The barbaric arts
Apparently (that is to say, according to the internet) this dog is one of the Führers cuter creations.
The philosophist Theodor Adorno famously stated, in 1949, that writing a poem after Auschwitz was barbaric. He proceded: “And this corrodes even the knowledge of why it has become impossible to write poetry today”.
With some simplification poetry may be understood as an art of beauty, and indeed that is how poetry has been perceived in most times and most places. Anyone not in poetry’s “in-crowd” is sure to start thinking of flowers, waterfalls, nationalism, high-end emotion and heartbreak when presented with the word “poetry”. Poetry, in this sense, is a bit like water-colouring, somehow – standing between being purely decoratory and an expression of something private, almost lavatorial in the sense that even though your poetry springs from a natural (in some sense beautiful) need, maybe you should refrain from doing it in public.
Properly executed ‘tis the finest of arts, all oohs and ahs with exclamation marks making you shiver with its allusive and powerful imagery, its nearly divine rhetoric and its authoritarian voice. In short, it’s everything a nazi would want to read at night to secure himself a goodnight’s sleep, a haven from the horrors of his day-to-day activities. Reading it makes you feel cultured in the same way that systematically killing people makes you feel not so cultured at all. And maybe they’re not so much opposites as they are partners-in-crime.
When WWII came to an end the allies found more than concentration camps in the Reich – they found homes, tunnels, secluded castles, salt mines, caves, trains and other hideouts stuffed with the finest european artworks, paintings, sculptures and artifacts. Top nazi Hermann Göring filled his countryhome with some of the most beautiful and famous works of art in the history of man. Hitler was planning on building the greatest art collection ever, the Führermuseum, designed by Albert Speer. It was to be erected in Linz, Austria and filled with stolen and bought art from all over the world – the best money can buy and muscle procure. Included in the plan, of course, was a library with 250.000 books.
This poem is from John Toland's Hitler biography, and apparently translated by Toland himself (no translator is credited). Hitler wrote the poem while a soldier in WWI, shortly before being injured. The Wotan mentioned in the poem is the west-germanic Odin.
Nazi Germany thought of itself as the height of civilization – a refined world order, creating a structured, civilized beauty out of mayhem, chaos and degeneration, through the violent application of a stern idealogy. Although their methods were not always applied in a systematic and organized fashion – not everyone died in the machine-like gas-chambers; children were also beat against rocks to save bullets – their ideal was to be „efficient“, „civilized“ and not least „beautiful“.
I’m not sure what Adorno meant by his famous words – and apparently that goes for most people. To add insult to injury Adorno (reportedly after reading the works of Paul Celan) took most of it back, saying maybe it’s so and maybe not – God knows! (I’m paraphrasing). Perhaps he took offense to beauty in the face of horror. Perhaps trying to get to the heart of humanity was worthless if humanity was so tainted. And perhaps he felt that if fine arts could also be enjoyed by nazis, fine arts had themselves become reactionary.
Originally appeared in The Reykjavík Grapevine.
I’ve heard that one of Adorno’s answers to the question of how to write poetry after Auschwitz, was “Like Beckett”. Which sounds plausible. Beckett’s poems are suitably grotesque, they often deal with distorted bodies, and an almost Dante-esque horror is often present. Beckett as poet was great, Hitler’s little poem above has got nothing on him!
Hy, “wer schweigt, ist schuldig” this applys to any sort and time of crime: within ones own family, friends, job, culture, religion, weltanschauung. How to deal with the rethoric and arts, Naziideology parcticed? I look at the Wiener Kreis for science, the Wiener Gruppe for poetry, the Wiener Aktionismus for art. Here I find answers for the scizophren attitudes which ruled and still rule the psyche of my own family, my own culture with all its segments: religion, sexuality, violence, bodyawareness, consciousness, rethoric and emotional behaviour since generations. How to break this? Digging deeper into humans existence, ripping off any kind of decoration, in language, in art. Otherwise I remain at the ded-end-road. Roland