grimm1973.pdf

7/25/2019 grimm1973.pdf

1/5

Board of Regents of the University of Oklahomais collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Books

Abroad.

http://www.jstor.org

oard of Regents of the University of Oklahoma

The Commitment and Contradiction of Hans Magnus EnzensbergerAuthor(s): Reinhold Grimm and David BathrickSource: Books Abroad, Vol. 47, No. 2 (Spring, 1973), pp. 295-298Published by: Board of Regents of the University of OklahomaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40127064

Accessed: 05-02-2016 13:33 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of contentin a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

This content downloaded from 132.174.255.116 on Fri, 05 Feb 2016 13:33:13 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/http://www.jstor.org/publisher/bruohttp://www.jstor.org/stable/40127064http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/40127064http://www.jstor.org/publisher/bruohttp://www.jstor.org/

7/25/2019 grimm1973.pdf

2/5

The

Commitment

and

Contradiction

of

Hans

Magnus

Enzensberger

commentaries

By

REINHOLD

GRIMM

When

criticizing

the critic one

can

always

take the

easy

way

out.

Thus,

for

instance,

when Hans Magnus Enzensberger decided to turn down his position at Wesleyan

University

to

go

to

Cuba,

the

novelist

Uwe

Johnson

noted that in

Cuba

"children

over

13

no

longer

receive

milk;

let

us

hope

the

poet

Enzensberger

has

been

properly

weaned."

Certainly

no

insight

is

gained

through

remarks of

this sort.

However,

it is

equally

dangerous

to

apply

a clear-cut

formula

to such

a

provocative

critic.

Given

Enzensberger's

most formative

influences,

one

is

tempted

to

trace a

line

of

development

from Brentano

(the

subject

of his

doctoral

dissertation)

to Adorno

(for

whom he

was

star

pupil

among

the

poets)

on

down to

Castro

(in

whose

island he

beheld

the

"cross-

roads"

of

world

history)

-

in

short,

a

development

from

dandyism

and

intellectual

snobbishnessvia the bold

dialectics

of

the Frankfurt

school

to

the

direct

political

action

of the guerrillas and Tupamaros. But this would be a vast simplification.

Granted,

definite

changes

have occurred

during

the

past

decade;

and

they

can

be

traced in the

very

titles

of

Enzensberger's

books.

From

the

"Museum

of

Modern

Poetry"

(1960)

and "Odds

and

Ends"

(Einzelheiten)

dealing

with

the mass media

and

poetry

and

politics,

his

development

as

a critic of his

age

extends to

volumes of

essays

such

as "Politics and Crime"

and

"Germany,

Germany

among

Other

Things"

{Deutschland

Deutschland unter

anderm)

;

and

it

continues in his

editing

of such

works

as Bikhner's

"The Hessian

Messenger"

and Las

Casas's famous

report

on

the

West

Indies

through

the

collection

"Acquittals:

Revolutionaries

on

Trial"

and the

documentary play

"Hearings

from

Havana"

up

to

"Conversations

with

Marx

and

Engels"

(1973)

and the

documentary

novel "The

Short

Summer of

Anarchy:

Life and

Death

of

Buenaventura Durruti"

(1972).

It

does in fact

appear

that

Enzensberger's

interests

have not

only

shifted from

poetry

to

politics

and from

specifically

German

problems

to those of a

global

nature,

but more

generally

from

the media to

those who

manipulate

it, i.e.,

from the

super-

Ed. Note:

This

paper

was

delivered at the

Boo\s

Abroad

symposium,

"The Writer as

Critic

of his

Age,"

at

the MLA

meeting

in

New

York,

December 1972.

For

other

papers

of this

symposium

see BA

47:1,

pp.

26-53.

The author

would like to

express

his

gratitude

to his

colleague

Evelyn

T.

Beck,

for

many

valuable

suggestions

in the

preparation

of this

paper,

and to Professor Mark

Boulby (University

of

British

Colum-

bia)

for

drawing

attention to

Johnson's

attack on

Enzensberger.

