Landscape of people and days
Landscape from People and Days is a volume of poetry by the Italian poet Gino Chiellino . The poems are written in German.
content
The poetry book consists of two parts, with the "Canti per M / Songs for a letter 1992-1998" and "Vita Nova" (along with a CamelCase written) are titled. Some of the poems have already been printed in anthologies. So z. B. the poem “The Kiss” (p. 23) and the three-part poem “An die Geliebte” (p. 18–20), published in Akzente magazine (edited by Michael Krüger , issue 5, October 2005) under the title “Songs for a letter” or in the anthology Trialog (Kraków: Villa Decius 1997) under the title “Canti per M 1–10” . The poems have been slightly changed orthographically for the present volume. The essay or the self-examination "A career through three languages" (p. 69f), which concludes the volume of poetry, appeared in the above. Magazine back in 2005.
Despite the reform of German spelling in 1996, the poet uses the old spelling. Another aspect is the frequently occurring location "on the Ionian shore", which can be found in the poems "At the honey lilies" (p. 25), "Cinia in today's Calabria II." (P. 28) and "Middle of life" ( P. 54).
This geographical indication is interesting because it emphasizes the poet's orientation towards this region. The city of Carlopoli , where Chiellino was born in 1946, can be described as the geographical center between the Tyrrhenian and Ionian Seas. I.e. that Chiellino's turn to the latter in his poems is a conscious choice and that he uses the sea as an intertextual reference in his texts. The Ionian Sea and its islands are the setting for large parts of Homer's Odyssey . The island of Ithaca , home of King Odysseus , is located in the Ionian Islands . The western coasts of the Ionian Sea are the southern Italian regions of Apulia, Basilicata and Calabria and the east coast of Sicily. In the European literary tradition, the adventures of King Odysseus are used as a synonym for long wanderings (see also Theodor W. Adorno 's interpretation of Odysseus, according to which the King of Ithaca is the first modern man in literary history because he does not surrender to his fate) .
The poems in the volume Landscape from People and Days can be interpreted as mirror images of the narrative situation of the Odysseus epic. In the middle section of the epic, King Odysseus tells his host, the Phaiac King Alcinous, his story. This is a "network" of people or companions that he had lost on the journey and of beings with whom he fought. Chiellino's revision of his artistic work can also be viewed as such a pause. The poet takes stock and although it is clear that the journey is far from over, many "projects" or episodes of life are presented as completed. The partially contradicting reception of Odysseus through the centuries could also be used for a comparative interpretation. I.a. Dante Alighieri's view of the hero Odysseus in the Divina Commedia . According to Dante, Odysseus is in the eighth circle of hell and, as a "bad advisor", has to atone for his trick with the Trojan horse. Dante's Odysseus encourages his companions to “not shut themselves off from exploration” and “to seek virtue and knowledge” rather than return to a monocultural way of life. Life can thus be understood as a special, never-ending development, the aim of which is by no means to settle down .
Another, recurring image that can be interpreted as the poet's cipher is the image of the "white dogs". So z. B. in the poems “A five-year-old waits for summer (photo, 1951)” (p. 43) and “The tower in a dream” (p. 48). The white color is assessed differently in different animal species. Genetically speaking, white dogs are a rarity and not popular with breeders because the light coat color is caused by a gene mutation and a lack of melanin . A lack of melanin in the iris can lead to visual impairment, but it can also cause hearing loss or deafness and disorders of the nervous system. In the context of the poems, the white dogs - the street dogs - appear as a symbol of the loneliness that must be paid as a price for a certain kind of freedom.
In numerous poems the landscape is represented by animals, plants and colors. Nevertheless, a “localization” of the poems and a comparison of two cultural units are almost impossible. See e.g. B. the following poem:
River landscape The alder on the river
in the sun and shady
divides the soul.
In the sand the viper
petrified by the sun
to fear in my heart.
The falcon is
lurking over the gorse bush
.
( Landscape from people and days , p. 14)
Falcon, alder and gorse bush are native to both Central Europe and southern Italy. Apart from the viper, which is not native to Germany, the metaphors cannot be assigned geographically. Moreover, their effect on the lyrical ego is similar: uncertainty, fear and the feeling of being monitored dominate the picture and indicate a restlessness of the ego that cannot be reduced to cultural idiosyncrasies.
In the poem “Birches and Palms” (p. 24) the plants are superficially built up as opposites. The birch seems to stand for Germany, while the palm only grows in Mediterranean regions. The birch region offers the lyrical ego “nothing” or only “rain”, while in the landscape of the palm trees the horizon is infinite. But in the third part of the poem it becomes clear that it is only through the protection of both plants that the lyrical self is able to create the desire for a "you" as a conversation partner. The colors that are juxtaposed are yellow and blue (see below).
