Hans Magnus Enzensberger in conversation with Michael March

“Poetry Is a Risky Thing”

Hans Magnus Enzensberger in conversation with Michael March

Munich, 2004

Michael March: You've experienced the onset of the slaughter and destruction of Europe through living in Nuremberg as a child. Maybe let us know little bit about your childhood and experiences.

Hans Magnus Enzensberger:  Probably everybody is marked to some degree by his historical experiences and mine, of course, was growing up in Nazi Germany, during the Second World War, the aftermath of the war.  I was a child at the end of the war, I was seventeen, and that of course leaves sort of indelible mark on you. I do not envy the young people who grew up in post-war times, in times of economical well-being, because this kind of experience gives you some background, some dimension, which people growing up in other times maybe do not have.

MM:  Is that why you became a poet?

HME:  It's very hard to say how you become a poet. It's probably something to do with language first of all, the kind of thing which reverberates in your head, you develop a taste for phrases, for metaphors, for verse, for rhythm, and so on. It's like a natural process, it's not an ambition, you don't plan to be a poet. In some respects it's like a vice, in fact, it's like the alcoholic, for example, he starts drinking, he doesn't quite realize what that means, what that implies, he just starts to have a drink, and so you start to write a verse or a few verses and after a while you discover that you cannot very well leave alone it. So it is more than a habit, certainly. And, I couldn't leave it alone, that's all.

MM:  Joseph Roth said that man is a puzzle and above all it's impossible to help him. Would you agree?

HME:  Well, in a minor way, everybody can help. When a woman falls down in a street I can try to help her up and call a doctor or do something of this sort, so in a modest way we can help each other. Joseph probably meant something much larger than that. He probably thought of mankind and that's a big difference, I can help in a modest way a person, but I don't think I can help mankind.

MM:  Can your words help them?

HME:  It's not for me to say. Perhaps many people have this experience that it helps them to read a book, listen to a song, but that was not the intention of the author and the author had no control over what other people will do with the text, with the poem, with the book. So if somebody is helped by literature I would only say that it's by chance. I don't like to make too big claims for what we are doing. A lot of nonsense has been made out of poets who became the voice of the fatherland, the prophets, the great seers, the collective unconscious and so on. On the balconies you have all these statues of poets whom probably of most of them we have never heard of, who are considered the fathers of the fatherland. Now, that's not a role I would like to take on. To make too big claims for yourself is not good.

MM:  Yet you're a poet. Do you see your poems as sort of political poems?

HME:  You see, I dislike the notion of the poet as a specialist. There used to be the idea, in the nineteen century perhaps, that the poet is a specialist in emotion, in feelings, almost in sentimentality. Other poets have been considered specialists for nature. And then there's the specialist for politics, who is socially engage poet - the man who is on the tribune, talking to the masses. I personally don't like these specializations. I think poet in my view is an omnivore, so everything is the case, everything which counts for us is also subject: it may be science, it may be love, it may be nature, it may be politics. I don't want to be a specialist.

MM:  How do you see the question of morality and responsibility of a writer?

HME:  I don't think you can decide to be a moral person. It's not an act of will, which gives what you do or think or act a moral dimension. I don't think that artists, poets, philosophers, intellectuals, are morally superior to other people. I do not think so. And the record of the intelligentsia in the twentieth century gives me good ground for suspicion, because there is a terrible record full of collaboration. Communism, fascism—intellectuals who put themselves in the service of all this. So let's not make any claim for moral superiority for people who work the way we do. There's no ground for that.

MM:  As an editor, which of the post-war poets do you think important for yourself?

HME:  I wouldn't like to make a hit-list, because the habit of making lists who is the best is little bit presumptuous. I was never an avant-garde poet, and I never wanted to be an avant-garde poet, though I respect the historical avant-garde of 1910. I find very tiresome the people who try to continue this stands to present themselves with the idea that they will do something which has never been done before and the tradition has to be thrown to the dustbin. I think that is very stupid way of looking at poetry. 

Poetry is an art which has flourished through thousands of years and very many people who were probably much better poets than we are have lived and worked, and I'm not prepared to renounce this tradition. So, if you ask me who are the poets who are very important for me, it would be a very mixed lot. It will be Catullus, for example, and it will be John Donne, and it will go on right through the ages, Latin American poetry is very important for me. I always pick something up when I can use it, Artists and poets are also egoists in some sense, because their criterion is not what is objectively good or important or what is in the schoolbook, but what is useful for me, for my work, and what I can learn from tradition. And tradition goes on right until your own lifetime.

MM:  In your poetry and your thoughts and essays you have been rather dramatic, in a way you could say that they've been in an opposition to society in which you lived.

HME: There is today the notion perhaps that the world is full of conformists. We have this almost cynical attitude, we say these guys, this manager steals or this politician lies, he is just an opportunistic creep and so on. Let's see it from a distance, because also this creep has a life, he also has probably his passions, he has his catastrophes, he has his private illnesses, his divorces, problems with his children, in other words even the creep has the life history with you. You would have to look very closely at a person in order to really judge him. It's not for me to be the judge.

MM:  But your work has been tremendously controversial.

HME:  Oh, yes, that's normal, that's how it should be, I should hope so. It's a sign of vitality, not on your mind part but also on the part of the others, that they react in some way, that they perhaps thought back. I would be disappointed if there would be lukewarm kind of benevolent indifference. I wouldn't want that.

MM:  How do you see the world after the Second World War?

