Form in the Menschheitsdämmerung: A Study of Prosodic Elements and Style in German Expressionist Poetry 9783110891010, 9789027917676

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DE PROPRIETATIBUS LITTERARUM edende curat C. H. VAN SCHOONEVELD Indiana University

Series Practica,

7

FORM IN THE MENSCHHEITSDÄMMER

UNG

A Study of Prosodie Elements and Style in German Expressionist Poetry by

ROBERT P. NEWTON University of North Carolina at Greensboro

1971

MOUTON THE HAGUE ·

PARIS

© Copyright 1971 in The Netherlands. Mouton & Co. Ν. V., Publishers, The Hague. No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publishers.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER 77-147934

Printed in Hungary

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to express my thanks to Professor William H. McClain of Johns Hopkins University for his interest and assistance in the completion of this study. A special debt of gratitude is also owed to the late Professor Ernst Feise for his encouragement as well as his numerous suggestions and critical comments. The Research Council of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro has very generously granted material aid. Last but not least of all, I am indepted to my wife, Fides, for her invaluable assistance in reading proofs and preparing the index.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgment

5

Reference Abbreviations

10

Numerical References to Poems in the Menachheitsdämmerung

11

I . The Critical View of Form in Expressionist Poetry

13

1. Introduction 2. " F o r m " as a Motif in the Menschheitsdämmerung 3. Critical Views on Form in Expressionism a. Form in Expressionist Criticism b. Form in Expressionist Practice (1) The Formlessness of Expressionism (2) The Forms of Expressionism 4. Current Views on Form in Expressionism 5. The Problems of Expressionist Form 6. Critical Utility of such a Survey 7. State of Form Study in Expressionist Research I I . Who or What is Expressionism?

13 16 22 25 30 31 36 39 43 44 47 61

1.The Problem of 'Expressionism' 2. Attempts at Definition

51 56

a. Definition by Motif b. Definition by Style Characterization c. Definition by Representative Poets d. Definition by Historical Period 3. The Menachheitsdämmerung as a Basis for Form Study . . .

57 59 62 65 67

a. Testimony for the Menschheitsdämmerimg b. Possible Bias in the Menschheitsdämmerung c. Consideration of Other Anthologies 4. Conclusion

69 73 76 77

8

CONTENTS

III. The Use of Conventional Verse Elements in the Menschheitsdämmerung

79

1. Conventional Verse Elements 79 2. The Use of the Stanza in the Menschheitsdämmerung 86 a. The Quatrain 87 b. The Sonnet 92 c. The Triad 101 Excursus I: The Triadic Form of Georg Traici 108 d. The Distich (Two Line Stanza) 112 Excursus II: Else Lasker-Schuler's Distich Form 114 e. The Multiline Stanza 116 (1) The Five Line Stanza 118 (2) The Six Line Stanza 120 (3) The Seven Line Stanza 122 (4) The Eight Line Stanza 124 (5) Stanzas of Nine and More Lines 126 f. Stichic Verse 127 Excursus III: Expressionism and Stichic Verse 129 3. The Use of Meter in the Menschheitsdämmermig 132 a. The Metric Feet 136 (1) The Iamb 136 (2) The Trochee 137 Excursus IV: August Stramm's Trochaic Meter 138 Excursus V .-Georg Heym's Emphatic Meter and the 'Visionary' Quatrain 142 (3) Dactylic and Anapestic Verse, and the Stricter FreeRhythms Based on Them 146 Excursus VI : Loose Trochaeo-Dactylic Meters-Heym, Tralci, Lasher-Schüler 149 b. Linear Foot-Number 156 (1) Line Length in General in the Menschheitedämmerung 158 (2) Rhythmic Consequences of a Longer Verse Line 159 (3) Metabolic Lines 161 Excursus VII: Expressionism and the Lied 162 Excursus VIII: The Expressionist Ballad 168 Excursus IX: August Stramm—Stress and Line Length as Style Elements 170 4. The Use of Rhyme, Assonance and Alliteration in the Menschheitsdämmerung 172 a. Views on Rhyme in Expressionism 174 b. General Rhyme Practice in the Menschheitsdämmerung. . . . 177 c. Rhyme Types 185 (1) Rhyme Schemes 185 (2) Free Strophes and Irregular Rhyming 188 (a) Rhyme-Disformation in the Poem 188

CONTENTS

(b) Rhyme-Disformation in the Stanza (o) Madrigal Rhyming (Free Rhyming) (d) Free Strophes (e) Occasional Strophic Variations (f) Rhyming Sections (g) Occasional Rhyming (3) Interior Rhyme (4) Masculine and Feminine Rhymes (6) Rhymelessness d. Assonance and Alliteration (1) Assonance

9

190 190 193 197 197 198 199 202 204 205 207

(a) Assonance as Rhyme Irregularity 208 (b) Assonance Used to Link Verses 209 (i) Schematic Assonance 209 (ii) Unschematic Assonance as a Means of Structural Unity 211 IV. Interpretive Guidelines 1.The Use of Formal Elements in Expressionist Lyrics a. Conventional Verse Forms b. Free Rhythms c. Tendency to Formlessness d. Formal Dissolution 2. Some Popular Verse Elements and Verse Forms 3. The Formal Principle of Unresolved Tension

219 219 220 222 224 226 230 232

a. Basic Expressionist Critical Notions b. Devices of Unresolved Tension

232 239

(1) Thematic Devices and Language (2) Formal Devices

239 240

(a) Compositionally Unresolved Tension (b) Textural Unresolved Tension 4. Perspective: Post-Expressionist Formal Tendencies

241 243 247

Bibliography

255

Key to Poem Numbers and Index

261

REFERENCE ABBREVIATIONS

Several anthologies of poetry are referred t o frequently throughout t h e t e x t ; t h e work a n d page n u m b e r will be indicated in parentheses directly a f t e r t h e reference, using t h e following abbreviations: MD

Menschheitsdämmerung : ein Dokument des Expressionismus, ed. K u r t Pinthue, Rowohlts Klassiker der Literatur u n d Wissenschaft, Deutsche Literatur, Vol. 4 (Reinbek bei H a m b u r g , 1969); "Mit Biographien u n d Bibliographien neu herausgegeben von K u r t P i n t h u e . " This is a republication encompassing all t h e poems contained in t h e first four (slightly varying) printings of Menschheitsdâmmerwng : Symphonie jüngster Dichtung (Berlin, 1920).

LdeJ

Lyrik des expressionistischen Jahrzehnts : von den Wegbereitern zum Dada (Wiesbaden, 1955).

LdE

Die Lyrik des Expressionismus, ed. Clemens Heselhaus, Deutsche Texte, No. 5 (Tübingen, 1956).

VdL

Verse der Lebenden: Deutsche Lyrik seit 1910, ed. Heinrich E d u a r d J a c o b (Berlin, 1927).

bis

NUMERICAL REFERENCES TO POEMS IN THE MENSCHHEITSDÄMMERUNG

Wherever numerous poems are listed as examples, or where no specific remarks are made on a poem mentioned, the work will be referred to by number. A key to these references is found at the end of the monograph. The first number indicates the poet, based on his position in the chronological sequence of birth years; the second designates the poem itself, based on its occurrence in the order of works listed in the "Verzeichnis der Gedichte" (MD, p. 378—381). The key gives the poet's name, the title of the poem, and its page in the anthology. 1-1 is, for example, the first poem by August Stramm (born 1874). 23-12 is the twelfth and last poem of Kurt Heynicke (born 1891). The numbers, therefore, although telling us nothing about the publishing history of the author in question, suggest that he belongs to the earlier or later stages of the Expressionist generation. (Else Lasker-Schüler's official birth-date is 1876; accordingly, she has been listed as "2". Pinthus reports that she was actually born in 1869 (MD, p. 360).)

I THE CRITICAL VIEW OF FORM IN EXPRESSIONIST POETRY

1. INTRODUCTION

Like most studies in Expressionism, that of Expressionist form is as problematic in the definition as in substantive answer. And since the results of any investigation can enjoy no greater clarity than the problem posed, it is hardly surprising that the question of form in German Expressionist lyrics has remained confused. Despite also the increasing enlightenment of historical perspective on that brief era's ideas, attitudes and artistry, the nature, limits and goals of a unique Expressionist STYLE have as yet to be neatly or even cogently defined — in a way, that is, which does not ignore or exclude important personalities and some vital phenomena. Obviously this has not been for lack of critical interest. Beginning with the Expressionists themselves and their contemporary critics, throughout the effusions of scholars and literati of the Twenties, muted for a time by the strident monologue of the Third Reich, but today again revived and amplified, runs the Babylonian tutti of voices weaving variations on a muffled theme. The exact significance of the term'Expressionism', and perhaps even the validity of its existence, remain questions still moot today. Indeed, the very origin of the word, as a pun on prefixes at the expense of 'Im-pressionism', casts some doubt on its original earnestness. A slogan coined for the polemice attending the modern revolution in the plastic arts, 'Expressionism' seems to spread inexorably from one art form to another, from the works of a single coterie to an entire era, gaining in latitude what is lost in definition. This diffuseness of reference is no new discovery, brought into focus by the longer view, but was as obvious to some contemporaries as it is to recent students. From the very beginning the term

14

THE CRITICAI, VIEW OF FORM IN EXPRESSIONIST POETRY

has been either misconstrued or rejected, as will be shown by representative quotations in Chapter II in connection with a fuller discussion of the matter. Our present pursuit is a survey of views on the FORM of Expressionist lyrics. In this context, such a terminological uncertainty has been cited in advance as an important, and indeed almost ineluctable, element of confusion. For as the contrasting views of poets and critics are presented — those who have emphasized Expressionism's purported formlessness opposed to those, more neglected, who see a 'Will to Form' — we must remember that they will be referring often to quite different poets and styles, as well as entertaining a different notion of what form might be. It is obvious that a critic's judgment on any given element of a style is based on specific poems he has in mind at the time of writing, and where no typical, accepted examples are generally referred to an incomparable confusion must prevail. That has long been the case in Expressionist research. Thus, where it is possible, the particular 'school' to which comments have been directed should be identified. Often we cannot be quite sure which 'Expressionism' the author has in mind. We can only present and classify his view, knowing he might well wish to qualify it, were he speaking of the same Expressionism as we. The confusing effect of differences in the understanding of 'form' is equally obvious. Here the variety of notions held is not peculiar to our historical period, though perhaps exaggerated in it, but rather is founded in the long-standing German, and European, dispute over the meaning of that concept. Even in the general usage of the German language, 'form' has various denotations which, applied in literary criticism, will designate quite different aspects of a work. Thus, 'form' may be the fortuitous external shape as opposed to the matter of a thing; or a defining and typical characteristic; or some specific modification of a genus; or a pre-established mold into which substance is cast; or, in sport, a capability commensurate with the result desired. And, in German, the word may have positive or negative overtones — positive, certainly, in the last mentioned case, but negative along the axis of 'good manners' as the pole of empty 'formality' is approached. In more properly aesthetic and literary usage, 'form' may be an established pattern, a mold; or an inward organic principle from

THE CRITICAL VIEW OF FORM IN EXPRESSIONIST POETRY

15

which the outward structural details can be explained, that is, a principle of unity; or, approached oppositely, the specific external shape correlative with a given 'content'; and even, sometimes, a simple synonym for the literary genres — lyric, epic and dramatic. Without attempting to review systematically the fortunes of the category of 'form' in German aesthetic thought, or of the term 'form' in practical criticism, we shall have occasion to refer again to this dispute in a section dealing with the various views on form held by contemporary critics. It would be an unnecessarily protracted approach to recount the German genealogy of the term 'form'. For, though it is true that such a term comes into the hands of poets, journalists and critics with a history of accumulated connotations which cannot be ignored (we will in fact separate several strands of usage which are entangled in the German history of the word), it is also a dominant matter of fact that in Expressionist writings no attempt is made to use the concept systematically or to see it in the context of traditional theories, so that recalling them would not advance any practical critical purpose. Rather, as first witnesses, even prior to the many theoreticians, apologists, ideologues, impresarios and patrons of the turbulent Expressionist movement, we shall hearken to the poets of the Menschheitsdämmerung, to lyrical occurrences of the word 'form' in this prominent anthology, and to a few instances of the motif in other lyrics. We would hope to find the word here charged with a vitality it does not always have in theory. To complete the survey, a third section, after the poets and their contemporary critics, will review more recent general statements on the significance of form in Expressionist literature. An attempt will be made to separate those statements which emphasize the style's formlessness from others which attribute to it a definite formal awareness. Throughout, no account has been taken of the chronology of the various utterances. In many cases contradictory views in question will be found in the same work. In some few instances apparent contradictions will actually represent a change of viewpoint of the writer, as is the case with Werfel. Since the various points of view are represented throughout the period and since the issue in debate was never systematically discussed and we can detect no progressive clarification, it is not misleading to treat these views 'simultaneously' — itself a good Expressionist method.

16

THE CRITICAL VIEW OF FORM IN EXPRESSIONIST POETRY

2. "FORM" AS A MOTIF IN THE

"MENSCHHEITSDÄMMERUNG"

That the motif 'form' is comparatively infrequent in any particular group of poems is not surprising. For the word in its abstract sense and the problem connected with it are not the customary and most essential stuff of lyric poetry, though they do indeed provide the matter of some famous poems. Mörike treats the motif symbolically in "Auf eine Lampe", Schiller philosophically in "Das Ideal und das Leben", and Storm directly and epigrammatically in "Lyrische Form". Goethe's "Lied und Gebilde" is also relevant. Most significant is that the motif appears as frequently as it does in Expressionist poetry, for this is an impressive indication that the problem of form was then no mere critical or philosophical one, but penetrated to the realm of immediate, human experience. We will encounter here, for the first time, an obsession with, but a profound ambivalence toward, all formative factors in life, in art and even in human consciousness. The problem of form we shall see to be but one manifestation of the most generally characteristic Expressionist concern — that of the relationship of human consciousness to itself and to the objective world. The best known instance of the form motif in the Menschheitsdämmerung, perhaps indeed the best known statement of the form problem in the whole period and possibly a contributing factor to the continuing mystique of its formlessness, is Ernst Stadler's lyric, "Form ist Wollust": Form und Riegel mußten erst zerspringen, Welt durch aufgeschlossne Röhren dringen: Form ist Wollust, Friede, himmlisches Genügen, Doch mich reißt es, Ackerschollen umzupflügen. Form will mich verschnüren und verengen, Doch ich will mein Sein in alle Weiten drängen — Form ist klare Härte ohn' Erbarmen, Doch mich treibt es zu den Dumpfen, zu den Armen,

Und in grenzenlosem Michverschenken Will mich Leben mit Erfüllung tränken. (8-10, MD, 312) The line "Form ist klare Härte ohn' Erbarmen" is occasionally cited to indicate the purported attitude of Expressionists as a group to the problem of form in poetry. But the poem poses some

THE CRITICAL VIEW OF FORM IN EXPRESSIONIST POETRY

17

curious problems for such an interpretation, not the least among them being that its own verse form is quite conventional, its meter well observed (n.b. the apocope of 'ohne') without monotonous regularity, and the structure of both rhythm and sentences in the service of a dialectically conducted period. We might say that the verse form accords, if not a 'himmlisches Genügen', then at least the sense of resolved rhythmic tensions to be expected in a good conventional poem. Aroused by this apparent contradiction, we will consider more closely the statements about 'form' which constitute the poem and reach the obvious conclusion that not verse form specifically is meant, but something far more general. This more general idea of form, the one emotionally rejected, encompasses social convention, the restraints of 'individuality' and established character, perhaps even the conscious control and formation of life and art. It is one of the not infrequent phenomena we shall encounter that critics and historians confuse the sense of 'formlessness' advocated in this poem with an actual formlessness in verse, or a defense thereof. This confusion is often abetted, as here in the case of the poet Stadler, by the fact that a good portion of his other verses really are of a type often called 'formless', i.e., verses of irregular length, unstanzaic, and sometimes unrhymed. Precisely in this programmatic poem, however, the verses are regular and rhymed and give no cause to associate Stadler's rejection of 'form' with a disavowal of conventional form in poetry. We have referred above to the mystique of formlessness connected with Expressionism, based on a frequent unqualified generalization of a partial truth. The partial but very significant reality is that many Expressionists value highly the quality of "formlessness" in the sense suggested by Stadler, as a spontaneous, unconceptual and active sympathy with life. Most of the other references to 'form' in the Menschheitsdämmerung give this evaluation, the references in question being, incidentally, almost all in the works of Franz Werfel. It will become clearer that there is good reason for this as we examine more closely the verse forms in our anthology. For Werfel, who is often considered one of the arch Expressionists, shows himself, in poetic practice as in reflective theory, to be one of those most aware of the issue of form versus formlessness. The 'form' motif appears in the following passages by Werfel:

18

T H E CRITICAL V I E W OF FORM IN E X P R E S S I O N I S T

POETRY

1. Unüberwindlich sind des Guten Tränen, Baustoff der Welt und Wasser der Gebilde. Wo seine guten Tränen niedersinken Verzehrt sich jede Form und kommt zu sieh. (19-18; MD, 275, 11. 2. Komm, heiliger Geist, Du schöpferisch ! Den Marmor unserer Form zerbrich I Daß nicht mehr Mauer krank und hart Den Brunnen dieser Welt umstarrt, Daß wir gemeinsam und nach oben Wie Flammen ineinander toben !