Poems
The first part of the volume of poems contains 23 poems, most of which are written in free verse. The first poem of this part “Landscape and Memory” (p. 7) and the eponymous poem “Landscape of People and Days” (p. 41), which is in the second part, are parallel to each other. The former emphasizes that the (German) landscape is not used as a reminder. It appears neutral because it has no memory that would relate to the narrative self. The future or self-affirmation can only be drawn from the love of a loved one. However, no direct interlocutor or a “you” is spoken of here, but the beloved is only mentioned in the third person.
But already the second poem makes it clear that personal contacts with people and the days spent can serve as a substitute for the lack of memory of nature and the landscape. It functions like a network that supplies the lyric self with the past and, in the absence of a memory, serves as a support. With the help of this network, the I can feel that it belongs to both “landscapes” - both in Germany and in Italy - of its life. The first lines of the poem make it clear that the feeling of foreignness evaporates - "In the year 60 of my life / my stranger loses himself [...]" - and that the self sees itself as a "garden gate". Sometimes it turns to Germany, sometimes to Italy, and belongs to both.
The following poems of the first part deal with the memories that are based on Calabria and the Italian language. “Farewell to Calabria” (p. 8) exchanges something tangible, ie the landscape of the Silage Mountains, for something “airy”, ie the German language. Life is fed up here: “Past sleeping hills / I fall back to life”, the poet assures us.
In the poem “When Waking Up” (p. 10), the beloved acts as a saving force. Although a “she” is often used, this pronoun seems ambiguous. It can describe a woman as well as love in itself or language as a creative medium. In the poem “Orpheus and Eurydice” (p. 11), personified love is characterized as a “little warmth in the back” that offers the “seeker” security and protection. In the poems “We” (p. 12) and “At the washing station” (p. 13), Germany and Italy again face each other. The river “ Singold ” flows through the city of Augsburg, the poet's place of residence, while the wind “Tramontana” represents the south coast of Calabria .
The poem "Ishtar" consists of two parts and describes a journey to the north (see the line "Shadows to the left"). The name is surprising because it is of Mesopotamian origin. Ištar was worshiped in the Babylonian Empire as the goddess of love, war and also prostitution. The exploitation that she suffers and her lack of housing could be interpreted as a metaphor for the situation of guest workers in the 1960s. The lyrical self carries Ishtar's name like a trophy. This seems to give him power and strength, as mythology says that when you mention her name, heaven and earth shake.
The three-part poem “To the Beloved” (pp. 18–20) makes it clear that exploring the foreign is associated with dangers. It is like a raging sea that “drifts” the seeker - or, similar to what happened to Odysseus, leads them on a wrong track. That is why the lyrical self seeks a firm hold in the beloved, who is addressed here for the first time as something “tangible” - “the quiet warmth of your skin” - and cannot be taken symbolically for language. In the poem “Temptation” (p. 22), on the other hand, the beloved appears as engaging. The lyrical self wakes up with a dream about its childhood. The dream was bad because he “destroyed” his voice and he cannot speak now - the song, ie the language, calls the self “faulty” in this context. The adjective also accompanies the kiss that the ego gives the beloved and thus implies that it is still elsewhere in the mind and not with her. Your offer, in turn, is "seductive": the seeker should concentrate on it or stop looking any further. But that would mean giving up for the self. The negative image of this lover in Chiellino's poem parallels Odysseus' Kirke and / or Calypso . The following poem "The Kiss" corrects the unflattering picture and describes the beloved as a steady, reliable and mature woman. The kiss goodbye with which the ego and she “poison” each other appears as a playful assurance that it will think of you even in the confusion of the day.
Another goddess that Chiellino refers to is the Great Greek goddess Hera Lacinia . The title of the poem "Cinia in present-day Calabria" (p. 27) includes a footnote to help the reader decipher the name "Cinia". With a melancholy voice, the poem states that the goddess has left the coastal city. Towards the end of the second part of the poem she returns, but her dream is "betrayed".
