Writing the Apocalypse
Voicing Silence Through Time
Page II
Art now has to demand of itself the greatest courage. Its concern is not with beauty, but truth, with the truths of the world, as much as we are able to know and express them. With the Holocaust, this test reaches the most strenuous and exigent pitch and the trial of the eternal return comes to its ultimate apogee. Far from taking the sting out of suffering, instead, art—tragic art—would intensify the sting, such as through ‘expressionistic’ paintings, like those of Otto Dix—even more so than Van Gogh, hardly beautiful painting—, or as in Artaud’s theater of cruelty, which sought not to pacify, comfort, or appease the spectator, but to startle, provoke, and awaken. (2) Artaud wanted to make the spectator live with suffering, not to be distant from it, contemplating the plague as if it could be an aesthetically pleasing event. It is art as contagion, not purification. One is to leave the theater of cruelty trembling, not in rapturous awe of beauty—one is to leave the theater infected, and to be infected is to live with horror. It is to know the sublime, and the sublime, not as defined by Kant, but Longinus and Nietzsche, is the aesthetic mode proper to plagues and apocalypses, for it immobilizes rationality and is as Longinus said a “power and irresistible violence [which] reigns supreme over every hearer.”
Rózewicz didn’t utilize Artaud’s principles in his poetic discourse but, like Giacometti and Beckett, developed a spare and whittled but equally potent mode of expression. In it, he recognizes the most inexplicable horrors and remains, continuing to laud life. It is an art of the sublime. To him, the image is a detour that disrupts the immediacy of sensation, which the metaphor, acting as a mediating device, does not permit to appear in its ‘unambiguous entirety.’ Instead, it protracts “the reader’s encounter with the true meaning of a poetic work.” It is direct intimacy that is at stake and Rózewicz refuses to let that contiguous communion between him or the poem and the reader be protracted let alone disrupted. As an encounter with an-other, Rózewicz wants in his words to be close enough to turn towards the other who embraces his work; also, for that other to be close enough to embrace, internalize and, possibly, be changed by him, even if that depersonalization is temporary, a mere instance of obliteration and incorporation. The poetic encounter is a silent encounter with things and with others. It is, as Celan proclaimed, a gift to those who are mindful of it.
In order for the ‘unambiguous entirety’ of his poems to appear unimpeded, Rózewicz forged a poetic discourse out of the detritus of speech, eschewing metaphor, dispensing with originality, and writing in what is considered the most literal, direct manner. It is poetry that, as haiku, is terse and pithy yet remains imaginative. In the poem “the professor’s knife” this terse, seemingly flat style is evident, but it conceals a formal complexity that is not as simple as it appears:
The use of enjambment here is dexterous, as well as his caesuras and what word and blocks of words make up a line, evidence of a highly skilled poet who isn’t simply writing direct and literal poems that employ the ordinary language of a peasant. (3) While enjambment is quite common in free verse and not necessarily that complex, it is often executed without careful thought, the degree of stress in each line therefore lacking tension, reducing the apprehension and anxiety which enjambment can produce. Rózewicz’ knowledge, understanding, and use of language is however far more complex, nuanced, and deliberate, as is evident from his distinguishing between humanity, “humanity”, and people, or in “so what if it’s a dream”, a poem from exit wherein he longs of saving something from the apocalypse, though he knows what an impossibility that is:
While Rózewicz may find rhetoric distasteful, there is no zero degree in writing. It doesn’t exist; it is a linguistic illusion. “There is no such thing,” Nietzsche proclaimed, “as an unrhetorical 'naturalness' of language to which one could appeal: language itself is the result of spoken rhetorical arts.” The “prose of carpenters” isn’t as simple as Rózewicz purports. “Language,” Nietzsche realized, “is rhetoric, for it can only convey a doxa and never episteme.” Hemingway is as stylized, if not more so, than Lautréamont. Sontag knew this too when she stated that zero degree writing is “as selective and artificial as any traditional style of writing.” The idea that a style-less, transparent mode of