«Morgens riecht der Fluß aseptisch»: Decomposing Nature in the Anthology Laute Verse CHARLOTTE MELIN U NIVERSITY O F M INNESOTA In his afterword to the anthology Laute Verse (2009), Thomas Geiger boldly repositions nature as a central feature of contemporary German poetry. Citing a definition of poetry articulated by the Yugoslavian-born American poet Charles Simic, Geiger tells readers that «the poem» is the space where irreconcilable elements meet. 1 He then asserts, «Himmel und Erde, Natur und Geschichte, Götter und Teufel, alles hat seinen Ort im Gedicht und natürlich spiegeln sich in ihm auch politische Vorgänge, verknüpfen sich Biografisches mit Religiösem oder Mythologischem. Und schließlich verbindet das Gedicht, wird es vorgetragen, auch das Sprachliche mit dem Köperlichen, dem Sinnlichen» (351). Pivotal to this claim is the term nature, which in itself evokes a wide range of possible meanings, from «untouched,» non-human environment to the nature-culture dialectic and our imaginings of a post-anthropocene world. What is ultimately at stake in the display of definitional choices raised by Geiger’s use of this word is the fate of Naturlyrik and the lyric genre, for here we see poetry pushing against the boundaries of tradition. My interest in the present essay therefore lies in exploring the kind of Naturlyrik that might now be emerging, a project I will pursue with reference to Gernot Böhme’s seminal essay «Die Natur im Zeitalter ihrer technischen Reproduzierbarkeit» and close readings of two exemplary poems from Geiger’s anthology in which processes of decomposition in nature become intrinsic to the creation of poetic knowledge pertaining to the environment. Here decomposition vividly reveals the temporal and physical dimensions of the ecological systems the poems describe. It also links the very process of poiesis (or poetry making) to decomposition in the natural world, making visible the fact that the lyric genre operates through a dynamic interaction of creative and destructive energies. To establish the assumptions about Naturlyrik at play in the anthology Laute Verse, let us return first to Geiger’s text. The assertion that «Natur und Geschichte» belong in contemporary poetry engages his programmatic statement with an extended discussion of nature as a cultural project (cf., for example, Adorno; Böhme; Goodbody, Nature, Technology and Cultural Change CG_44_2_s105-232End.indd 215 CG_44_2_s105-232End.indd 215 14.02.14 06: 47 14.02.14 06: 47 216 Charlotte Melin 255-79). The afterword builds to this crescendo gradually. Opening with the claim that «Die deutsche Literatur hat in den letzten Jahren Terrain zurückgewonnen» (Geiger 348), a claim which metaphorically describes literature in terms of landscape, Geiger points to the accomplishments of younger contemporary writers, especially two in whose work human and natural history are mutually entwined. Geiger specifically mentions Die Vermessung der Welt (2005) by Daniel Kehlmann and Nach der Natur (1988) by W. G. Sebald. Words like Nischen and Zwitter add organic elements to the afterword’s metaphorical register, further evidence that the ineluctable presence of the natural in our physical environment plays an important role in Geiger’s vision for the anthology. By noticing these details, we sense something similarly dynamic in nature and works of art, a quality that Böhme reminds us is intrinsic to the aura (or ineffable specialness) on which both depend, and which in the modern world is endangered. «Verfall der Aura: das hieß Aufhebung der Achtung gebietenden Distanz, das hieß tendenzielle Vernichtung Einmaligkeit,» Böhme writes as he explains his conceptual indebtedness to Walter Benjamin in using this term, continuing with «Das kann für die Natur heißen: die Aufhebung jeder Anerkennung des Gegebenen, der Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben; es kann die Vernichtung der Individualität bedeuten, und ganz sicher die radikale Vernutzung der Natur als Ware» (109). Thus while the dyad Natur/ Geschichte signals on one level the mutual interactions of nature and culture through which mankind shapes the environment, on another level the coupling inserts important ontological considerations that raise a frightening specter in the contemporary world because the human footprint can yield deadly results. As Böhme observes, «Technische Reproduzierbarkeit der Natur: Man scheut sich, auch nur davon zu sprechen» (109). While Geiger is perhaps less overtly concerned with the technical reproduction of nature (the manufacture of the artificial per se), he is deeply interested in the creation of new forms of poetry, particularly effects that depend on the physicality of language and bodily production of poems. Conceptualizing the collection he edited in terms of its title, Geiger points first to the performative quality of much poetry today. Clearly he has in mind the differences between «stage» poetry (such as poetry slams, typically in large city venues like Berlin and Hamburg) and its «page» counterparts (poetry that circulates in small edition books, intended to be read in private or more intimate settings). The adjective laut (loud) accordingly foregrounds the role that the manipulation of language, acoustic effects, and «stage» presence plays in defining the genre as a conspicuously urban art form that functions differently from reticent «page» texts. Geiger explains, «Der Titel dieser Anthologie schließlich ist doppeldeutig. Man kann das ‹Laute› adjektivisch oder substan- CG_44_2_s105-232End.indd 216 CG_44_2_s105-232End.indd 216 14.02.14 06: 47 14.02.14 06: 47 «Morgens riecht der Fluß aseptisch» 217 tivisch