A much

larger

version of this

paper

some

seventy-odd pages

will be

published

in

German in the

yearbook

Basis

4

(1973).

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

7/25/2019 grimm1973.pdf

3/5

296

BOOKS ABROAD

structure to the

base.

Looking

at

his

shorter

pieces

we

note a

similar

development:

essays

dealing

with

dramaturgicalproblems,

film and even

an

obligatory piece

about

the

backward state of modern Danish

poetry

give way

to

pamphlets concerning

"The

Interlocking

Nature of

Capital

in the Federal

Republic/'

the

emergency

laws and the

Communist

Party

of Cuba. One can trace in

Enzensberger

a

growing

political

com-

mitment

paralleled by

an

increasingly

intensive

study

of

the

theory

and

history

of

socialism and

revolution;

all

of this is

revealed

not

only

in

his

choice

of

subject

matter,

but in

its treatment as well

that

is,

his

work

becomes

a

collective effort

involving

several

writers.

Enzensberger's

pronouncements

over the last twelve

years

underscoreand

strength-

en this

impression.

In 1959

he stood

up

to

his

mentor

Adorno

who,

as is well

known,

had stated

that after

Auschwitz it was

no

longer possible

to write

poetry

"If

we want

to

keep

on

living,"

said

Enzensberger,

"then this

sentence

must be

proven wrong."

Conversely, in 1971 he declared in an interview: "For me literature was never the

most

important

thing.

It

was

never

the

most

important

thing

in

my

life

and

hopefully

never

will be."

Halfway

between

these

two statements

is an

essay

by Enzensberger

which

appeared

in

Paris

entitled

"La

litterature

en

tant

qu'histoire,"

which

clearly

reveals

a

kind of

looking

back

and

a

tentative

summing up.

Similar

transitions can

be

found

in

his

political

writings.

"Let's

cut out the

nonsense

Please don't talk to

us

about

democracy,

and

least

of

all

about our

constitutional

rights "

So

reads an

open

letter

of October

1967

to the

Minister

of

Justice

at

that

time,

Gustav Heinemann.

In

the same

vein,

Enzensberger

continues,

"I

know

from

my

own

experience

how difficult

it is to

rid

oneself

of such

phrases.

Yes,

too much

optimism,

too

much

hope

for reform

and

a blind faith

in

the

legitimacy

of

the state that is what

I

myself

am

guilty

of."

At

one time

Enzensberger

had

actually

publicly supported

Heinemann's

Social

Demo-

cratic

Party,

but

"without

enthusiasm,

and

yet

without

hesitation." As late

as

1964,

he

had

explicitly

stated that

his intention

was

"revision,

not

revolution." And

yet

the

following pronouncement

of

May

1968 is

just

as

emphatic:

"Misgivings

are

not

enough,

suspicion

is not

enough, protest

is

not

enough.

Our

goal

must

be

to create

even in

Germany

conditions

as

they

now

exist

in France." The

speech

entitled "Emer-

gency"

(Notstand)

ends in

an

open

call

for

revolution.

Its

goal

is

absolutely

identical

to

that

of the above

interview,

which

places

literature in its

proper perspective,

but at

the same time

wants

to refashion

it

(sie umzufun\tionieren)

and

assign

it the

"sole

task

...

of

making

socialism a

reality."

The

roots

of this

development

are

already clearly

discernible in the fifties. It was

by

no means

simply

"odds and

ends"

of

art or

the

cultural

industry

that first

excited

the

young

critic

at this

early

stage,

but rather the "rituals"of the

"unconquered

past"

and

that

fatal

"German

question."

The nuclear

threat,

the

cold

war and the iron

curtain

overshadowed

everything

in a divided

Germany. Germany

was

for Enzens-

berger

so much "the

unholy

heart

of

all

peoples" (an

inversion

of the famous line

by

Holderlin)

that

he saw it as

both the

main

perpetrator

and chief

victim of destruction.

