Poets and Writers at War

Feature photo: Detail of the Korean War Veterans Memorial in Washington | © Pixabay

I finished writing this paper on Sunday, April 3, 2022. Inspired by a contribution by Heinrich Kuemmerle from March 29, 2022, in which he, among other things, the American poet Robert Frost mentioned, which brought back good memories for me, I wanted to think and write about poets and writers during the war. Not least about what task poets and writers have to perform after the end of a war. The terms Truth and hope play an important role in this.

But on the very same day, Sunday, April 3, 2022, the world was shocked by the pictures of the atrocities committed by the Russian soldiers in the village Bucha, near Kyiv, and elsewhere on civilian populations. "Streets full of corpses," she captioned Süddeutsche Zeitung her report. It's becoming increasingly clear: Putin has blood on his hands, but he's proclaiming that it isn't. He is committing atrocities in Ukraine, the black shadows of which will fall back on his country.'

Given the images on the screen—they are in fact even more horrific—can one write about poetry, about truth, and about hope at such a time? Despite the news and pictures from Ukraine, I want to take the risk — precisely for the sake of hope. In war, truth dies first but hope remains, for hope dies last.

Poets and writers at war - Robert Frost brought back many memories for me

Heinrich Kuemmerle dealt with poems and poets on March 29, 2022: I was not familiar with the volume of poetry “Rhythm of the New Europe” – first published in 1921. He wrote the poem "To the Soldiers of the Great War" by Gerrit Engelke quoted and above Edward Thomas a line of connection to the American poet and multiple Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Frost (1874-1963), whose works are primarily associated with New England, and the US states of Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and Upstate New York. Frost lived in various places in Great Britain from 1912-1915, where he dealt with the First World War and its aftermath and then returned to the United States.

With Robert Frost woke up Heinrich Kuemmerle very old memories for me. His contribution made me write the volume of poetry “The Poems of Robert Frost' from the bookcase to read the quoted Frost poem 'The Road Not Taken“ to read. The volume of poetry – its spine is already somewhat yellowed – contains a handwritten dedication on the first inside page, which makes it particularly valuable to me: “Dear Hans, Merry Christmas 1958! Terry, Kay + Derry” — I met Terry in Heilbronn in 1956 when he was in the Wharton Barracks served as an American GI in the south of our city. We remained friendly for many years; we have met several times in the United States. Terry and his family settled in Massachusetts, and Terry and Kay showed me parts of that New England that Robert Frost sang: The peaceful valleys and hills and the farms nestled within them, the Berkshire Mountains and Mount Greylock, at 1.064 meters the highest peak in Massachusetts. On the summit stands the 1931/32 built Veterans War MemoriaTower. In sight of it the Bascom Lodge, a portion of Appalachian Trail passes there. In bennington in Vermont the grave of Robert Frost, and last but not least for friends of American history Fort Ticonderoga  — the French called it in their day Fort Carillon – at a strategically important point between the lakes Lake champlain  and Lake George located, which was fought over several times during the Seven Years' War and the American War of Independence. Play in that area James Fenimore Coopers "Leatherstocking Stories"; I was not the only one who devoured the book “The Last of the Mohicans” after the war.

Another important New England personality is the draftsman, painter, illustrator and advertising artist Norman rockwell (1894-1978). In his former studio, now a museum, in Stockbridge, Massachusetts you can see them all: the mischievous little rascals, the cranky craftsmen and everyday Americans who looked a bit backwoods but showed a lot of mischievousness in the neck. Many residents of the area had Norman rockwell Being a model - they then adorned the front pages of the for many years Saturday evening post and the magazine "looks". From today's European perspective, one could speak disparagingly of "bourgeois America" ​​were it not for Rockwell's "Four Freedoms" the "Four Freedoms". which he did in 1943 for the front page of the Saturday evening post painted and who greatly promoted the sale of war bonds: 

•    Freedom of Speech
•    Freedom of Worship — freedom of religion
•    Freedom from Want
•    Freedom from Fear — freedom from fear

From this, the Americans understood what the Second World War was about. Norman rockwell explained it to them in an understandable way.

