Venice (cycle of poems)

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Venice is a cycle of poems by Rolf Bongs .

The volume was published in small octaves without any information on the place or year , was hand-set in the Orpheus Antiqua , printed in two hundred numbered and signed copies with drawings by Alfred Vietze and by the poet himself. According to the German National Library, the issue is in 1949 as a manuscript at Streckfuß been set, printed and published.

Literary classification

The eighteen- page volume of poems, which is based on the post-war reclamation books, is thematically and formally in the tradition of German Venice poetry such as the cycle Sonnets from Venice (1825) by Count August von Platen and the novella Death in Venice (1912) by Thomas Mann . Platen, Mann and Bongs each present, in their very different works, a melancholy German visitor to Venice who, in the Italian city, was given relief from his darkening (Bongs: As a night man I entered Venice. P. 5, line 6), but also seeks erotic fulfillment, and which does not find it despite a short inner upswing. Mann's novella contains allusions to Platen's sonnet cycle; Bongs, on the other hand, do without intertextual references .

Literary form

Bongs uses free verse in a timeless, classic tone of the greatest possible simplicity and conciseness. Narrative and evocative passages alternate and merge. The literary excursions into metaphysics that were customary for a short time after the Second World War were avoided, as was any connection with neo-expressionism .

Historical allusions

Just like Platen's sonnet cycle, which goes back to the poet's stay in Venice in the autumn of 1824, contains numerous culturally pessimistic allusions to the fall of the Republic of Venice and how Thomas Mann evokes the atmosphere of an impending war on the first page of his novella and his novella Death in Venice explicitly Defined as a decadence work of the fin de siècle , Bongs' cycle is a work that was created under the influence of the Second World War and written down after the war. These two time phases are roughly merged in the verse Venice darkened under the law of war (p. 8, line 1).

Symbolism and imagery

The gray coat (p. 5, line 1), the soldier's coat , mentioned in the first line, makes it clear that this is a visit during the war. The poet calls his cloak a friend from the winter nights of the East (p. 5, line 3), he uses it to denote a specific historical moment, but at the same time symbolizes the cloak as a sign of sadness and death.

Literary meaning

The simplicity and liveliness of this literary work was instrumental in filling the vacuum after the Second World War with poetry based on classical heritage and yet free. Thus the black-haired beauty conjured up in Poem V (p. 13, line 10) cannot so much be read as a counter-figure to the boys in Platen and Mann's Venice poems than as an optimistic allegory of poetry itself:

But she walks, of dress and fragrance

blows around, antique swing

proud and sightless over the holy place.

(P. 14, lines 1-3)

literature

• Rolf Bongs: Venice. Streckfuss, Düsseldorf 1949, DNB 450551423 .