lesen, dann bezieht es sich auf den Bauplan von Gedichten. Sie bestehen: aus Lauten, Wörtern, Versen, Strophen […]» (351). The term Laute, thus, alerts us to the ways in which overt destabilization of the relationship between reader and text (which in traditional poetry tends to be tranquil) can occur through the jarring sensory input produced by physical performance. It reminds the reader that in the lyric genre sharp contrasts exist between urban and pastoral modes - typically poets are known for work in only one of these styles. Surprisingly, Geiger then equates the second term, Verse (verses), with content, and, fundamentally, with nature. This iteration, which defines poetry through references to multiple natural elements (heaven, earth, and nature itself), points to a crucial problem for the contemporary lyric genre, namely the difficulty of conceiving of poetry as a vital form when nature, which has for so long been fundamental to it, can no longer be taken for granted. Through it we realize that the idealized subject of pastoral verse has in some profound way become unavailable, for despite the fact that decay is a natural process, the pastoral aesthetic strives to exclude it. Decomposition in the many forms encountered in contemporary works recovers this missing ecological element by acknowledging the presence of organic breakdown and the effects of less than benign human influences - habitat disturbance, noxious pollution, or fragmented landscapes, for instance. This circumstance creates dilemmas that are bound up with the changing status of the lyric genre and an evolving appreciation of representation. To a striking extent, these problems are intertwined with the postwar literary environment in German-speaking countries, which has shaped this understanding of nature and Naturlyrik in profound ways. Interpreting Böhme’s essay «Die Natur im Zeitalter ihrer technischen Reproduzierbarkeit» against this background, I want to establish a context for my reading of two poems from Laute Verse by Hendrik Rost and Christian Lehnert that I see as indicative of the problematic of contemporary Naturlyrik. Through these examples, we can discern the emergence of a potentially new poetic mode that reflects important changes within the lyric genre, in part by emphasizing its capacity for presenting the world dynamically - an environment that is always in interaction with humans, as well as constantly changing and decomposing. Such materiality has become the subject of recent material ecocriticism. As Serenella Iovino explains, material ecocriticism «heeds the materiality as the constitutive element of ecological relationships, exploring the entanglements between material configurations and the emergence of meanings» (56). Thus, I will ultimately contend that the expansion of the category «nature» to include the physical manifestations proposed by material ecocriticism and «dirt theory» (Sullivan) can provide grounding for the interpretation of contempo- CG_44_2_s105-232End.indd 217 CG_44_2_s105-232End.indd 217 14.02.14 06: 47 14.02.14 06: 47 218 Charlotte Melin rary poetic texts by drawing attention to elements that complicate our conceptions of art and nature and move us beyond conceiving of them as pristine abstractions. Nature, as Rachel Blau DuPlessis argues in a trenchant essay about the foundational materials of poetry, has been one of the primary sources for the lyric genre since antiquity and throughout the Western literary tradition (71). The emergence of the lyrical poem in European and Anglo-American literary traditions, where it was anchored in natural tropes, paralleled the rise of the European nation state (Ferry; Häntzschel). Moreover, its cultural status was reinforced by a powerful synergy of aesthetic and social forces that has continued to shape perceptions of the lyric genre today (Ferry; Jackson; Felstiner). Poetry anthologies played an important role in this process; in fact, the word anthology, as we remember, derives from the Greek term for «flower gathering,» and emphasizes the role of nature poetry in canon formation («Anthology»). Anne Ferry in Tradition and the Individual Poem (2001) demonstrates that as the paradigm for the lyrical poem arose in anthologies, they in turn promoted specific traits - visual patterns suitable to book printing, short works that were memorable, and especially «pastoral balance» that exercised «special force in the conscious art of putting the complex into the simple» (119). This conception of what poetry should be - aestheticized, concentrated, and associated with a bucolic culture of leisure - has been taken as the essence of nature poetry and evokes a sense of timelessness. Yet poetry itself, of course, and our perception of nature dramatically change over time. David Gilcrest proposes in Greening the Lyre (2002) that the «scenic or ornamental» role that nature once occupied in poetic texts has been gradually replaced in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries with more complex environmental perspectives (2). 2 To be sure, Gilcrest is aware of the many poems about dynamic and dark nature (in the German tradition, texts by Goethe, Novalis, and Annette von Droste-Hülshoff come to mind). The point he makes, however, is that it is no longer the specular view of nature that occupies the poem, but rather perceptions of systems dynamics, in other words, webs of relationships connecting the animate and inanimate. Gilcrest’s definition of such work provides a useful starting point for examining the ways in which the lyric genre has been transformed. 