9-12)

(19-24; MD, 321, 11. 1 - 6 ) 3. Wir drehen uns vorüber An einem Lämpchen, einem Mann. Uns reißt etwas hinüber, Und letzte Sehnsucht faßt uns an. Wir werden nie mis haben, Denn Formsein packt uns herrisoh ein. Und sind wir einst begraben, Wird Staub dem Staub noch feindlich sein. (19-25; MD, 323, 11.

1-8)

Exactly as was the case with Stadler, we find Werfel consistently using the "form" motif in the context of a quite conventional stanza form, a clear indication that the dominating form he would wish to consume or shatter is not closely associated with the idea of poetic form. Rather, the term's connotation, as in Stadler, is that of form as a social barrier between man and man, a barrier which (the third example suggests) may be more existential than sociological. There are of course nuances. In the first passage 'form' might even be simply thought of as meaning 'excessively formal manners', in which case it would inherit or exploit the pejorative sense of the German word which we have referred to. In the second and third examples, 'form' represents the limitations, the bonds, the isolation of individuality. In the first two poems it is an isolation, a separating surface, which may be breached still, but in the third it is accepted with resignation. Common also to the first two passages, and perhaps in a way the third, is an opposition of liquidity to the firmness of form — an imagery found also in lines one .and two of "Form ist Wollust", and to which we will soon again refer.

THE CRITICAL VIEW OF FORM IN EXPRESSIONIST POETRY

19

It is interesting by way of contrast then to notice that the one positive commitment to 'form' which we find in the Menschheitsdämmerung uses the word expressly in the sense of aesthetic form, that is, in the previously neglected sense, and — paradoxically — it appears in what many contemporary critics would have called a 'formless' work. The passage is in Gottfried Benn's "Der junge Hebbel": Ihr schnitzt und bildet: den gelenken Meißel in einer feinen weichen Hand. Ich schlage mit der Stirn am Marmorblock die Form heraus. Meine Hände schaffen ums Brot. Ich bin mir noch sehr fern. Aber ich will Ich werden ! Ich trage einen tief im Blut, der schreit nach seinen selbsterschaffenen Götterhimmeln und Menschenerden. (9—2; MD, 70, 1 - 1 0 ) Prom these paragraphs and the remainder of the poem we must conclude that 'form' is a quality valued, though a clear distinction is made between 'aesthetic', facile form-manipulation and more violently expressive form-creation. In the possibility of these two connotations lie the seeds of a second ambiguity to plague the critical writings of the period. For, often, we find no clear distinction made between 'form' considered as an observance of conventional rules and that 'inward form' which is held to be organic even to outwardly 'formless' works of art. Still, even in "Der junge Hebbel" form is not allowed to function only as an artistic category. The second stanza above adds to the two artistic senses of 'form' just mentioned the personal sense exploited earlier by Stadler and Werfel. The important difference is, of course, that Benn here affirms the process of personal individuation and establishes it as the goal of self-realization, to be sure a more positive prospect than we view in his "Gesänge", also in the Menschheitsdämmerung. The metaphor of marble and its form, used by both Werfel and Benn and not uncommon in such contexts, tempts further comparison with Schiller's previously mentioned poem "Das Ideal und das Leben".1 Here (stanzas eight and nine) the conception of form 1

Friedrich Schiller, Sämtliche

Werke (München, 1958), I, p. 203.

20

THE CRITICAL VIEW OF FORM IN EXPRESSIONIST POETRY

is Platonic. Form is a divine 'Gestalt' (stanza three) which is released from imprisoning matter by the artist's genius, much as the philosopher strips adventitious qualities from the essential idea of a thing. With the artist, this release is the result of intense effort and sacrifice, an agony of chisel strokes, whose final achievement must appear effortless. The elements and stages of the artistic process are the lifeless matter, the energy and genius of the artist as craftsman, and the ultimate shape of beauty to be liberated to a life of its own. In Benn's and Werfel's use of the 'marble' motif, though their attitudes towards individuation are directly opposed, we find significant and common differences of emphasis with respect to Schiller. Benn's young Hebbel hacks laboriously at the stone to realize its inward shape; Werfel's holy spirit shatters the marble and its form completely, also in the name of release, but actually for neither of them is the transformation or deformation of matter the main motif. In Schiller's poem this transformation was the main point and the artist important only as its agent, but in the two Expressionist poems it is the AGENT himself who, after the introduction of the 'marble' and 'form' motifs, usurps our interest. This is reflected in the abandonment of the introductory imagery without any further development such as we find in "Das Ideal und das Leben". It is replaced in each instance by an image of fluidity, in Werfel 'flame', in Benn's poem 'blood'. The former poet would fain evanesce and the latter would congeal, but in both instances the problem is now that of the artist's own 'form' and not that of his work. And in both the Schillerian duality has been replaced by a Heraclitean monism, in which the fluidity of substance makes vain the traditional concept of form. There is no Schillerian 'Schwere' to be left behind as the ideal is realized, but rather the substance itself is transmuted. Even in Goethe's "Lied und Gebilde" (Westöstlicher Divan), where a contrast of substance is made explicit, molded clay versus the 'flüssiges* Element', our eye is held by the poet's shaping of the water, which in its essence remains unchanged. Without wishing to press these differences too far, 2 we notice attitudes here which, it is hoped, can later be shown to pervade many Expressionistic form and structure devices. 1 We would have to comment then on the 'fluidity' of Schiller's 'tief versteckter Born' of truth (stanza δ) and the fact that it is not an image for the nature of the artist himself.

THE CRITICAL VIEW OF FORM IN EXPRESSIONIST POETRY

21

Like Gottfried Benn, Walter Hasenclever sees 'form' as an emergent event in the course of a development. 3 We read in Hasenclever's "Der Jüngling", which is not in the Menschheitsdämmerung : Nur wir sind würdig, alles zu genießen, Die wir genießen, ohne Ziel und Norm Und die wir, groß im Auseinanderfließen, Einst wieder wachsen: einsam und zur Form.4 Again we find the conventional stanza, again the formlessness of the poet rather than of his poem. And again we encounter the image of fluidity in conjunction with and opposed to form. Of course, it is an imagery as old as Moses, and the only factor that makes it significant is its complete suppression of the equally obvious and ancient imagery of the formlessness of unhewn or unmolded matter. Interesting also is its frequent combination with the idea of an organic development as opposed to a dualism of form and matter. In Hasen clever's poem that implication is in the 'growing' toward form. This growth toward form provides a specific image for Wilhelm Klemm's "Der Baum" {MD p. 160, 6 - 6 ) which says of itself: Ich wuchs unaufhaltsam in meine Form. Nun stehe ich so, wie du mich gewollt hast. Another instance of imagery which depicts form ae an organic outgrowth of an active, vital principle is to be found in the following poem by Else Lasker-Schüler, "Trieb": Es treiben mich brennende Lebensgewalten, Gefühle, die ich nicht zügeln kann, Und Gedanken die sich zur Form gestalten, Fallen mich wie Wölfe an.5 In none of the examples we have found is form thought of as Mörike's 'Kunstgebild der echten Art', or Schiller's 'Bild' — "schlank und leicht, wie aus dem Nichts gesprungen". Even though 3 Herwarth Waiden says of 'the poets': "Sie nehmen Formen, statt, Formen zu geben." In "Das Begriffliche in der Dichtung", Der Sturm, I X , 66—67; quoted from Paul Pörtner, Literatur-Revolution 1910—1925 (Darmstadt, 1960), I, 405. * Walter Hasenclever, Der Jüngling (Leipzig, 1913), p. 23. «Else Laeker-Schüler, Gedichte 1902—1943 (München, 1969), p. 19.

22

THE CRITICAL VIEW OF FORM IN EXPRESSIONIST POETRY

form may be thought of as an end stage (in the last three examples), it is not a product, a pattern imposed on substance, but an event, the outcome of a process of change. Albert Soergel, the most prominent early historian of Expressionism, calls this the 'eschatological' nature of form.® Benn, in his essay "Probleme der Lyrik", has given the notion a formulation which is well known: Eine isolierte Form, eine Form an sich, gibt es ja gar nicht. Sie ist das Sein, der existentielle Auftrag des Künstlers, sein Ziel.7 With this idea Benn occupies a middle ground between Schiller's dualism of material and form and the conception of emergent form we have developed above. Benn's form is a 'höchster Inhalt' rather than an event of development. Expressionists may take either view; but we will not find them thinking of form as an established and accepted pattern without vigorously rejecting it. And this latter reaction is, ae we have said, one of the major sources of the myth of their poetry's formlessness.

3. CRITICAL VIEWS ON FORM IN EXPRESSIONISM

Comparisons of motif development and imagery are concrete and, to my mind, most fascinating. But traditional literary history and criticism have been more preoccupied with the THEORETICAL views on form put forward by Expressionist writers and contemporary students of the movement. As we read through the documentation of this era, its manifestoes, essays, polemics, appreciations and interpretations, and through the studies of the Twenties which attempt to characterize post mortem what Expressionism had been, we are struck by the simple fact that the numerous ambiguities of sense of the word "form" were never clarified and that, instead of serving as a tool, the word served usually only as a slogan, an imprecation or a spellbinding charm. Contemporary testimony to this fact is given by

6

Albert Soergel, Dichtung wnd Dichter der Zeit. Neue Folge: Im Barme des Expressionismus (Leipzig, 1927), p. 381. 7 Gottfried Benn, "Probleme der Lyrik", Gesammelte Werke (Wiesbaden, 1959), I, 608;

THE CRITICAL VIEW OF FORM IN EXPRESSIONIST POETRY

23

Emil Winkler in 1924, in an article entitled "Was heißt dichterische Form?": Ein Wissenschaftsbegriff nun, den der Literaturwissenschaftler von heute besonders genau unter die Lupe nehmen muß, ist der Begriff der dichterischen 'Form'.8 In the course of his exposition Winkler shows that the word has three distinguishable senses, whose confusion can be dangerous, and concludes: Das kunstwissenschaftliche Denken scheint durch eine Homonymie bedroht.® The result of this dangerous homonymy has been that less critical writers plunge hypnotically into abysmal confusion, while the more perceptive ones seem in continuous struggle with an alter ego, engaged in heroic self-contradiction. A good example of this may be found in two published lectures of 1917 and 1918 by Kasimir Edschmid. In the former he states: Man konnte nach George nioht mehr vergessen, daß eine große Form unumgängig sei für das Kunstwerk.. .10 whereas in the latter he maintains: wir (the Expressioniets) . . . legen auf Formales geringsten Wert.. . u Since, he continues, questions of artistry are superficial in comparison with the artist's sense of social solidarity. One might rightly ask if this re-evaluation is not a symptom of what some hold to be the progressive radicalization of the Expressionist movement, its turn to political and social revolution at the end of World War I. But a comparison of style and purpose of the two lectures would indicate that such is not the case. 8 Emil Winkler, "Was heißt dichterisohe F o r m i " Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift, Χ Π (1924), p. 267. • Ibid., p. 260. But the senses of form which Winkler distinguishes are somewhat different from those developed here, as will be indicated in footnote 49 to Chapter I. 1 0 Kasimir Edschmid, "Über den dichterischen Expressionismus" (1917) in Über den Expressionismus in der Literatur und die neue Dichtung, Tribüne der Kunst und Zeit, no. 1 (Berlin, 1920), p. 46. 1 1 Kasimir Edschmid, "Über den Expressionismus in der Literatur und die neue Dichtung", Ibid., p. 11.

24

THE CRITICAL VIEW OF FORM IN EXPRESSIONIST POETRY

Furthermore, the 1918 lecture later advocates a poetic form which has become one with its content,12 in which case it is either not the superficial artistic question we have been told it was or it is no longer 'form' in the same sense. Perhaps the nondiscursive nature of Expressionist criticism makes such apparent contradiction inevitable, but this sort of polemical imprecision should not confuse the view of literary historians. Since the senses and problems of 'form' in Expressionism have not heretofore been adequately distinguished, we shall be obliged, and free, to devise our own categories. In Expressionist criticism there seem to be four 'problems' connected with the notion of form. The first, the problem of form in the sense we have seen in the poems of Stadler, Werfel, Benn and Hasenclever, is philosophically that of self-realization, or, in sociological terms, self-interested individuation — a process which can conceivably alienate the individual person from the brotherhood of mankind, from 'essential' man, as happened (according to much influential German thought) in the bourgeois nineteenth century. As such, the problem is part and parcel of one of the major geistesgeschichtliche issues in the study of Expressionism, the question of the Expressionist's characteristic and 'new' spirit and perspective. It is an issue which is usually debated in the terms of fraternity, love, anti-individualism, immersion of the self in the community or universe, and in similar formulations. More profoundly still it is the problem of the very existence of the 'individual'. Is he still possible in any sense, or have not the functional interrelationships of the technological world and the positivistic analysis of modern thought reduced him to an unessential association of impressions and desires ? Wherever such questions are broached by Expressionists the idea of the 'form' of the individual is also implied, even though the word may never appear. The second problem of form is a ramification of the first, extended into the realm of literary creation — to wit, whether or not conscious control of artistic form is a hindrance to spontaneous communication of the poet's vital message to his fellow-man or to his imperative self-expression. Form would then per se constitute a distortion of the modern 'simultaneous' experience of reality, the interpenetration of experiences. "Ibid., p. 32.

THE CRITICAL VIEW OF FORM IN EXPRESSIONIST POETRY

25

The other form problems deal with matters of literary history. In dispute is: First, whether Expressionist literature is, in actual fact, formless; and second, assuming on the contrary it is a literature like any other, written in some kinds of forms, then to what extent are these forms peculiarly Expressionistic. In practice these questions of fact often become hopelessly confused with theory, admonition and subjective feeling. It is of utmost importance to recognize that one can, among Expressionist authors, adduce opinions pro and con on all of these issues. This means that the 'Expressionist spirit' is not inherently formless, but that form in all senses is problematic in its thinking. However, the cliché of Expressionism, as it soon took shape and currently is still often repeated, tends to mean by 'form' the literary form (and with great frequency in the case of poetry simply verse form) and to opine that, in this respect, Expressionism is indeed formless or represents a dissolution of conventional forms. This is a considerable simplification. a) Form in Expressionist

Criticism

The problem posed for the human subject in the demarcation of itself and its object was the first of the 'form' problems mentioned, certainly a major issue in the study of Expressionism as a phase in the history of thought and sensibility. Concerned ae we are with verse form and structure, we shall not further deal with it directly. On the other hand the corollary argument about the status of form in literary art, whether or not it is essential to the latter's nature, is directly apropos. This is basically the traditional antagonism between Ausdruckskunst and Formkunst being voiced anew. Those who discredit the necessity of form, the loudest voices of the times, conceive of form as some pure or absolute external pattern imposed and manipulated by the artist for its own sake. We may cite Arno Schirokauer in his Expressionismus der Lyrik: Das Wesentliche mußte hinter den Formen sein, sie. . . waren nur Schleier und Schein.13 18 Arno Schirokauer, Expressionismus der Lyrik (1924), in Germanistische Studien, ed. Fritz Strich (Hamburg, 1957), p. 22.

26

THE CRITICAL VIEW OF FORM I N EXPRESSIONIST POETRY

Nie wird das Ziel solchen Dichtwerks (Expressionist lyric) sein die absolute Form, welche zeitlos i s t . . . u Nicht mehr ist die Kunst eine Summe erlernbarer Handgriffe.15 And Kurt Hiller: Form, als solche, ist leer.1® Such writers mean to reject only 'form as such', but polemic impetus often transports them beyond their goal. They imply that 'form' is expendable, self-indulgent, even reprehensible, and in the reality of Expressionism nonexistent. A case in point is Ludwig Rubiner, editor of the anthology Kameraden der Menschheit: Wir wissen, daß der rein künstlerische Wert unrein und ein Unwert ist.17 And Kurt Hiller, in Das Ziel: Die Gestaltenden mildern nicht das Unglück der Anderen, sondern schroten das Eigene aus.18 In this connection we might also recall Stadler's idea that "Form ist Wollust", 19 which implies a reproach of selfishness. Wilhelm Michel, an Expressionist champion of form, says generally of revolutionary periods in his 1920 essay "Tathafte Form": Sie zeigen immer die Neigung, Form fälschlich zu subordinieren.20 M

Ibid., p. 36. "Ibid., p. 23. 16 Kurt Hiller, "Philosophie des Ziele", in Das Zid; Jahrbuch 1915 (München), p. 187. Quoted from Wolfgang Paulsen, Expressionismus und Aktivismus (Bern, 1935), p. 68. 17 Kameraden der Menschheit, ed. Ludwig Rubiner (Potsdam, 1919), p. 123. Quoted from F. J. Schneider, Der expressive Mensch und die deutsche Lyrik der Gegenwart (Stuttgart, 1927), p. 142. 18 Hiller, p. 68. 18 Stefan George, against whose influence muoh of this polemic is directed, does not identify form with 'Wollust'. For George art, and to a great extent that means form, is the transfiguration of 'Wollust', and not the thing itself, as he writes in "Tage und Taten. Aufzeichnungen und Skizzen." See: August Closs, Die freien Rhythmen in der deutschen Lyrik (Bern, 1947), p. 192. î0 Wilhelm Michel, "Tathafte Form", Die Erhebung. Jahrbuch für neue Dichtung und Wertung, ed. Alfred Wolfenstein, 2 vol. (Berlin, 1919 and 1920), Π (1920), p. 348.