writing may exist “is one of the most tenacious fantasies of modern culture.” While the poems may be free of masks and costumes, while they may be impartial, bare expressions of Rózewicz’ experiences and more direct than Rilke and Pound, in their own right they remain complex, are multi-layered, and are at times elliptical. Like Beckett though, Rózewicz pares language to its simplest proportion. In this distillation, there is a demythologization not only of man and culture but of language itself, and that is hardly simple. Through that refinement, and it is a refinement, Rózewicz approaches his readers as intimately as possible, reaching out to touch and encounter them as he encounters the world. In “the last conversation” the question of whether or not life has meaning because we must die is answered, and this is one of our ultimate encounters with the world:
In new poems, history is active through memory and imagination, and Rózewicz’ crossings with friends who have died or were murdered, as well as a host of political, religious, and literary figures, are always personal encounters wherein he relates how he lives with them, how they have become part of his consciousness. There are encounters with Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein, with God, Boehme, Jesus, and Pascal, with demagogues like Mussolini and Hitler, and artists such as Pasolini and Kafka. In “farewell to Raskolnikov” Rózewicz encounters the infamous outsider in a café. After confessing that he “wanted to become a Napoleon . . . but only killed a louse,” Rózewicz wryly observes that on the table before them there is “a glass of cloudy tea” and “a squashed/stale napoleon” from which “greenish cream” oozes “from the pastry/like dried pus” (246). The encounter provokes in Rózewicz a feeling of kinship, though not with Raskolnikov’s murderous instincts but “that strange uncommon/feeling” which he reveals to be “the excitement” of seeing one’s “name in print!” (247) Yet, Rózewicz is not concerned merely with famous personages or with fame; no character, subject, or thing is without interest to him. He makes no moral valuations; the ‘base’ is as worthy of being written of as the ‘noble’—what is important here is experience, what he experiences everyday, of how the world comes alive to him through his senses. Whatever those experiences may be, even if seemingly mundane, it is vital material and worth transforming into poetry.
Rózewicz’ new poems is a dark and lively book that speaks as if the poet were sitting before one. It is a testament not only to the intimate tone of Rózewicz’ poetic discourses, but to Bill Johnston’s consummate translation, which gives sensuous life to Rózewicz’ voice. The only misfortune is that, considering Rózewicz’ relative obscurity, the book lacks an introduction. Since all but one of the translations, and they are few, of Rózewicz’ poetry are out of print, it would have been of enormous benefit to the reader unfamiliar with his work to have an introduction. For that, the avid reader can seek out Adam Czerniawski’s now out of print translation of Conversation with the Prince and Other Poems. Otherwise, this is a book whose publication should be celebrated and which will hopefully rectify the relative obscurity of Rózewicz here in America (the Poet’s House directory, which boasts a collection of over 20K poetry books, has not one of Rózewicz’ books, (4) though two of Herbert and five of Szymborska); his work deserves far wider readership and with this translation, he should in particular be embraced by poets and his work more prominently enter the canon. Once again, Archipelago has made an attractive volume one not only wants to read, but savor with one’s eyes and hands. Giacometti’s drawing The Walking Man could not be more fitting a cover: bare, fragmentary but sensual and determined, it is an image of one in whom the past continues to live as a present reality, and to whom the present and the future continue to beckon, always awaiting the next day, always ready to greet the sun as the moon looms in the distance, absent but present, a specter whose light comes from afar. There is a darkness which often engulfs the world, but the light remains, and without tragedy, there can be no incipit comoedia. . .
© Rainer J. Hanshe—Nietzsche Circle, 2007
(published in Hyperion: On the Future of Aesthetics, a web publication of The Nietzsche Circle: www.nietzschecircle.com, June 2007)
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“Writing the Apocalypse: Voicing Silence Through Time”
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