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Trenches during trench warfare in World War I

schtzngrmm is a poem by the Austrian poet Ernst Jandl , the creation of which is dated April 19, 1957. It is one of Jandl's first so-called “spoken poems” and appeared in the May issue of Neue wege magazine in 1957 . It was not until 1966 that the first book was published in Jandl's volume of poems, Laut und Luise . Both releases caused a scandal.

The poem is based on the single word " Schützengraben ", which after removing all vowels and slurring them into slang words, becomes guerrilla . The consonants are put together to form new syllables that are reminiscent of machine gun salvos or grenade strikes and paint an onomatopoeic image of trench warfare and the final death of a soldier. schtzngrmm is next to father, come tell from the war one of the most famous poems Jandl about the war and a frequently cited example of concrete poetry .

Content and form

Ernst Jandl
schtzngrmm
Link to the full text of the poem
(please note copyrights )

According to Walter Hinderer, the title already provides the content and formal program of the poem: the word “trenches” is changed and alienated by reducing the vowels . The second part of the word is blurred by pronunciation in dialect - for example in Jandl's Viennese . What remains is the language construct “schtzngrmm” , which is made up of consonants . This is broken down into its components: into sibilants (sch, z), plosives (t, g), oscillating sounds ( r) and nasals (m, n). In the following lines they are in turn put together, repeated and varied to form new patterns.

The result is a sound poem , and Jandl even the term "speech poem" preferred and explained in a foreword to preliminary impression "that is speaking poem only read by loud effective length and intensity of loud fixed write-through." The design characteristics of schtzngrmm named he as "hardening the word by withdrawing the vowels" and "breaking down the word and combining its elements into new, expressive sound groups". The text can be assigned to Concrete Poetry , since - as Dieter Kessler explains - “it only uses its own material possibilities, from which the acoustic component is accentuated; also in terms of meaning it does not break out anywhere. "

The listener can record the poem as a sequence of noises, but he can also semantically complete the individual parts by adding vowels . The element “grm” can be expanded to include “Graben”, “Grimm” or “Gram”, which is pronounced in the dialect. "Schtzn" can be used to form "protect" or "estimate", from "scht" the curse "Schiet". The sounds can also all be understood as onomatopoeia , as a mimetic implementation of trench warfare, for example the sequence “tttt” as well as the increasing “grrt” as the rattle of a machine gun . While Dieter Hoffmann hears the sound of a moving tank in the "grrrmmmm" , in the later variations its stuttering engine, Hans Helmut Hiebel hears the impact of a bullet, the combination "tzngrmm" creates a shot and the following impact for him. The hissing sounds "s --------- c --------- h" and "tssssssssssssss" are reminiscent of the hissing of the fuse of a grenade or missiles flying past, the double syllable "schtzn" of the ignition and the recoil of a cannon or howitzer . At the end of the poem, there are five “sht” sounds from balls flying past. The longest line of the poem follows with “grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr”, the repeated rattle of an MG, which this time does not end in t, and thus transferred in a kind of enjambement to the final “t-tt”. Hiebel's interpretation is that the first shot "t-" misses another time, while the last shot hits: "tt". The addition of the vowel "o": "tott" or "tot" is obvious. The result that the firearms and artillery have been aiming at all along is death. Already visually, the letters "t" - in lower case like the rest of the poem - are reminiscent of soldiers who have fallen on the cross .

The structure of the poem reminds Walter Hinderer of a dramolet : Exactly in the middle of the 35 lines is the peripetia with the stretched "tssssssssssssss" , at the end of the "t-tt" the low point. The first 17 lines are framed by the double appearing "schtzngrmm", the center is the three times identical line "tzngrmm". In the second part, too, “tzngrmm” is in the middle, the frame here is the increasing “grrt”. If in the first part of the poem the elements formed from “schtzngrmm” and the purely onomatopoeic sequence “tttt” are still in confrontation, they merge in the second part and form new connections with “grrt” and “scht”. The barrage of the war lute intensifies after the middle of the poem to an extended "tttttttttt" and leaves less and less recognizable remnants of the initial term "schtzngrmm". With the punchline of the final “t-tt”, the poem ends for Hiebel in an “explosive final chord, a 'bang'”.