THE CRITICAL VIEW OF FORM IN EXPRESSIONIST POETRY

27

The forensic overstatement is not a new story, nor is it the first time that foe as well as friend cooperated in forgetting originally reasonable qualifications. If we do not ignore the 'pure', 'absolute' and 'as such' the preceding statements come into proper focus. We must understand by 'form' the established, restrictive verse forms which German literary criticism associates with the Romance literatures, and we must think of them in the context of the turn of the century, when a reaction to the stylistic negligence of the Naturalists appeared in the George circle and the l'art pour l'art spirit belatedly permeated the German literary scene. For the Expressionists, Stefan George is the chief representative of the reputed symbolist doctrine that form and not sense is the conclusive value of a poem, perhaps even the exclusive value.21 In theory this doctrine equates the art of poetry with its formal or at least its immanent aspect. In practice it emphasizes, or is considered to emphasize by those who oversimplify George's ideas on form,22 the absoluteness of meter and the artful handling of a wide variety of traditional stanzaic schemes. Other representatives of this post-Naturalistic 'neue Formgesinnung'23 were poete such as R. M. Rilke, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Rudolf Alexander Schröder and Rudolf Borchardt,24 but in the minds of many Expressionists the exaltation of literary form was especially associated with George, with his personal cult, and with the aesthetes' esoteric alienation from basic humanity.

11

"Den wert d e r d i c h t u n g entscheidet nioht der sinn (sonst wäre sie etwa Weisheit gelahrtheit) sondern die form . . . " (Stefan George, see note 19.) Expressionists forget t h e qualification George adds: ". . . d.h. durchaus nichts äusserliches sondern jenes tief erregende in maaes und klang wodurch zu allen zeiten die Ursprünglichen die Meister sich von den nachfahren den künstlern zweiter Ordnung unterschieden haben". 22 e.g. Max Brod, "Versuch einer neuen Metrik", Der Sturm, I I (1912), No. 58, p. 462. 13 Clemens Heselhaus, "Die dt. Lyrik des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts", in Dt. Lit. im zwanzigsten Jahrhwndert, ed. Hermann Friedmann (Heidelberg, 1954), p. 175. 24 Rudolf Borchardt generously returns the antipathy of the Expressionists in his "Rede über Hofmannsthal'', Wolfgang Borchardt. Reden (Stuttgart), pp. 53—57, which lambasts modernism in general and its formlessness in particular.

28

THE CRITICAL VIEW OF FORM IN EXPRESSIONIST POETRY

Seen in this perspective, rejection of formal elements as superficial by Edschmid and others is recognized aa a moral commitment to the community rather than a purely artistic judgement. It is a rebellion of the engaged artist against the supposedly self-glorifying one. Especially associated with the idea of engagement are the Activist poets, among whom are several masters of conventional forms, such as Benn, Wolfenstein and Lichtenstein.25 Disavowals of form from such a quarter must be read as the traditional reaction to an immediately preceding, quite specific literary phase. But this theoretical antipathy to literary form is not the whole truth of Expressionism. Though the fact is often overlooked, many Expressionists recognized form as an essential element of art, and among these are not only those writers who accepted traditional verse forms. Naturally we would expect a Werfel and a Wolfenstein to admit a term so essential to the conventional verse which they can and do practice with great virtuosity, whatever attacks they may permit themselves on 'form' in its social and psychological sense. But even men like Edschmid who have no vested interest in the defense of traditional verse forms can say, as we have already seen, that a masterful form is as imperative to the work of art as is significant content. To document this form-consciousness, or rather this awareness of the critical necessity of the term 'form', we might immediately adduce one of the most surprising and certainly one of the most significant testimonies, that of Herwarth Waiden, the patron of the Sturm poets. Surprising, since the 'absolute verbal art' of this group is often considered the logically extreme development of Expressionism's formlessness. Significant, since the term 'form' is now applied in an obviously technical sense without implying conventional versé forms and devices as with the antiformaliste. Waiden says: Die Sichtbarkeit jeder Kunst ist die Form. Form ist die äußere Gestaltung der Gesichte als Ausdruck ihres inneren Lebens. Jedes Gesicht hat seine eigene Form.26 25

Other Activist poets are Van Hoddis, Α. Ehrenstein, L. Rubiner, J. R. Becher, E. W. Lötz, Κ. Otten, Max Hermann-Neisse, I. Göll, W. Klemm. See Albert Soergel, Im Banne des Expressionismus, p. 651. 26 Herwart Waiden, "Dae Begriffliche in der Dichtung", Der Sturm, IX (1918), p. 66.

THE CRITICAL VIEW OF FORM IN EXPRESSIONIST POETRY

29

What is meant here is not the 'inward form' in the traditional German sense, but the 'outward form' which corresponds to it. The inneres Leben here represents the former concept. A statement by Wolfgang Paulsen shows another typical effort to apply 'form', in this sense of specifically expressive form, to Expressionist poetry, without however sacrificing the revolutionary fervor of antiformalism. It is a maneuver similar to Gottfried Benn's. Paulsen writes: So zieht der Dichter die Form in sein Erlebnis herab, denn eine darüber schwebende, unberührte Form kann es für ihn (for the Expressionist poet) nicht geben. Gewiß, er macht die Form gleichermaßen zum Inhalt. Aber daß er das tut, ist ja schon wieder ein Beweis für die Priorität des Inhaltes, denn die Form wird zum Inhalt gemacht — und eben nicht: der Inhalt zur Form.27 Kasimir Edschmid has also been previously quoted as making this equation of form and content, which doctrine, though it is not novel in Expressionism, is typical of Expressionist writers who try to preserve the concept of form in a sense acceptable to the times. Insofar as form is not an imposed external authority or an empty and effete formality, insofar, that is, as it can be considered an intensional control or an organic element of the whole, it can be defended and even exalted in Expressionism. In this context, it is interesting to recall the frequency with which we found the imagery of 'fluidity' being used with the 'form' motif in the Menschheitsdämmerung. Stadler's world, released suddenly through opened conduits; Werfel's tears which constitute and share the shape of the world; his 'flames' and 'dust' as ultimate forms of man; Benn's self buried in the blood; Hasenclever's diffusive flow which grows again to form; Else Lasker-Schüler's materializing lupine thoughts — all seem to suggest a vitalistic, an intensive world, whose form and substance or content are inseparable. It is a world, incidentally, in which on a psychological, social and political plane the demarcation of subject and object have become so problematic that both solipsism and self-abandonment prosper. But it is not only expressively specific form which Expressionists may defend. There are 'reactionary' countercurrents that not only practice but also critically justify conventional verse forms. Alfred Wolfenstein not only uses the word 'form' without appa" Paulsen, Exp. und Aktiv., p. 138.

30

THE CRITICAL VIEW OF FORM IN EXPRESSIONIST POETRY

rent qualms, despite his Activist sentiments, but even accuses Activists of error when they assume that the urgency of moral problems in literature invalidates the formal question.28 And Franz Werfel, in an indisputably Expressionistic essay of 1917, defends quite unequivocally the traditional verse forms. He is able to do so and still permit himself the obligatory taunt at pedantic formalism: Alle lyrischen Revolutionen (in Ermanglung anderer) handeln von Abkehr und Wiederkehr zur Strophe. Die Prämisse ist immer falsch, denn sie heißt 'konventionelle Architektur'. Der freie Vers wird gegen die vierzeilige Strophe, die vierzeilige Strophe gegen den freien Vera immer wieder neu erschaffen. Ob aber geleugnet oder gehuldigt wird, diese konventionelle Strophe ist durch keine adäquate, gleich mächtige und allgemeine Form ersetzt, so verschweint sie auch ist. Alle Reformen sind eben Reformen, geboren aus Willkür und nicht aus biologisch genialer Notwendigkeit. . . . Ich glaube an die Geburt einer neuen strophischen Dichtkunst, die ganz frei sein wird von der scholastischen Symmetrie bisheriger Architektur, aber ebenso frei von der Zufälligkeit der aus dunklem Widerspruch kommenden, sich selbst nicht beweisenden, immer auch anders möglichen, permutationsfreien Erneuerung. In der modernen Literatur haben solche Strophen Hölderlin (in den Hymnen), Poe und Swinburne geahnt.29 That Werfel is turning away from some of the excesses of his own earlier practice we will soon see. But he is not in theory abandoning the freedom of treatment of conventional forms which he had gained and may thus still be considered an example of the Expressionist as champion of form. b) Form in Expressionist Practice We have been previously considering critical views with respect to the general problem of literary form. There is a different, an historical problem involved in determining what was held by contemporaries to be the actual practice of the poets, and opinions here need not necessarily run parallel to those of the theoreticians. Involved here is the question as to whether Expressionist literature, and specifically poetry, is IN FACT formless or uses forms; Wolfenetein, " B ü d e r s t u r m " , Die Erhebung, I I , p. 379. "Substantiv und Verbum", Die Aktion, No. 1/2 (1917), in LiteraturRevolution 1910—1925, ed. Paul Pörtner, 2 Vol. (Darmstadt, 1960 & 1961) I (1960), pp. 1 8 7 - 1 8 8 . 28

29

THE CRITICAL VIEW OP FORM IN EXPRESSIONIST POETRY

31

and, secondly, the question as to the nature of any such forms used, that is, whether they are traditional or peculiarly Expressionistic. For example, in the passage just quoted from Werfel, the implication is that there has been a lyrical revolution which has in general practice abandoned conventional architecture in the lyric. Is this a universally accepted fact, and if so what sort of form has replaced the conventional one, or is the result usually seen ae pure formlessness ? (1) The Formlessness of Expressionism, It would seem superfluous to document the universal cliché that Expressionist poetry is in fact formless or shows a dissolution of forms. Like all clichés it stems from an oversimplification of a rather obvious state of affairs, and an overextension of this apparent simplicity. We do not need scholarly verification that there is a good deal of free verse being written in this decade and that some of the surviving 'conventional' stanzas, when charitably judged, upset our expectations and, when harshly evaluated, seem rather badly done. It is these phenomena which, rightly or wrongly, have been taken as characteristic of the style and designated 'formless'. The real extent of the phenomena must be investigated at the sources, but we may properly inquire now as to the meaning of 'formless' when it is used in such a critical context, and shall find that it may have any one of the senses already differentiated. It is not surprising of course, in the light of this 'dangerous' homonymy, that the 'form' of the individual in the world and the prescriptive 'form' of conventional verses and the critical notion of expressively specific 'form' should all be applied as standards to Expressionist poetry. It is not surprising, but it is certainly pernicious that there has been little differentiation of these usages, but instead an indiscriminate stylistic generalizing about what is, after all, generally conceded to be a protean period of the lyric. We shall find this confusion of meanings to be a source of blindness, in many interpretations, to what should otherwise be quite manifest. Let us run the gamut of forms which are said to be missing in Expressionism and Expressionists. Hermann Pongs attributes the most radical sort of chaos to

32

THE CRITICAL VIEW OF FORM IN EXPRESSIONIST POETRY

Expressionistic creation, a chaos of simple perceptions, associations and urges, transcribed automatically as it were, unshaped by consciousness, personality or character. In short, a method akin to Dada theory. He ascribes such a method to Gottfried Benn and considers it to represent: . . . die Preisgabe aller formenden Aktionen des Bewußtseins, im Aufnehmen der chaotischen Flutungen des Innen und Außen.30 This is an extreme statement, applied to the creative process itself, of characteristics which are often claimed for the Expressionistic style — namely, free association and what is called, in the jargon of the times, 'acausality', a juxtaposition of elements which are not even united by associative relationships. Pongs's idea of formlessness is not basically a literary quality, but rather a spiritual state of the poet, induced by a refusal to assert the organizing and individualizing functions of consciousness. It is to this mode of creation that reference is being made when, as happens, the quality of 'impersonality' is occasionally attributed to the Expressionistic style in poetry, despite its almost continual invocation of the first and second grammatical persons. At the social level, also, the Expressionist artist is sometimes said to be suffering from a lack of form, suffering quite literally from a lack of those common forms of human communication which society alone can provide him and within which the artist must work if he is to achieve more than mere private expression. As stated by one of the earlier Expressionist poets who wrote traditional verses, Franz Blei: Aus einer Gemeinschaft, die nicht ist, entbunden, fehlt dem Künstler die vis superba, der Zwang der Form in einer mitschaffenden Umgebung. Er selber kann sie nicht schaffen, denn da sein Wesen Mitteilung ist, setzt es, damit diese zustande kommt, den andern Teil, eben die Umgebung voraus, welche schöpferisch teilnimmt.31 Blei sees the Expressionist artist alienated by moral fervor from a massed but abstract audience, whose imbecille salaciousness, indifferent and yet oppressive presence, whose aesthetical attitude to life and art force him to ugly acts of self-evisceration as an ethical, gesture of protest. But not only in the quality of 'rebelliousness' 30 31

Das Bild in der Dichtung (Marburg, 1927), I, 437. "Fragmente zur Literatur", in Lit. Rev. 1910—1920,

I, p. 91.

THE CRITICAL VIEW OF FORM IN EXPRESSIONIST POETRY

33

could this formlessness of social alienation be considered manifest in the Expressionistic style. It might also be reflected in instances of morbid subjectivity, primitivism of feeling, cynicism, antirationality and in the general tendency to an isolation of elements from the whole. Shifting his ground somewhat, Blei goes on to state that a work can have its own specific form without its having a form recognizable as such by a society in default of its form-giving function. But, characteristically for the times, Blei does not evince noticeable interest in specifying the inner laws which might organize the matter of such a work. Instead he takes the fervid and facile revolutionary tack, lashing out at the playful eclecticism with formalistic conventions which he appears to find dominant in his contemporaries and which somehow does not constitute a via superba. This is a peculiar note in the year 1918, year of chaos and revolution, but demonstrates thus especially well how indispensable is the impetus of moralistic indignation to the rejection, by many Expressionists, of conventional literary form. The year 1918, in general the latter years of the First World War, has often been considered the high-point of the more extreme sort of Expressionism, and few scholars seem to agree with Blei that it was an era of eclectic traditional forms. But what then, if any, is considered to be the rôle of such forms in Expressionism ? The three most ambitious early studies dealing with Expressionist lyric poetry, before the recent revival of interest, are all agreed that it evidenced a rejection of conventional verse forms. The most cautious and perhaps most nearly accurate is P. J. Schneider, who says of the 'modern' (Expressionist) poet: Sein Endziel ist die völlige Auflösung aller jemals geübten dichterischen Form. Und die eifrige Verfolgung dieses Ziels ist in der Entwicklung gar nicht zu verkennen, wenn auch.. .32 and there then follow some qualifications we will mention in the company of statements by writers who do not find Expressionism to be devoid of conventional forms. Wolfgang Paulsen recognizes that conventional forms were indeed practiced by the early Expressionists but asserts that they were systematically abandoned: 32

Der Expressive

Mensch,

p. 114.