But from Norman rockwells New England back to Robert Frost and finally to the misery of the war in Ukraine, which also deals with it Heinrich Kuemmerle has dealt with. The poet Robert Frost describes in the introduction to the volume of poetry in my bookcase the difficulties with which that person sees himself confronted with a white sheet of paper in front of him on which something meaningful should be written at the end. Right from the start, he takes the readers of his poems up the high rope: what is poetry? "Poetry is simply made of methaphor" - "A poem simply contains metaphors."

• (Metaphor (Greek), transfer of a word (or a group of words) from its own context of meaning to another, without a comparative particle clarifying the necessary relationship between signifier and signified, e.g. "A lion in the battle" (the comparison adds: (fights) like...") Poetic stylistic device and popular / rhetorical figure since antiquity. 
  (Source: Duden encyclopedia in 3 volumes; Mannheim 1976).

And how does the poetry begin, the writing on the blank white paper? "As a rule, precise calculations don't play a role in the initial considerations." To put it in my words: At the beginning of poetry there are rambling thoughts, feelings and assumptions as to where the journey could lead. Describes the finished “product”. Robert Frost with a thoughtful sentence: “Every poem is an epitome of the great predicament; a figure of the will braving alien entanglements" -- "There is a great awkwardness in every poem; the will to avoid entanglement in the unknown.” As a bard, he searches for the right words, for the right words, and he searches for the truth. Did he actually say what he meant at the end and write elsewhere in the introduction?: "Every poem contains a new metaphor, otherwise it's worthless. And yet, basically, all the poems have the same metaphor.” To use my own words again: This last metaphor could mean truth, honesty, sincerity and also humanity.

The poet takes people on a journey

Born in August 1936, I was almost nine years old at the end of the Second World War in May 1945. Growing up in Heilbronn's southern district, my family and I were lucky not to have been "bombed out". The air raids on our city on September 10, 1944, December 4, 1944, and January 20, 1945, and the nights in the basement of our house until the Americans marched in in April 1945 have remained deep in my memory. After the war ended, we boys were starved physically and mentally. We devoured books wherever we could get them. As students at the Robert Mayer Oberschule - today's Robert Mayer Gymnasium - a school friend and I fetched the literature from the small school library, from the library of the Mennonite community, Moltkestraße 40 and above all from the Amerikahaus, Lerchenstraße 83. According to the chronicle in the city of Heilbronn, it was opened on September 1, 1948 and contained 3 books. Adventure literature, like the leatherstocking stories already mentioned, was important to us; anti-war literature, however, was significant and influential. I will name some of the books that describe what war does to people and what people in war can do to others.

moved me deeplyNothing new in the West" from Erich Maria Note (1898-1970), a reckoning with the Prussian nationalism of the German Empire and the bloody human slaughter on the western front in the First World War. "Nothing new in the West" was one of the many books that were thrown into the fire and banned during the Nazi book burnings of 1933. Heinrich Heines Words from his tragedy "Almansor" — written in 1821 — comes to mind: "Where books are burned, people are also burned in the end."

The Hollywood adaptation of "Nothing new in the West" from 1930 - it was awarded two Oscars - was also shown in Germany after the war. It affected us so much because the high school students who enthusiastically volunteered in World War I and then lost their lives at the front were only a few years older than we were at the end of World War II.

Captivating and moving in a completely different way - into the history of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). Ernest Hemingway a love story woven in – was “For whom the hour strikes". The novel was Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman filmed.

The novel "Damn to all eternity" -- "From here to Eternity”—– it takes place before and after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 – by James Jones I read during my exchange year in the USA in 1953/54. This novel was also made into a film with a star cast and won 8 Oscars.

I would like to mention another book that also takes place in the Pacific War and was published in 1948: "The Naked and the Dead" from Norman Mailer. This book was also filmed; it always seemed to me in the shadow of "Damn to all eternity" to have confessed. For me it is "Nothing new in the West" the measure of all things for anti-war literature after the First World War. "Damn to all eternity" stands for it after the Second World War.