3 He writes: The idea of nature as subject […] corresponds with the development of what may loosely be called an environmental perspective: the view that all beings, including humans, exist in complex relationship to their surroundings and are implicated in comprehensive physical and physiological processes. An environmental poetry is consequently distinguished from other types of «nature poetry» (especially Romantic nature poetry) to the extent that it reinforces and extends this perspective. (3) CG_44_2_s105-232End.indd 218 CG_44_2_s105-232End.indd 218 14.02.14 06: 47 14.02.14 06: 47 «Morgens riecht der Fluß aseptisch» 219 Although numerous ecocritics have found it productive to explore Romantic nature poetry as environmental literature (Rigby; Morton; Bate), Gilcrest’s perspective is particularly useful in describing a recent conceptual shift in how we imagine the role nature and the environment play in the contemporary lyric genre. Applying these insights to contemporary German poetry enables a reading of it as environmental. We thus gain an interpretive framework that reclaims Naturlyrik from the state of neglect it has fallen into since the mid-twentieth century - one that begins to take into account such matters as complex aesthetic representation, post-human perspective, and contemporary ethical dimensions. Recognizing decomposition as a troping of ecological consciousness and central to poiesis (the making of poetry) itself, we draw attention to the ephemerality and physical decay that ultimately will consume both nature and art. Nature poetry in the German literary context has long been considered the repository for descriptions of the beautiful, contemplation of the sublime, and expressions of patriotic sentiment (Heukenkamp; Rigby; Goodbody, Nature, Technology and Cultural Change). The accompanying prestige and ostensible accessibility, however, contributed both to its popularity and trivialization. The tensions between low and high cultural regard have taken on special significance in the postwar period (the epoch under consideration here). Immediately after 1945, nature poetry proliferated rampantly in Germany for historically specific reasons (Korte; Melin, Poetic Maneuvers 35-55). The retreat into Schonraum Natur seemed inescapable after the war, leading Hermann Korte to conclude, «Wie kein anderes Genre hat das Naturgedicht die Lyrik der fünfziger Jahre beherrscht» (30). Explaining this history in a provocatively titled 1963 essay, «In Search of the Lost Language,» Hans Magnus Enzensberger takes pains to distinguish what he calls «the pastoral babble of the nature-lyric school» from poets like Günter Eich and Karl Krolow, whom he praises as gifted («In Search of the Lost Language» 47). Intellectual discourses of the time also reinforced this sense of a break with the past by deploying the forestry term Kahlschlag (clear-cut) as synonymous with the notion of the «zero hour» or Stunde Null (a word from the military register) represented by the events of 1945. 4 The aesthetics of this period continue to influence German poetry today, as can be seen by comparing Geiger’s characterization of poetry with an earlier one by Enzensberger. Relying on Simic, Geiger follows the lead of the postwar generation of poets who turned to international models, especially American poets, and employs a discourse about poetry that resonates with Enzensberger. Where Geiger declares, «alles hat seinen Ort im Gedicht» (351), Enzensberger in describing his own work and that of Günter Grass and Peter CG_44_2_s105-232End.indd 219 CG_44_2_s105-232End.indd 219 14.02.14 06: 47 14.02.14 06: 47 220 Charlotte Melin Rühmkorf finds that «The safety-pin and the Rapacki Plan, the juke-box and the cough-drop appear in verse with the same right and the same naturalness as the moon, the sea, and the rose» («In Search of the Lost Language» 49). This location of nature in disparate elements has modern cachet; it eventually translates into the fragmented postmodern «paratactic landscape» that Jürgen Egyptien discerns in the work of Peter Waterhouse (64), which he finds in some ways problematical, due to the precarious, porous relationship this style establishes between nature and Technik. Though Enzensberger’s characterization of the state of German poetry (like that of other authors, critics, and scholars of the time) tends to downplay the initial postwar importance of Naturlyrik, by the 1960s Naturlyrik was a shrinking part of a literary landscape dominated by hermetic verse and concrete poetry. It waned noticeably throughout the sixties and seventies first in the face of Agitprop and then with the rise of New Subjectivity (Schnell; Riordan; Wiesmüller). While the tradition of nature poetry continued in the hands of individual poets, its stature diminished. Meanwhile, its subject matter began to be transformed, as Egyptien convincingly demonstrates, by a sense of ecological crisis. Particularly in the GDR, where many important writers made nature poetry a vehicle for the critique of environmental degradation, a revived nature poetry began to flourish (Volckmann; Goodbody, «Deutsche Ökolyrik»). Works from this phase of Ökolyrik were, however, often preoccupied with addressing the effects of pollution and the vanishing natural landscape through issue-oriented content (cf. for example the poetry of Heinz Czechowski, Wulf Kirsten, and Thomas Rosenlöcher) and not invested in an aesthetic transformation of Naturlyrik. At the start of the new millennium, a more expansive interest in nature poetry was renewed through publications such as the anthologies Feuer, Wasser, Luft & Erde (Leitner), Der magische Weg (Heukenkamp) and Deutsche Naturlyrik (Bode) and an issue of the literary