34

THE CRITICAL VIEW OF FORM IN EXPRESSIONIST POETRY

Es führt eine gerade und fast folgerichtige Linie dieses Formabwerfens von Stufe zu Stufe durch die expressionistische Kunst.33 And the view is also shared by Arno Schirokauer: Die alte Form hatte versagt, und so mit Recht hatte man sich von ihr losgesagt.34 Not only TRADITIONAL forms are denied to Expressionism, as in the above instances. Going far beyond this comparatively understandable oversimplification are the hardly infrequent judgments which deny to Expressionist poetry any literary form whatsoever. The most intransigent formulation of this opinion occurs in Arno Schirokauer's Expressionismus der Lyrik, which in its apodictic style often outdoes the Expressionists themselves: Soweit die Lyrik Form ist, ist sie nicht expressionistisch.35 Hereupon Schirokauer inserts into his study the text of Stadler's "Form ist Wollust". A typical unconscious shift of connotation has taken place without the author's awareness, and Stadler, who did not necessarily mean verse form at all, becomes a witness against the wrong defendant. Iwan Goll's denial that Expressionist poetry might have, after all, a specific form is probably more significant than Schirokauer's, because of Goll's proven technical versatility as a poet, and because of his more pragmatic approach. Schirokauer, in the context of the above quotation, had defined 'expressiveness' as precisely that element of a poem which is not the formal element and had then deduced the consequence: that the most Expressionistic poetry must have the least form. Göll is not afraid of the word 'form' and accepts the possibility of a specifically Expressionistic one but confesses that in practice he and his poetic confrères did not achieve it: Was fehlte dem Expressionismus ? Form ! Wir sind Menschen und leben von den Dingen, wir sind Fleisch und leben von Fleisch. Form = Fleisch ! Eine Seele in einem rachitischen Körper ist nicht zu beneiden. 33

Expr. wnd Aktiv., p. 129. Expr. der Lyrik, p. 116. 35 Ibid., p. 37. For many, Expressionism is a return to the 'essential' behind appearances. Schirokauer considers 'form' a resistance to this 'grenzenloser Vereinigung', and hence unexpressionistie. 34

THE CRITICAL VIEW OF FORM IN EXPRESSIONIST POETRY

35

Und was ist denn Form ? . . . Form muß der adäquate, innerlich wie äußerlich begründete Ausdruck eines Zeitalters sein.36 Despite the views of Göll, countless attempts have been made a n d continue to be made in an effort to show how the Expressionistic style was indeed "der adäquate, innerlich wie äußerlich begründete Ausdruck eines Zeitalters", though such attempts are usuallyundertaken in avoidance of the taboo category of 'form'. (2) The Forms of

Expressionism

Passages can be found, however, which quite expressly concede t h a t the period has not completely foregone the use of conventional verse forms. And others imply t h a t a specifically Expressionist form was at work. F . J . Schneider was recently interrupted in the process of qualifying an orthodox but, as we shall eventually see, untenable statement: Sein Endziel ist die völlige Auflösung aller jemals geübten dichterischen Form. Und die eifrige Verfolgung dieses Ziels ist in der Entwicklung gar nicht zu verkennen, wenn auch späterhin . . . Anlehnung an ältere Muster auftauchen klassischer Silbenmaße. 37 Wolfgang Paulsen does not deny t h e presence of conventional verse forms at the outset of the period b u t asserts t h a t they were progressively shed in the course of its development: Es läßt sich nun zeigen, daß der Expressionismus zwar nicht zu einer neuen Entdeckung der alten Form fand, daß er die Form aber zuerst sehr wohl besaß und oft in einer nur selten erreichten Meisterschaft besaß (Werfel), sie jedoch im weiteren Verlaufe seines Werdens mehr und mehr hinter sich tat. 38 I t is often said t h a t the evolution of the movement in its later years was toward ever more chaotic, shrill and looser rhetorical pastiches. In point of quantitative distribution and among t h e countless vulgarizers and popularizers there may be an aspect of t r u t h in this. B u t on several accounts there is reason to doubt its validity and to maintain t h a t a t both beginning and end of t h e 36

"Das Wort an sich", Die neue Rundschau, (1921), II, pp. 1082— 1085, in Lit. Rev. 1910—1925, I, p. 254. 37 Der Express. Mensch, p. 114. 38 Expr. und Aktiv., p. 128.

36

THE CRITICAL VIEW OF FORM I N EXPRESSIONIST POETRY

period both verse forms and the so-called 'formless' poem were prominent. The recent anthology Lyrik des expressionistischen Jahrzents,zt which is organized quasi-chronologically, shows that both types continued to appear in the first-productions of new poets throughout the span of over a decade. We have already cited an essay of 1917 by Franz Werfel, in which he commits himself to a 'neue strophische Dichtkunst'. As if to confirm this a certain Alfred Lemm in 1916 claims to detect "Heute wieder ein Hang zur festen Form".40 Apparently the reputed orgy of formlessness in late Expressionism needs further investigation; in the anthology just referred to one may quickly confirm for himself that many of the later poets also mastered traditional stanzas. It is, however, usually the early Expressionists to whom is conceded a conscious striving for form. Among these are the poets of the very early anthology, Der Kondor (1912),41 and naturally above all others, Georg Heym.42 But Franz Werfel also is often admired for his formal skill and versatility,43 though he is usually classed with the Hochexpressioniaten and even considered by Naumann the pinnacle of the whole movement.44 Willi Duwe, however, introduces no historical gradient into his scheme when he identifies among Expressionistic styles one of Baroque vehemence and another whose 'severity of form' he acclaims. The latter he relates to Cubist tendencies, a rather farfetched source from which to derive, as he does, the period's known fancy for the sonnet form.45

SB

(Wiesbaden, 1955). "Einiges vom Problem der Form", Weiße Blätter, July—Sept. 1916, p. 95. 41 Considered to be "stark im Banne der Wort- und Formkunst Stefan Georges" by Hans Naumann, Die dt. Dichtung der Gegenwart vom Nat. bis zum Expr., (Stuttgart, 1930), p. 356. 4! Often considered formally influenced by George. See: Naumann, op. cit., p. 338 and Oskar Walzel, Die dt. Lit von Goethes Tod bis zur Gegenwart (Berlin, 1929), p. 107. 43 See: Paulsen, E. & Α., p. 128; Eugen Kurt Fischer, Dt. Kunst wnd Art. Von den Künsten als Ausdruck der Zeiten (Dresden, 1924), p. 232; Kurt Breysig, Eindruckskunst wnd Altsdruckskunst (Berlin, 1927), p. 143. 44 Die dt. Dicht, der Gegenw., p. 366. 45 Willi Duwe, Dt. Dicht, des Zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts. Die Geschichte der Ausdruckskunst (Zürich, 1936), p. 46. 40

THE CRITICAL VIEW OF FORM IN EXPRESSIONIST POETRY

37

At stake in the preceding discussion has been the rôle played by traditional verse forms. If one now inquires whether purportedly formless works were ever thought of as having their own specific form, Expressionistic perhaps but indeed a form, then positive voices can again be heard. But the efforts to characterize what might be thought of as Expressionistic forms, that is, recurring non-conventional structural features of the style, have usually been cloaked under the majestic robes of stylistic 'description' rather than what we now would call formal analysis. In the case of Paul Zech, however, we possess a direct defense of the form of his Expressionistic sonnets: Nun muß ich sagen, daß diese 14 zeiligen Gedichte gar nichts, auch gar nichts mit einem Petrarca'schen Sonett gemein haben. Aber wie eine subtil geformte Präzisionsmaschine, haben auch diese Gedichte eine durchaus gebändigte und geschliffene Form in Gestalt von eben 14 Zeilen. Die Technik dieser Form ist ungeheuer raffiniert und selbständig.4® In this connection we should remind ourselves that August Stramm, who is so often mentioned among the most radically formless Expressionists, has documented in letters the stylistic polishing of which Zech speaks.47 Stramm's friend and critical champion Herwarth Waiden has already been quoted to the effect that every work of art has its own specific form. Certainly he is thinking in particular of the works of the Sturm poets, who conceived of themselves as purely artistic rather than social revolutionaries. An independent, non-Sturm critic, Kurt Breysig, also does not hesitate to assert that Stramm exercises a 'kunstvolleren Formenzwang' in his work than does realistic art.48 It would be an interesting study in textual history, were the manuscripts available, to investigate some Expressionist claims for the spontaneity and wilful imperfection of their work. Though they may speak of a sense of shame over a well-wrought poem and of the desire to create ugliness, we should not assume that they are unaware, the poets among them at least, that to do even this may necessitate conscious revision and the control of deformation. 46

Paul Robert (pseud. Paul Zech), "Dan schwarze Revier", Die Aktion, (1913), Col. 620. "Lit.-Rev. 1910—1925, I, pp. 4 5 - 4 6 . 48 Op. cit., p. 140.

III

38

THE CRITICAL VIEW OF FORM IN EXPRESSIONIST POETRY

We have attempted to discern the several elusive mutations of the term 'form' in contemporary Expressionist thought and to illustrate if but briefly the variations of opinion on problems connected with it. A concise summary is perhaps in order, before we shift our attention to more recent studies. We have documented the obvious fact that a concern with form or its lack is one of the salient issues in contemporaneous discussions of the Expressionist style. The term 'form' itself, however, was not reserved for critical study of works of art but was also prominent in the central debate which raged around the problem of the relation of the individual to world and society, his delimitation from or his immersion in the spheres of 'Humanity', the community, or even the realms of sensation and subconscious affect. In addition of course 'form' continued to be thought of as a category of practical literary criticism. In this sense it was applied somewhat indiscriminately to the idea of conventional verse forms and to the more general notion of the specific form of any work of art.48 As a consequence of the multiple senses in which the word was applied, and in view of the nature of the literature which was termed Expressionist, there appear to be four basic points of argument about 'form' in the period under consideration: 1. Is the personal 'form' of the individual a state to be realized or cast off? 2. Is conscious literary 'forming' restrictive to expression or is it constructive and desirable ? 3. Is Expressionist literature formless? 4. If forms are indeed realized in it, to what extent are these specifically Expressionistic forms?

48

These are different from the senses distinguished by Winkler's "Was heißt dichterische Form?" (See p. 11). Dealing with 'form' in the context of traditional German aesthetics he recognizes; 1. Form as a complementary concept to matter (The form of a piece of marble). 2. A species or subclass of a genus (A form of thinking, for example). 3. The typical as opposed to the individual characteristics of a thing (Legal form). Winkler then relates these senses to the literary term 'outer' and 'inward form'.

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39

4. CURRENT VIEWS ON FORM I N EXPRESSIONISM

On the whole, the situation we find today in reviews of Expressionism and in more specialized studies reflects, in point of variance and lack of clarity, the situation we found among the movement's contemporary writers. There are frequent generalizations whose aging burden is that Expressionist poets abandoned the conventional elements of verse. Doubt is aired about the realization of any formal principle at all. And there is manifested the now familiar contrary view that Expressionism does not lack a 'will to fprm' and perhaps represents a 'new' form. The latter conviction has indeed gained a bit in currency. Certainly, in studies and interpretations of individual poets, it must often be taken into account. Moreover, the 'formlessness' of the period's literary works is now more often specified as a break from traditional practices, leaving open the question of possible specific forms. We encounter naturally an increased sobriety in assessment of the issue, devoid of that polemical or even messianic tone which seemed imperative even in the more objective contemporary studies of the times. Kayser formulates laconically: Wir finden abermals viel freie Rhythmen, wir finden auch Strengeres.50 And yet many of the questionable formulations of this period have silently been deposited as ewiges Kulturgut in the unreflective stream of literary history. Werner Milch, for example, repeats the theme of F. J. Schneider and Wolfgang Paulsen, that the immanent goal of the Expressionist style is a complete dissolution of form, an: Entwicklung aus Gründen der als gefühlsmäßig empfundenen Wahrheit . . . zur Formlosigkeit und an manchen Stellen zum assoziierenden Schrei.51 Judgments such as this postulate a basic Expressionist feeling or principle, which is then presumed to reveal itself progressively. This is no longer a common assumption for those who do not see 50

Geschichte des dt. Verses (Bern, 1960), p. 150. Werner Milch, Ströme, Formeln, Manifeste, Marburger Reihe, I (Marburg, 1949), p. 54. 51

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THE CRITICAL VIEW OF FORM IN EXPRESSIONIST POETRY

the decade 1910—1920 in isolation, but it is à habit difficult to shed and to which scholars unwittingly fall victim, as when Edgar Lohner calls August Stramm the 'konsequentester' Expressionist.52 More recent studies increasingly limit themselves to historical orientation, appreciations of individual poets and stylistic study of the period's actual literary practices — though even such endeavors as these can be hampered by long current and accepted exaggerations. The old working assumption that the elements of traditional verse atrophied calamitously in Expressionist poetry has, for its part, continued to flourish. We find it in such recent phrases as 'Abdankung der überlieferten Formen' (Heselhaus), 'Empörung gegen alle objektive Normen' (Martini), 'radikale Formemanzipation' (Pretzel, in a work on German prosody).53 Heselhaus clarifies what he means by an abdication of traditional forms. It is the disappearance of the elements of traditional poetry, a: . . . Befreiung des Gedichts aus den Fesseln des Metrums, des Reims und der Strophe.54 Edgar Lohner specifies in great detail what he considers to be departures from the usages of the past: Bei vielen dieser Lyriker wird also die Auflösung der traditionellen Formen allein schon aus dem typographischen Bild der Druckseite deutlich. Der in kurze Kola aufgeteilte Vers, das Übermaß an Ausrufungszeichen, Pünktchen, Gedankenstrichen, Kommata, die Substantive und Adjektive trennen, oder das Fehlen fast jeder Interpunktion (wie in den Gedichten Stramme oder Gölls), zeugen von der nervösen Beweglichkeit der Dichter.55 In passing it might be noted that the word 'form' as used here is no freer of excessively general or ambiguous meaning than it was found to be in the past. On the other hand there are approaches which, while dissociating Expressionism from the practices of what is called Formkunst, 52

Edgar Lohner, "Die Lyrik des Expressionismus. Einleitung" in Expressionismus, ed. Herrn. Friedmann (Heidelberg, 1956), p. 77. 63 Heselhaus, Deutsohe Lyrik der Moderne, p. 11; Fritz Martini, "Der Expressionismus" in Dt. Lit. des Zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts ed. Friedmann, p. 115; Ulrich Pretzel, "Deutsche Verskunst," Dt. Phil, in Aufriß, ed. W. Stammler (München, 1957), III, Col. 2415. 64 Dt. Lyrik der Moderne, p. 146. M Op. cit., note 52, p. 66.

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41

concede the existence of, and try to characterize, its formal aspect. Martini speaks of a "Verlangen . . . nach einer Vereinfachung der Form",56 corresponding perhaps to the supreme Expressionist search for the typical and essential as opposed to the individual. Heselhaus calls this return to ingenuousness a "Reduktion auf primitive Strukturen",57 meaning thereby a form whose principle of unity is the exploitation of a dominant single element which is normally only one of several contributing structural elements of a poem. Such elements would be symbol, image, rhythm, wordplay or the like. Possibly this notion has been introduced into literary criticism from the style analyses of the Expressionist plastic arts, where the simplification of forms was easily recognizable.58 But adoption need not confer legitimacy, and the status of Heselhaus's form 'analysis' is as open to question as many a more naive judgment. Another approach to characterizing the relationship between Expressionistic form and conventional form sees in the one a conscious distortion of the other, not motivated by destructive revolutionary exuberance but as an aesthetic device for the evocation of surprise, tension, intensity, and other effects. Walter Muschg, speaking of modern art in general (by which he means the revolutionary isms from Futurism on), derives from its fascination with ugliness and horror an "Aesthetik . . . der verletzenden Dissonanz und Deformation".59 This interpretation of Expressionistic form or

"Fritz Martini, Was war Expressionismus? (Urach, 1948), p. 30. 57 Clemens Heselhaus, Die Lyrik des Expressionismus. Voraussetzungen. Ergebnisse υ/md Grenzen. Nachwirkungen, Deutsche Texte No. 6 (Tübingen, 1956), p. III. 68 In 1911, Wilhelm Worringer writes about 'modern art': "Ja, ich glaube nicht fehlzugehen, wenn ich die tiefste Wurzel dieses neuen künstlerischen Wollens gerade in der Überwindung des Subjektiv-Willkürlichen und nur Individuell-Bedingten sehe. Mit diesem unverkennbaren Drang zum Objektiven, zur zwingenden Vereinfachung der Form, zu einer elementaren Vorurteilslosigkeit der künstlerischen Wiedergabe hängt jener Grundcharakter der neuen Kunst zusammen, den man als sinnlose Primitivitäts- und Kindlichkeits-Komödie vor dem erwachsenen Europa lächerlich machen zu können glaubt." In Im Kampf um die moderne Kunst, die Antwort auf den Protest deutscher Künstler (München, 1911), p. 94/96. 49 Walter Muschg, Von Trakl zu Brecht. Dichter des Expressionismus. (München, 1961), p. 44.

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formlessness — never fully exploited — will undoubtedly prove to be one of the most fruitful. It is also the perspective baseline from which comparison of Expressionist poetry with the main figures of 'modernism' in European poetry becomes possible, or at least with modernism as Hugo Friedrich interprets it, who postulates that: Dissonantische Spannung ist ein Ziel der modernen Dichtung überhaupt.80 We will later have occasion to mention in more detail some of the insights already granted to an unclouded contemplation of the formal aspects of Expressionist poetry. Such re-evaluations will be encouraged and even demanded by the recognition, in recent studies, of Expressionism's 'neuer Formungswille' its 'neue Kunstform'.®1 Kurt Pinthus, in his preface to the recent reprinting of the Menschheitsdämmerung, now lays greater emphasis on the Expressionists' faith in the 'Sieg befreiter und befreiender Formen'82 than on their animus toward the enslavement of form. Martini concedes on one occasion that there is 'keine Preisgabe der Formen . . . bei den wahren Dichtern'.83 Clemens Heselhaus undertakes to systematize the manifold possible form-content correlations of modern poetry, especially in Expressionism, by establishing specific theme-form parallels.84 This increasing appreciation of the formal side of Expressionism would seem to come apace with the more thorough study and re-evaluation of individual poets, changing their status from that of specimens or paradigmata to that of personalities such as we find in any other age. It is also evidence of a natural historical development, the consolidation of the revolutionary, a process in this case retarded by the intervening reaction of National Socialism. On this process of gradual realization, Pinthus has remarked: 60

Hugo Friedrich, Die Struktur der modernen Lyrik (Hamburg, 1956), p. 10. 61 Otto Mann, "Einleitung" to Expressionismus, ed. Friedmann, p. 20; Heselhaus, Dt. I/yrik der Mod., p. 205. 62 Menschheüsdämmervmg, ed. Kurt Pinthus (Hamburg, 1959), p. 15. 63 "Der Expressionismus", p. 122. M ". . . der besonderen Thematik kommt jeweils eine eigene Formensprache zu". Die 1/yrik des Expr., p. VI. This idea is the basis of his recent book, Dt. Lyrik der Moderne.

THE CRITICAL VIEW OF FORM IN EXPRESSIONIST POETRY

43

Mögen Anklage und Schrei, Posaunenstöße und Fanfarengeschmetter der damaligen Forderungen verhallt und verschollen sein und heutiger Jugend wenig gelten—gerade jenes Element, das einst am heftigsten verurteilt und lächerlich gemacht wurde: zersprengte, zersprengende Sprache, Unform oder Mißform tumultuarische oder träumerische Aneinanderreihung der alogischen, akausalen Assoziationen— damals Hilsfmittel des kämpfenden Geistes —, all dies ist allmählich zur wirklichen Form geworden, zum unbewußten oder selbstverständlichen Erbgut, zum Allgemeingut späterer Generationen.65 We might see in this 'realization' a confirmation of Franz Blei's contention that it is society which confers validity to 'forms' by 'creative participation'. In any event it is a development which justifies renewed investigation.

5. THE PROBLEMS OF EXPRESSIONIST FORM

The major practical issues which warrant a new, systematic review, in the interest of just historical characterization and more profitable interpretation, may thus be summarized as follows: 1. A very obvious question to be put is: to what extent did poetry in the Expressionist manner actually abjure traditional verse forms and prosodie elements? 2. In a broader sense of'form' what other formal and structural principles can be observed in frequent use ? 3. Finally, do there appear to be any common and specifically Expressionistic form principles? By "form" in the first instance is meant stanza form, meter, rhyme and related devices. In the last two questions "form" is considered to be a principle of unity — in rhythm, among verse periods or verse groups — or a principle dictating the organization of a poem so as to achieve a clear and specific effect. Our attention will be directed mainly to the first of the above listed problems, but this will prove to be tangential to the others at many points. The mass of material necessitates some restriction, and the limitation to a discussion of conventional verse elements is imposed for several reasons. It is, first of all, one of the major issues in any critical discussion of the Expressionist style, and one upon which our interpretation of the Expressionist 'spirit' or 'daemon'will rest heavily; the view which stresses Expressionism's 65

Op. cit., Note 62, p. 16.

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THE CRITICAL VIEW OF FORM I N EXPRESSIONIST POETRY

irregular qualities needs no renewed emphasis. In addition, the conventional verse elements and their usage provide a simple and demonstrable means of discussing the form of a surprisingly large number of Expressionist poems — including many free verse works and those in which a traditional verse form has been distorted. Further study should, of course, be devoted to the free-rhythmic poems and the formal problems associated with stichic and stressed verses as opposed to stanzaic and metric ones.

6. CRITICAL UTILITY OF SUCH A SURVEY

In addition to clarifying a somewhat confused historical picture, it is to be expected that answers to the above questions will aid in the task of interpretation of individual poems. It will be illuminating perhaps to offer a few examples of how interpretations have suffered from the uncritical acceptance of generalities and from inherited imprecision in the use of terms. The case for the 'formlessness' of Expressionist poetry has, from the beginning, rested to a considerable extent on its use of free verse. Without prejudging the matter of the latter's relative dominance in the period or its formal status, we might show an instance where traditional prejudice against irregular rhythms has distorted one critic's view of both a single poem and a whole period. Wolfgang Kayser, in his Kleine deutsche Versschule, certifies his distaste for 'free rhythms' (as they are called in German) first by his basic premise of poetics that: . . . der Dichter dichtet nicht in Zeilen, die er aneinanderfügt, sondern vom Bauplan der Strophe her.48 and, second, by the quite disproportionately brief and perfunctory treatment he accords them. In his chapter on the 'verse' as unit he wishes to point out the peril opposite to that of mechanically metrical monotony, and he says: Auf der anderen Seite lauert eine nicht minder große Gefahr: daß die Scheu vor der Zeile wie vor jeder anderen rhythmischen Einheit zu einer Sprengung der Versordnung führt.67 "(München, 1957), p. 17.

«7 Ibid., p. 16.

THE CRITICAL VIEW OF FORM IN EXPRESSIONIST POETRY

45

Without pausing to inquire to what extent this is not merely a tautology, we turn in search of such a dread and neglect of rhythmic units to his illustrative example, which is a section of Johannes Becher's poem "Vorbereitung": Ich lerne. Ich bereite vor. Ich übe mich. Wie arbeite ich — hah leidenschaftlichst ! — Gegen mein noch implastisches Gesicht—: Falten spanne ich. Die neue Welt (—eine solche, die alte, die mystische, die Welt der Qual austilgend) Zeichne ich, möglichst korrekt, darin e i n . . . Indisputably this is no longer gripping poetry, and one could argue for the carelessness of several passages of the poem. Indeed, that is one of the points to be made here, that there are far more rhythmically turbid sections in Becher's poem if that is what Kayser wishes to demonstrate. But a fixed idea causes the critic to choose indiscriminately, and so he selects this particular paragraph which has audibly recognizable regularities of stresses per line — 4, 4, 4, 2, 2, 3 -f 4, 5, an arrangement of verses obviously used to control a rhythmic period of balance, acceleration, retardation and resolution. It may not be accomplished poetry; but it is not mere rhythmic prose, and it does not illustrate 'Scheu vor der Zeile'. Rather the contrary. And it does not, as Kayser implies, exemplify typical Expressionist 'Versempfinden'.68 There is far more and far less prosaic free verse to be found in Expressionist works. Slighting of the formal aspects of a poem can be critically selfdefeating. Though certainly not always, this has too often been the fate of Georg Heym's poetry at the hands of his interpreters. 69 In their style characterizations one senses that the effect of his chosen verse forms has been felt, but that the resulting quality has been attributed to the working of some other poetic element, such as imagery, or has even been ascribed to the suppression of form. Clemens Heselhaus asserts thus: Bei Georg Heym herrscht eine primitive Strophenform mit vier Zeilen und fünfhebigen Versen bis zur Monotonie vor; . . .70 >»Ibid., p. 16. Klein, Gesch. der. dt. Lyrik, p. 819, says that Heym's form 'bleibt unangetastet' but Klein shows no further interest in it. 70 Dt. Lyrik der Mod., p. 177. M

46

THE CRITICAL VIEW OF FORM IN EXPRESSIONIST POERTY

and lie considers this a sort of 'Auflösung' or dissolution of the rhymed verse form, though why it should be so by virtue of impeccable regularity is not clear, no more so than the 'primitiveness' of pentameter quatrains. The implication that the verse form is of no conscious concern to either poet or interpreter is obvious, and is based on the erroneous assumption that Heym is somehow incapable of formal variety. Heym's two poems "Mit den fahrenden Schiffen" and "Deine Wimpern, die langen" can alone disqualify this argument. In an interpretation of Heym's "Der Krieg", J. Pfeiffer takes a negative attitude toward a peculiarity of the meter which, positively interpreted, is one of the secrets of the poem's success: Die breitgespannten trochäischen Sechstakter haben unverkennbar etwas Aufgepumptes und bedürfen daher immer neuer gewaltsamer Füllsel um eingehalten und durchgehalten zu werden.71 And Fritz Martini in an interpretation of the same poem, though he sees the function of this verse form, does not appear to understand its importance for the total effect. Martini is rendered fundamentally insensitive to Heym's formal qualities by his often expressed conviction that Heym allows content to ruthlessly dominate form.72 Such antithetical thinking would seem peculiarly inadequate to deal with this poet, if it is still a justifiable critical mode at all. Martini is also guilty of several factual errors, attributable no doubt to a certain rhapsodic infatuation with the category of formlessness which is an established self-indulgence of German thought. It is true that they occur in one of his earliest publications on Expressionism, the popularly conceived Was war Expressionismus?, and yet it is possible that such oversights may be more frequent among writers on Expressionism than is suspected. Martini writes of Franz Werfel's "Prozession" that "die Verse 71

"Heym. 'Der Krieg'." in Wege zum Gedicht, ed. Rupert Hirschenauer (München, 1956), p. 350. Pfeiffer may be thinking of Goethe's reported criticism to Eckermann: "Der sechsfüßige Iambus . . . ist für uns Deutsche zu lang, wir sind wegen der fehlenden Beiwörter schon mit fünf Füßen fertig." Quoted from Wolfgang Kayser, Kleine dt. Versschule (München, 1957), p. 30. 72 "George Heym — 'Der Krieg'." In Die deutsche Lyrik, ed. Benno von Wiese (Düsseldorf, 1956), II, p. 428. The same idea had already appeared in his Was war Expressionismus?, p. 87.

THE CRITICAL VIEW OF FORM IN EXPRESSIONIST POETRY

47

werden mehr gestammelt als geformt".73 If "stammering" means anything at all, thus contrasted with "formed", it must imply a noticeable and continuous irregularity. Upon examining the poem, however, we find it to consist of: (1) three rhymed trochaic pentameter quatrains, to each of which succeeds an unrhymed orphan line of irregular rhythm; and (2) an eight-lined trochaic pentameter stanza rhymed abbcdadc. Neither in scheme or execution is any remarkable lack of control evident, nor are the above listed elements in any way novel. Even more revealing of prejudgment in action is Martini's attribution of 'free rhythms' to a poem by Alfred Wolfenstein, "Fahrt", which contains not only no trace of a free rhythm but not even a metrically displaced stress.74 Each of the six stanzas consists of two iambic hexameter lines, rhymed, followed by a fivesyllable iambic line to which is rhymed one of nine syllables. What is more, in the volume from which this poem is taken (Die Freundschaft, 1917) there are four other poems of the same form, or a very similar one ("Yon Welt zu Welt", "Karusell der Welt", "Getöse", "An den Andern"). Obviously such errors will tend to appear most often in literary histories, isolated interpretations and passing references, but this encompasses a good deal. Such misinterpretations are possible where accepted general ideas prove inadequate, and it is then of course time to re-examine them.

7. STATE OF FORM STUDY IN EXPRESSIONIST RESEARCH

This is certainly not to imply that the concrete problems of form have been completely neglected. In histories of modern literature, histories of the lyric and in works on prosody, as well as in the standard studies of Expressionism, there has always, despite the onus of formlessness which early fell upon the period, existed an urge to characterize its stylistic and formal features, especially insofar as they might seem to be glamorous innovations. In general, however, attention has been concentrated on a certain few poets or on a single school and, among these, on the most extreme exam73 74

p. 82. p. 86.

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THE CRITICAL VIEW OF FORM IN EXPRESSIONIST POETRY

pies of some "revolutionary" style device. Distortion has been practically unavoidable. In addition, a tendency to rhapsodize, as already noted in Martini, has often led away from the poetry itself into untenable and unilluminating positions. Nevertheless, many interesting observations have been made. Specific ones will be introduced where appropriate, it being fruitless to give a resumé of particulars out of context. For the more general characterizations of Expressionist form the following phrases are typical. As will be seen, the insight is often correct for certain types of poem and the formulation is suggestive, but frequently it is also overcomprehensive, under-elaborated and unnecessarily imprecise. Thus, Expressionist form has been described as 'unbedingte Bewegung',75 'unendliche'7® or 'intensive'77 or 'offene Form',78 'Bewegung statt Form'79, 'gestoßener Rhythmus'80 or as 'Reduktion auf primitive Strukturen',81 'Simultanität'82 and as a tension between 'Konzentration und entgrenzendem Drang zur Wortgebärde'.83 In general, the most frequent stylistic qualities mentioned which might derive from formal and structural devices are: rhythm and motion, tension and intensity, openness, simultaneity (free association), concentration, and the isolation of individual elements of language or form to the exclusion of others. These are all very usable categories, though none can be equated with Expressionism per se. What is needed are methods of relating such terms concretely to the structure of poems. There has ae yet been no full study or dissertation concerned directly and generally with form in Expressionist poetry. Two of the earlier works to deal in passing with such problems are Wolfgang Paulsen's very useful Expressionismus und Aktivismus (1935) and F. J. Schneider's Der Expressive Mensch (1927). Another is Arno Schirokauer's Expressionismus der Lyrik (1924), which combinée 75

Paulsen, E. & Α., p. 144. Edschmid, Über den Expr. in der Lit., p. 40. " Schirokauer, Expr. der Lyrik, p. 26. n Ibid., p. 38. " Paulsen, p. 144. 80 Wolfang KayBer, Geschichte dea dt. Versea (Bern, 1960), p. 150. 81 Heselhaus, Die Lyrik des Ex., p. IV. 81 Lohner, "Die Lyrik des Ex. Einleitung", p. 82. 83 Martini, "Der Expressionismus", p. 122. ,β

THE CRITICAL VIEW OF FORM IN EXPRESSIONIST POETRY

49

some good observations with extremist theories. Histories of contemporary literature published in the Twenties by Mahrholtz, Naumann, Soergel and Du we are not systematic in their treatment of form. Nor are the essays on Expressionist lyrical poetry by Heselhaus ("Die deutsche Lyrik des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts" in Deutsche Literatur im zwanzigsten Jahrhundert) or Lohner ("Einleitung" to the lyric poetry section of Expressionismus). Walter Sokel's The Writer in Extremis is not concerned with the technical aspects of Expressionist verse; its first chapter, however, "Pure Form and Pure Formlessness" is a good general introduction to the sociological and philosophical aspects of the problem of form in German art. The only recent work to broach the problem explicitly is Clemens Heselhaus's Deutsche Lyrik der Moderne which, as the title indicates, is not confined to the Expressionist period although it undertakes: . . . die moderne deutsche Lyrik von den Ergebnissen des Expressionismus her neu zu verstehen.84 Heselhaus's intent is to inquire into the 'Stabilität' and 'Wechsel' of forms in modern lyric poetry. His findings are that the 'styleconcept' of Expressionism runs broadly parallel with the structural form of 'Zeilenkomposition', as opposed to the symbolistic 'lyrischer Zyklus', but that it also includes examples of a third form, the 'lyrische Groteske'.85 These he calls 'Vorstrukturen', within whose framework each poem has an 'Individual-Struktur'. The former are thus not to be considered as specific schematic forms. In the execution Heselhaus's book is rather a mixture of interpretive and geistesgeschichtliche studies of a few of the more prominent Expressionist poets. Efforts to relate actual works to the 'Vorstruktur' of 'Zeilenkomposition' are prudently not carried to their inevitably ruinous conclusion. His procedure is to postulate what might be called a basic 'inward form' for the individual poet — such as essay, phantasmagoria, parable, vision, metaphor — to which his comments on form, imagery and theme in the poems are related. Revived interest in Expressionism has been especially reflected in the increasing appearance of formal interpretation and in articles M

p . 5.

ω

ρ . 11.

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THE CRITICAL VIEW OF FORM IN EXPRESSIONIST POETRY

on particular authors. A collection of the latter constitutes the body of Expressionismus. Gestalten einer literarischen Bewegung, edited by Otto Mann and Hermann Friedmann. The contributions, by various writers, are as a rule dominated by the thematic interest, and representation of the period is not complete.88 In individual interpretations the poets commanding most attention continue to be the early Expressionist triumvirate, Georg Heym, Georg Trakl and Ernst Stadler. Though much effort has been lavished here, the formal aspect of their work has often been neglected. Even Dietz's very comprehensive study of Die lyrische Form Georg Trahis does not exhaust the mystery of those verses, and it is the most thorough such investigation yet. Obviously there is much of interest still to be done in this field (and in modern poetry in general), both in the discovery of detail and in the rectification of general notions. Means to the realization of such a project must, howeven, themselves be the topic of closer inquiry.

86

Richard Brinkmann in his recent Expressionismus. Forschungs-Probleme 1952—1960 (Stuttgart, 1961), p. 9, opines of the Friedmann anthology: "Auch in den Abschnitten über Lyrik und Drama haben keineswegs alle Bedeutenderen ein eigenes Kapitel gefunden."

II WHO OR WHAT IS EXPRESSIONISM?

