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For the Dying Calves: Beyond Literature: Oxford Lectures
Poetically written and originally given as lectures, this is a moving essay collection from Durs Grünbein.
In his four Lord Weidenfeld Lectures held in Oxford in 2019, German poet Durs Grünbein dealt with a topic that has occupied his mind ever since he began to perceive his own position within the past of his nation, his linguistic community, and his How is it possible that history can determine the individual poetic imagination and segregate it into private niches? Shouldn’t poetry look at the world with its own sovereign eyes instead?
In the form of a collage or “photosynthesis,” in image and text, Grünbein lets the fundamental opposition between poetic license and almost overwhelming bondage to history appear in an exemplary way. From the seeming trifle of a stamp with the portrait of Adolf Hitler, he moves through the phenomenon of the “Führer’s streets” and into the inferno of aerial warfare. In the end, Grünbein argues that we are faced with the powerlessness of writing and the realization, valid to this day, that comes from confronting history. As he muses, “There is something beyond literature that questions all writing.”
In his four Lord Weidenfeld Lectures held in Oxford in 2019, German poet Durs Grünbein dealt with a topic that has occupied his mind ever since he began to perceive his own position within the past of his nation, his linguistic community, and his How is it possible that history can determine the individual poetic imagination and segregate it into private niches? Shouldn’t poetry look at the world with its own sovereign eyes instead?
In the form of a collage or “photosynthesis,” in image and text, Grünbein lets the fundamental opposition between poetic license and almost overwhelming bondage to history appear in an exemplary way. From the seeming trifle of a stamp with the portrait of Adolf Hitler, he moves through the phenomenon of the “Führer’s streets” and into the inferno of aerial warfare. In the end, Grünbein argues that we are faced with the powerlessness of writing and the realization, valid to this day, that comes from confronting history. As he muses, “There is something beyond literature that questions all writing.”
164 pages, Hardcover
Published December 6, 2021
6 people want to read
About the author
Durs Grünbein
99 books22 followersDurs Grünbein is a German poet, essayist and translator living in Berlin since 1985.
Grünbein is hailed as the most significant and successful poet to emerge from the former East Germany, and his work has been awarded many major German literary prizes, including the highest, the Georg-Büchner-Preis, which he won in 1995. That same year, he also won the Peter Huchel Prize for Poetry.
In 2005, he held the position of Max Kade Distinguished Visiting Professor at Dartmouth College.
In 2006, Grünbein was elected by the academy of fine arts at Düsseldorf to the first chair of poetry (poetics and artistic aesthetics) at any German university or academy. Grünbein is a regular contributor to Frau und Hund - Zeitschrift für kursives Denken, edited by the academy's rector, the painter Markus Lüpertz.
Grünbein has also published several essay collections and new translations of plays from antiquity, among them Aeschylus' The Persians, and Seneca's Thyestes. His work, which also includes contributions to catalogues and a libretto for opera, has been translated into many languages.
Grünbein is hailed as the most significant and successful poet to emerge from the former East Germany, and his work has been awarded many major German literary prizes, including the highest, the Georg-Büchner-Preis, which he won in 1995. That same year, he also won the Peter Huchel Prize for Poetry.
In 2005, he held the position of Max Kade Distinguished Visiting Professor at Dartmouth College.
In 2006, Grünbein was elected by the academy of fine arts at Düsseldorf to the first chair of poetry (poetics and artistic aesthetics) at any German university or academy. Grünbein is a regular contributor to Frau und Hund - Zeitschrift für kursives Denken, edited by the academy's rector, the painter Markus Lüpertz.
Grünbein has also published several essay collections and new translations of plays from antiquity, among them Aeschylus' The Persians, and Seneca's Thyestes. His work, which also includes contributions to catalogues and a libretto for opera, has been translated into many languages.
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March 14, 2022
I have read Grunbein’s poetry in the Hofmann translation and came to this collection of lectures after reading Hofmann’s Messing About in Boats in the same series. For the Dying Calves turned out to be one of the most thought-provoking works I have read in recent years.
Grunbein, born well after the end of WWII, has tried to come to grips with Germany under the Nazis and has written startling things for contemporary Westerners to consider, frOm the creation of the autobahn to the application of technology on a mass scale of murder and destruction, whether one discusses the Shoah or the mass bombings of cities and their inhabitants.
Much of his insight digs into and uncovers, without being forced, the parallels on the surface of present political and social climate in the US and elsewhere in the West.as well as in the present Russian invasion of Ukraine, an incident identifiable by itself as a war crime at Nuremberg. My own thoughts about the present Republican Party were sharpened by these lectures’ outlining of Nazi characteristics, not a comfortable thought by any means.
Grunbein, born well after the end of WWII, has tried to come to grips with Germany under the Nazis and has written startling things for contemporary Westerners to consider, frOm the creation of the autobahn to the application of technology on a mass scale of murder and destruction, whether one discusses the Shoah or the mass bombings of cities and their inhabitants.
Much of his insight digs into and uncovers, without being forced, the parallels on the surface of present political and social climate in the US and elsewhere in the West.as well as in the present Russian invasion of Ukraine, an incident identifiable by itself as a war crime at Nuremberg. My own thoughts about the present Republican Party were sharpened by these lectures’ outlining of Nazi characteristics, not a comfortable thought by any means.
Displaying 1 of 1 review