HME:  When I was seventeen or eighteen Germans were the pariahs of the world. You could hardly go abroad, you did not have a passport, you were, morally speaking, an object of contempt. A German was the bad guy. And I don't know how it came about, but certainly the Germans had a lot of historical luck, because the peace which was made between the Western allies and the Germans was a very intelligent peace, unlike Versailles after the First World War. And of course, we didn't have the good heart of the allies to thank for, we had the Russians to thank for, because it was because of the Russians that West Germany was put on its feet again. It was needed for strategic reasons then. Still, it was very remarkable and farseeing peace which we were granted, and actually the Western allies forced almost the democracy on us. 

Now the real sensation of the thing is that it worked. I became an inhabitable place. It was to that extent a success story. Now of course, this success story is probably at its end, because this kind of German miracle does not exist anymore and we are going to have the same problems like the rest of the world.

MM:  Perhaps the miracle has moved east. Because the imposition of democracy is now being sought of course in Iraq and in the Arab world.

HME:  Yes, under much more difficult circumstances, much more difficult traditions and so on. Nobody knows how this is going to work out, and it's also a question whether you can apply the same pattern to all sorts of civilizations, but it's not for me to say. I would like at this point, perhaps, to include a list of all the things that I am not: I'm not a sociologist, I'm not a political scientist, I'm not a philosopher, I'm not a prophet, I'm not a futurologist, so there are a lot of questions which are rather too big for me to answer.

MM:  Occasionally you've been asked, and occasionally you've spoken quite clearly—like when you supported the ousting of Saddam Hussein. Why has this caused such a furore?

HME:  I'm not quite sure about the reasons, but there is of course a pacifist tradition in Western Germany due to two world wars, where the Germans were roundly beaten, perhaps, afterwards you might say, to their own good. The military does not have the high standing in the society. That's part of the explanation. Another part of the explanation is the relationship to the United States, which is very complicated and very ambiguous, ambivalent you might say. There is sympathy but there is also dislike for America in the world. 

As far for myself that's very simple. I have one overriding political passion and that is my hate of dictators. Dictators for my political feeling is very worst kind of criminal in the world. So the downfall of any dictator I rejoice. And this is visceral reaction which I can do anything about. I have no illusion that there will be an end to dictators, because new dictators will come up, so it's not a big solution—but it's a wonderful moment. A statue of Stalin is crushing down! This is one of the moments of real joy. 

Still, all these things being said I am not a defender of the American foreign policy, or I am not claiming that the United States should not obey the rules of international law, and I'm not saying that the lies which were involved in this operation by Mr. Bush were not lies—it's not that, all that I'm not claiming. The only thing I maintain is if a bastard like Saddam Hussein disappears it's all to the good. 

MM:  It's a personal joy.

HME:  Yes. It's a personal joy, but it's also based on experience. I would not be alive if the Allies would not have come and made an end to Hitler.

MM:  Why? 

HME:  As a kind of person I would not be tolerable. This kind of person would have been done away with. 

MM:  Do you see this repetition within history in a way drifting back to the turn of the twentieth century, to the fall of empires, to the disintegration of Europe?

HME:  There is always some new element in it. The old empires were territorial empires. British empire, even the Roman empire, were the empires who occupied and annexed. Look at these maps where the British empire goes all over the place. This is a new kind of empire, the American empire. They don't need to annex places, they don't have colonies, they do it by economy. And that's a new kind, they don't want to be there really. The American people were always isolationists. They don't want to imitate the Brits for a government. So it is a new phenomenon, it's not a repetition, it's not a replay. History is not a replay. There is always something new in it. 

Sometimes I feel sorry for Americans because to be number one in the world is not a blessing. Whatever you do is wrong, of course. You intervene, then you are an imperialist, you don't intervene, like in Rwanda, you did not do your job. I'm happy that we are not a big power here in Europe, it's much better. Who wants to be number one? The Germans have tried once and failed! No, thank you very much.

MM:  Maybe we should feel sorry for the European Union, because I think this expansion is a malformed of insanity.

HME:  Nobody knows how it's going to turn out, but at the same time the world of Yalta has gone, and that's all to the good. I feel very close to the Hungarians, I feel very close to the Poles, I don't mind them coming in, on the contrary, How it is going to turn out economically that's another question. I'm not an economist, I don't know, but why shouldn't they cope? That is not what bothers me about the EU, it's not that Eastern Europe is going to join, what I mind is, to put it crudely, the lack of democracy involved in this whole construction. 

Brussels is a bureaucracy, it's a kind of politburo, and that's what bothers me. Not the Poles, not the Czechs, not the Hungarians. It's a very anonymous thing and of course its legitimacy is problematic, the parliament is not powerful, it's government behind closed doors more or less. Probably there was no other way to construct this union, but this is what bothers me.

MM:  What bothers me is that for political influence Europe would through the European Union try to remilitarise itself, have a European army.

HME:  No chance at all. 

MM:  So we can rest easy.

HME:  Well, in that respect. We have other problems to think about.

MM:  What you feel after witnessing the past fifty years in your work, where are we now, in time?

HME:  I think I was fortunate in many ways. I worked in times when I was not bothered by the secret police, I didn't go to prison, I was not forced into exile. I was fortunate to be published, I had possibility to say what I wanted, so I don't think I have any reason to complain, personally. And I don't like whining poets. Poetry is a risky thing. Everybody who knows anything about poetry knows that it is a risky thing, I think that if you take on the risk it is wrong afterwards to complain and whine.