According to Hermann Korte , the text forms a spoken score that enables a wide variety of implementation options without instructions on intonation , modulation , volume and tempos. The sound material is converted into a visual presentation and arranged into an optical structure. Jandl himself described this combination of optical and phonetic elements as "visual lip poems". Similar to visual poetry , the typeface itself makes one aware of the material character of language. For Peter Pabisch , "the visual and phonetic components are still synonymous" in schtzngrmm : You have to hear the poem or read it aloud to grasp the meaning of the letter structures. "But you also have to see it in order to pay attention to the linguistic-architectural arrangement of the letter constellations, which illuminates the poetic thought process."

interpretation

Material battle in the First World War

According to Hans Helmut Hiebel, the poem knows no subject , no lyrical self : “It is objective, in that it allows only objects to speak, quasi subjectless: the weapons of war.” Hermann Korte adds: “The inexorable force of the war machine dominates as something independent, devastating noise events [...] barbaric in detail and as a whole. "For Walter Hinderer, a word like" trenches "loses any non-binding effect when it is translated into sounds and in turn becomes a theater of war. Peter Pabisch sees the word "perhaps more successfully exploited through its own linguistic components than in a traditional poem version."

For Ernst Jandl, “a challenging poem can only be written on the subject of war if the poem does not rely on the challenging subject matter, but rather becomes a challenge as a poem itself, regardless of the subject.” He lists the following principles of a war poem: “Avoiding rhyme - war rhymes with victory; avoiding the lock step of a regular meter ; the avoidance of what is said to be elevated language (they move across the battlefield on their stomachs, crawling on elbows and knees); the avoidance of any shine ". Jandl goes on to explain the style of schtzngrmm : “The vowels are withdrawn from its base word, vowels do not appear in the poem. If you want: the war doesn't sing! "

Rolf Schneider explains the lack of vowels with the fact that “the trenches are a place where losses occur.” For him, Jandls is one of those kind of war poems that neither cheer the war nor condemn it “just meant well”, but rather “ that can affect ". For Walter Hinderer, too, it is “a political text in the best sense of the word, an anti-war poem”. In contrast, Dieter Kessler asks the question whether the poem does justice to a war and is not too aesthetic : “Ultimately, this text is more fun than it could spread horror and warn of wars.” Jandl's simple six-line liner is much more haunting father come tell me about the war to think about the war.

Origin, publication and reception

Ernst Jandl and Friederike Mayröcker at a reading, Vienna 1974

According to Jandl's work, 1956 marked a "turning point". While he had not previously been able to write a spoken poem in the manner of schtzngrmm , he found a new writing method with the prose from the whisper gallery . This was followed by a series of works in experimental literature , especially in the productive spring of 1957 , including schtzngrmm , the creation of which is dated April 19, 1957.

In May of the same year, Jandl went public for the first time with this work and, in addition to schtzngrmm , published five other poems in neue wege , a magazine of the Vienna Youth Theater distributed to schools under the protection of the Ministry of Education . According to Klaus Siblewski, the publication led to a “storm of indignation that none of the other authors in Jandl's age had even rudely triggered and had to endure.” Jandl's poetry was perceived as a “unparalleled cultural provocation”, reinforced by the fact that Jandl worked as a German teacher in his job, and he was reviled as a “spoiler of youth”.