"The

Germans

today

are much like

hostages

of world

politics,"

he

wrote.

"If

anyone

is

to be

shot,

they

will

be

the

first."

The tremendous

effort it

cost him to overcome

this

obsession is

apparent

in

titles

such as

"Attempt

to Take

Leave of the German

Question"and "Am I a German?,"an essaywritten for Encounterand later on retitled


7/25/2019 grimm1973.pdf

4/5

GRIMM

297

"Concerning

the

Difficulty

of

Being

a Native"

("Uber

die

Schwierigkeit,

ein

Inlander

zu

sein").

It

was

only

in

1967,

under the

shock of

the Grand

Coalition and the

threaten-

ing growth

of the

National

Democratic

Party,

that

he

finally

recognized

this fixation

as a

"dangeroushandicap,"

ndeed

"boring

to the

point

of nausea." One will become

blind

to

the

future,

Enzensberger says,

if one

gets

too

caught

up

"in

this

alone."

The

change

in him becomes

abundantly

clear

in

an

essay

entitled

"European

Periphery,"

which was leveled

not

only

at

Germany

but at

all

of

Europe.

His

broadening

perspec-

tives

on

national issues

correspond

to his

growing

concern

over social

questions.

This

is best

seen in his

reworking

of a

quotation

from

Biichner as well

as

the

closing

words

of

his remarks in

an edition

of

the

Communist

Manifesto.

In

his

commentary

to

"The

Hessian

Messenger"

he

makes the

following

statement:

"The

relationship

between

poor

and

rich

peoples

is the

only

revolutionary

element in the

world." No

more can

we

speak

of

"proletarians

of

the

world,"

Enzensberger

admonishes,

but

only

of

"the

proletarianworld." No longer are the struggle between "communism and anti-com-

munism,

fascism and

anti-fascism"

and

the notion of class

antagonisms

and

"ideological

differences"

he

determining

factor,

but

rather it

is

the

contradiction between the

two

halves

of the

world.

The block of rich nations and

large powers

from

New

York to

Moscow stands on one

side;

while

opposed

to

them stands

the third

world of the

oppressed

and

exploited

nations which

one

really

ought

to

call the "second"

or "im-

poverished"

world.

For

this macabre

grouping

only

the

one

"seemingly

most

anti-

quated"

concept

is

suitable:

namely,

"colonialism."

No

doubt,

Hans

Magnus Enzensberger

has

changed.

He

himself

has

recently

indi-

cated

quite

clearly

that

a

development

has

taken

place;

indeed,

he has even been

practicing self-criticism.

Thus his own assessment

and that of an overwhelming

majority

of his critics would seem

indisputable.

But is this

really

the

case? Has not

much,

or even most of

what

marked

Enzensberger

s

early

work

remained the same?

Do

we

not find

that

with

him,

as

with

so

many

of

his

generation,

the

thought patterns

of

the

fifties

are

being perpetuated?

One

need

only

consider the

pervading

sense of

doom,

so

prevalent

at

that

time,

which comes

through

not

only

in "Odds and Ends"

and

the

early

poems

but

throughout

his

later

essays

and

even

in

his

most recent

poetry.

In

spite

of his

attempts

at

mockery,

there

emerges

in

almost

all

of his

writings

a

paralyzing

sense of

catastrophe

and

doom.

It finds

brutal

expression

in the

essay

"World

of Shambles"

("Scherbenwelt"),

n

which

Enzensberger

unfolds

a

typology

of

newscasts

ranging

from "an idiotic

idyll

to

cosmic

insanity,"

i.e.,

the

explosion

of the

atomic

bomb,

declared

to be the actual telos of all

images.

He denounced this

"apo-

theosis

of destruction"

as

early

as 1957.

But even

a full decade later we

read

the

follow-

ing

in

"Attempt

to Take Leave

of

the

German

Question":

"There is no

longer

any

mediation

between reason and material

violence."

Day-to-day politics

are

bluntly

described as "crass

stupidity"

not

to

be

reconciled

"with

productive

thought."

