Peter Paul Wiplinger – My position as a writer
My point as a writer and poet is not to avoid the burning, current issues, but to face them, to point them out; not to keep them out of and away from literature, but to deal with them.
We cannot do without wanting to humanize society and coexistance, even if our ideas and commitment seem to fail or have failed; as a postulate, as a utopia, believing in the possibility, we must – nevertheless – maintain our position of wanting to change. This is the task of literature, at least of the committed writer as a person.
It is therefore also about helping to shape a social awareness process from which approaches to action should and must be derived. The oppressed person – by whom and by what means ever – is and remains, must remain, a subject for literature, a concern for the writer.
There should not and must not be a retreat into the reserve, into the ghetto of pure l’art pour l’art aesthetics. Intellectual indifference or life only as consumption – these are not humanistic positions.
Peter Paul Wiplinger – Vienna 1994
Translated from the German by Annemarie Susanne Nowak
COMMENTS ON „BORDERS / GRENZEN“
Translated by Herbert Kuhner.
Cross Cultural Communications, Merrick, New York, 1977. 72 pages.
Edward Butscher
POETS Magazine, New York
Our century celebrates noise, spreads information, breeds a void. Where language begins and ends is difficult to grasp, since silence is impossible without its existence, its echo. For the poet, this means a greater concentration on print and space, the extreme, unnatural relation-ship between the two. One result has been an increasing tendency towards elliptical brevities, as in the work of Orr, Simic, Tate, et.al. Behind it, of course, looms the assumption that the intensity of the material being handled demands the distancing of understatement and surrealistic strategies.
Peter Paul Wiplinger, the Austrian poet, is aware of both the silence and its menace, as the title of this collection makes clear, and his own poems are often starker than knife slashes on the page, each word rippling, at times, with a violent anguish barely held in check‘ „time/ is reality/ a stone/ carries the message.“ Lack of punctuation accentuates the scene’s bleakness a „Cemetery in Achlat“–and weds missing connections. More important, topography and poetry share the same bed, as the message on every tombstone „binds/ words/ to the sky/ to the earth.“ Adjectives and adverbs have been jettisoned during the marriage, as if qualifications of any kind suggested infidelities, wet dreams of transcendence.
In another poem, „Thirty Years Later“, the separation of words from silence has been lessened to the point where language mounts itself:
you can’t remember their names
what they were called
in Lidice and Novosibirsk
and their shrouds
bang like white flags
in the garden
you ascend in an elevator
you can’t remember
but you suddenly realize
that you’ve lost everything
and you’re standing in a corner
saying I love you
you ascend in the elevator
knowing what will happen
thinking of the white shrouds
but you can’t remember their names
Ostensibly a lament for survivor and victims, the poem cannot escape its. concern for itself as poem, the metaphor of shrouds like flags of surrender implying the cognitive act of naming, naming in black against white space; the threat, constant, of nothingness is restrained by language alone—even memory has failed. Other strong Poems, i. e. „Relics,“ „Butterfly‘,'“ „We Do Not Die Out,“ and „Cornelia,“ confront a similar duality of purpose, art and life intermingled with an unrelieved emphasis on fierce oppositions, on the poles of human experiences „signs of love/ signs of death/ earth and snow/ sun and stone.“
Though born in 1939 Wiplinger remains obsessed with the enormous reality of the concentration camps, despite his patent refusal to accept that „Auschwitz/ has made writing poetry/ impossible.“ His borders, his thin black lines of lyric, are heavy with the loss of meaning his generation has inherited. Like the generation of poets who lost their faith in civilization after the slaughters of World War I, he must depend upon fragments to shore up his ruins, as in „Relics“.
sentences
deserted houses
broken bridges
days like sunken ships
the throbbing of blood
fingerprints
your photo
and my breath
in bed
next to you
The existential despair here clings to the tokens of language and things, refusing rhetoric in the process.
And yet, such a minimalist aesthetic carries its own dangers, a potential for false significance and precious self-indulgence that Wiplinger does not always avoid. Too many of his poems remind us that pain is not enough, that literature requires more. In „On the Threshold of Death“, for instance, simple idea and simple words produce little beyond a simplistic sentimentality:
on the threshold
of death awaking
to joy
on the threshold
of death awaking
to love
on the threshold
of death awaking
to yourself
finding the way in death
to joy
to love
„Extinguish the Signs,“ „For Myself,“ „Drawing Back,“ and „You and I“ are other poems suffering from the same malaise of abundant reality and in-sufficient art—Eliot’s „objective correlative“ is missing.
