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The Importance of Poets and Poetry in our Lives by Hatto Fischer

With regards to poetry, there come first Homer and Virgil although there is a great difference between the two. It is said that Homer understood to give to his fellow men confidence, a measure of things and through Odyssey a man who can talk his way out of trouble. By contrast, if you reflect Virgil, then this state poet of Rome and the Roman Empire meant to write with the intention to create a myth to safeguard rulership. Anyone having read Herrman Brochs 'Death of Virgil', will understand the final pain to be already on the death bed but while having read the 'Aneias' laughter by three drunken men rises from the court yard below the window and drowns out the voice of the boy reading the poem.

Indeed, poetry needs to be read out aloud and be listened to. How far does the voice carry something into the late night and shows a path like the stars above in order to find the way?

At the same time, my grandmother Käte Kuhn filled my days with poetry. Especially when it was time to find a gift, she had put in the first, second and third place of hiding a poem in need to be interpreted in order to find the clues as to where to search next. Yes, poetry is about a constant interpretation as to what life is about.

While still at Lisgar Collegiate in Ottawa, Canada, that is during the High School years, poetry was linked to the sonnet of Shakespeare, but also to the sombre tone of Alexander Pope who in his 'Paradise Lost' reflects another inferno compared to Dante.  In that final year our English teacher Mr. Mann made sure that no one would ignore Robert Browning and his wife. They became as much familiar faces as Eliot and his 'Waste Land' never became a clear reference, but more so remained a kind of puzzle.

If that takes one suddenly to Robert Frost, then because someone who left United States to join the poets in England meant he wanted to learn from them. Unfortunately or fortunately for him he joined the group around Erza Pound who became a controversial figure due to his support of Mussolini. Suddenly politics entered the field of poetry. It had to do with the times, insofar as the Student Movement of 1968 meant bringing poetry into the streets of Paris. Unfortunately by September 1968 poetry was gone and replaced again by the many cars crowding into any given street in Paris. Still, inspiration came from poets like R.D. Laing who used the title 'knots' to describe in poetic analytical terms how often relationships between man and woman end up getting more and more entangled. Poetry was about speaking with the other about his or her feelings in terms not understood if oneself remained self centered. There was the question of marriage: was it ever compatible with poetry, writing thereof? It seemed somehow by extension that poetry was reaching far out into the universe as to the hand of a child growing up and seeing all the difficulties on the road ahead.

Interestingly enough during that time poetry entered popular songs through the lyrics which were written and sung amongst others by the Beatles. The song 'imagine all the people' by John Lennon touches a chord in everyone still today. Poetry became a vision to imagine if there would be peace. That theme was picked up later by Sam Hamill and the poets against the war who responded to first Afghanistan being invaded shortly after 911 and then Iraq in March 2003. But this was before 'dream nothing' became an indication that human souls were surely over demanded and in the end fruitful dialogues were replaced by silence. Not a wind, not a sound was heard. Once she had left and shut the door behind her, there was a sense of gone was love.

As such an immense human pain ensued and many more poems followed. It prompted Katerina Anghelaki Rooke to say at the root of all good poetry is human pain. There followed more silence because even in the form of a wedding with the wind the wish for people to transform themselves into unmoved objects was that much stronger in a world apparently unmoved by their existence. This great indifference was also something few people thought about it but felt literally they could not deal with it. Again, if they wanted to avoid nothingness and not follow the path that someone like Nietzsche or even Van Gogh took, they had to do something about it. In the case of Katerina Anghelaki Rooke she found it in translation not only of poems written in English, French or Russian, in translating life's end into love. To this should be added 'supposing end' for no one knows in reality what to imagine life's end to be. As far as this goes here Katerina Anghelaki Rooke is sure. To her life is always much greater than what human beings can imagine. Thus the limits are in ourselves and not in life itself. That makes life into a sanctuary as long it is and can be lived. Out of it stems the experience of "us mortals" while there shall always be for Katerina Anghelaki Rooke exceptions. She considers poets like Elytis or Seferis as 'immortals' for they have created something beyond our imagination and as such they add something to keeping the human dream and voice alive.