1. THE PROBLEM OF 'EXPRESSIONISM'

At the very outset of this review we undertook to be cautious of all vivid and proprietary definitions of Expressionist form, which are apt to render unpredictable violence to some aspect of the reality. The definition of 'Expressionism' becomes even more crucial when one proposes to choose initially the material on which to base a study of lyric forms. Moreover, it is certainly sensible to ask whether 'style' and 'school' definitions (as well defined literary terms) are indeed necessary at all for dealing with the history of literature and the interpretation of poems, the more straightforward activities of a Germanist. Here we might plead simply the practical consideration that German Literaturwissenschaft has long utilized and continues to formulate such categories, and that in view of this inalterable state of foreign affairs it is imperative to come to grips with their tendered meaning, prudent to help clarify the usable notions, and rewarding to find the insights invested in them. But even more, it would seem that German literature in particular has often revealed real interaction between the programmatic theory of coteries and the actual works of their adherents, not always to the advantage of the latter. In many cases this justifies, and it surely always magnifies, the temptation to academic categories. Oscar Walzel has defined the peculiar function of such groups in German literary history: Sie bedeuten zugleich eine ideelle und formale Gemeinsamkeit und einen Sammelpunkt von verwandten Individualitäten. In der deutschen Literaturgeschichte der jüngsten zwei Jahrhunderte spielen diese Gruppen eine große Rolle. Die Bremer Beiträger, die Stürmer und Dränger, die Romantiker, die Jungdeutschen, die Münchner, die Ver-

52

WHO OR WHAT IS

EXPRESSIONISM?

bindungen der Literaturrevolution am Ende des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts stellen solche Ganze dar, in denen verwandte Ideen, Lebensprobleme und Formen innerhalb einer größeren Anzahl von Individuen gleichzeitig walten. Hier tritt neben individualistischen Kunstbetrieb etwas Kollektivistisches. Große Individuen gehen gelegentlich aus diesen Gruppen hervor oder gehen durch sie hindurch. . . . In diesen Kreisen ist die Verbindung der Individuen mehr als ein Aggregat von Individualitäten, weil gedankliche und formale Verwandtschaft herrscht. Auch die seelische Anlage der Genossen hat etwas Verwandtes und stützt eine Synthese, die nicht von der Gegenwart in die Vergangenheit weist, sondern in der Gegenwart selbst besteht.1 Without prejudging the meaningfulness of the term 'Expressionistic' or to what extent it may characterize a uniform style impetus, we may concede that the period of Expressionism exhibits elements — common Lebensprobleme, continuous and dominant critical theorizing, an urge to collectivity — relating it to previous such groups and justifying its treatment as a 'movement'. We will not probe behind the question of the utility of style concepts to the even more basic inquiry into their very possibility and their methods of demarcation and definition. These are certainly issues affecting the feasibility of handling Expressionism as a coherent style period, but the doubts striking at the root of such a flourishing enterprise and the uncertainties about its methodology are ineradicable debilities; they effect all periods and styles. And thus the practical decision has been made, based on a conviction of its inherent interest and value, to examine the usages of form and structure in the Expressionist period without prior elaboration on the theoretical difficulties of stylistics and periodization.2 Only those dilemmas will be taken into account which are peculiar to the periodization and definition of a possible Expressionist style. Returning to the quandaries of Expressionism itself, we must squarely confront the problem of what might be called its 'hovering denotation'. One of the most recent and outspoken witnesses to the troubling irresolution of the term, Gottfried Benn, was himself a major Expressionist. In his introduction to the anthology, 1

Oskar Walzel, Das Wortkwnstwerk, Mittel seiner Erforschung (Leipzig, 1926), p. 33. 2 The bibliography lists various works consulted on stylistics. For the problem of periodization I have relied on H. P. H. Teesing, Das Problem der Perioden in der Literaturgeschichte (Groningen—Batavia, 1948).

WHO OR WHAT IS

EXPRESSIONISM?

53

Lyrik des expressionistischen Jahrzehnts, he confesses to his own ignorance of the nature of Expressionism, points out how the term has been generally distrusted and no consensus on its meaning achieved, only to then, in conceptual dismay, introduce as others before him a deus ex machina: Ich werde im folgenden die Bezeichnung Expressionismus unkritisch in dem ihr seit vier Jahrzehnten zugewachsenen Sinn verwenden.3 But in fact, no organically accrued sense exists, although the word has undoubtedly consolidated itself. Yet Benn proceeds as others before him to tell us what that 'accrued sense' is, quite forgetful of his previous embarrassment. Several problems are involved in such situations of terminological confusion. One is to elaborate the meaning of an irrevocably given term — in this case, 'Expressionism'. A somewhat different problem is to delimit the body of actual literature of 'Expressionism', either historically, stylistically or otherwise. Initial difficulty springs from the logical ambiguity of the word. This reveals itself as one tries to formulate its opposition to 'Impressionism'. Leo Spitzer, for example, affirms in agreement with Vossler that the modes of expression of 'Impressionists' and 'Expressionists' are correlated, and goes on to show how both terms are logically qualified to designate one and the same expressive mode: . . . was der Schriftsteller so ausspricht, wie er es fühlt, kann man als Ausdruck seines Wesens oder auch als Eindruck, den seine innere Regungen auf ihn machen, fassen.4 Thus what is expressed is in all cases originally an impression on the consciousness, even though it may come from the poet's inner being. And contrarily, impressions within the poet of the outside world, no matter how faithfully reflected, will inevitably express the poet's own nature, if only by virtue of having been chosen selectively. The terms therefore are perspective ones, and, in the

3

Lyrik dea expressionistischen Jahrzehnts. Von den Wegbereitern zum Dada (Wiesbaden, 1955), p. 11. 4 Leo Spitzer, Stilstudien (München, 1928), p. 307.

bis

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WHO OB WHAT IS EXPRESSIONISM?

absence of any inherently clear significance, meanings must be established for them in critical usage.5 Unfortunately, should we be able to agree on a sense in which to use the terms 'expressive' and 'expression' in aesthetics and criticism, we are faced with a new vexation. For, without tautology, it is difficult to see how the notion could be so modified as to apply expressly to 'Expressionist' art. It is often maintained that a l l art is expressive, reflecting the being of the artist as well as his object; and even if the word is given a more restricted application, to art that strongly conveys the immediacy of feeling, there have certainly been many previous examples of expressive art.® Expressionistische Kunst will also 'ausdrücken*. Das will aber doch jede Kunst.7 As can be seen, we are little assisted by semantics in our search for a meaning for 'Expressionism'. The latter becomes meaningful as a stylistic term only by admitting qualifications such as 'immediacy' or 'intensity' which in the strictest sense are not implied by 'expression'. Historically, of course, the characteristics of intensity and immediacy have indeed been associated with what is called Ausdruckskunst in German criticism, so that the term Expressionismus is justifiable insofar as it wishes to imply only a pathos reminding us of Klopstock and the Sturm und Drang. Hermann Pongs has this in mind when he writes: Diese leidenschaftlich aktive, schöpferische Offenheit ist es, die den Namen Expressionismus rechtfertigt.8 The confusion has been intensified rather than resolved by contrasting the term explicitly with 'Impressionism'. In contemporary 5

Wolfhart Gotthold Klee, Die charakteristischen Motive der expressionistischen Erzählimgsliteratur (Berlin, 1934), p. 9, quotes from Karl Huber, "Vom Expressionismus", Zeitschrift für Deutschkunde (1922), p. 36ff., to the effect that "Expressionismus ist — Impressionismus", testimony to the purely perspective nature of the terms. 6 Paul Böckmann, Formgeschichte der deutschen Dichtung (Hamburg, 1949), considers all styles including and after the Sturm und Drang to have an 'Ausdruckshaltung' as opposed to the 'Sinnbildcharakter' which had generally preceded. See Vol. I, pp. 653—666. 7 Emil Winkler, Das dichterische Kunstwerk (Heidelberg, 1924), p. 97. 8 Das Bild in der Dichtung, p. 233.

WHO OR WHAT IS EXPRESSIONISM ?

55

reporting it was often remarked that this antithesis constituted the only real reference of the former word, and the antipathy to Impressionism the only unity of the movement. F. J. Schneider writes: Expressionismus oder Ausdruckskunst . . . wäre, streng genommen, als die Antithese zur Eindruckskunst aufzufassen.9 The vanity inherent in characterizing one style as the antithesis of another should be immediately apparent. Soergel observes that the former is a natural 'counterslogan' to the latter, 10 but as soon as it exceeds its function of rallying opposition to the old and exalting the proponents of the new, 11 as soon, that is, as stylistic moments are dialectically deduced from a word, a fatal step has been taken. The pointed contrast of Expressionism and Impressionism first was made in the plastic arts, especially painting, and was suggested by a visible change. Here lies probably a further root of the confusion which proliferated in the literary use of the distinction. For the changes in literary style, conceived as parallel to the changes in the plastic arts, were in no wise so immediately obvious nor so precisely formulable. The history of the origin of 'Expressionism' as a critical term and of its introduction into Germany in connection with a new style in painting have been frequently dealt with in recent years and will not be repeated here.12 What has not yet been really sufficiently studied is the course of its adoption into and adaptation for the literary vocabulary, although Pörtner's chronology of early occurrences of the word provides an initial framework.13 It would seem, however, that the process was rather one of unconscious osmo• Der expressive Mensch, p. 3. Dichtung und Dichter der Zeit. Im Bamne des Exp., p. 367. 11 Fischer, Deutsche Kirnst und Art, p. 231: "Bs gab eine Zeit, da hielt man den Impressionismus in der Dichtung und Malerei für überwunden und nannte alles Neue selbstbewußt Expressionismus." Hermann Bahr, Expressionismus (München, 1920), p. 49: "Alle Reden der Expressionisten sagen uns schließlich immer nur, daß, was der Expressionist sucht, ohne Beispiel in der Vergangenheit ist: eine neue Kunst bricht an." 12 Discussions of the history of the word 'Expressionism': F. Schmalen bach, "Das Wort Expressionismus", Neue Zürcher Zeitung, No. 899 (March 12, 1961), p. 5; Literatur Revolution 1910—1925, ed. Paul Pörtner (Neuwied am Rhein), II (1961), p. 13ff; Muschg, Von Trakl zu Brecht, p. 20. 13 Lit. Rev., II, pp. 1 9 - 2 5 . 10

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WHO OR WHAT IS EXPRESSIONISM ?

sis, slow at first and half-hearted, with no great enthusiasm for this ism, as opposed, say, to Futurism, Activism, and Neo-pathos. Unknown and unused by many Expressionist poets themselves, it was applied indiscriminately by other writers and often in mere analogy to the revolution in the plastic arts. Since its meaning for literature was not clear, it could be applied to Futurism, Activism or any of the other schools. Only Herwarth Waiden's Sturm circle laid an eager and imperious claim to the title and tried to restrict it to the practitioners of their own 'absolute verbal art'. We see in this record grounds for both the triumph and the futility of the term. Imported from an alien discipline, where it had acquired an emotionally revolutionary fervor, it provided the focus of identity for many otherwise conflicting tendencies, while remaining sufficiently vacuous to avoid the clear exclusion of any. And this duality has persisted into the present. 'Expressionism' has remained comparatively fruitless as a style category, while becoming indispensable as an historical one. In order to transform it completely into the latter, Walter Muschg has suggested defining it as broadly as possible and writing it in quotation marks, thus exorcizing its power as an abstraction.14

2. ATTEMPTS AT DEFINITION

And yet, although disenchantment with the term extends from the very moment of its introduction (1911) down to the present,15 the urge has always been irresistible to breathe some life into its rigid yet seductive features. The many stratagems for this purpose are of interest insofar as they might offer criteria for the selection of Expressionist examples, and we shall point out why they are ultimately inadequate. 14

Von Tralci zu Brecht, p. 19. Some typical comments and judgments at regular intervals: 1911 — Karl Scheffler speaks of Έ'. as an 'abschreckend dummer Name'. Quoted according to Lit. Rev., II, p. 14, Note. 1914 — Walter Hasenclever, "Kunst und Definition", Neue Blätter für Kwrist umd Dichtung, Jg. I, 1918, p. 40: "Es ist Zeit, einen Schwindel aufzuklären, auf den die Geister hereingefallen sind. Expressionismus gibt es nicht !" 1917 — K. Edschmid calls Έ . ' a 'Schlagwort von zweifelhafter Formulierung', in Über den E. in der Iñt. u/nd die neue Dicht., p. 50. 16

WHO OR WHAT IS

EXPRESSIONISM?

57

Attempts have been made to define Expressionism on the basis of its motifs, its stylistic characteristics, the poets representing it, and as an historical period. The approach most often taken involves the motifs and style characteristics, usually correlated as elements of an Expressionist'type', and some conception of these is probably implicit in any external periodization or listing of poets. a) Definition by Motif The general and particular motifs and motivations attributed to Expressionism are manifold. Fritz Martini asserts that the period's "innere Gemeinsamkeit lag in dem Willen zur Wandlung des Menschen".16 Muschg maintains: "Die Entdeckung des Unbewußten ist ein entscheidendes Merkmal der expressionistischen Kunst."17 August Close sees, at least in the Menschheitsdämmerung, 1921 — Rudolf Kayser, in the prologue to his anthology Verkündigung, speaks of the 'nichtsnutziges Wort 'Expressionismus", quoted from Lit. Rev., I. 261. 1924 — H. E. Jacob, Verse der Lebenden (Berlin, 1924), p. 6; 'das törichte Wort 'Expressionismus' 1929 — Oskar Walzel, Die dt. Lit. Von Goethes Tod bis zur Oegenw., p. 82: The terms E. and Impressionismus remain 'vieldeutig' even after 'umständlicher öffentlicher Erörterung'. 1934 — Klee, Die charakt. Motive . . ., p. 9: E. is 'kein einheitlicher Stil.' 1954 — Fritz Martini, "Der E.", Dt. Lit. im zwanzigsten Jahrhundert, ed. Hermann Friedmann (Heidelberg, 1954), p. 108: "der Expressionismus — diese Formel wird folgend nur als ein Hilfsbegriff im vollen Bewußtsein seiner Unzulänglichkeit gebraucht." 1967 — K. A. Horst, Die dt. Lit. der Gegenwart (München, 1957), p. 208: "Der Begriff E. verliert mit wachsendem Abstand immer mehr an deflnitorischer Bedeutung." 1960 — Wilhelm Emrich, "Lit. Revolution 1910—1925", Protest und Verheißung (Frankfurt a.M., 1960), p. 148: "Selbst das Sammelwort Έ . ' trifft nicht das Wesen dieser Revolution." Despite this continual and impressive opposition, the term has imposed itself on literary history: 1961 — Muschg, Von Trahi zu Bercht, p. 19: "der Begriff E . läßt sich nicht mehr abschaffen". " Martini, "Der Exp.", p. 108. 17 Muschg, Von Trakl zu Brecht, p. 33.

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a "makabren Hang zum Grauenhaften, zu Tod und Verwesung".18 Lohner claims greater systematic completeness with his: . . . Motive, die von den Anfängen durch diese gesamte Dichtung zu verfolgen sind: das Ende eines Zeitalters, die Armut der menschlichen Existenz, ihre Ziellosigkeit und Zerbrechlichkeit. Lohner finds these motifs "bei allen, Werfel ausgenommen". He considers them to have the force of: . . . Insignien, die in fast regelmäßigen Abständen und an entscheidenden Stellen der Gedichte immer wieder auftreten.18 He later adds the further motif of a dissociation of heart and mind, and, more specifically, the motifs of the city, the morgue, death, war, the moon. In a like effort to offer some system, Willi Du we distinguishes three stages in the development of Expressionism. The first, represented paradigmatically by Georg Heym, is a poetry of 'demonic visions'. Thie gives way to an 'Aufbruch zur Gemeinschaft', which is purified in the fires of the First World War to a passion for the 'Verbrüderung der Menschheit'.20 Most recently Walter Muschg, who is well aware of the problematic nature of the period, has attempted to identify its 'Hochburgen', centers of social and cultural aggressivity, in the shadows of which Expressionism's great variety burgeoned. For Muschg these main impulses were: social revolt, the ideal of the 'new man', a hate of classical standards of beauty, and a recovery of vitalistic heathenism.21 To what extent are such criteria usable for surveying a domain of actual Expressionist poems, or even to confirm a single one as being Expressionistic ? It would seem that even in theory they could not be accepted for such purposes, and in practice they prove inapplicable. The more general 'genres' of motif are obviously represented in other periods, as well as in contemporary nonExpressionist poetry and would have to occur in conjunction or in some pattern or sequence to be termed specifically Expressionistic. And to find such characteristic patterns we must already have " A u g u s t Closs, Die freien Rhythmen in der dt. Lyrik 181. 19 Lohner, "Die Lyrik des E. Einleitung", p. 60. 20 Duwe, Dt. Dicht, des 20sten Jhrh., p. 9. 21 Von Tralci zu Brecht, pp. 27 — 57.

(Bern, 1947), p.

WHO OR WHAT IS

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59

a group of Expressionist poems with which to work. Moreover, many clearly Expressionist poems cannot profitably be subsumed under any of the previously cited motif genres, and when major ones by major authors such as Werfel must be excluded, the value of such generalities diminishes rapidly. 22 Quite fundamentally, inductive cataloguing of individual motifs which recur frequently has its value in the characterization of a style but can never be justified as a standard in itself for assigning a poem to this or t h a t style type. 23 Large numbers of Expressionist poems of interest to us are not about death and the morgue, but many other things, and when the list of these things approaches thoroughness we are no longer talking about Expressionism but about literature in general. b) Definition by Style

Characterization

A more common and perhaps edifying way to give identity to a literary period is by marking the characteristics of its style and noting preferred rhetorical and linguistic devices. Although Activist poets and other Expressionist revolutionaries emphasized the ideological aspect of their work, its style has been the dominant preoccupation of critics and scholars. Stylistic characterization has from the beginning seemed the appropriate method, due to a feeling t h a t this was a 'new' art, a cataclysmic upheaval in the use of 22 The lack of thematic unity in Expressionism has been emphasized by many writers. See Note 15, Chapter II. In the Prologue referred to there under 1921, Rudolf Kayser also says that the term Έ.': "täuscht eine programmatische Gemeinschaft vor, die nicht vorhanden ist". 23 Undoubtedly there are many recurring themes in Expressionist poetry — war, pacifism, revolution, humanity, religion, social injustice, love, guilt, physical decay, ecstasy, isolation, friendship — as well as frequent motifs — the city, the railroad train, the moon, the woman, the whore, the poet, the smile, the morgue, the proletariat, the procession, the son, the woods, the apocalypse, 'Volk', 'Schrei', 'Mensch', 'schreiten', 'raeende Fahrt' and the like — but few of these arrived with Expressionism; many of the more modern motifs we find already in the Naturalists. Perhaps the only truly Expressionist motifs are a few images that assume an almost ineffable nuance of meaning in the Expressionistic context: 'der Mensch', 'schreiten' 'das Lächeln', 'der Schrei'. In all other instances an additional factor, that of style, would have to be introduced to demonstrate a poem's 'Expressionieticity'. According to F. J. Schneider even 'lächeln' is a Hölderlin word (Der expressive Mensch, p. 139).