journal Eiswasser devoted to Naturlyrik (Dasenbrock and Sagurna). Charting the thematic terrain of contemporary German poetry represented in the influential 2003 anthology Lyrik von Jetzt, Erk Grimm notices the reemergence of poetry about nature (in the most general sense) and perceptively connects its resurgence to urbanized sensibilities. Instead of the familiar dichotomy of restorative Naturlyrik versus alienated Großstadtlyrik, Grimm found that works from this anthology exercise a postmodern consciousness of environmental factors that is reflected linguistically (for example, through sound experiments that mimic city surroundings) and in terms of liminal content (i.e., settings like borderlands, coasts, gardens, and parks). His prime examples from Lyrik von Jetzt are largely experimental works, with poets Ulrike Draesner, Enno Stahl, and Ron Winkler playing a central role in the CG_44_2_s105-232End.indd 220 CG_44_2_s105-232End.indd 220 14.02.14 06: 47 14.02.14 06: 47 «Morgens riecht der Fluß aseptisch» 221 analysis. As a result, his explanation casts the trend in terms of a break with traditional Naturlyrik, similar to the sharp avant-garde/ conservative divide that can be discerned between poetry that experiments with language such as that which can be found in the works of Elke Erb or Friederike Mayröcker and traditional narrative verse. By implication, his reading suggests that the traditional domain of nature poetry stands faint hope of being revived - certainly an important consideration. Yet experimental poetry has not been the only locus for the Naturlyrik revival. Looking more broadly at contemporary works, such as the sample of poems in Laute Verse, we see many poets revisiting the traditional genre of nature poetry - employing non-urban settings, natural observation, and inherited poetic forms. Grimm’s interpretive categories aptly apply to a number of the works in Laute Verse, from Nico Bleutge’s evocative «Später Herbst,» which contemplates a waterside landscape populated with onlookers and motor sounds, to Sabine Scho’s «hot magenta,» which stunningly reveals the ways in which material consumption detaches the color salmon from its biological origins. But in other poems, such as the two poems to which I will turn shortly, the fragile aura of nature that occupies Böhme in his essay «Die Natur im Zeitalter ihrer technischen Reproduzierbarkeit» is clearly at stake, and with it the possibility of another kind of Naturlyrik. Evoking Walter Benjamin’s famous essay «Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit,» Böhme points out that nature, like art, no longer enjoys an autonomous, existence that establishes its unique value, for, as he explains, «Natur ist uns überhaupt nicht mehr das Gegebene. Natur ist das im Prinzip durch Herstellung Mögliche» (115). The consequence of such reproduction, Böhme cautions, is seen when nature is no longer defined through contrast with technology, culture, and civilization; it is then reduced to being «sozial konstituierte Natur,» and ultimately politicized (123). Indeed, some twenty years after Böhme’s publication, ecocriticism acknowledges the reality of Böhme’s assertion, as do many literary works. Some of the Naturlyrik written by Christian Lehnert and Hendrik Rost demonstrate these effects. The poems problematize the very longing for the special aura of nature, that quality that seems to elevate it to the sublime and picturesque. They incorporate dissonant elements of decomposition (e.g., leaves already withered away and aseptic stench) into inherited traditions of the lyric genre in ways that draw attention to the constructedness of our perceptions and aesthetic representations of nature. Böhme reminds us that, «Die technische Reproduzierbarkeit von Natur stellt uns in unserem eigenen Selbstverständnis in Frage» (109). Contemporary poets like Lehnert and Rost seek to explore this problematical self-awareness by reintroducing nature to poetry. CG_44_2_s105-232End.indd 221 CG_44_2_s105-232End.indd 221 14.02.14 06: 47 14.02.14 06: 47 222 Charlotte Melin The two poems I have selected as examples of such poetic exploration are both fourteen-lines-long, rhymed sonnets (or sonnet-like) texts, written by authors born in 1969, thus of the generation that came of age during the Wende. 5 «Herbstzeitlose» by Christian Lehnert contemplates an autumn crocus, while «Nachmärz» by Hendrik Rost describes a polluted waterfront in the region between the Ruhrgebiet and Emsland. Both involve decomposition: in Lehnert’s case, it is at the end phase of a botanical cycle, in Rost’s the odor of what seems to be related to the decay of organic matter, caused we might suspect by chemical fertilizers. The more established of the two poets, Lehnert, studied religion, theology, and Orientalistik, and resides near Dresden (in Mügliztal). 