In one

of his

latest

poems,

"The Real

Knife"

("Das

wirkliche

Messer"),

politics

is

mytholo-

gized

as

hopeless carnage:

"And

they helped

themselves and

they

were

right

/

And

they

could

not

help

one another."

At

the

heart

of these

verses

lies

a

thought pattern

characteristic

f

the

fifties which

is

typical

of

Enzensberger's

entire

work.

Uwe

Johnson,

in the

only bright

moment

of

his attack,recognizesthis and defines it as "dualism."Closelyrelatedto Enzensberger's


7/25/2019 grimm1973.pdf

5/5

298

BOOKS

ABROAD

sense

of

catastrophe,

t

is

his

obsession

with the

essential

evil inherent

in all

political

forms,

an obsession which

constantly

takes the

shape

of a

radical

dichotomy, despite

Enzensberger's

insistence

upon

the

underlying

identity

of

states and

systems,

which

only

in isolated cases and then often

just

as

radically

is broken

through by

an act

of

affirmation.

Again

and

again

we

confront such

oppositional pairs

as Federal

Repub-

lic/German

Democratic

Republic,

capitalism/communism, USA/USSR;

repeatedly

the

rulers

and the

ruled,

the

exploiters

and the

exploited,

the rich

and the

poor,

and

finally,

rich and

poor

nations

are

juxtaposed. Certainly,

there

is a

development

from

national

to

social to

global

concerns.

But the basic

dualism two

states,

two

classes,

two

systems,

two

worlds

is

maintained.

The content of

Enzensberger's

thinking

ex-

pands

and

develops,

its

structure however remains the

same.

This structure

emerges

in

particularlypure

form in his

collection

of

essays,

"Politics

and

Crime."

Enzensberger

not

only

assures

us

that

the

dictator

and

mass murderer

Trujillo

has carried out his

liquidations "as cold-bloodedlyas a world corporationor a people's democracy,"but

he also

presents

the

shocking

thesis that

revolutionary

activity

is

virtually interchange-

able

in its modes

and methods with

that

of

the

counterrevolutionaries.

The

latest

variation

on this

theme

is

the

oppressive

counterpart

to Western

"monopoly

capital-

ism"

Eastern

"monopoly

bureaucracy,"

an idea which

Enzensberger

owes to

the

open

letter

entitled

"Monopoly

Socialism"

by

the two Polish writers Kuron and

Modzelewski.

Enzensberger appends

the

following

comment to it: "Their

essay

repre-

sents one of

the first

attempts

to

apply

the

revolutionary

method of Marxist

theory

systematically

o

one of

the

socialist societies of

Eastern

Europe."

In

Enzensberger,

then,

it

is

not

simply

"the

Manichean

eye"

at

work

that

is,

the

strict

separation

of

good

and

evil,

as

Johnson

would

mistakenly

have us

believe; instead,

there

is

a

dualism

which

more

often than not

flips

over

into total

monism. We

should,

therefore,

not

be led

astray by Enzensberger's

commitment to

revolution,

socialism

and

the third

world,

for

this

in

no

way

contradicts

his

underlying

thought pattern.

The

commitment

is both a

part

and

the most

logical

contradiction of

the

thought

pattern;

in

many

cases it

is

repeatedjust

as

compulsively

as

the

dichotomy

from

which

it must

extricate

itself.

The

paradox

of Hans

Magnus Enzensberger

as a

critic

of his

age

lies

precisely

n

the fact that

while

he

despairs

of

the

efficacy

n

any political

action,

he

nonetheless is

passionately

moved to call for and commit

political

acts.

This

is a

paradox

which

I

can

only

reveal,

not

resolve.

For

the

moment,

Enzensberger's

own

answer echoes the

words of

Antonio

Gramsci,

"pessimism

of

mind,

optimism

of will."

But the

question

remains:Will a mere echo suffice?

University

of

Wisconsin

Translated

rom

the

German

By

David

Bathric\


grimm1973.pdf

Documents