But perhaps the risks are worth it. Enough of Wiplinger’s taut lyrics triumph over their sparse diets to make‘ the collection a valuable one for us and a fundamental one for their author. The final sequence, „Black Poppies“, intimates that a tropic break-through is perhaps imminent, though it will rise from its own ashes „the inventory/ was accurate/ this was made apparent/ in the morning/ by the dead birds/ and the bleeding sun.“
* * * * *
Aaron Kramer
vector magazine/arts & entertainment
179 main street, hackensack, new jersey
Borders is both harrowing and thrilling; it strikes the reader dumb. „Auschwitz/has made writing poetry/ impossible/said Theodor Adorno Wiesengrund/and he should have known/since he survived.“ lt was a holy and excruciating task Wiplinger undertook: to utter the words neither Auschwitz ghosts nor its surviving poets could utter, humbly offering himself as the lips of a tremendous theme. And what music rises from his page: Always low-keyed, always stark, it pierces and overwhelms and illumines with its vision of humanity agonized but undestroyed: „We’re no longer here/ but something is still here/besides us in which we are.“
* * * * *
“In Borders Wiplinger gives us magnificent poetry and it is magnificently translated by Herbert Kuhner…. Spare, powerful, extremely moving, Wiplinger’s short poems, each contains a lifetime of seeing and understanding.”
Harry James Cargas
(June 18, 1932 – August 18, 1998) was an American scholar, author, and teacher best known for his writing and research on the Holocaust.
Dr. Cargas was honored for his work on the Holocaust, human rights, and teaching excellence

ESSAYS BY
PETER PAUL WIPLINGER
Photo taken by Heidi Heide at the 1st Austrian Writer’s Congress in Vienna, 1981
WHAT CAN WE DO?
Never, as I maintain and believe, has so much been said about peace in the world. But then never before has world peace been endangered to such an extent. The two super-powers of this earth. together with their military systems of marionettes, NATO and the Warsaw Pact, and all other forces and powers of the world, are constantly emphasizing the importance of striving for peace. Almost daily they affirm their desire for peace in order to conserve the wellfere of mankind and to save it from extinction and destruction. Conferences, which are certainly necessary, are constantly taking place. And yet, everyone seems to be playing an insane, crazy game, built up by threats and terrorism and originating from a completely absurd premise. All reflections and actions resulting from this premise lead to a complete insanity, since the assumption that anyone could possibly win a nuclear and atomic war (soon to be called war of the universe) simply does not hold. In this case the result is known: the destruction of our planet and its life and living conditions for ever. The very thought that adjustment. limitation and computer manipulation are possible in such a situation is completely ridiculous. Such a dangerous attitude threatens all of us and serves as an excuse for the global insanity of armament. However, the laws of evolution and destruction have developed to such extent that they are no longer accessible and controllable by man’s will.
Such is a short report on the pathological conditions of this world, with its gigantic political and military blocs. These blocs make up the great powers, the powerful and less powerful and a great majority who are powerless. Then there are the powerless peoples in the countries of the Third World, who are harassed, exploited and dying of hunger. Human rights and dignity, a striving for freedom, all have been suppressed by force. It is these very powerful oppressors who have changed these countries into their interest spheres and military training grounds, and who identify with these countries‘ governments.
There is talk of security systems of defence, which means the establishment of huge arsenals of weapons and nuclear potentials, as well as gigantic, global armaments capacities. This surpasses anyone’s notion of the destruction possibilities and deprives the world of the strength and sources needed for the prevention of other menacing world disasters: famine and the breakdown of the ecological system. It seems as if we have not learned much from history, especially recent history. That is, if we limit all efforts of countries for peace to military armament and if all reflections on peace lead to the same insane statement: „If you want peace, prepare for war.“ Such practice blindly leads to insanity, to war. This was more than obvious in the two world wars, as well as in wars on other continents, in Vietnam, Cambodia etc. To put it clearly and simply, Arms are not tools of peace, but instruments of killing. Arms do not awaken life, they carry death.
How can we, journalists, writers and poets, use our Pens to fight against all this? What can we do against hypocrisy, propaganda, lies, the insanity of global armament exceeding all limits towards infinity, against threats and violence, terror, intolerance, stubbornness; against this most dangerous error that peace can be secured with arms? What can our pens do against force and the politicians of such force, against the mighty of this earth, against the two superpowers and their blocs, who have long been operating their own systems without any outside influence whatsoever? What can our pens do against tanks and cannons, bombers, missiles, against newton bombs and laser beams? What would be the result of a confrontation between moral and spiritual powers on the one hand and military powers on the other, between the rational and irrational – the madness of blind fanaticism? What, then, can we attain through our writing and by what means? Problems and conflicts have never been solved through terrorism, threats, violence, extortion, humiliation, aggression, and all the lies hypocrisy and propaganda associated with them. These are not peace measures. They always lead to new conflicts, or, at best, transfer the area of conflict and replace it with-another. Irrationalism, violence, power and the accumulation of power in the hands of the few have always led to violent debate, wars between nations or countries, and world wars. Today such armament can only mean a war that will destroy the world. In view of such beliefs, we felt compelled to propose and explain the principle antidraft, for consideration and implementation, in order that it may spread far and wide.
