congratulations (poem)

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Glückwunsch is a poem by the Austrian poet Ernst Jandl . It was created on July 28, 1978 and was published in 1980 in Jandl's book of poems, the yellow dog, at Luchterhand Literaturverlag . The poem begins with a general congratulations from everyone to each, whereupon the good wishes are canceled line by line by increasingly cruel consequences, which extend to the agonizing bleeding of the congratulated.

Content and form

Ernst Jandl
congratulations
Link to the full text of the poem (pdf)
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Jandl's poem Glückwunsch consists of eight lines, which, according to Ralph-Rainer Wuthenow, are "in a sober style of speech copied from Bertolt Brecht ". François Bondy emphasizes the strict form with its correct syntax and the harmony spread by the numerous rhymes . At first glance, Anne Uhrmacher feels reminiscent of a serenade due to the “simple character of the text” , to which the regular meter with its iambic five-lever canters in the frame verse also contributes. The first line is:

"We all wish everyone all the best:"

Five lines follow in which specific requests are expressed. They are each introduced in an anaphor with the conjugation “that”. While congratulations on in common parlance Indicative be drafted, the needs are in the poem throughout the formally correct but stilted acting subjunctive . Also unusual for Jandl is the nested sentence structure with its inserted participle clauses separated by commas , which, according to Uhrmacher, hide “decisive meaning” in complicated syntax. The iambus also predominates in the inner verse, but here it is irregular, with the resulting accentuation underlining the horror of the content.

Already in the second line, the addressee of the poem, named only with the pronoun "he", is wished that he missed a blow. According to the watchmaker, this is “also a blow to the expectations of the recipients”, since the mention of a blow, and also a deliberate and targeted one, is not part of the usual repertoire of congratulations. In the following lines, the inserted participle reveals the ineffectiveness of the previous wish, while in its brutality and cruelty, more and more far-reaching wishes are expressed. In spite of the allegedly weakening wishes, the poem thus increases to a climax . The congratulations are that the victim should not bleed visibly, that the bleeding person should not bleed to death, that the bleeding person at least feels no pain, and finally that he, “torn apart by pain”, finds his way back to a point “where he took the first wrong step not set - ".

The only male cadenza in the poem, including the following indent, force a reading pause and pause, which is combined with the desire to withdraw the content, as it were to rewind a film to the beginning. Finally, the last line in a permutation repeats the beginning:

"We each wish everyone all the best"

In this repetition there is resignation for watchmakers, as well as “a general validity, something recurring”. You also give the congratulations the form of a ritual .

interpretation

Congratulations or curse

When Jandl calls his “Mechanics of Terror” a congratulation, François Bondy asks, “What would a Jandl cursing sound like?” Anne Uhrmacher sees Jandl's congratulations as exactly such . Its central word "blood" suggests ancient rituals of cursing . The way in which the wish for a blessing turns into a curse reminds her of the very similar metamorphosis of the greeting of peace in falamaleikum . Here Jandl formulated in congratulation not death wishes of an individual, but - on the introductory "we all" - those of all mankind free after saying " homo homini lupus " ( "Man is a wolf to man").

Bondy takes the change of the wishing from “all everyone” to “everyone all” as an opportunity to distinguish between the general “all” and the “everyone” made up of individuals. There are two levels in the poem: the other and the ego, the person affected and his observer, a kind of voyeur who vacillates “between pity and lust for harm”. With the “he” of the poem, distance from the “I” should be created, an identity “wished away between me and the others, those doomed to pain and death”, out of defense and repression, which nevertheless merge in the introductory “we”.

Sarcasm, cynicism and fear of life

According to Anne Uhrmacher, the poem is characterized by two comic stylistic devices : sarcasm and cynicism . Typical of the sarcasm is a combination of emphasis and irony , the exaggeration of the congratulations from everyone to everyone and its permanent reversal of content into the opposite. The poem's mockery is based on desperation at the inescapability of human fate and its threat from danger and death. In doing so, it exposes the impossibility of the alleged harmony between people and unmask the false unanimity of the wish expressed. Cynicism is used to ward off the feeling of fear and pain when looking at someone else's misfortune and to cover it up with laughter.

Kurt Neumann , on the other hand, focuses on a biographical consideration of the poet: Written a few days before Jandl's 53rd birthday, in the midst of three other poems written on the same day with the titles of upright gait , to existence and nostalgic, the poem speaks of “fear of life in a phase, in which the old age began to creep through the cracks of the body “, although the artistic potency was still unbroken. For him, congratulation is an "elegant, light, gloomy poem that brings about the inevitable sequence of ever more violent precipitations of life."

reception

According to Rolf Jucker, congratulations is one of Ernst Jandl's most famous poems , alongside talk , falamaleikum , wien: heldenplatz or schtzngrmm . Marcel Reich-Ranicki included the poem in his anthology Der Kanon. The German literature on.

Jandl's poem was set to music by Woody Schabata in 1984 and was recorded together with the Vienna Art Orchestra on the record bist eulen? recorded, which was awarded the German Record Critics' Prize in 1985 .

expenditure

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Ralph-Rainer Wuthenow : German as a Foreign Language? In: Michael Vogt (Ed.): “JANDL stand big on the back”. Interpretations of texts by Ernst Jandl . Aisthesis, Bielefeld 2000, ISBN 3-89528-284-7 , p. 170.
  2. ↑ François Bondy: The weggewünschte identity , S. 240th
  3. ^ Anne clockmaker: varieties of the comic. Ernst Jandl and the language , p. 63.
  4. ↑ a b c d Ernst Jandl: congratulations . In: the yellow dog . Luchterhand, Darmstadt 1980, p. 30.
  5. ^ Anne clockmaker: varieties of the comic. Ernst Jandl and the language , pp. 61, 63.
  6. ^ Anne clockmaker: varieties of the comic. Ernst Jandl and the language , pp. 61–63.
  7. ^ Anne clockmaker: varieties of the comic. Ernst Jandl and the language , pp. 62–63.
  8. ↑ François Bondy: The weggewünschte identity , S. 240, 242nd
  9. ^ Anne clockmaker: varieties of the comic. Ernst Jandl and the language , pp. 65–67.
  10. ↑ François Bondy: The weggewünschte identity , S. 241st
  11. ^ Anne clockmaker: varieties of the comic. Ernst Jandl and the language , pp. 64–66.
  12. ↑ Kurt Neumann: All the best between all and everyone , pp. 86–88.
  13. ↑ Rolf Jucker: “What will we call freedom?” Volker Braun's texts as a criticism of the times. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2004, ISBN 3-8260-2836-8 , p. 62.
  14. ↑ are you owls? ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.vao.at archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. with the Vienna Art Orchestra .