»The successful poem and its reader are like two magnets that repel each other.«
Photo: IMAGO/Pond5 Images
Mr. Bulucz, do you think in rhythms?
No, I don’t think in rhythms. The rhythms are the work. I often start from certain materials: memories, motifs, phrases, words, around which the poems are created. I write a lot of things strictly metrically because I can write the poem more confidently if I know that every syllable has its indispensable place. However, strictly metrical writing has an interesting consequence: because I cannot always access the most appropriate word for an idea and have to use another word, the strict form of the poem distances me further and further from the material around which it was created.
In your book “Hour Wood” you repeatedly return to memories that actually have a different linguistic connotation, I think, namely Romanian.
My mother tongue is Romanian, and once in Germany I no longer had a language, I was speechless. Also speechless and aghast because emigration was a shock for me. I left my father behind, my friends at school and at the sports club. I lost my familiar surroundings, everything that was dear to me remained where I was no longer. I no longer had any shelter. Emigration was a kind of deafening alarm clock that I still can’t turn off to this day. The total awareness, the total alertness – there is no superlative for this trauma, except perhaps the insomniac who resents the peaceful sleep of those who sleep peacefully.
Interview
dpa
Alexander Bulucz is a poet, literary critic and German scholar. Born in Alba Iulia in Romania in 1987, he came to Germany in 2000. In the spring, Schöffling published his volume of poems “Hours Wood”. In June he received the Hölty Prize, the most valuable poetry prize in Germany.
How does this influence your work?
My lyrical subjects are in fact obsessed with reconstructing, through memory and memory, the Romania of the 90s, this hellish paradise or, as the case may be, this paradisiacal hell from which I did not really want to be freed. Because some consciousness is a disaster. It leads to the impossibility of living the present and immediate experience, not to mention the future. And this reconstruction, as if I were trying to compensate for my trauma, often relies on facts. For example, if I write about Ceaușescu’s famous ban on abortion and all contraceptives, something that has had an impact on my family, then the facts have to be right, then I consciously choose certain words to express it. In this sense, I am journalistic, conscientious. At the same time, I try to remain as fair as possible. I’m trying to show that there is a life in the wrong, a life that needs to be appreciated despite its wrong context. If that has something to do with the truth of the individual, then I’m happy.
Is it a naive thought to say that poems can only be understood by those who also write poems? Poetry seems to me to be a kind of dedication, even more so than prose.
But poetry is perhaps the genre most unsuitable for the masses because it tends to reject all kinds of stagnation aesthetically. But it is also the most versatile species, constantly looking for innovation. We just had this debate again, as a result of the Büchner Prize going to Oswald Egger. It is considered particularly difficult for the large German-speaking book market. The jury honored radical artistic autonomy, and that’s a good thing. Brecht’s poetry, for example, is largely considered political. One could use individual examples of his poems to discuss the relationship between content and form, that is, between communication and aesthetic innovation. The more dominant the message, the less aesthetic innovative power, that would be my theory. Conversely, through strong aesthetic innovation, the content of a poem is suppressed until it hardly plays a role. That’s something to weigh up.
Another thesis: I got the impression that poetry is learning to read, but aimlessly.
For me, the potentially inexhaustible nature of poetic expression is what defines a poem. I think this is a great quality. And “information” is ultimately the term in question: everyday information; What is useful is something other than poetic information or a message. The latter more or less interrupts the language convention, puts the language out of function, is an analysis of the language. In this respect I would say: Yes, reading poetry is learning to read. Reading poetry is also about enduring the vagueness in which you suddenly find yourself that cannot be completely resolved.
Speaking of vagueness, are you a different person when you speak Romanian?
Yes, I feel that, but fortunately not often, as I no longer speak Romanian very often, especially after the death of my father last February, with whom I have mainly spoken on the phone in the 24 years since I emigrated. When I go through this experience, i.e. when I speak Romanian, I am the boy I was back then. But he doesn’t just speak Romanian, but Romanian at the level of a 13-year-old whose Romanian vocabulary and sense of language have been dwindling for 24 years now. My German self became very alienated from this boy, as well as from Romania and my compatriots there.
How did you actually get into poetry?
I wrote poetry in Romania as a young student, in Romanian. But you have to remember that poetry is much more important in Romania than it is here. I remember dedicatory poems to parents. Until the very end, my father had my poetry booklet with around 10 to 15 poems from that time. I didn’t dare read them again when I had the chance. In Germany I started writing more seriously during my studies. That may have something to do with my relationship at the time. My partner also wrote. Then came the first big readings: Dostoyevsky, Celan, Cioran, etc., which were so stimulating that I felt like I wanted to respond to them in a literary way.
For Walter Benjamin, whom you also quote in “Hourswood” along with many other philosophers, the best way to regain a divine language is through the translation of poetry. To a certain extent, this is also something that varies with you.
For Benjamin, translation is the “area of reconciliation and fulfillment of languages” – one immediately notices the messianic character of the essay. It is an area in which the meaning of language is transcended. Hence Benjamin’s nod to Hölderlin’s Sophocles translations, in which the meaning falls “from abyss to abyss.” I think translation is not just the translation of languages, but also of experiences unknown here into the local; Experiences that I bring with me from Romania. They also expand German, I say confidently. I cannot easily connect my poetry with the idea of “pure language,” but I can at least say that impure things play a role in my work. For example, the frequent experience that there are no toilets to be found in churches and monasteries. And my contention is that the church would be better off if it engaged more boldly with the impure. For me, poetry has always been a kind of defiance of modern experience. Adopted homes are hardly accessible, ideals. So sometimes all I can do is sit in the comfort of the loss.
When I talk to people outside Europe, their impression is often that the Western is in decline. In your case I find the opposite, but maybe that’s just a projection?
From my comparative perspective, I can say that I live in the best of all possible worlds. When I mention this every now and then, it irritates people. But that only means that I would choose Germany if the only alternative was Romania. Because what would have happened if I had stayed in Romania?! I might have become an asparagus cutter like my uncle, who comes to Germany every year to earn money near Bremen, which is then enough to last the whole year in Romania. The phenomenon of Eastern European seasonal labor is devastating for families. Sometimes not just one parent comes to Germany, but both. And sometimes the grandparents come too. The child or children end up with some xth degree relative. On the other hand, I often scratch my head and ask myself: What would Majka, my great-grandmother and one of the main characters in my book of poems “Hour Wood,” have said if she had been confronted with certain problems in the Western world. She probably wouldn’t even have known what we were talking about. In other words: It is absurd how far certain socio-political pseudo-debates take us away from the actual social question. When I think about it, I become bitter. Bottom line: I’m culturally pessimistic – decline everywhere, just faster in certain regions.
And what, for you, makes a successful text, especially a successful poem?
I believe a successful poem is one that cannot be reduced to its content. The successful poem and its reader are then like two magnets that repel each other; the approach to the poem is limited. Recognizing the insurmountable distance is closeness to the poem.
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