the word “falamaleikum” back to “the children's magic formula of 'aleikum'”. Anne Uhrmacher is already reminiscent of magical figure poems with the repetition of words . In the accumulation of the a-vowels, the formula Abracadabra sounds like , in the letter sequence “ala” and the final “m” a Simsalabim . The evocation of peace in Jandl's poem is just as deceptive as these formulas by a magician.

Walter Magaß draws the connection to the Hebrew formula Shalom Alechem , which "with its defensive magic was often a signal of lack of peace", as reported by the prophet Jeremiah : "[...] and say: Peace, peace! - and there is no peace. ”( Jer 6,14  ELB ) The fact that Jandl converts the peace formula“ shalom ”into a description of peacelessness is for Magaß an expression of literacy . He uses a form of letter mysticism from Kabbalah and reverses the formula, as the Torah says: "Turn it around and around, because everything is in it." Anne Uhrmacher points out the closeness to transform the peace formula into a warlike statement from blessings to curses turned into their opposite . So they lead the syllable combination "male" and the initial "f" in falamaleikum to the word "vermaledaien" in the sense of "curse".

war

falamaleikum was published in Jandl's volume of poems Laut und Luise in 1966 under the heading krieg and so along with other well-known poems about war such as wien: heldenplatz and schtzngrmm . Jandl himself described the falamaleikum as an “anti-war poem”, in which “within six lines a change from having to laugh to actually not being able to laugh anymore is achieved.” For Dietrich Segebrecht , Jandl's poems are “an appeal, useless as a pamphlet ”. falamaleikum is "extremely unsuitable as an evocative warning of war [...]." This is contradicted by Anne Uhrmacher, for whom falamaleikum is a " polemical poem" that exposes "constructions of reality that euphemistically depict war ". For them, the speaker of the poem is a representative of war propaganda , which is also supported by Jandl's readings, in which he asks the final question in a cutting tone that it has the effect of an order. Jandl exposed the speaker's "cynical contempt for human life" with the stylistic device of irony , starting with the insincere greeting of peace at the beginning, the false assertion of the recurring war dead, and ending with the fictitious question . Hermann Helmers sees through them "the question of the futility of dying" in war, whereby the "chaos of the abstraction of phonemes" reflects the "chaos of a senseless war".

Walter Weiss and Ernst Hanisch place falamaleikum in the historical context of Winfried Schulze's remarks on the connection between economic growth and population development after demographic crises such as war. Weiss goes on to say that Jandl's “if the war is long enough” is a formula for the onset of restoration and the end “leads back to the fatal beginning” with the “falsified peace greeting” , to a recurrence of events. Horst Stürmer emphasizes that “long enough” already implies that the state of non-war will last “long enough” if not “too long”. The fact that “everyone” is back makes falamaleikum the mouthpiece of a “justification of the perpetrators”. For Wolfgang Mantl , the poem moves further and further away from the original greeting of peace, towards a lack of peace in the post-war period, in which all signs pointed to a return of war and warriors. The final roll call set the final question mark. Anne Uhrmacher speaks to Georg Büchner of a “hideous fatalism of history” to which a poem like falamaleikum can only react with grim irony.

reception

falamaleikum is one of Jandl's poems that were particularly popular at his readings and, despite the serious content, made the audience laugh. Volker Hage counted falamaleikum next to lichtung , etude in f , fifth sein , schtzngrmm and ottos mops among the poet's “hits and evergreens”, “which the listeners expect as a matter of course”. The poem is also read in school lessons. According to Franz Schuh , in 2000 a “ canon of German lyric poetry ” could no longer do without schtzngrmm and falamaleikum . In 1983 the poem gave the title of a book of poems by Jandl for children with pictures by Jürgen Spohn .

Friedrich Cerha set falamaleikum to music alongside other poems by Jandl in his cycle Eine Art Chansons , which was first performed on June 28, 1988. According to Hartmut Krones, these “speech error poems” received “wonderful musical imitations” by Cerha, which “[b] sparked storms of enthusiasm in every performance”.

