Helmet Heissenbuttel
Of all the writers I can think of Helmet Heissenbuttel deserves the accolade of being called an experimental writer, not that I would brand him with that absurd label ‘Post-Modern’ or ‘Modernist’ but rather in the true sense of an experimenter with words, meanings and phrases. More than most writers he could almost be called neo-scientific in the rigour that he applies to his media experimentation. In his texts – and I’ve selected the three translated below carefully to demonstrate some of the following – he uses collage, montage, tautology, humour, discontinuity and so on – now all have been used before to often startling effect by Aragon, Breton, the Dadists and a range of 20th and 21st C writers and innovators. However in Heissenbuttel’s work the absurd practice of individualism and innovation for its own sake is left far behind.
OEDIPUS COMPLEX MADE IN GERMANY
Daddy has been ruling for about a thousand years
the
Oedipus complex of the German people is called
NSDAP
after that we tried it with Grandpa but that
was
not a permanent solution now we just don't know
who
can advise us quiz masters wanted
who landed
us in this stew Bild magazine wants to know
Grandpa
has been preserved in a glass coffin Daddy's
representatives
have their names erased as time goes by
but
have we forgotten Daddy
we're still doing
better than in the Third Reich that is not a
a
permanent solution
do they have Daddies in
Washington or Moscow too our ersatz
Oedipus
complex is called Pankow Grandpa o mein Papa or
in
Rome
Daddy's reign is extinct but bits of it
still hang in the air it
is the air of Berlin
still that smell whose name was Josef
what we
demand is an end to Daddies and Granddads an end to
Oedipus
complexes
enlightened as we now
are
enlightened as we now are
enlightened
as we now are
enlightened as we now are
grant
power to the most rational
why don't you just
try that for a change
ESSAY IN GREEK
if
I knew Greek I would converse with you in Greek
but
I don't know any Greek
Amery's sentence on the
drive from Brussels to Waterloo
9-24-1975
rainy street Atlantic low pressure ran a red
light
threatening Belgian cops
du machst mich an
spoken in Cologne dialect
you turn me on said
Amery has purely sexual connotations
telephone
voice surprises I'm always on time
rubbed in
between thumb and palm
glance across trees in
a dream leaning against the hood nipples
erect
and hard a long time
look at me look at me
look at me
I have no Greek and difficulties
with classical education all
those Patmoses
Lesboses Apollos Dionysuses
the Greeks'
antique nakedness is replete with ideational content
nakedness
without content our nakedness simply just naked
to
learn that nakedness instead of content
say
Greek woman wouldn't you be safer in your Greece
but
when pressure mounts there is increased danger of everything
bursting
even though pressure can lead to nice
things though maybe a
little weird
who
loses steam gnaws bones
losing steam losing
sense makes for a wrinkled pouch and a
tiny
prick
wrinkly present wrinkly
nature
cutapplebrown
the
brown of cut apples
in Greek I would converse
with you in Greek but I don't have
any Greek
and you can't understand me
sexual union means
insight into the matter at hand not into
psychology
your
rage your grunting does open you but not your psychology
even
when I can't stand it I hurl myself into gaping flesh
into
flesh which is definitively and in the most extreme sense
facing
me and I am not
naked torsos half asleep
incessantly interchangeable repeatable
quartered
backsides repeatable
the bird quite clearly
flown to Idaho railroad embankment Thoreau
crumpled
and gummed-up moon
we have lived under this
moon
crumpled and gummed-up moon
we
have lived under this moon for a long time
crumpled
and gummed-up moon
it may well be we have
lived under this moon for too long
my language
is a noise
Translated by sdv (from Oedipus Complex
1981)
Lesson 3
and then down into the black soul
1
to stylize to deny the body can be traced back to rationality in that context also the desirable body it has to be that that too part of the calculation the desirable a kind of lure
2
and then down into the black soul
3
what I want to say is I saw it the room naked as a hand I locked up the black princess the sheath of the angel naked I swear it from head to toe from anus to navel what I want to say is my mind rotates in images of beauty and desire my gaze embraces naked what I want to say is fruit of a suit flight of a bird
4
and then down into the black soul
5
enjoyably and deeply I lost myself in all the minglings and intertwinings of joy and pain from which emanates the spice of life and the flower of feelings a florid fire flowed through my veins what I dreamed was not just some kiss not just the wish to break the smarting stings of longing it is not for your lips alone that I long or for your eyes or for your body but it was a romantic confusion of all of these things a wondrous tangle of all the various remembrances and longings.
6
and then down into the black soul
7
the element wherein desire and its object exist indifferently against each other and autonomously is the alive Dasein the gratification of desire sublates this as far as it concerns its object but this is the element which gives both their separate reality rather a Being that is essentially a representation
8
and the down into the black soul
9
gratified lust does indeed carry the positive meaning to have become itself as objective self-consciousness but just as much the negative one namely to have sublated itself and by grasping its realization only in terms of that meaning its experience enters its consciousness as contradiction wherein the achieved reality of its singleness sees itself annihilated by the negative being and yet is the selfsame's devouring power
10
and then down into the black soul
11
in the silver moonlight alongside the ships and the large buildings and the canals which cut into and through the city's innermost core the forest of masts the lines of beams and cordage crossing a thousand fold all in moonlight strange and magic at one corner but a glance into a brightly lit room where a hundred diligent hands were sewing sails
12
and then down into the black soul
13
actually today everything is like yesterday except for the hallway where yesterday the handbag kept surprising me today I am surprised that the handbag is no longer there thus it would be more accurate to say that today everything is completely different from yesterday but then again not really either
These translations by steve devos