Various teacher organizations, such as the teachers' union and the association of Christian middle school teachers, protested in their organs against the publications by Jandl, Gerhard Rühm and Ernst Kein . For the Wiener Lehrerzeitung it was “really sad if it did not succeed in keeping such nonsense out of school.” Erich Fitzbauer asked in the magazine Der Mittelschullehrer und die Mittelschule “whether lyrical products of this kind have anything in common with literature; they may just eke out their miserable existence, provided there are publishers and editors who print similar things, and readers who take pleasure in babbling or graphically fixed and line-by-line stammering. ”However, the distribution to pupils is an“ irresponsibility ”, the one“ Deformation and wilderness of aesthetic taste “open the door and the effect“ comes close to what has been rightly and successfully combated as 'filth and trash' for years. ” Realistic authors also distance themselves from the unfamiliar poetry. The school authorities noticed a riot that had to be stopped. The responsible literary editor Friedrich Polakovics, who had designed the provocative May edition in the absence of the sick editor-in-chief, was dismissed. The campaign against his poetry had consequences for Jandl, too, and for years he found no more opportunity to publish it.

When Otto F. Walter published Jandl's experimental poems in a limited edition of 1000 copies in the volume Laut und Luise in 1966 , among them in the rubric krieg and so also schtzngrmm , the scandal repeated itself. Walter was dismissed from the conservative supervisory board of Walter Verlag and moved with Jandl and sixteen other authors to Luchterhand Literaturverlag , which has been publishing Jandl's works ever since. Overall, the volume received significantly more positive criticism than the spoken poems nine years earlier, but there were still reservations about schtzngrmm . Helmut Salzinger asked : “Do alphabet games do justice to the experience of the trenches? Jandl seems to experience reality primarily as a linguistic phenomenon, and that necessarily results in a certain aesthetic immoralism. ”And Karl Riha was perplexed:“ What do you do - in honor of Dada - with 'schtzngrmm'? In such a ball of consonants, Jandl's linguistic talent ends up on rocky terrain, the extreme point where the 'spoken poem' comes up here justifies itself as an extreme point: [...] the lip breaker has his pleasure in himself. "

At the end of the 20th century, according to Hermann Korte , schtzngrmm had become a "classic" in reading books and, along with poems such as ottos mops , lichtung or vater komm tell von krieg, was one of the most frequently printed poems by Jandl in school books and teaching materials, whereby it was the highlight of his Had spread in the 1970s. For Korte, the poem was also one of the classic works of concrete poetry . While the effect of other poems of this direction was gladly narrowed down to a “witty-harmless language game”, schtzngrmm possessed a “politically resistant bulkiness”, which made it one of the most famous anti-war poems of the 1960s.

Settings

The composer Johannes X. Schachtner transferred the sound melodies of the poem to the trumpet. They form the musical framework of his composition Etude on the poem Schtzngrmm for solo trumpet (2004). The jazz musician Christian Muthspiel also set schtzngrmm to music as part of his solo performance for and with ernst (2008).

expenditure

  • Ernst Jandl: spoken poems . In: neue wege No. 123/1957, p. 11
  • Ernst Jandl: Laut and Luise . Walter, Olten 1966, p. 47