6 His publications include the poetry collections Der gefesselte Sänger (1997), Der Augen Aufgang (2000, which includes a sonnet cycle), Finisterre (2002), Ich werde sehen, schweigen und hören (2004), Auf Moränen (2008), and Aufkommender Atem (2011). He has also collaborated with Hans Werner Henze on the opera Phaedra (2007). For his part, Rost studied Germanistik, resided in Hamburg, and now works as a translator in Lübeck. Allusions in Rost’s works to American poets such as William Carlos Williams, John Ashberry, and others, point to the fact that he spent time in the U. S. and embraces poetic sensibilities that reflect this experience. His publications include Vorläufige Gegenwart (1995), Aerobic und Gegenliebe (2001), Im Atemweg des Passagiers (2006), and Der Pilot in der Libelle (2010). Both poets are deeply engaged with the problems of contemporary nature poetry as voiced in Gilcrest’s notion of environmental poetry and Böhme’s observations about reproduced nature; both poets attempt an expansion of Naturlyrik and the lyric genre. Christian Lehnert’s poem «Herbstzeitlose,» from Auf Moränen (2008), portrays an unusual flower: Herbstzeitlose Ein hoher Becher, zart, aus lila Glas Geblasen? Flacher Atemzug der Auen? Wo sich die Nebel früh am Morgen stauen und die Demenz herankriecht wie ein Gas? Ist sie ein Anfang? Ende? Dergestalt und ohne Blätter? Ein vergangnes Leben das blühend hier versucht den Kopf zu heben, und sich mit letzter Kraft ins Erdreich krallt? Schenkt sie dem Augenblick die Illusion, es sei ein Gleichgewicht, das alles trüge? Daß Zeit verblaßte schnell wie ein Ion CG_44_2_s105-232End.indd 222 CG_44_2_s105-232End.indd 222 14.02.14 06: 47 14.02.14 06: 47 «Morgens riecht der Fluß aseptisch» 223 Im Nordlicht glüht? Kein Herbst? Kein Tod? Kein Regen? Nur eine Form, die sich in ihre fügte, um jetzt im kühlen Wind sich zu bewegen? (Geiger 166) The first two stanzas depict the flower’s connate shape in vaguely anthropomorphic terms. Resembling a Becher from a man-made substance (Glas), it appears where «die Demenz herankriecht wie ein Gas.» This is an uncanny location reminiscent of Droste-Hülshoff’s milieu, as in her poem «Die Mergelgrube,» in which her blending of a keen naturalist’s view and a poet’s affective response to the external world reinforces a sense of the uncanny. Lehnert’s poem speculates that the bloom is «Ein vergangnes Leben, / das blühend hier versucht den Kopf zu heben, / und sich mit letzter Kraft ins Erdreich krallt.» Unsettling though the description seems, it corresponds precisely to the «unnatural» life cycle of the Herbstzeitlose (colchicum) - an autumn crocus that leafs in spring, dies back in summer, and blooms leafless in the fall. The precision of Lehnert’s text rests in part on his repertoire of poetic tools. «Herbstzeitlose» triangulates variable perspectives to achieve its description, using «die trigonometrischen Punkte» adumbrated in his poem «Westwärts…» (Finisterre 20). This is a phrase that references both Günter Eich’s poem «Der große Lübbe-See» (37) and Enzensberger’s tribute to Eich in the poem «Trigonometrischer Punkt» (Blindenschrift 80-81). Its concentration on the observational moment participates in the technique of photographiclike Momentaufnahmen, to which his earlier work explicitly refers (Finisterre 40), an aesthetic dating back to the beginnings of photography that with the inspiration of international models became one of the hallmarks of progressive German poetry after 1945 (Melin, Poetic Maneuvers 11-12). Even the term Atem (in Atemzug) evokes Rainer Marie Rilke’s line, «Atmen, du unsichtbares Gedicht! » («Duineser Elegien, Die Sonette an Orpheus» 71), the pivotal concept of Atemwende in the work of Paul Celan («Der Meridian»), and the resonance of that concept for Hilde Domin (Melin, With or Without). Meanwhile, the cochicum’s temporal qualities, captured so aptly in its German name, remind us of Celan’s poem «Die Silbe Schmerz» where it binds Columbus’s discovery of the Americas in October (when the flower blooms) to both the Spanish Inquisition and the Holocaust (Celan, «Die Silbe Schmerz»; Zorach and Melin). With a brief allusion, Celan addresses the fraught history of the expulsion of Jews from Spain, which coincided with the departure of Columbus on his initial voyage of exploration. Compressing this troubling past into a mere trace, Celan mentions only a sharp-eyed Columbus and the colchicum, which flowers seemingly out of nothing at precisely the time of year when he landed in the New World. In Lehnert’s text, these temporal/ historical dimensions are elided. The focus remains on the literal as- CG_44_2_s105-232End.indd 223 CG_44_2_s105-232End.indd 223 14.02.14 06: 47 14.02.14 06: 47 224 Charlotte Melin sociation of the flower’s name with timelessness, while Gleichgewicht echoes a pivotal passage in Rilke’s Sonette an Orpheus (Rilke, «Duineser Elegien, Die Sonette an Orpheus»; Ryan). In a 2011 interview with Lehnert, fellow poet Nico Bleutge asks him about his preoccupation with Zwischenzonen, «wo man Land und Luft nicht unterscheiden lassen.» Lehnert reponds that «Mich interessieren Momente, in denen Erscheinungen entstehen»; more precisely, Lehnert continues by stating that it is the openness of phenomena and the emergence of form that concerns him (Bleutge). The reader notices this openness when encountering the first lines of the poem, in which Lehnert describes the Herbstzeitlose in riddle-like fashion. The riddle aspect is sustained by the interrogative punctuation, which continues throughout the poem, creating a tension that suspends the resolution that a declarative sentence could provide. This conception of poetry as creating this experience is similarly adumbrated in his artist’s statement from Laute Verse, where he calls the Augenblick des Gedichts, «nur eine Form,» and yet a medium that «versucht, etwas einzugrenzen. Dazu wird es gebraucht. Dass Leere, umgeben von Worten, zur Offenheit wird» (Geiger 157). The questions encountered in «Herbstzeitlose» surround the form that we sense constitutes the essence of the poem. Lehnert’s project, though phrased in the more abstract terms of Offenheit and Erscheinung, hinges on a sense that poetics are connected with the environment, something articulated in similar ways in the writings of American author Gary Snyder: Human subjectivity and language are possible only on the basis of deeper structure of signification and communication that have nothing exclusively