Yet with love gone and silence ruling, then people end up living in a place of the dead. This has become the frightening reality of modern societies being similar to cemeteries. It prompted the French philosopher Michel Foucault to urge everyone to heed this silence: 'we have to find these places of silence before lyrical protest covers them up'. Suddenly poetry was perceived not as the truth, but practically an enemy thereof.

Such claims of false truths echoes the fears Hegel had of poetry. He denied poetry to have a certainty for it does not lead on to such concepts capable of claiming the whole and thereby the truth. Hegel failed to see that in the composition of a poem there is more than just a whole piece of evidence as to human emotions and thoughts. But his denial of poetry left Hölderlin out in the cold. He took positions like endorsing the French Revolution which was not politically correct at his time and ended up for the second part of his life in a tower in Tübingen. By contrast, Schiller and Goethe managed to integrate themselves into society, but more on other pillars than just on poetry. Goethe was also a civil servant while Schiller made a name for himself through his theatrical and philosophical-educational writings. Naturally both left behind powerful metaphers of poetry such as Schiller's 'freedom bell'. Still poets were taken for what they were: Romantics, and if unable to serve others like Rilke did Rodin, they would end up in loneliness. In a most dramatic way this was shown by Christa Wolf in her novel about Kleist and Günderode and called in German 'Kein Ort. Nirgends' - no place, nowhere! The two poets did not find a place to exist and even make love. Something excluded them from that possibility of being alive in the full sense of the word and come into touch with continuity of life.

Something similar tragic happened with Ingeborg Bachman who had after her relationship with Max Frisch found her destiny to be a congress in Vienna and instead she burned to death in her hotel room presumably out of neglecience when falling asleep while her cigarette was still burning.

Still till today life's end or death is not a metaphor. Rather to the poets in view of what has become of life is much more those drowned out voices which bothers them. There are many who are never heard whether now the local ones discussing things at the next street corner or who does not speak up in crucial debates. It has become the political norm that when it comes to making crucial decisions, that the 'voice of reason' is never heard or deliberately overheard. One tragic example is Athenians not heeding the voice warning them not to go to war against Sparta for then it will be more than a defeat a complete downfall of democracy in Athens.

Giving recognition to the poet and therefore to the human voice is not simple, for often the human voice can hardly, if ever be really heard. Instead for someone to speak in political assemblies presupposes everyone knows how to follow the political agenda already set before anyone took the floor. That leaves the majority of people marginalised and silent. They end up just watching the duel, for example, between Danton and Robspierre till the guillotine came down over and again. It helped establish the pseudo morality which would cripple many in their search for human expression over a desire for life which would remain a prerequisite for poetry.

No poem can uphold such violence as the guillotine. The Surrealists would manifest that image insofar no feather is ever strong enough to resist the cutting edge of the axe coming down. Despite this they failed to acknowledge that a feather can carry thoughts like birds through many winds and let them fly far away.

There is something deeply unsettling in this collision and coalition of forces, may they be the Romantic movement or those adhering to the principles of the Enlightenment. Certainly Adorno and Horkheimer set the tone in 1944 when analysing the failure of the Enlightenment, and this in view of Fascism having come very close to a total destruction of mankind and the world. Rightly so Adorno concluded that 'no more poetry was possible after Auschwitz', even though he was contradicted by Paul Celan. The latter survived the Holocaust but committed later in Paris suicide. Gadamer who feared Paul Celan would destroy the German language perceived his poems as if they were messages put into a bottle and set adrift on the wide ocean; once found they needed to be read like all cryptic messages with a carefulness to prevent being lead astray in so many subtle points. May they be human errors or more grave mistakes, for sometimes poetry can also reveal unknowingly the many human dreams have been betrayed even by the time the poet was no longer a young one, but had reached adulthood. This was considered at least by Brendan Kennelly in the introduction to his epic poem called 'Judas' and in which he shows that the most difficult thing to do is 'to unlearn learned hatred'.

The way death and war linked to various forms of myths about heroship have been handled by official institutions, but not very well - and yet even certain US Presidents wanted sometimes for their inauguration a poet or writer (J.F. Kennedy wanted Hemingway but who found out he could no longer write and went on to commit suicide very much like Pavese) to mark their words. For poetry seems to represent best for this would be politicians a future present of the past tense time for them. They wish to preserve something of that after having been elected with convictions and promises people hoped would be carried far and through all the institutions. But of course poetry is most of the time outside the institutions and certainly not a part of main stream culture. That may be due again to a forgetfulness that before any philosophy can institutionalise the thought process as did the American Constitution, there is poetry or at least a longing for once words are spoken in the glow of the candle night, then what is written down stands up as well to history. Still, to express deep feelings that takes a long time until it reaches the surface of the earth and some light shines upon it.

