Writers' Festival: Enzensberger offers immortality on the page

Hans Magnus Enzensberger - one of many illustrious guests of this year's Prague Writers' Festival - represents an increasingly rare class of European intellectual: a multigenre writer whose synthesizing intellect spans a range of subjects beyond literary autobiography. Enzensberger, born in Germany in 1929, has enjoyed increasing popularity in the Anglophone world over the past two decades, with several collections of poetry and prose translated into English, including the seminal book of essays on European culture and politics, Europe, Europe published in 1989.

But Enzensberger's literary career stretches back to 1957, when he published his first collection of poems in German. By 1963, he was being hailed as the torchbearer of Bertolt Brecht and Gottfried Benn by none other than the influential cultural critic Theodor Adorno, who said "all we have in German literary criticism ? is Hans Magnus Enzensberger ? and a few scattered attempts."

Enzensberger's latest poetry collection in English, A History of Clouds, published this month, was originally published in German in 2003. Translated by noted Germanic scholars and translators Martin Chalmers and Esther Kinsky, the book is a welcome addition to the already voluminous selection of Enzensberger's work available in English and is a powerful reminder of the efficacy of an engaging and curiously wide-ranging intellect.

As the title suggests, A History of Clouds is a series of meditations, on time, politics and the human condition, among other subjects. Enzensberger never sinks into rhetorical prosthelytizing, even when engaging the most contentious themes. Instead, he relies on a seasoned wit and a touching attention to detail that allows readers to draw their own conclusions. "Motivational Research" is one example:

Unfortunately I have no choice but to kill you,

-because you refuse to speak Basque

-because the bank has blocked my overdraft

-because of daddy

-because I can't bear the sight of unveiled women

-because the rich get on my wick

-for the sake of the Dear Lord

[...]

-and anyway. Just because.

I thank you for your time. [?]

A History of Clouds isn't all terrorism and politics, however. One of the book's recurring themes is the raw power of the senses and their ability to capture experience at moments when words fall short. Many poems call attention to the strength and sureness of touch, as opposed to the vacillating nature of language. Enzensberger also repeatedly pays homage to handmade objects and the old-school craftsmanship that has become harder to find in the modern age. "The Copy" is one example.

The poem opens by introducing Steinar Petursson, an Icelandic carpenter who arrived in Copenhagen "a good hundred years ago," and saw a "wonderful machine ? a gleaming band-saw."

He ran his fingers

over belt pulley, hand wheel and stop.

For four days on the packet

Steinar Petursson was silent.

At home he took the hardest wood

and shut himself into his workshop.

"His work, a band-saw made entirely of wood, [?] can still be seen today [?] in a corner of the local museum at Borgarnes," Enzensberger writes, concluding the tale of a man whose curiosity and skill as a craftsman have allowed his work to transcend time.

Several poems in A History of Clouds make a similar gesture of admiration to craftsmanship. But the book comes to full realization in the final section, "A History of Clouds," consisting of 12 poems meditating on clouds and their transient, foreboding strength. It is a fascinating expression of an experienced poetic intellect reflecting on the natural world.

At the Prague Writers' Festival, Enzensberger will give a reading with Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott and participate in a conversation titled "Our Only Immortality is in the Police Files." Enzensberger's readers will attest that his immortality lies elsewhere as well, among the lines of his voluminous literary output, including the latest flowering, A History of Clouds.

Stephan Delbos can be reached at
sdelbos@praguepost.com