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Andreas Hapkemeyer, ...und das soll Dichtung sein: Untersuchungen zur 'neuen Sprache' in L yrik und Kunst seit den 1950er Jahren (Würzburg: Königshausen & neumann)
Andreas Hapkemeyer's useful book opens in 1950s Vienna. This was where Ingeborg Bachmann began her search for what, years later, in her story "Das dreißigste Jahr," she called a "neue Sprache." And during the course of the decade, Austrian writers like H.C. Artmann and Friedrich Achleitner began their experiments with concrete poetry and Dialektdichtung. Despite being a point of convergence, Vienna wasn't a site for harmonious co-existence, as Hapkemeyer shows. In her Frankfurter Poetikvorlesungen held in 1959 and 1960, Bachmann ridiculed the avant-garde's efforts as "Basteleien" and "Fin- gerübungen." The avant-garde felt similarly about her. Oswald Wiener gave an ironic reading of Bachmann's "Anrufung des großen Bären" at the Wie- ner Gruppe's December 1958 cabaret (this is his recollection: "ich bemühte mich sehr, dieses schöne und moderne gedicht der grossen österreicherin bachmann dem publikum zu vermitteln, aber die leute verstehen nichts und lachten, sodass ich aufhören musste;" other polemical targets of the evening included Wittgenstein, Sartre, and Pasternak). Hapkemeyer also mentions a public discussion in the Galerie St. Stephan in Vienna between Paul Celan and Gerhard Rühm that, according to Rühm, didn't go so well: "nach wenigen Worten versickerte das Gespräch, noch bevor es eigentlich begonnen hatte, und Celan wurde nicht mehr gesehen." This non-conversation is...