human about them . […] The natural world is full of indicators, signs and communications, associated with diverse and (to us) mostly opaque modes of intentionality and reference. Why should the peculiarities of human consciousness be the narrow standard by which other creatures are judged? (qtd. in Clark 53-54) Much of Lehnert’s poetry revolves around a biosemiotic attempt to read nature’s signs in more profound ways - by noticing not only visible elements (the color of the flower, for example) but nearly invisible traces, like the Atemzug der Auen. Lehnert acknowledges the root of his works in mysticism and the very immediate experience of environmental disturbance with the flooding of the Elbe River in 2002 (Bussmann; Hollenbach; Lehmkuhl). Indeed, Michael Braun applauds Lehnert’s craft in incorporating such «Urelemente der Natur» and admires the spiritual depth of his work (281). Deeply invested in capturing ineffable perceptions, which he elsewhere terms «Sprache ohne Sprache,» Lehnert creates poems where the tension between precision and openness hinges on the constructedness of text (Ich CG_44_2_s105-232End.indd 224 CG_44_2_s105-232End.indd 224 14.02.14 06: 47 14.02.14 06: 47 «Morgens riecht der Fluß aseptisch» 225 werde sehen, schweigen und hören 18). In «Herbzeitlose,» small-scale descriptions in the first quatrains are juxtaposed against the large temporal and spatial dimensions evoked in the closing tercets. The final two lines («Nur eine Form, die sich in ihre fügte, / um jetzt im kühlen Wind sich zu bewegen») stage contemplation of form (of both the Herbstzeitlose and the poem), and ultimately of the balance between nature and culture. The organic form of the colchicum belongs to nature and is as important as the poetic form of the sonnet, both of which have just emerged before the eyes of the reader, and while we know that balance is a problematical concept in current ecology and ecocriticism, Lehnert’s interest in constructing this balance has much to do with the aesthetic the poem advances. Leere and then Offenheit arise through the contrast between the opaque image of the crocus and the uncertain position of the subjective observer, who punctuates each thought with a question mark. The sharp focus on the palpable image of the crocus brings its natural Umwelt momentarily into focus, but at the cost of literary or symbolic perspective. An underlying dynamic (the tension between proximity and distance in its many forms) is revealed through gesture. A series of poetic moves occurs - the appearance of the term Gleichgewicht, which reminds us of the fragile balance of ecological systems, the phrase «das alles trüge,» which captures the precariousness of art’s illusion by echoing Rilke’s famous sonnet «Archaischer Torso Apollos,» and ultimately the cool wind. That breeze stirs in the final line and leads to a last question mark, a tentative closure at the poem’s ending. Concentration on linguistic representation in which the echoes of Rilke, the literal meaning of Herbstzeitlose, and the sustained interrogatives themselves can be heard, thus, underscores the uncertainty of human perceptions and representation. In «Nachmärz» by Henrik Rost, from Im Atemweg des Passagiers (2006), we encounter a less overtly aesthetic response to nature. The first line confronts the reader with an off-putting whiff of literally decomposing nature («Morgens riecht der Fluß aseptisch»). This emphatic gesture establishes the text as a counter-version to the traditional nature poem: Nachmärz Morgens riecht der Fluß aseptisch, Schaumkissen driften, beim Aquarellieren geht es um Übergänge. Skeptische grünfüßige Verwandte der Kraniche balzen, fliehen vor mir, duellieren sich ins nackte Unterholz. Nische ist eine Verniedlichung des Gewährten. Ich verachte Vorgärten, CG_44_2_s105-232End.indd 225 CG_44_2_s105-232End.indd 225 14.02.14 06: 47 14.02.14 06: 47 226 Charlotte Melin die Gräbern gleichen; Thuja, Immergrünes. Dem Genre nach Frühjahr, sind es Abweichungen, die rühren: Kontamination braucht keine Quelle anzuführen. Die Gegend reinzuzeichnen, ich kann irren, ist unnötig. Sie läßt sich fotokopieren. (Geiger 210) The conception of space - the contrast of proximity versus distance - shapes the two halves of the text. A viewer must be relatively close to smell the river, see the green feet of the «Verwandte der Kraniche,» and observe the ecological relations of the Unterholz. The presence of the cranes’ relatives inevitably reminds the reader of Schiller’s poem «Die Kraniche des Ibykus» and their metaphorical association with poetry (Schiller 111-15). Intriguingly, however, Rost avoids a specific definition of these birds. Although the poem associates them with the magnificent cranes (a migratory species), they are merely their kin, possibly the more common Teichhuhn, whose scientific name Gallinula chloropus denotes its green feet (Sibley 151). Moreover, it is also possible that this odd tinge should be interpreted as resulting from an overgrowth of algae caused by polluting chemicals. The parallelism of aseptisch with Skeptische, a word that aptly describes the opinionated attitude of these birds, foreshadows the skepticism of the poet that gradually emerges in subsequent lines. Things seem to have gone awry to produce such quantities of Schaumkissen where the birds wade, yet in other contexts outside this poem, foaming itself can also be the result of natural fermentation, hence productive decomposition. Though nothing in this landscape seems particularly remarkable, its location makes palpable the meaning of Nische. Within an ecosystem, niche represents successful adaptation to Umwelt and