60

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language, which view in turn, though certainly reinforced by the extremes of the Sturm poets, possibly derived to a considerable degree from an unconscious association of the new poetry with the new painting. The Futurists, the Brücke, Der Blaue Reiter and Wassily Kandinsky's abstract art had already successfully astounded and scandalized the world with programs and provocations. It was not unnatural to assume that, in literature also, something radically new in kind was emerging and to attempt to parallel its spirit with that of the new painting. Without hoping to summarize or synthesize the enormous mass of material accumulated by the critics' long campaign to capture the illusive force of Expressionism, we might simply list some of the more typical epithets, descriptions and qualities which it has claimed to find. As for example: abstraction, absence of landscape, acausality, associative thinking, asyntacticality, concentration, deliberate obscurity, demonism, elementalism, erruptivity, essentiality, formlessness, graphic imagery, immediacy, impersonality, intensity, irrationality, irreality, polarity of feeling, primitivity, rationality, simultaneity, subjectivism, subordination of spatial relations, tension, totality, visionary imagery, world-rhythm — and the like. Some authors even claim to have isolated THE constitutive characteristics of Expressionism. Thus Walter Muschg, who had warned of the perils of one-sided definitions on page 27 of Von Trakl zu Brecht, is — fate of most intrepid predecessors — hoist with his own petard on page 80 at the latest: Wo Manierismus Ausdruck des erschütterten Vertrauens in die Sprache ist, steht man einem konstituierenden Merkmal expressionistischer Dichtung gegenüber.24 The logical flaw in such definitions is their tautology. One has an intimation of what Expressionist poetry is, chooses a group of such poems to study, and identifies a common characteristic. Other possible candidates are not invited to apply. The purely practical disadvantage is that deductive application of the 'rule' produces strange, prejudged evaluations and forecloses a free and sensitive reaction to many poems. For example, Muschg on the basis of the above dictum finds Georg Heym a less 'authentic' Expressionist poet than Trakl. What that means is not clear, but it implies that 21

Muschg, p. 80.

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61

if we want our spirits unadulterated we had better patronize the latter and not dash them on the rocks of Heym's 'unerschüttertes Vertrauen'. Other definitive characterizations of Expressionism have been given. Oskar Walzel finds a 'wesentliches Merkmal' to be the 'Vergewaltigung von Wort und Satz'.25 Edgar Lohner perceives the 'wahres Wesen der Ausdruckskunst' as: . . . asyntaktische Wortkunst, die Beschäftigung mit assoziativen Verdichtungen und Auslösungen verschiedener Vorstellungen, die in Substantiv oder Verb eingehen und von ihnen ausgestrahlt werden.28 Other more extensive characterizations and analyses of the significant elements of Expressionist style could be cited; indeed, Schirokauer's whole study, Expressionismus der Lyrik, constitutes just such an endeavor. In works of this sort various style devices and qualities are easily demonstrated in appropriate poems, but the implication is that they are typical of all Expressionist poems. However, despite the apparently irresistible challenge which the project has presented, no usable consensus has been arrived at — though, as we have seen, many frequent traits and some sub-styles have been more or less precisely identified. In a comparatively recent critical bibliography of Expressionist research (1960), Richard Brinkmann summarizes the situation on the basis of his broad examination of current literature: Den Namen 'Expressionismus' für jene Literatur des Jahrzehnts zwischen 1910 und 1920, des 'expressionistischen Jahrzehnts', gebrauchen viele mit schlechtem Gewissen, weil sie nicht recht wissen, was er genau besagen soll. Und mit der Klage, daß gar nicht feststehe, was Expressionismus eigentlich sei, hebt manche Darstellung an, in der irgend etwas über Expressionismus steht.27 A quotation from Muschg's even more recent Von Trakl zu Brecht confirms that the first of the above sentences is still valid, while Muschg's book itself again illustrates the paradox alluded to in the second: Das Bild der expressionistischen Literatur ist also sehr differenziert, weit entfernt von der stilistischen Uniform, deren Fehler ihr manche vorwerfen. Man kann sie nicht als einen bestimmten Kreis von Autoren 25

Dt. Lit. von Goethes Tod, p. 109. "Lyrik des E. Einleitung", p. 70. 27 Ex., Forschungs-Probleme, p. 1. K

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umgrenzen, weil sie der Schauplatz eines epochalen Vorgangs ist, von dem mehr als eine Generation betroffen wurde. Es ist der Fehler fast aller bisherigen Darstellungen, daß sie das übersehen und eine einseitige Definition des Expressionismus verallgemeinern.28 We may conclude t h a t a lack of sufficiently general agreement as to which traits, and these in what degree, constitute an Expressionist's state of mind and quality of feeling and, furthermore, as to which devices, syntax, types of word and figure predominate in Expressionist language, 29 make stylistic considerations of the prevalent type inadequate as a criterion for the selection of a representative group of poems. Many individual works have been very generally conceded Expressionistic, but their number is not large enough on which to base a study of form types, and about the large majority of poems doubts can usually be raised, if one will, on the basis of this or that definition. c) Definition

by Representative

Poets

A third method of localizing a style is referred to by Muschg in the immediately preceding quotation. That is the more traditionally historiographical tactic of introducing poets into each other's company, and flagging them with the banner of an ism or other catchword. Grouping, of course, is sometimes personal or social and then represents a movement independent of literary historians' chapter headings. B u t whether it is an historical community of interest or simply a postulated common Zeitgeist, the fact remains t h a t the existence of common STYLISTIC characteristics must be 28

p. 27. There have been several systematic dissertations on the subject of Expressionist language as well as several contemporary essays on the subject. Heinz Peter Dürsteier, Sprachliche Neuschöpfu/ngen im Expressionismus (Thun, 1964), is, by its very conception as a 'Materialsammlung' of neologisms, not intended to be a general study of or criterion for Expressionist language. It leans heavily on the lexical and grammatical phantasies of the Sturm circle. Lucille Virginia Palmer, The Language of German Expressionism (Urbana, 111., 1938), lists peculiarities of grammar and syntax as well as word inventions, but many items listed are not unique to Expressionism (e.g. the preposited genitive) and others are of infrequent occurrence. Though peculiarities of language may be the prime Expressionist element in some poems, there are many (at least in the Menschheitsdämmerimg) without especially Expressionistic syntax or tropes. 28

WHO OR WHAT IS EXPRESSIONISM?

63

independently demonstrated. In the long run, therefore, delimitation of a style by its representative poets can be for the student of style only a tentative solution, the starting point of his analysis. And it has not been expressly tried for the Expressionist period very often or with great seriousness, if we except Herwarth Walden's attempt to capture the banner for his Sturm clique. On the other hand it is common to unconsciously assume that so-and-so is an Expressionist by virtue of his associations or his appearance in this or that Expressionist periodical. It is certainly not amiss, for example, to ask whether Theodor Däubler and Else LaskerSchüler are REALLY Expressionistic or not, since it is conceivable that they have been instated more on historical than on stylistic grounds. There are various reasons for this historical uncertainty as to just who the Expressionists were and are. As we have said, the term was assimilated comparatively slowly into the literary world, without being adopted clearly at the outset by any individuals or groups. By the time the question was consciously asked then — who are THE Expressionists ? — it was perhaps too late to say. The 'early Expressionists' and some of the most important of them — Heym, Trakl, van Hoddis, Lichtenstein, Blass — did not use the term, and Ernst Stadler, who did, did not consider himself one.30 Later, the battle lines seemed to be somewhat clarified in a dispute between the more art-minded Expressionists and the political Activists, but in the course of time the latter term has succumbed to the former, adding another dimension of uncertainty. Even during the period itself there was wrangling about who was and who was not an Expressionist. 31 The one ambitiously tenacious claimant to the leadership of the movement was the publisher and impressario, Herwarth Waiden. It was in his periodical Oer Sturm that one of the first occurrences (1911) of the term is to be found, in an essay by Wilhelm Worringer, the art critic.32 Waiden had at his disposal the publicity means to create an association between the term Expressionism and the See Lit. Revol., pp. 20 — 21. " N i c h t alles, was man Expressionismus nennt, ist A u s d r u c k s k u n s t . " K u r t Schwitters, " B a n a l i t ä t e n aus dem Chinesischen", in Lyrik des ex. Jahrzehnts, p. 283. 32 See his contribution to Der Kampf um die moderne Kunst, die Antwort auf den Protest deutscher Künstler (München, 1911), pp. 94—96. 30

31

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WHO OR WHAT IS

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work of the artists and literati he made his protégés. Muschg asserts that at one point: Wer von Expressionismus sprach, meinte nun vor allem seine [Walden's] phantastische Betriebsamkeit und die Schriftsteller, die dank der durch sie erzeugten Kampfstimmung in aller Mund waren: Franz Werfel, Carl Sternheim, Georg Kaiser, Else Lasker-Schüler, Karl Kraus, Albert Ehrenstein, Fritz von Unruh, Walter Hasenclever und viele andere, heute unbekannte Namen . . ,33 That Waiden was successful in establishing this association at least in some informed minds is confirmed in L. L. Schiicking's Soziologie der literarischen Geschmacksbildung (1923), a book which does not treat literary group phenomena casually, by a passage which obviously is linking the Sturm's 'absolute Wortkunst' with what Schücking calls the 'Explosionisten', whose achievement is: . . . die Syntax eines Säuglings angenommen und den Ausdruck in ein Lallen umgewandelt zu haben.34 But Waiden was not able finally to assert his claim. Even in 1910 we find Hermann Bahr according the title of Expressionist to all groups which were opposed to Impressionist art, although he is aware that the word is 'zunächst nur der Name der einen Sekte'.34 The force of the name as a general and dynamic slogan and its accepted legitimacy for all anti-Impressionist tendencies made it difficult to confiscate for any single clique. Walden's 1932 anthology, Expressionistische Dichtungen, purged all but his own circle from its pages, but was not able to change the common understanding of the term. A more recent attempt to locate a center of Expressionist literature has been somewhat half-heartedly made by Kurt Pinthus in the bio-bibliographical section added to the recent re-issue of his anthology, the Menschheitsdämmerung. In a brief curriculum vitae of Walter Hasenclever, Pinthus speaks of Hasenclever's: Enge Freundschaft mit dem Herausgeber dieses Buches [Pinthus] und Franz Werfel in einem literarisch aktiven Kreis, der sich um den Ernst Rowohlt Verlag, später Kurt Wolff Verlag in Leipzig sammelte und eine Gruppe der später 'Expressionismus' genannten Literatur darstellte.36 33

Von Trakl zu Brecht, p. 16. (München, 1923), p. 106. 35 Bahr, Ex., p. 49. 36 Kurt Pinthus, Menschheitsdämmerung. nismus (Hamburg, 1959), p. 344. 34

Ein Dokument des

Expressio-

WHO OB WHAT IS

EXPRESSIONISM?

65

True as it is that the Kurt Wolff Verlag has an especial importance in the history of Expressionism, the circle centered around it represents but a part of the movement. Even Pinthus' anthology contains poems by authors published elsewhere. In addition to these historical groupings, other efforts have been made or suggested recently to select Expressionist poets. Gottfried Benn, in his introduction to the anthology Lyrik des expressionistischen Jahrzehnts, reports the rather pragmatically direct criterion used by the publisher in compiling that volume: Der und der sind in der und der literarischen Abhandlung von dem und dem als Expressionisten bezeichnet. Das und das Gedicht sind von dem und dem Essayisten als typisches expressionistisches Gebilde angeführt.37 In the current state of the art a worse method could easily be found, and we shall settle for one that recommends itself only by greater limitation. Walter Muschg has currently suggested that we take as a standard for Expressionism those authors who "nur expressionistisch dichten konnten". 38 Overlooking the obvious circular reasoning here and accepting the intent, i.e. to consider ¡only authors who wrote Expressionistically by conviction and not as a matter of timely fashion, we may still inquire why we should restrict our horizons to Trakl, Else Lasker-Schüler, van Hoddis and some few others and reject, for example, the Expressionistic poems of Werfel and Göll. d) Definition by Historical Period The fourth, most general and thus least significant way to define a literary style would be to include all works of a certain very general kind produced in a certain period. Circumscription is achieved by very obvious exlusions rather than by a criterion of inclusion. Since this is the least controversial usage, it seems to be gradually establishing itself in the case of Expressionism, so that the term becomes actually more an historical category than a stylistic one. 37 38

Lyrik des ex. Jahrzehnts, Op. cit., p. 19.

p. 6.

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WHO OR WHAT IS

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We have seen evidences of this already. The Lyrik des expressionistischen Jahrzehnts originally was to bear the title Lyrik des Expressionismus, until the publisher settled on the former as being lese problematic.39 We have also, in passing, referred to the following proposal of Walter Muschg, which amounts to converting 'Expressionism' into an historical designation: Auch der Begriff Expressionismus läßt sich nicht mehr abschaffen, er kann nur sinnvoller definiert werden. Man muß ihn weit fassen und in Anführungszeichen brauchen, damit sich dieses Abstraktum nicht selbständig macht.40 And Richard Brinkmann in his Expressionismus. ForschungsProbleme 1952—1960 seems to adopt as a working principle that anyone writing between 1910 and 1920 who has been called an Expressionist may be accepted as one.41 Perhaps Paul Pörtner's collection of documents and manifestoes, Literaturrevolution 1910 — 1925, which distinguishes Cubism, Futurism, Expressionism, Activism and Dada, will act as a stabilizing force to forestall the unreasonable extension of any one of these terms, but the tendency is apparently to subsume all but Dada under Expressionism. The very broad historical use of the word is not merely a recent development. In 1923 Schücking remarks: "schon beginnt der Begriff der 'Ara des Expressionismus' sich festzusetzen";42 and in 1927, in the first great chronicle of that era, Richard Soergel's Dichtung und Dichter der Zeit. Neue Folge, Im Banne des Expressionismus, we read the following: Man hat sich gewöhnt unter Expressionismus einen Sammelbegriff für alle die jungen Kräfte zu verstehen, die zwischen 1910 und 1920 sich durchzusetzen suchten. In Wirklichkeit ist das Wort zunächst nur Ausdruck eines künstlerischen Stilwillens.43 The habit has perhaps become too ingrained to overcome, and for historical purposes seems unexceptionable, but for a style study there are inherent difficulties in defining Expressionism as, say, 'the revolutionary literature of the period 1910 — 1920'. Josef 39

See Bonn's introduction, p. 6. " O p . cit. p. 19.

"p. 3. 11

Soziol.

"p. 357.

der lit. Geschmacksbildung,

p. 11.

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Nadler has concisely formulated the puzzles posed by defining such a Zeitstil: Aber der zum Schlagwort gewordene 'Zeitstil' ist eine Täuschung und ein Denkfehler. Meint man damit ein mehr oder minder breites Band von Gleichzeitigkeit, so ist darauf hinzuweisen, daß Zeit ein Fließendes ist, willkürlich abzugrenzen und in Epochen zu bringen. Je nach der Epochenabgrenzung verschiebt sich aber auch der Umfang und damit Inhalt des Beobachtungematerials, daher auch die Stilindizien. Und welche 'Epoche' meine ich? Das Jahrfünft, das Jahrzehnt, das Jahrdreißig, das Jahrhundert? Und von wo an beginne ich zu rechnen ? . . . Nehme ich die Einschnitte von einem Werk ? Aber von welchem ?44 These objections become more salient as the historical perspective lengthens, and we learn to separate more soberly Expressionist publicity from its practice and to associate it, on the other hand, more intimately with preceding and succeeding phases of a more general modern style. Granting that a certain amount of periodization is required by what Wölfflin calls 'intellektuelle Selbsterhaltung',45 in stylistics it should ideally be accomplished from the 'inside', by tracing a structural relationship of elements that characterize and unify the period.4® And this sort of structure is exactly what has not been agreed upon for the Expressionist period.

3. T H E "MENSCHHEITSDÄMMERUNG" AS A BASIS FOR F O R M STUDY

In the preceding discussion we have successively questioned the feasibility of motif study, style characterization, representative 44

Josef Nadler, "Dae Problem der Stilgeschichte", in Philosophie der Literaturwissenschaft, ed. Emil Ermatinger (Berlin, 1930), p. 391. 45 Teesing, Das Problem der Perioden, p. 38, quotes H. Wölfflin, Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe (München, 1943), p. 245: "Alles ist Übergang, und wer die Geschichte als ein unendliches Fließen betrachtet, dem ist schwer zu entgegnen. Für uns ist es eine Forderung intellektueller Selbsterhaltung, die Unbegrenztheit des Geschehens nach ein Paar Zielpunkten zu ordnen." 41 Teesing, Op. cit., p. 39: "Die Perioden erscheinen uns als komplexe Einheiten ein wenig fragwürdiger Art. Solche zusammenfassende Einheiten können nur dadurch zusammengehalten werden, daß sie strukturiert sind."