expenditure

literature

  • Ulrich Gaier: About reading and interpretation. To a poem by Ernst Jandl. In: Renate Lachmann (ed.): Dialogicity . Fink, Munich 1982, ISBN 3-7705-2089-0 , pp. 107-126.
  • Hermann Helmers: Lyrical Humor. Structural analysis and didactics of comical verse literature. 2nd revised edition. Klett, Stuttgart 1978, ISBN 3-12-923571-X , pp. 46-48.
  • Walter Magaß: scribes to Jandl's “falamaleikum”. In: Renate Lachmann (ed.): Dialogicity . Fink, Munich 1982, ISBN 3-7705-2089-0 , pp. 127-130.
  • Anne Uhrmacher: Varieties of the comic. Ernst Jandl and the language. Niemeyer, Tübingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-484-31276-0 , pp. 42-51. (German Linguistics, Vol. 276)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Karl Müller : "Barking instead of singing ... with a sharp ear just in case ... or lacking?" Some observations on poems by I. Bachmann, E. Jandl and G. Fritsch. In: Oswald Panagl. Walter Weiss : Again: Poetry and Politics. From the text to the political and social context and back. Böhlau, Vienna 2000, ISBN 3-205-99289-X , p. 382.
  2. ^ Hermann Helmers: Lyrical Humor. Structural analysis and didactics of comical verse literature. P. 46.
  3. ^ A b Anne Uhrmacher: Varieties of the comic. Ernst Jandl and the language. P. 43.
  4. ^ Anne clockmaker: varieties of the comic. Ernst Jandl and the language. Pp. 43-44.
  5. ^ Hermann Helmers: Lyrical Humor. Structural analysis and didactics of comical verse literature. P. 47.
  6. ^ Hermann Helmers: Lyrical Humor. Structural analysis and didactics of comical verse literature. Pp. 47-48.
  7. ↑ Ulrich Gaier: About reading and interpretation. To a poem by Ernst Jandl. Pp. 124-126.
  8. ↑ Ulrich Gaier: About reading and interpretation. To a poem by Ernst Jandl. Pp. 115-117.
  9. ^ Anne clockmaker: varieties of the comic. Ernst Jandl and the language. P. 45.
  10. ↑ Lisa Kahn: "Falfischbauch and Owls": Ernst Jandl's Humor. In: Philological Papers Volume 29, West Virginia University 1983, p. 100.
  11. ^ Anne clockmaker: varieties of the comic. Ernst Jandl and the language. Pp. 45-46.
  12. ^ Walter Magaß: scribes to Jandl's "falamaleikum". Pp. 127-130.
  13. ^ Anne clockmaker: varieties of the comic. Ernst Jandl and the language. P. 47.
  14. ↑ Quotations from: Anne Uhrmacher: Spielarten des Komischen. Ernst Jandl and the language , pp. 42, 44.
  15. ↑ Dietrich Segebrecht: The language is fun. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of March 4, 1967 ( online on Reinhard Döhl's website ).
  16. ^ Anne clockmaker: varieties of the comic. Ernst Jandl and the language. Pp. 42, 47, 51.
  17. ^ Hermann Helmers: Lyrical Humor. Structural analysis and didactics of comical verse literature. P. 48.
  18. ↑ Walter Weiss , Ernst Hanisch (Ed.): Vermittlungs. Texts and contexts of Austrian literature and history. Residenz, Salzburg 1990, ISBN 3-7017-0661-1 , p. 6, 193.
  19. ↑ Horst Stürmer: A complaint about the appropriation of nature, a transfiguration of culture, a lost war. In: Oswald Panagl. Walter Weiss: Again: Poetry and Politics. From the text to the political and social context and back. Böhlau, Vienna 2000, ISBN 3-205-99289-X , p. 378.
  20. ↑ Wolfgang Mantl : Thoughts of a political scientist on the Great Landscape near Vienna (Bachmann), balance sheet (Fritsch) and falamaleikum (Jandl). In: Oswald Panagl. Walter Weiss: Again: Poetry and Politics. From the text to the political and social context and back. Böhlau, Vienna 2000, ISBN 3-205-99289-X , p. 370.
  21. ^ Anne clockmaker: varieties of the comic. Ernst Jandl and the language. Pp. 49-51.
  22. ↑ Volker Hage : A whole language, a whole life. In: Everything was invented. Portraits of German and American authors . Rowohlt, Hamburg 1988, ISBN 3-498-02888-X , p. 154.
  23. ↑ Andreas Schäfer : Poem = Jandl = Jandl's voice . In: Berliner Zeitung of August 1, 1995.
  24. ↑ Franz Schuh : Lechts and rinks . In: The time of August 3, 2000.
  25. ↑ A kind of chansons on Friedrich Cerha's website .
  26. ^ Hartmut Krones : "Viennese" compositions by Friedrich Cerha. In: Lukas Haselböck (Ed.): Friedrich Cerha. Analyzes, essays, reflections . Rombach, Freiburg im Breisgau 2006, ISBN 3-7930-9437-5 , p. 209.