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 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. 22.
  2. ^ Walter Hinderer : Art is work on language. Ernst Jandls schtzngrmm in context , pp. 56–58.
  3. ↑ For a detailed analysis cf. Hans Helmut Hiebel: The spectrum of modern poetry: Interpretations of German-language poetry 1900–2000 in the international context of modernity . Part 2, pp. 233, 235.
  4. ↑ The full text of the preliminary remark, the spoken poem from Neue wege No. 123/1957 was z. B. reprinted in: Ernst Jandl: für alle . Lucherhand, Frankfurt am Main 1984, ISBN 3-630-61566-X , p. 203. It can be viewed online in the biography of Ernst Jandl on lyrikline.org .
  5. ↑ Dieter Kessler: Investigations into concrete poetry. Preforms - Theories - Texts , p. 263.
  6. ↑ a b Ulrich Gaier: Form and Information - Functions of Linguistic Sound Means , pp. 36–38.
  7. ^ A b Hans Helmut Hiebel: The spectrum of modern poetry: Interpretations of German-language poetry 1900–2000 in the international context of modernity . Part 2, p. 233.
  8. ^ A b Dieter Hoffmann : Workbook of German-language poetry since 1945 . Francke, Tübingen 1998, ISBN 3-7720-2262-6 , p. 297.
  9. ↑ Hans Helmut Hiebel: The spectrum of modern poetry: interpretations of German-language poetry 1900-2000 in the international context of modernity . Part 2, pp. 233-234.
  10. ^ Walter Hinderer: Art is work on language. Ernst Jandls schtzngrmm in context , pp. 57–58.
  11. ^ Walter Hinderer: Art is work on language. Ernst Jandls schtzngrmm in context , p. 58.
  12. ^ A b Hans Helmut Hiebel: The spectrum of modern poetry: Interpretations of German-language poetry 1900–2000 in the international context of modernity . Part 2, p. 235.
  13. ^ Hermann Korte: Poetry from 1945 to the Present , p. 69.
  14. ↑ Peter Pabisch: funny. Phenomena of German-language poetry 1945 to 1980 , pp. 80–81.
  15. ↑ a b Hermann Korte: Poetry from 1945 to the Present , p. 70.
  16. ^ Walter Hinderer: Art is work on language. Ernst Jandls schtzngrmm in context , p. 56.
  17. ↑ Peter Pabisch: funny. Phenomena of German-language poetry 1945 to 1980 , p. 81.
  18. ↑ Ernst Jandl: The beautiful art of writing . Luchterhand, Darmstadt 1983, ISBN 3-472-86583-0 , p. 120.
  19. ↑ Ernst Jandl: To the destruction of the war . In: Marcel Reich-Ranicki (Ed.): Frankfurter Anthologie Volume 9. Insel, Frankfurt am Main 1985, ISBN 3-458-14280-0 , p. 133.
  20. ↑ Quoted from: Peter Pabisch: luslustigtig. Phenomena of German-language poetry 1945 to 1980 , p. 79.
  21. ^ Rolf Schneider: Materialschlacht , pp. 218-219.
  22. ^ Walter Hinderer: Art is work on language. Ernst Jandls schtzngrmm in context , pp. 56–58.
  23. ↑ Dieter Kessler: Investigations into concrete poetry. Preforms - Theories - Texts , p. 262.
  24. ↑ Ernst Jandl: The opening and closing of the mouth . Frankfurt poetics lectures . Luchterhand, Darmstadt 1985, ISBN 3-472-61567-2 , p. 57.
  25. ↑ a b Klaus Siblewski (Ed.): Ernst Jandl. Texts, data, images. Luchterhand, Frankfurt am Main 1990, p. 52.
  26. ↑ Klaus Siblewski: a comma point Ernst Jandl. A life in texts and pictures . Luchterhand, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-630-86874-6 , pp. 98, 101.
  27. ↑ a b I very much love the German spoke. Peter Huemer in conversation with Ernst Jandl , p. 26.
  28. ^ Hannes Schweiger: Education for resistance. Ernst Jandl's school of literature. In: Bernhard Fetz (Ed.): The Ernst Jandl Show. Residenz, St. Pölten 2010, ISBN 978-3-7017-1557-2 , p. 102. ( pdf )
  29. ↑ Elfriede Gerstl : From then Jandl in my current head . In: Heinz Ludwig Arnold (Ed.): Ernst Jandl. In: text + kritik 129, edition text + kritik, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-88377-518-5 , p. 9.
  30. ↑ Klaus Siblewski: a comma point Ernst Jandl. A life in texts and pictures , p. 106.
  31. ^ Helmut Salzinger : Do-it-yourself play poems . In: Die Zeit of March 28, 1969.
  32. ^ Karl Riha : Ernst Jandl: Laut and Luise / Hosi-anna . In: Neue Deutsche Hefte 13, 1966, Heft 4, S. 152 ff. Quoted from Kristina Pfoser-Schewig (Ed.): For Ernst Jandl. 60th birthday texts. Work history . In: Circular special number 6.Documentation Center for Newer Austrian Literature, Vienna 1985, ISBN 978-3-900467-06-7 , p. 74.
  33. ^ 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 , pp. 203-204.
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on January 13, 2012 .