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poets and temporal period as criteria for the selection of a representative body of Expressionist poetry. In none have we found standards which are generally accepted and broad and simple enough to permit their use. As they have been practiced, all seem to involve logical circles without an established starting point. If we had been able to find such criteria, they would serve as a basis for the study of Expressionist form; but actually, if these criteria already existed, if it were possible to specify what REAIJ Expressionism is, there would no longer exist such uncertainty about its form or its formlessness. It is this exigency which allows us to argue the broader significance of the results of an investigation into the problem of form in the most prominent Expressionist anthology, the Menschheitsdämmerung. For it is possible thus to defend the use of a standard anthology in a study of Expressionism as economical, reasonable and without a satisfactory substitute, although as a general resort this would be less defensible for a more established period and a more posthumous anthology. The only real alternatives would be, first, a stylistic definition with which we might separate the more from the less Expressionistic poems (but which would presuppose a solution of the form problem we have shown still to persist), or second, an extensive and very representative body of works generally accepted by critics and scholars as Expressionist. The latter could not omit any but the most minor names without risking distortion in the results achieved from its study. Neither of these alternatives is available. Y e t the urge to discover guidelines for the detailed interpretation of Expressionist poetry persists unabated, and as the closest approximation to such an aid the Menschheitsdämmerung offers us the broadest and most generally undisputed collection of poetry of this period. B y working with this anthology, one chooses the path of reasonable directness, hoping to achieve concrete results which are interesting in themselves and applicable even to poets not represented. One is in effect working from inside outward, from a fairly well defined core of Expressionism towards more obscure regions. To better evaluate this choice, let us examine the credentials of the Menschheitsdämmerung, compare it with other possible anthologies, and discuss the extent to which it is representative of the movement as a whole.

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a) Testimony for the ' 'Menschheitsdämmerung" Perhaps one of the most noteworthy indications of the unique statue of this book is the fact that Gottfried Benn, in the very act of baptizing a fresh Expressionist lyric anthology (1955), pauses to canonize the Menschheitsdämmerung as its patron saint, as 'die erste und einzige Sammlung dieses lyrischen Kreises'.4' Willi Duwe, one of the early historians of Expressionism, had long before (1936) authorized its veneration: Für den eigentlichen Expressionismus kann die von Pinthus herausgegebene Symphonie jüngster Dichtung 'Die Menschheitsdämmerung' . . . als bestes Beispiel gelten, während alle anderen bisher erschienenen Anthologien schon heute völlig wertlos sind.48 And Fritz Martini concurs for our own secular day, calling it 'die immer noch ergiebigste Anthologie expressionistischer Lyrik'.4· It is interesting to observe the extent to which it is considered typical of the period. We will touch later upon those respects in which it is not completely so and upon the possibility of this anthology's having itself created the very image of Expressionism which it is then, later, considered so truly to reflect. At a quite early date this collection seemed to enjoy canonical authority. Manfred Schneider, in his Einführung in die nevaste deutsche Dichtung (1921), gives it the following review: Die expressionistischen Lyriker hat Kurt Pinthus mit ihren wesentlichen Gedichten in der sehr lesenswerten Anthologie 'Menschheitsdämmerung' vereinigt. . . . Die Qualität dieser Dichtung ruhe in ihrer Intensität. Dazu ist zu sagen, daß vielfach statt Intensität Lautheit und Krampf sich äußert, und daß die noch so edle Gesinnung in einer großen Zahl der Gedichte allzu sachlich, stofflich zu Wort kommt.50 Though dryly critical of their unantiseptic quality, Schneider considers these poems the central ones of the period. Arno Schirokauer writes, in the first study of substantial length devoted to Expressionist poetry: Die große, eben genannte Anthologie, die weiteste Arena des expressionistischen Kampfes, ist 'Menschheitsdämmerung' genannt. Die 47

Lyrik des ex. Jahrzehnts, p. 19. Dt. Dicht, dee 20sten Jahrhunderts, " " D e r Ex.", p. 115. 50 (Stuttgart, 1921), p. 52. 48

p. 45.

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Menschheit ist in die Zeit gestellt. Ein Geschlecht dämmert hinab, ein neues hinauf — die Menschheiten eines Übergangs fühlen, daß sie an sich vorübergehen.51 But Schirokauer's book is a pietistic devotional of Expressionism, and we might rightly ask how the sceptics see the matter. Oskar Walzel, if not antipathetic, shows much academic reserve, but he also refers his followers thither: Verwandtes und Gegensätzliches der expressionistischen Lyrik ist aus Kurt Pinthus Anthologie 'Menschheitsdämmerung' (1920) gut zu erkennen.52 In addition to literary historians we have also the word of a recognized prosodist, Otto Paul in Deutsche Metrik: Der Expressionismus stellt — mit anderen Vorzeichen und wirksamer als der Naturalismus — eine neue Revolution der Verskunst dar, welche die Auflösung strenger metrischer Formen zum Formprinzip werden läßt (Stadler, Heym, der frühe Benn u.a. ; man vergleiche auch die für den Expressionismus repräsentative Anthologie 'Menschheitsdämmerung'.)53 For its bearing on our own desideratum this statement is doubly important, since it recommends the anthology as a source book for a purported Expressionist form principle — the 'Auflösung strenger metrischer Formen'. In addition to thematic, stylistic and formal representativeness, L. V. Palmer gives witness in the matter of poetic language. In her dissertation, The Language of German Expressionism, she calls the Menschheitsdämmerung an 'anthology which represents the floodtide of Expressionism', and for her own purposes 'a group of poets representing all phases of Expressionistic lyric'.54 Indeed, this collection has to a certain extent become symbolic of the whole movement and, to some writers, of the advent and triumph of modern poetry in German. Walter Höllerer gives his 'notes on contemporary poetry' the title 'Nach der Menschheitsdämmerung', in which we may read: Ex. der Lyrik, p. 26. Dt. Lit. von Goethes Tod, p. 109. 5 3 Otto Paul and Ingeborg Glier, Deutsche Metrik (München, 1961), p. 182. Andreas Heusler apparently also considers it representative for he uses it as a basis of comparison for the status of rhyme and meter in Expressionism. (See his Deutsche Versgeschichte, Berlin, 1929, Vol. I l l , pp. 95, 315). M p. i x ; p. X V . 61 ω

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Die Menschheitsdämmerung, diese von Kurt Pinthus 1920 herausgegebene zusammenfassende Gedichtsammlung der Generation des ersten Weltkrieges, zeigt, wie jene Generation, als sie ihre eigene Gegenwart selbständig aussprach, mitten in dieser abendländischen Bewegung stand, i . . Heute sehen wir aber, daß der Expressionismus, wie die anderen Ismen des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts, keine isoliert dastehende Kabine, die Menschheitsdämmerung kein verriegelnder Abschluß war.55 Occasionally a discordant note is sounded. Clemens Heselhaus strikes one in the preface to his own Expressionist anthology: Man muß sich endlich die Frage vorlegen, ob die Themen, die Kurt Pinthus für die Menschheitsdämmerung wählte (Sturz und Schrei, Erweckung des Herzens, Aufruf und Empörung, Liebe den Menschen) nicht die Folgen des verlorenen Krieges waren. Sie sind also nicht unbedingt bezeichnend für das Kunstwollen des Expressionismus.56 Since Heselhaus also maintains that 'der besonderen Thematik jeweils auch eine eigene Formensprache zukommt',57 the above would imply that the Menschheitsdämmerung is not truly exemplary of Expressionism's formal variety. The consensus would seem to be against Heselhaus. But we should inquire, in the face of such a consensus, if it is not perhaps self-perpetuating. It would be a difficult thing to prove, but it seems entirely likely that this anthology owes a good deal of its prominence to the fact that, as we have suggested, it helped to create the vivid image of a SCHOOL of poetry which it was later held to so admirably reflect. Several considerations make this plausible. Its publication came late enough for it to be a concluding summary (1920) yet contemporaneously enough to seem an organic manifestation of the age. The only anthology comparable in volume and breadth, Heinrich Eduard Jakob's Verse der Lebenden, was published in 1924 after the tide had ebbed. The Menschheitsdämmerung enjoyed good sales and fit du bruit58 In two years it sold 20,000 copies in four printings.59 Jakob's book was not reprinted again until 1927 56

Walter Höllerer, "Nach der Menschheitedämmerung. Notizen zur zeitgenössischen Lyrik", Akzente, I (1954), p. 425. w Die Lyrik des Ex., p. iv. "Ibid., p. vi. 58 Felix Bertau, Panorama de la Littérature Allemande contemporaine (Paris, 1928), p. 247. ω Pinthus, Menschheitsdämmerung, Ein Dok. des Ex., p. 7.

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and is scarcely known. Presumably, scholars and critics would have Pinthus' work available (whereas copies of earlier Expressionist authors, anthologies and periodicals might be vexatiously inaccessible) and would repair to it for confirmation long after the Expressionist periodicals had rapidly died out in the early Twenties. What is more, the Menschheitsdämmerung undoubtedly made access to Expressionist poetry easier for an audience of considerable size which did not regularly follow Der Sturm and Die Aktion, not to speak of its influence on new and curious readers of the next decades. One of the latter was Hugo Friedrich, the foreword to whose study Die Struktur der modernen Lyrik opens with a reminiscence: Das Buch ist aus langjährigen Beobachtungen moderner Lyrik hervorgegangen. Sie begannen, als dem Gymnasiasten 1920 die von K. Pinthus veröffentlichte Anthologie Menschheitsdämmerung in die Hände fiel.60 And the Marxist critic Hans Mayer has contrasted his own with the Expressionist generation — as represented in the Menschheitsdämmerung.61 The possibility exists, furthermore, that Pinthus' introduction to the volume helped shape the general attitude of later scholarship to the poetry of the period and even suggested some of the frequent critical phrases.82 Opinions expressed in some of the subsequent histories and studies, even the less superficial ones, may thus be dependent on this book or on other works which derive from it. This process of self-confirmation could continue so long as Expressionism as a concept and as an historical phase was not more closely examined and its individual works more broadly read. But that time has now past, and although it leaves the Menschheitsdämmerung with a legacy of authority we wish to exploit, it is necessary to consider possible limits to that authority.

60

Friedrich, p. 7. Pinthus, Op. cit., Note 69, p. 10. 62 Ibid., p. 8: "Ein holländischer Gelehrter behauptet sogar, die Einleitung des Herausgebers habe 'die Forschung beeinflußt' und er führt Gelehrte wie Walzel, F. J. Schneider, Huizinga, Christiansen an, die der 'optimistischen Tendenz' (er meint 'positiven Tendenz') jener Darstellung des Expressionismus gefolgt seien." 61

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b) Possible Bias in the "Menschheitsdämmerung" For there are several respects in which this anthology may indeed not be entirely representative. The degree to which it is not will, however, be awkward to estimate, since there appear to be, with perhaps the exception of the Dadaiste, at least some examples in it of all the various Expressionist themes and forms. One way in which the anthology may not completely reflect the whole period is indicated by the following observation. Prefaced to the Lyrik des expressionistischen Jahrzehnts is a 'Zeittafel', a listing of the lyricists included in the selection, each of whom is assigned to the year in which purportedly his first Expressionist volume appeared. With reference to this table we find eighteen of the poets of the Menschheitsdämmerung listed under the five years 1910 — 1914 (which years include a total of thirty names), while among the thirty-two poets appearing in the years 1915 — 1920 only three are represented in Pinthus' selection. In this connection we recall Pinthus' express statement on his inclusion policy: . . . die Nachläufer durften nicht aufgenommen werden, die glauben neu und jung zu sein, wenn sie problematische Vorbilder programmatisch nachahmen.63 We are made mindful that any results of research based on his collection should be compared with 'the late Expressionists' taken as a group. There will not, of necessity, be great differences; we have already raised the question in Chapter I of the reality of the Expressionist movement's progressive 'radicalization' toward its end. In defense of Pinthus' judgment, or as evidence of his sway, it should be remarked that in the central section of Lyrik des expressionistischen Jahrzehnts, devoted to Expressionists (as opposed to 'forerunners' and Dadaiste), almost two-thirds of the space is claimed by poets of the Menschheitsdämmerung. A further possible distorting factor in Pinthus' selection of poets is suggested by Soergel's classification of Expressionist lyricists in his Dichtung und Dichter der Zeit. This classification is somewhat arbitrary, it is true, and founded on thematic and stylistic grounds which are at times obscure. But in one of Soergel's categories which would seem to have the least ambivalent thematic basis, "Spiegelung von Krieg und Revolution", we find only two authors from 48Ibidp.

24.

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the Menschheitsdämmerung among the eleven treated. Now, there is certainly no dearth of war and revolutionary motifs in our anthology. But what is missing are most representatives of the so-called Arbeiterdichtung, for whom both revolution and war are typical themes, as well as the Kriegsdichter. The most prominent Arbeiterdichter are Paul Zech, Karl Bröger, Heinrich Lersch, Gerrit Engelke, Alfons Petzold, Max Barthel and Josef Winckler. Of these only Zech is in the Menschheitsdämmerung, whereas in Heselhaus's anthology Die Lyrik des Expressionismus, for example, all but Bröger appear, and the Lyrik des expressionistischen Jahrzehnts admits three — Zech, Engelke and Lersch. Many of these same names recur often among the Kriegsdichter; Bröger, Barthel, Lersch and Zech are such. But Ernst Lissauer and Walter Flex are most frequently assigned to the war poet category, and to their names a long list of others could be joined.®4 Among all these war poets only the name of Paul Zech is familiar to us from the Menschheitsdämmerung. Nevertheless, to appraise the matter fairly, we must call to mind the war poetry of Werfel, Hasenclever, Klemm, Heym, Becher, Stadler, Ehrenstein, Stramm and other poets, which is very much evident in that section of the Menschheitsdämmerung called "Sturz und Schrei". Revolutionary motifs are also not sparse, in works of Becher, Werfel, Otten, Rubiner et al., especially in the third section, "Aufruf und Empörung". The absence of the typical poets in these categories does not necessarily imply, therefore, a major imbalance, at least in point of themes. As a third consideration we might mention that the specifically grotesque lyric of the period is not broadly represented. Of course, the grotesque style is not exclusively associated with Expressionism; it has been an element of German literature since the late eighteenth century85 and of German art even longer. Around the turn of the century the grotesque style was already flourishing in authors such as Paul Scheerbart, Gustav Meyrink, Alfred Kubin and Hanns Heinz Ewers. During the Expressionist years the style is cultivated by poets seldom if ever thought of as Expressionistic, for example Christian Morgenstern, whose Galgenlieder volumes appear from 1905 to 1919. Thus it is difficult to assess the meaning 64 ω

Soergel, Op. cit., p. 501, provides an extensive list of See Heselhaus, Dt. Lyrik der Moderne, pp. 286—289.

Kriegsdichter.

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of the absence of names such as Hugo Ball, Klabund, Kurt Tucholsky, Walter Mehring and Erich Kästner in the Menschheitsdämmerung, all of them included in Heselhaus's anthology under the rubric "Groteske und Ironie". Heselhaus also accepts the Dadaiste Hans Arp and Kurt Schwitters — under "Experimente", though Dada is often more grotesquerie than it is linguistic experimentation of the kind we find among Sturm poets. The Lyrik des expressionistischen Jahrzehnts likewise adopts Ball and Klabund as well as a substantial corps of Dadaiste. Karl Otten has published a whole volume entitled Expressionismus—grotesk, embracing still other writers whom he considers to unite both styles. The Menschheitsdämmerung offers in this kind poems by Heym, van Hoddis, Lichtenstein, Rudolf Leonhard and others. There are in addition, of course, grotesque elements in the imagery of many of its works, if we take the formal definition of 'grotesque* as 'die überraschende Zusammenfügung des Heterogenen'.68 And all of the poets in this anthology would provide examples of visionary imagery or forced and astonishing metaphors. A final and perhaps the most patent deficiency lies in the neglect of the Sturm school's 'absolute Wortkunst'. Their lone delegate to this convocation is August Stramm, patriarch of the style, who nevertheless does not exemplify in his poems all its possible degrees and variations. A few poems by Lothar Schreyer, Kurt Schwitters, Kurt Liebmann, Hermann Kasack or F. R. Behrens, mixed into the Menschheitsdämmerung, or some Sfwrm-influenced works of Heynicke and Leonhard, would have given more equitable recognition to this doctrine. The poems in Pinthus' anthology by van Hoddis, Lasker-Schüler, Zech and Heynicke, poets with the Sturm's stamp of approval,®7 do not demonstrate absolute verbal art, though those of Heynicke show its fruitful influence. The problem of the extent to which all facets of individual poets are reflected by the Menschheitsdämmerung does not arise in a study such as ours. We are concerned that the anthology catch all the manifold styles, forms and themes of the period; whether illustrations derive from the one poet or another is secondary, up to a