lichting (poem)

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Title page of the English book edition Reft and Light (2000)

lichtung is a poem by the Austrian poet Ernst Jandl , in which the question of whether one can confuse the directions left and right is combined with an exchange of the letters l and r . It was published in Jandl's first volume of experimental poetry Laut and Luise in 1966 and is one of Jandl's best-known and frequently cited poems.

Content and form

The poem consists of just one stanza . All words are in lower case , punctuation marks are limited to a period and a final exclamation mark. While it is reported that some thought it was impossible to confuse left and right , the letters l and r are interchanged in all words .

So from the directions:

left and right.

The mix-up becomes:

cannot be
changed.

The conclusion of the poem is:

what an illtum!

interpretation

interpretation

Volker Hage offers three possible interpretations. As a directional indication of the political spectrum , a confusion between left and right could be understood on the one hand as a rapprochement of the mainstream parties in a grand coalition with the consequent loss of profile on both sides. On the other hand, it can be interpreted as the interchangeability of the consequences of political extremism or totalitarian regimes from left and right . Ultimately, however, the completely apolitical interpretation of a person with a right-left weakness who repeatedly confuses the two directions in everyday life is also possible. The poem is open to any of these interpretations, it has no fixed message.

Hans Helmut Hiebel sees in lichtung a political poem about the interchangeability of seemingly oppositional directions and the vulnerability of dogmatic positions. However, he particularly points out the mixing of authorial and personal narrative situations . Although the speaker of the poem wanted to critically expose the narrow-minded attitude of "some" who considered right and left to be unmistakable, his own speech was riddled with slips of the tongue. These could largely be understood as quotations from "some" with which he uncovered their Freudian mistakes . But when he ends up shouting “werch an illtum!” He takes on the mistakes of others. It is precisely this undermining of the logical punch line that turns the poem into absurdity . Although the individual elements make sense, the entire poem becomes nonsense . At the end of the poem, the title can now also be reinterpreted. Not a clearing was meant, but the direction twisted by a slip of the tongue . In the end, the poem does not lead into light, but into a confused darkness, a mixture of perspectives, of clever and stupid speech.

Franz Schuh, on the other hand, makes the title echo the poetry , which, through its own confusion, sheds light on a matter, namely "that, regardless of what 'some think', left and right are always confused."

The question was also raised whether Jandl wanted to allude to the concept of the clearing in the philosopher Martin Heidegger's . Glade is a well-known word in philosophy as a central term in Heidegger. The term should indicate the presence of the truth of being, but also the darkness that is broken by a clearing. The fact that Heidegger's work of art is associated with the clearing, because it puts the truth of beings into the work, could thus be a punchline of Jandl's poem: Occasionally, forests only appear to thin out.

Concrete poetry

For Hage, Jandl's poem lichtung shows three typical characteristics of concrete poetry : the irritation is followed by the knowledge and then the amusement. Although the poem makes no claim to imperishable truth, it does have a certain unforgettableness. For Hiebel, too, the poem, although written in the conventional poem form, has the character of concrete poetry: a fictional play of letters that looks like a nursery rhyme becomes a language alienation and a demonstration of the linguistic material.

reception

lichtung was published in Jandl's first volume of poetry Laut und Luise in 1966 . It is one of Jandl's best-known poems and is quoted many times. Hans Helmut Hiebel saw the poem as one of the reasons for Jandl being awarded the Georg Büchner Prize in 1984. For Michael Vogt, lichtung was "a permanent fixture in 20th century poetry". Even Klaus Siblewski concurred with this assessment and looked as in poetry clearing "the experiments of the early avant-garde literary ( Expressionism , Dada continued)". Marcel Reich-Ranicki included the poem both in his canon of German literature and in his personal selection of a hundred poems from the 20th century. According to Hermann Korte , lichtung is one of the three poems Jandl most frequently included in school books and teaching materials, alongside ottos mops and in the country , which have a canonical meaning for German lessons in lower secondary level .

Jandl's poem lichtung was attached to the glass front of the plenary building in Bonn , which opened in 1992 and designed by the architect Günter Behnisch . It was part of an installation by the Baumann + Baumann graphic office , which also included poems by Eugen Gomringer and Friedrich Achleitner . For Jandl's 65th birthday, the daily newspaper designed its August 1, 1990 issue with a front page on which all the letters l and r are swapped. The headlines of this issue are for example: "With piggyback and 5 Plozent ins Palrament", "LAF confesses: Too little explosive" and "One in reading, divided by Plomirre". Ernst Jandl himself became "Elnst Jandr". For Klaus Siblewski, this page "must be seen as the most impressive 'reception testimony' that has been presented to a living writer".

Many of Jandl's poems have become part of everyday linguistic life and are received in various forms of media, including lichtung , which as Rinks & Lechts (like ottos mops , with the subtitle In Search of Jandl ) even appeared as a computer game , with which children Spelling and counting can be taught.

literature

Publications

Secondary literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑
    Wikiquote: Ernst Jandl  - Quotes
    with full text of the poem lichtung .
  2. ↑ Hage: confusion possible , pp. 331–332.
  3. ^ Hiebel: The spectrum of modern poetry , pp. 239–241.
  4. ↑ Franz Schuh : Lechts and rinks . In: The time of August 3, 2000.
  5. ^ Irmgard Hunt: Bachmann against Heidegger . Preliminary study for a story. In: Caitríona Leahy, Bernadette Cronin (ed.): On this darkening star. Re-acting to Ingeborg Bachmann . New Essays and Performances. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2006, ISBN 3-8260-3108-3 , p. 90 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  6. ^ Konrad Paul Liessmann : Lechts und rinks: About risk of confusion . In: Armin Nassehi , Peter Felixberger (Ed.): Course book 173: Rechts Linke . Murmann, Hamburg 2013, ISBN 978-3-86774-276-4 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  7. ↑ Hage: Confusion possible , p. 331.
  8. ^ Hiebel: The spectrum of modern poetry , pp. 239, 241.
  9. ^ Hiebel: The spectrum of modern poetry , p. 239.
  10. ↑ Michael Vogt (Ed.): JANDL is big on the back. Interpretations of texts by Ernst Jandl . Aisthesis, Bielefeld 2000, ISBN 3-89528-284-7 , p. 9.
  11. ^ Klaus Siblewski: Ernst Jandl on the website of the University of Duisburg-Essen .
  12. ^ Hermann Korte : Jandl in school. Didactic considerations for dealing with contemporary literature . In: Andreas Erb (Hrsg.): Construction site contemporary literature. The nineties . Westdeutscher Verlag, Wiesbaden 1998, ISBN 3-531-12894-9 , p. 204.
  13. ↑ Romanus Otte: "... because foreign workers take their jobs away from them at low wages" . In: Welt am Sonntag on June 19, 2005.
  14. ↑ left right. Orientation between architecture and parliament German Bundestag Bonn . On the website of Hatje Cantz Verlag .
  15. ↑ Klaus Siblewski: a comma point Ernst Jandl. A life in texts and pictures . Luchterhand, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-630-86874-6 , p. 179, reprint of the title page on p. 178.
  16. ↑ Katja Stuckatz: Ernst Jandl and the international avant-garde . About a contribution to modern world poetry. De Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2016, ISBN 978-3-11-047729-0 , pp. 296 ( limited preview in Google Book search).