But it was not only in the United States that writers and directors grappled with the horrors of war, processed their own war experiences and created fictional characters in whose fate they made the misery and misery of the war years visible. Wrote to us in Germany Wolfgang Borchert 1946 the harrowing play "Outside the door". It was November 21, 1947 - 22 hours after Borchert had died of his war injuries, premiered in Hamburg. The Bavarian Radio called "Outside the door" as the most important German anti-war drama. Borchert not only came to terms with his own fate, but also "made the survivors once more aware of the whole tragic madness of the war in an authentic way" (BR/Bavaria 2, January 20.1.2009, XNUMX: "The fate of a war returnee", by Armin Strohmeyer).

A little book moved me no less: "Unrestful Night" from Albrecht Goes (1908-2000). The poet and pastor Albrecht Goes is connected to our region. He was born on March 22, 1908 in the vicarage of Langenbeutingen -- today a district of Langenbrettach -- born. In "Unrestful Night" the first-person narrator, a Protestant war chaplain, describes how he accompanied a young German soldier who was sentenced to death for desertion in the last hours of his life. 

In his birthplace will Albrecht Goes commemorated with a memorial stone on which one of his poems -- a parable of life -- is carved. Here is the third and last verse:

                       Take a bold step, take a brave step

                       Big is the world and yours

                       We will, my child

                       After the last step

                       be together again

(More notes on the life of Albrecht Goes: see on the internet at Albrecht Goes: Municipality of Langenbrettach).

Ukraine – again war in Europe

Albrecht Goes describes in "Unrestful Night" an event that took place in October 1942 in the city then occupied by the German Wehrmacht Proskurov has happened. He left a dark memorial stamp on the city. And today, 80 years later, there is war in Ukraine again. This time the Russian President Vladimir Putin the furies of war unleashed. The terrible images of the war, full of misery for the people there, flicker across the screens every day. What is war doing to poets and writers? What do poets and writers do in times of war when not only the imagination and the beautiful thoughts die in the hail of bombs and rockets? 

In an interview with the Süddeutsche Zeitung gives the Ukrainian writer Andrei Kurkov (Born 1961) -- he has been President of the Writers' Union PEN in Ukraine since 2018 -- an answer to these questions: "I no longer write literature. I only write articles and reports. At the BBC I do weekly shows, work regularly for other media and get an incredible amount of feedback.“(sueddeutsche.de, 26.3.22/XNUMX/XNUMX: "The war will not stay in Ukraine"; Interview with the Ukrainian writer Andrei Kurkov). War, I read from this answer by the writer Kurkov, bury or kill the imagination under mountains of rubble. The creation of fictional characters in the novel and the invention of their lives is only possible again when the war is over, when the mountains of rubble have been cleared away and when mourning for the dead has given way to memories of good times together. 

One of Kurkov's answers in this interview is depressing because it shows what the war is doing to the writer. the interviewer Hilmar Klute asked about the humorist Andrei Kurkov, after the satirical enlightener whose novels are read all over the world as entertaining and funny fables. Kurkov replies: "I no longer have a sense of humor.” and responding to another question as to whether humor has a chance of returning: “I hope so, but I don't know."

As after the wars before, the poets and writers will investigate the fates and experiences of the people after this war. You will invent characters and describe the events of war in a frighteningly realistic way and also in metaphors. The date of March 24, 2022 will go down in European history just as the date of September 11, 2001 turned America inside out. The poets and writers will try to find the truth that died first in war and they will try to give people hope for the future because hope dies last...

A soldier

He is that fallen lance that lies as hurled,

That lies unlifted now, come dew, come rust,

But still lies pointed as it plowed the dust.

If we who sight along it round the world,

See nothing worthy to have been its mark,

It's because like men we look too close,

Forgetting that as fitted to the sphere,

Our missiles always make too short an arc.

They fall, they rip the grass, they intersect

The curve of earth, and striking, break their own;

They make us cringe for metal point on stone.

But this we know, the obstacle that checked

And tripped the body, shot the spirit on

Further than target ever showed or shone.

Robert Frost 

                                                                             

---

Addition by Heinrich Kümmerle
As this poem by Robert Frost is an unusually difficult one to understand, I would like to refer to this review of the poem: