Oskar Pastior, durch – und zurück. Gedichte (2007), Urmuz. Das gesamte Werk (1976) – eine poetische Lektüre
Oskar Pastior, Through − and Back. Poems (2007), Urmuz. The Complete Work (1976) – a Poetical Reading

Summary/Abstract: Oskar Pastior was born in 1927, in Hermannstadt ‒ a member of the German community in Transylvania, Romania. Only a few days after his death in 2006, he was awarded the famous Georg-Büchner-Preis, the most important literary prize for creative poets and writers in German language. From his voluminous and abundant literary writings we have chosen a booklet, entitled durch - und zurück (“trough ‒ and back”) with a collection of Pastior’s poems. We consider them characteristic for Pastior’s creative and ingenious literary documents. But what does he mean for instance by Krimgotischer Fächer (“Crimea-gothic fan”)? How should we proceed to obtain new linguistic forms/words by “language cloning”? May we understand his poem Gelsenvertreiben (“expelling gnats”) as a proof for his formula of a “chain reaction” (Kettenreaktion) to create new words inside a semantic coherent text by means of morphological derivation, as for instance in the prose-text Allerleihlach? This construction represents a correct German word from a grammatical viewpoint, but it is unknown, it is unusual and it must be considered therefore a deliberately created non-sense. Is Pastior really allowed to depreciate the methods of literary text interpretation by the traditional Germanistik? Finally, where is the translator to ‘transfer’ such forms in a foreign language, for instance in English or Romanian? Pastior’s translation of the Romanian Dadaist Urmuz, to whom he owes undoubtedly a lot of linguistic metaphors, acquires a special interest. To understand such ingenious, bizarre, dark and sophisticated poetry requires an excellent competence of German and a special empathy for this artistic poetry and literature to appreciate the often artificially production of utter nonsense.

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