the stability of homeostasis. However, adaptation can be fatal when conditions change since no system is forever in balance. For the poet, the Nische becomes «eine Verniedlichung des Gewährten.» While an ecological niche generally benefits its inhabitants, what exists here is perversely diminished, and the poet’s anthropocentric perspective intensifies at this juncture in the poem. The received niche, innocuous as it may seem, becomes a limiting factor against which he strives. Loss of free will is implied by its mention, since niche is not a matter of choice. In response to that constraint, the poet reacts negatively, declaring, «Ich verachte Vorgärten.» This statement marks the tension between the scene observed up close at the outset and the spatial detachment of the second half. Perceptions of genre and widespread contamination depend on distance. We cannot fully read a poem as a sonnet until we grasp its total Gestalt; likewise, whether Schaumkissen are actually the product of pollution would ultimately be determined by mapping systems relations. Reinforcing the conceptual shift, CG_44_2_s105-232End.indd 226 CG_44_2_s105-232End.indd 226 14.02.14 06: 47 14.02.14 06: 47 «Morgens riecht der Fluß aseptisch» 227 Rost connects the two parts of the poem using enjambment and inserts the word Thuja in the opening line of the next stanza. Linguistically, the insertion of the word Thuja (a botanical species) underscores a cognitive shift as well. Thuja is a coniferous tree in the cypress family frequently used in cultivated gardens whose Latin name arborvitae means «tree of life,» again, something the poet rejects. While such negativity seems paradoxical for a poet who lavishes attention on the details of natural description, we are reminded here of the problematical aspects involved in thinking about the environment. As Timothy Morton soberly observes, «Ecology equals living minus Nature, plus consciousness» (19). Indeed, Rost respects ecology’s complexity (and dark side) by exploring the meaning of decomposition through the aseptisch and contaminated elements he incorporates. This interplay of the closed systems (niches) and edge effects (the generative productivity of the ecotone), combined with a keen awareness of the limitations of human perception, mark the recurrent theme of boundaries in Rost’s work. In the ecotone where edge effects occur, disparate ecological communities overlap and exhibit hyper-fertile conditions, much in the way the riverbank with its aseptic smell clashing with the Vorgärten seem to generate the poem itself. Elsewhere in this collection, Rost shows an interest in other confluences, such as the muddy Neuland created by surging water in the poem «Randmeer» where earth is constantly built up and then dissolved by the forces of water (Im Atemweg des Passagiers 14). Likewise in «Naturgesetze,» Rost experiments with the notion that there are generative borderlines between mechanical production and the creation of reality. A photograph creates a poem and creates reality, or as he writes, «Wenn ich Fotos sage, wie ich / es sehe, entsteht ein Gedicht […] Wie ich es sehe, lassen / sich Details aus allem stanzen. / Ich kann auf Fotos total tanzen» (Der Pilot in der Libelle 54). Photographs capture visual details to a degree that exceeds the capacity of poetry, hence the delight and revelry of the poet, who will presumably use these images as the raw, manipulable materials for fresh creations, once they are fixed by the mechanical, chemical, or electronic processes of photography. Explaining in Laute Verse that the title «Nachmärz» is intended to evoke the atmosphere of a post-revolutionary period, Rost adds that, «In diesem Gedicht gut versteckt liegt meine größte literarische Prägung der ersten Jahre als Autor und damit das Eingeständnis, dass es tatsächlich zuallererst und immer wieder um Variationen geht, Abweichungen des ewigen Themas: Wo kommen wir her, wo gehen wir hin, wo biegen wir ab? » (Geiger 212). On what terms does he negotiate these questions? The two parts of the poem offer distinctly different ways for relating to Umwelt and conceiving of art. The first stanza traces proximate observations of nature. This initial response registers awareness of CG_44_2_s105-232End.indd 227 CG_44_2_s105-232End.indd 227 14.02.14 06: 47 14.02.14 06: 47 228 Charlotte Melin the wider implications of niche and validates fluid perceptions, represented by the impressionistic term Aquarellieren. Experiential knowledge is foregrounded. The second part, by contrast, concentrates on formally constituted knowledge and distance. Moreover, the term reinzuzeichnen in the penultimate line teases the reader with different meanings - one literal and the other spatial. Not unlike the conclusion of Eduard Mörike’s poem «Auf eine Lampe,» where the final line, «Was aber schön ist, selig scheint es in ihm selbst,» offers such divergent possibilities of interpretation that it provoked debate between Emil Staiger and Martin Heidegger (Bennett), Rost works to suspend meaning here in a way that reinforces the dilemmas raised by variable modes of perception. On the one hand, the poem suggests that the poet dismisses cultivated gardens and the scientific procedures for tracing contamination back to its source, hence the responsibility of «cleaning things up» (literal reinzeichnen). On the other, it marks a profound refusal on the part of the poet to immerse himself in experience of the fragile material world, to «write his way into» what he sees, that is to make nature an object of contemplation for his poem. The final word in the poem, fotokopieren reduces experience to mechanical