The last poem of the section, “La morte, the Death” (p. 31) is a wonderful union of opposites that resonated throughout the section. At first glance, a comparison - in this case two languages - appears to be present. The Italian and German are "squeezed together" in the title and only separated by a comma. But the vowel harmony makes it possible to read the title seamlessly, which eliminates the contrast right at the beginning. The first word of the poem, the personal pronoun "Du", makes it clear that this is by no means two separate "persons" - as the comma implies - but that "la morte" and "death" represent a unit. The lines “You were sister to me” and “You became a brother” indicate the difference in the grammatical gender of the two words in Italian and in German. In the former, death is a female figure from a mythological and religious perspective, while in German it is masculine (cf. Freund Hein , Schlafes Bruder and Gevatter Tod ). The aesthetics and eroticism that are culturally linked in the Latin languages with a female death stand in contrast to the horror images of the grim reaper and skeleton. Yet the lyrical self does not portray male death as frightening, but portrays it as neutral. It has neither color nor smell. Thus, the characters can exist in agreement and accompany the I on its final path. The poem takes on the function of a transition. Not only is it the only poem in the first part in which the poet's Italian language is actually present - if only with one word - but it speaks of the union of the two languages and the two cultural memories.
The second part of the volume “VitaNova” consists of 35 poems, only three of which are in Italian. This is unusual because Chiellino's volumes of poetry are otherwise composed in three languages - Calabrian, Italian and German. The three Italian-language poems are entitled “Bisogna arrivarci di notte” (p. 46), “Dopo una vita da vipera” (p. 52) and “Al riparo dal futuro” (p. 57). The second section generally contains poems written between 2005 and 2009.
In this part of the volume of poems there are also further examples of the revival of poems that have already appeared earlier. I.a. it is the poems “Vermächtnis” (p. 42) and “As inhabitant of strange rooms” (p. 49), both of which were already published in the magazine Many Cultures - a Language of the Robert Bosch Foundation (Stuttgart 2002). Here they were titled as "The White Dogs" and "Zimmer" and the reprint shows slight spelling changes to the texts in this case too.
The poem “The Guest Gift” (p. 35) reveals an autobiographical element that Chiellino first encountered in Ich in Dresden. Mentioned a poetics lectureship (Dresden: Thelem Verlag, 2003). Since the poet was in Germany and refused to do military service in Italy, he was considered deserted for ten years (see p. 22f).
“Standstill” (p. 36) makes it clear that there is no such thing as standstill for a poet: because a poem can also be created in a creative break. The lyric self searches its surroundings for signs of memory and the place where these memories or the poem originated are indicated by the reference to the beach.
“Conversations” (p. 37) confirms the assumption that plants have a high symbolic power in Chiellino's works. Here “the pear tree from Friedberg” and the “vine from the silage mountains” continue the conversation that other plants and animals began in the first part of the volume of poetry. The perpetual conversation revolves around the lyrical self, analyzing or symbolizing his life and experiences, becomes visible in the line “Conversations about a farmer's son from Calabria”.
The poem "Yellow like telephone booths, mailboxes and rape" (p. 38) is an attempt to document or interpret the yellow color differently than is customary in the German lyric tradition. While Chiellino in the poem "Disposing" (in: Gino Chiellino: My foreign everyday life . Kiel: Neuer Malik Verlag, p. 17) tries with a daring metaphor to describe the life of guest workers in the FRG in the 1960s and 1970s with fate of the German Jews in World War II, the color yellow gets a positive impression here. Although she stands for “separation” at the beginning of the poem and gets “cracks” in the second stanza, she brings out “faces, smiles and words”. From anonymous signs, which are also yellow in Germany, from telephone booths and mailboxes, which have established themselves as symbols of longing in immigrant literature, and from the eternal yellow of the rapeseed fields that characterize the landscape in southern Germany, words have positive connotations. The third stanza refers to the Berlin Wall and the separation of Germany, as it mentions collapsing "towers" and "freedom". The reconciliation of the two halves of Germany also produces a reconciled lyrical self. The color yellow has lost its function as a separator.
The color yellow is often associated with the color blue - such as B. in the poem "Our Life" - opposite.
Our life
My life in blue
was confident.
You would not have found access
to my life in blue
.
Our life in yellow is warm
like the gorse in the shade of the pine.
( Landscape from people and days , p. 60)
The commonality of a partner relationship is symbolized in this poem in color. Blue embodies the sea as this color dominates the landscape in Calabria. The yellow, in turn, refers to the above-mentioned poem "Yellow like telephone boxes, mailboxes and rape" (p. 38). Due to the positive codification that the poet worked out for himself in this poem, the yellow of the gorse can now be labeled as "warm" and thus illustrates a happy community.
In the poem “Sprachwechsel” (p. 40) the cipher “Viper” appears again (cf. “River Landscape”, p. 14). It appears as the symbol of a cultural loyalty that forces the lyrical self to make sacrifices. After their thirst is quenched, a ritual washing can take place and the ego turns to a “you” who represents the future. The “I” and the “you” become the plural “we” and both personas set to work to “invent” a new, common language.
