Günter Kunert: Self-Portrait in Refracted Light

To present the real self: a paradox: how can one slip into one's own face without first recognizing that this is a mask and thus no longer one's own. Reflection estranges it. A complex matter—particularly for somebody to whom biog­raphy has made sense only as social paradigm and event. Even the writer who seeks to make clear that the so-called personality is a by-product of social circumstance cannot es­cape its all-powerful imprint.

Should I succeed in effecting this release of myself from myself (the way it might happen in the classic horror stories of R. L. Stevenson or Gustav Meyrink) I would view this creature in amazement: the way I sit at a bleached wood work table, gadgets nearby, virgin paper at hand, the round skull bared, mouth mustached, this figure with the melan­choly physiognomy of a sea lion would appear even stranger than before. When I look at him, this Kunert, I must con­fess upon full reflection that I know embarrassingly little about him, very little of the essence of his being, and in general that my knowledge is limited to the external cir­cumstances of his life, so that I must ask myself whether, perhaps, these external circumstances constitute his essen­tial being, or, whether, as I sincerely hope, that what is wholly and purely personal has been pushed aside by these circumstances of his existence which are in no way personal. Favoring the side of the accused, I shall give the latter expla­nation the benefit of the doubt.

Moreover, I ask myself, seeing him there behind the ta­ble, bowed over pages of lined paper as if he were near­sighted, which he in no way is, does he have an independent existence, or is this figure not a metamorphosis of the lined paper made visible, since all paths of his daily life, his life as a whole, lead to these pages whose numbers decrease after an encounter with Kunert: the transformation of a ream of yellow paper into a human being catalyzed by the very act of writing on it.

But the writing process does not only change paper into a Kunert, it also changes Kunert into something—some­thing which, in order to understand, circumscribe and ex­plain, makes it necessary to cover this paper again and again with words in a script as difficult as Mayan hieroglyphics, so that he prefers to release new decipherings. But this takes place only later, after that transformation in which the un­certain psyche of the writer is again happily united with the external world—its totality and congruence of time, space, being, thought and sensibility restored—a state that has been thought of as the exclusive prerogative of the gods. It is a condition in which the frightening, crushing, fore­dooming constraints of time seem to end; in which time al­most stands still: at the edge of this horrible abyss where it is only writing that stops the plunge. While it goes on, writ­ing is a rescue from death. The moment of truth arrives when the individual gives himself over to his individuality and fuses his innermost self with the immortal I of the uni­versally human—an I, which if it is not to be condemned to facelessness and disappearance, needs this balding individ­ual, crouched at the table, bowed over the paper, to be made manifest and visible.

There is nothing much else of significance to add about Kunert: at most, answers to questionnaires, vital statistics, measurements and sizes, hat, collar, shoes. Of what concern are these to others: the wife to whom he is married, the friends necessary for talk and drink, the cats for filling empty rooms, favorite foods and favorite books, spaghetti with parsley, garlic and parmesan, and Arno Schmidt ex­plain nothing of this writer I am, only that (with its specific­ity unspecified): Günter Kunert as Günter Everyman.

Central Railroad Station

One sunny morning a Somebody comes upon an official notice in his rooms; it lies on the breakfast table next to his cup. How it got to be there, nobody knows. Hardly opened, it strikes this Somebody with its demands.

You must, the official print on the limp gray paper commands, appear on the 5th of November of the current year at 8 A.M. in the Gentlemen's Toilets of the Central Railroad Station for the purpose of your destruction. Stall No. 18 has been reserved for you. In neglecting these orders you may be liable to a fine or punishment in accordance with the decrees of the legally established authorities. Light clothing is advised to facilitate a smooth transaction.

A little later the perplexed object of these measures ap­pears disconsolately at the home of friends. Refusing all of­fers of food and drink he urgently presses them for advice, but all he gets are serious and significant shakes of the head. Specific suggestions or offers of help are not in the picture.

Secretly, all breathe easier when the door closes behind this fellow with the sharply limited life, and one even won­ders whether it was wise to have opened it at all. Does it pay, who knows what burdens they may be shouldering for a man from whom one can expect so little in the future.

And now he goes to a lawyer's office where it is pro­posed that he make an application to reverse the ruling. He is advised in any case to keep the appointment (Nov. 5) so as to avoid reprisals. After all the Gentlemen's Toilets and the Central Railroad Station have a respectable and reason­able ring. Nothing is eaten as hot as it is cooked. Destruc­tion? That no doubt is a typographical error—instruction, not destruction. The lawyer finds it quite conceivable that the authorities might be concerned to give his fresh new cli­ent the proper instructions. Patience and trust! One must have trust! Trust is most important.

At home this poor fellow with his order to appear in the Gentlemen's Toilets rolls restlessly in his damp sheets. Filled with burning envy he listens to the heavy buzzing of a fly. It lives! It has no cares! What does it know of a Central Railroad Station? What does he himself know ... In the middle of the night he rings his neighbor's bell. Through the peephole an impatient expressionless eye stares back at him until the bell ringer capitulates and takes his finger off the bell-push.

Punctually at 8 A.M. our man enters the Central Rail­road Station, freezing in a short sleeved sports shirt and cot­ton pants, the lightest clothing of this sort in his wardrobe. Here and there an idle porter stands yawning. The floor is being swept while at the same time a sprinkling of some sort of fluid moistens it. His foot stops as he enters the shining emptiness of the Gentlemen's Toilets. He finds the door to No. 18 directly. He pushes the token into the lock of the door, it swings open, he enters. A wild thought strikes him, he is certain that nothing will happen. Nothing! They only wish to instruct him, nothing else! Soon it will all be over and he can return home. Trust! Trust! An euphoric feeling rises in his throat; smiling he locks the door and sits down.

Fifteen minutes later, two toilet attendants enter and with a passkey open No. 18 to pull out the lightly clothed corpse which they carry into the red brick depths of the Central Railroad Station, where, as everyone knows, no train has ever arrived or departed, although the smoke, pre­sumably of a locomotive, clings to the roof.

Memory of Scheria

Once more to regain this moment: on these porous cliffs, warmed by the sun, surrounded by water clear to the bot­tom where shadowy organisms flit, dumb messengers of a past far beyond our own, the blessed mid-day peace punc­tuated by a lone cicada, sheltered by bushes, laurel or ole­ander, low-growing pines with long needles: here to come to self-awareness. Here your foot, your hand, belly and limb, joint and hair, for a short while in steady state: so that you sense them once more and again. He who can re­gain this moment, he would be privy to bliss, and one other than that of cliff, of water, light and nothingness.



Nausicaa I

Found me. Sent away
the girl companions.
Under the scorching sun, under the brush
at the shore,
under moaning, mumbling wild chaotic words
the whole island of the Phaeacians
dissolved
in lust, in fleshly joys
until in the end after the end
only her body's imprint was left in the
sand: the most precious
thing I ever left behind, and you know:
rarely was anything left behind by
Odysseus
besides his seed, doubtful
of any possible return
at any time at all.


Nausicaa II

One doesn't know where one has landed.
One knows only: here
the sun never fails to shine.
Soft rush of waves
on the gentle sand of the pale shore:
island rhythm.
Naked the other sex approaches the new arrivals: phallic flowering the mid-day heat generates.
Life is and death is
very simple: a toothless cowering
at the end, the eye
on the motionless sea, the back
towards the rough cliffs, no more expectations,
no hope: a final recognition
that die place lost in passage
was no other than
Scheria.



Translated by Agnes Stein