reproduction. Photocopying ensures accurate versions, but it lacks the human action of watercolor and fails to capture the messiness of nature. As a process, it introduces the prospect of the posthuman, for the poet becomes incidental to the flecks of ink copying the landscape (cf. the discussion of the posthuman in Hayles 2-3). Rather than settling on one perspective, the poem vividly contrasts the modes of perception available to poetry: the intuitive (associated with niche, vibrant Umwelt, and ecotone) and the precise (derived from mechanical detachment and abstraction). Ultimately, of course, perception relates to representation and the possibility of developing ways to write environmental poetry. Gleichgewicht and Nische, the pivotal terms in these poems, call our attention to the blending of scientific and aesthetic discourses in contemporary poetic language, and the ways in which the postmodern register is transforming the lyric genre. More fundamentally, they alert us that what is described is not merely a «paratactic landscape» that jumbles nature and man-made artifacts together, and yet keeps them physically compartmentalized (Egyptien 64). Both terms embody a sense of systems dynamics, hence an awareness of the deep connection of all earthly things, living and inanimate. With this connection, the infiltration of decomposing nature into texts like Lehnert’s «Herbstzeitlose» (where the colchicum appears in its last phase) and Rost’s «Nachmärz» (where unspecified pollution colors the scene with the aesthetic of the Schaumkissen) becomes an element that constitutes resistance to abstraction, because the concrete, textual details depend on the unflinching perceptions of the poet. The aversion they call forth helps turn «nature» from an object of CG_44_2_s105-232End.indd 228 CG_44_2_s105-232End.indd 228 14.02.14 06: 47 14.02.14 06: 47 «Morgens riecht der Fluß aseptisch» 229 serene contemplation into a problematical environmental subject (Gilcrest). Awareness of such connection thus mediates a different knowledge about our world, for as Heather Sullivan observes, Within the biospheric processes constantly reshaping all matter, there can be no long-term stability for the boundaries we declare between clean and unclean, sanitary and unsanitary, or the pure and the dirty. […] With dirt theory, we see that most of these boundaries are actually porous membranes participating in often disturbing exchanges of energy and matter. (528) Returning now to the questions initially raised with regard to Böhme’s discussion of the problem of representing nature in the contemporary world and the loss of aura, we recognize the difficulty of poetic representation that confronts the two poets, Lehnert and Rost. The texts examined here have obvious roots in the category of Naturlyrik, yet they challenge familiar modes of relating to nature. The purely aesthetic pleasure of the pastoral, the specular apprehension of the sublime, and even the experience of the uncanny are present in the register of the poems, though clearly as echoes of the past. Both poets eschew the self-contained isolation of art - the attitude epitomized by Stefan George’s poem «Komm in den totgesagten park und schau.» With their commitment to an aesthetic of openness and suspended meaning, Lehnert and Rost nevertheless succeed in creating poems that instantiate Aura. Both poems function as works that turn attention to an experience of Umwelt - as an ecopoetical site for reconnecting nature with poetry, perhaps not identical with that which Böhme describes, but a place where aura provisionally exists in the new Naturlyrik. While it is not possible to predict the future of Naturlyrik in the twentyfirst century, the poems examined here argue for its enduring vitality. The decomposing nature that permeates them becomes a constitutive element in poetic composition. This material quality, which I have proposed as indicative of an environmental perspective, is found across contemporary Naturlyrik and utilizes poetic practices that ultimately strive to recover aura. By estranging us from nature, decomposition invites us to reflect on our assumptions about poetry’s capacity to create. True poets, we would consequently hope, are always concerned with poiesis and nature, as, indeed, Lehnert and Rost prove to be in their work to renew the lyric genre. Notes 1 Simic has been well received in Germany through the translation of his work by Thomas Poiss, the poets Hans Magnus Enzensberger and Karin Kiwus, and others. See in particular Simic’s Ein Buch von Göttern und Teufeln: Gedichte, translated by Hans Magnus Enzensberger. CG_44_2_s105-232End.indd 229 CG_44_2_s105-232End.indd 229 14.02.14 06: 47 14.02.14 06: 47 230 Charlotte Melin 2 Gilcrest builds on the work of Lawrence Buell. 3 Scott Slovic similarly observes that ecopoetics is not restricted to insights derived from «nature poetry,» but seeks instead to interpret how language involves patterns, processes, and «living entanglement with the world» that require new modes of interpretation. See Scott Slovic, «Editor’s Note.» 4 It is interesting to note, as current discussions of the anthropocene acknowledge, that this period also coincided with the dramatic rise in CO 2 levels, with a concatenate impact on climate change that continues to the present. 5 Although both authors have won critical acclaim and received literary awards, neither has yet been the subject of sustained scholarly attention. 6 For more information about Lehnert’s work see «Christian Lehnert.» Works Cited «Anthology.» The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. Ed. 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