But to return to poetry becoming political, there are two different set of examples aside from someone like Erza Pound who recognized Mussolini out of a mislead projection of greatness of the human spirit upon a man impounding it instead. There is the lyrical protest in China. In the sixteenth century it sufficed for a poet to write a four line stanza on the wall of a pub and already it was taken to be a sign of open rebellion. There are many hidden and wonderful dimensions in such Chinese poetry. The translator Franz Kuhn gave some taste of it, but also the writer George Crane with his translation of the 'Plum poems' to be found in his book 'Beyond the House of the False Lama'. And then, there is surely Pablo Neruda whose affiliation to Communism made him become a hunted man in Chile and who treated the trust people had in him like the river which fed his poetry in silence. He could keep secrets while still confessing that he enjoyed life. Pablo Neruda stands out in a sense that he gave recognition to his brother Ritsos who was at the time Neruda did the reading in the Round House in Camden Town in London in jail and could not join his poet brother. Again the two are controversial figures as both accepted poetry prizes from Communist leaders who were definitely not on the side of humanity. Ritsos did so even as late as 1988-89 from East Germany when everyone saw already the signs of the wall coming down. Both endured persecution, and both knew politics. Neruda was in his time as well Senator of the Parliament and for some time ambassador, that is when his friend Allende had become President of Chile. He died one week after his friend died in the putch initiated by Pinochet in 1973 and which silenced all poetry for a long, very long time. Mothers would say then to their children it is not for them to tell the tale; they should ask their fathers who never returned from the stadium after troops had taken them away that fateful night when the putsch occured. Life goes on and is endured, so they would add, and whisper more to themselves than to anyone else that their own pain has yet to be heard. Someone like Christa Wolf who wrote Cassandra would know why: historians do not heed feelings and thus a lot remains unrecorded and is therefore never read by the generations which follow. Still, being political can mean many things, including becoming a victim of both the Right and the Left. It was only someone like Robert Musil who found a way to go in-between.

Enzensberger drew attention to someone who did not leave, but stayed in one place: William Carlos Williams. Of course, Thomas Mann had his affinity via literature to certain poets but then in Germany it was difficult to avoid Goethe and Schiller. While in Heidelberg it meant discovering Hölderlin and others who seemed to be carried away by the Romantic spirit as was Heinrich Heine. Names can also be brought to your attention like Hagelstange by Helmut Frieser who admired this poet in particular as if finding something in the post war ruins of Germany new hope. Eventually that would mean thanks to Isolde Arnold to get to know all the East German poets, and then especially those who were on small paths to find out what language had preserved in hidden corners and niches from an otherwise dull and sullen life. Heike Willingham was therefore one of the new poetess.

But when I came to Athens in 1988 to live here, then the entire world of poets opened up with a promise of future. This includes by now so many that only with time can their poetry be appreciated and respected, but of course fore mostly there is Katerina Anghelaki Rooke.

Over the past 20 years poetry has become an interwoven pattern of being present in the present, there where people are willing to translate the other to facilitate communication. Poetry is a social element insofar as it frees everyone from the urge to compete and thereby to exclude the others despite what Guenter Grass wrote in his lovely book called "Meeting in Telgte" or what prompted much later Brendan Kennelly to write "Poetry, my Ass!" Ah yes, the Irish poets cannot be forgotten with Seamus Heaney, Brendan Kennelly, Gabriel Rosenberg, Theo Dorgan, Paula Meehan, Michael Longley and Michael D. Higgins to mention but a few best known to me over time and various forms of interactions. Certainly the Irish have made their strong contribution to poetry and thus follow in the footsteps of James Joyce.

Often some poetic inspirations come and go as if some waves lab along the shores and while licking away at the wounds, realize they will have to return to the depth of the sea or else dry up. It leaves open as to when the dialogue between poetry and philosophy is resumed again so as to rewrite the grammar of life.

Hatto Fischer 25.4.2010

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