The poems “Legacy” (p. 42), “A five-year-old waits for summer” (p. 43), “The Knot” (p. 44) and “Visitor Days” (p. 45) tell of a damaged childhood and the infinite loneliness of a child. In the former, the lyrical self compares with the “white dogs”, ie with the street dogs that are “free” but at the same time “abandoned”. The reaction of the dogs to this ambivalent existence and the running away of the ego are also put in parallel. The dogs “bark”, which can also be understood as a verbal protest, while the child is without words, but can escape his suffering - it runs away. The second poem exudes coldness. Not only because it reports about ice cream in April, but also because no memory seems to exist between the first and second stanzas, that is, from birth to fifth birthday. The child's clothes are evidence of poverty and neglect. It's still waiting for summer - for some warmth. The third poem tells of the moment of departure and the main role is not played by the departing child waiting for the bus alone, but the knot of fear in his stomach. In his loneliness, the child personifies the suitcase, the knot and the number 77 and identifies them as his “companions”. But the suitcase is lost. The number is charged with historical events - among other things, the year 1977 symbolizes the climax of the German autumn - and so only the knot in the stomach remains, which the lyrical self remembers on lonely days. The fourth poem describes the absolute loneliness of a child who is alone in boarding school and sits alone in the library on Sundays, when all the other children are visited, with only a few birds as company. The middle part of the poem, which tells of a relaxed mood in the dining room, even exacerbates the loneliness, as it becomes apparent that the child knows the food, that is, it is not culturally alien, and is still excluded.
The following poems in the second section also vividly depict the “weaving” that the poet has already defined as a symbol for his work in various earlier publications (cf. “The workshop of a weaver” in: Chiellino: Ich in Dresden , p. 105 –144 and the collection of poems Weil Rosa die Weberin ).
The poems “Obituary” (p. 47), “The tower in a dream” (p. 48), “As a resident of strange rooms” (p. 49), “Naturalization” (p. 51), “For José, in memoriam ”(P. 53),“ Disenchantment ”(p. 56),“ Alpha and Omega ”(p. 59) and“ From knife, glasses, umbrella and ring ”(p. 68) play in German-speaking countries and tell about one Living in the German language. The objects or topics that appeal to the lyrical self bind it to friends and call back special days to its memory. These memories form the title of the volume of poetry, ie they become a landscape that functions as a social network and as a body memory of the self.
The poems “Iliad” (p. 50), “Disenchantment” (p. 56), “Encounters abroad” (p. 55), “Apples for the master” (p. 62), “A sheet” (p . 64) and “Die Schreinerwerkstatt” (p. 67) represent the other “thread” of the woven web, since they call up the cultural memory stored in the Calabrian and Italian language of the poet, respectively.
The poem “As an inhabitant of strange rooms” (p. 49) is reminiscent of the title of the volume, as a landscape is built up from rooms. The memory of a total of seven different dwelling places of the lyric self functions as an alternative curriculum vitae. In “Naturalization” (p. 51), two people - a “he” and an “I” - are brought together as a “we” when the passport is signed. This special kind of "arrival" - the receipt of citizenship - does not prevent the painful memories of a lonely childhood of the ego, as is addressed again in the poem "Encounter in a Foreign Country" (p. 55). The image of a mother who cannot accept her child stands in drastic contrast to the image of the Madonna in Italian religious tradition. Then the lyrical self in the poem “Disenchantment” (p. 56) takes stock and claims: “You, / claims of a peasant boy, / I no longer get involved.” Also the poem “Our life” (p. 60) can be understood as breaking away from old loyalties and building new affiliations. The ego realizes that a life “in blue”, ie in Calabria would have been “confident”, but that the person he was talking to, whom he only called “you”, would not have found access to it. A fully fulfilled life is therefore only possible in yellow - the color that symbolizes Germany. The memories of childhood are often sad and testify to loneliness. You speak of a pain that can, however, lead to new insights.
However, the connection to either the Italian or the Calabrian language is not simply broken. In the poems that tell of the body memory of the lyrical self, the still strong affiliation becomes visible. “Apples for the Master” (p. 62) is z. B. a dream sequence in which the "yellow apples from my childhood" evoke a series of memories. In the poem “Die Schreinerwerkstatt” (p. 67), the smells of a workshop transport the self into the past and evoke the longing for warmth and security in it.
Through involuntary memories and conscious analysis, the poet builds up a landscape in the volume of poetry that not only functions as a social and emotional network, but also names and represents the nodes of future projects.
literature
- Gino Chiellino: Landscape of People and Days . Hanser Verlag, Munich 2010.