We must all oppose the widespread and wrong belief that peace can be secured on the basis of an „equilibrium of fear and threat“. This must be done wherever possible, in our own countries, in the media, wherever our ideas may be expressed orally or in writing, professionally, and even as individuals, who usually have easier access to institutions, associations and supporters of public opinion. We must oppose such belief collectively and jointly, vehemently, energetically consistently and with argument, effectively and with a fixed purpose. We must not keep silent and never allow ourselves to be silenced, since we are the bearers of spiritual and moral responsibility, which can be expressed, spoken and formulated. Through our actions we can do something for the word’s conscience. This absurd peace theory – a balance of destructive capacities of arms arsenals on both sides as a way of guaranteeing peace – must be revealed accurately, energetically and publicly with all our might for what it is: a hypocritical lie, hollow, destructive propaganda, an attempt at putting something which concerns and affects all of us into the hands of a few powerful persons and decision-makers. It means anchoring ourselves into systems where there are no basic democratic processes of decision-making, not even a possibility of exerting one’s influence. These are all efforts to strip us of all responsibility, to keep us under their patronage, to frighten and quieten us into resignation and withdrawal from these destructive forces and thus leave our fate to the flow of the world. But this must not happen! We all must do something: we must resist!
A new period of enlightenment and moral strengthening is needed. It must begin in the name of peace, as a result of our uneasiness and distress, out of solidarity to fellow men, because we know our responsibility in this matter, because we do not want to gamble the „principle of hope“ and so that we will be able to look our children and children’s children into the eyes. This enlightenment must be spread far and wide, with a fixed goal and successfully, to every last inch of indifference and passiveness. People must be aroused from their slumber and made to understand that peace is not only the affair of those above us, but concerns all of us. And that something must be done for it! We must act instead of wait. Our words must he heard loudly and clearly so that countries and governments will be considerably disturbed by them. Our involvement and viewpoints must then be multiplied and passed on to others – the world cannot be divided by some few persons into their own territories and influential spheres as if it were their property. This is the reason for conflicts and crises, which often lead to military confrontations between nations and countries, since the two parties are not just the opponents, but at the same time also the victims of the super-powers‘ interests. In reality, two or more such parties at destructive war are simply puppets fighting for the interests of the superpowers and because of their conflicts. Forceful military debate must never be a method for solving conflicts – it cannot and must not be. This is also true of smaller countries and the so-called limited military talks, since it is precisely the policy of allies and pacts that render it impossible to limit a conflict. Such a conflict can only become a provocation for greater confrontations and global war.
This is why we must also strive to perform as enlightened and moral individuals in our own country, by loudly and clearly advocating and spreading our belief that peace can only be obtained through peaceful means. It must be made clear to everyone that all systems based on threats, oppression, terrorism, extortion, humiliation, aggression and violence, which make use of these means as weapons against individuals, groups, minorities and those of different opinion, are nothing more than methods of suppressing truth, justice and freedom. Such systems are similar to great world politics in that they endanger peace. So here, too, we must spread information and keep resisting.
We all realize our state of powerlessness, or better the ineffectiveness of our efforts in the face of superior, which dispose of different means, other than writing. But we also know that conscience can never be appeased. Because of this, we must aim at strengthening our conscience and spreading our knowledge on the widest social level. We must devote ourselves completely to this struggle with all the means at our disposal. We should count on the possibility of resistance from the powerful and be ready to counter it with planned, set tactics, good self-defense and also with civil disobedience, but wisely.
I know how problematic it is to spread and call to resistance slipping into slogans and thus exposing oneself to basically false interpretations and dangerous misunderstandings, with all their consequences. I am aware of the problem that associating peace with fight poses. I realize, by all means, the dangers of contradiction. In spite of this – and it must be clear that peace at any price is not possible – it must be said that peace is irrevocably connected with truth, justice, freedom and the dignity of man, and that is also the way it should be. It is obvious that aggression cannot be looked upon with indifference and wrong tolerance, because we would then be accomplices of undeniably accepted aggression. I realize that in view of our knowledge of Auschwitz, Treblinka, Bergen-Belsen, Birkenau, Dachau and Mauthausen, a moral proclamation alone can only be blasphemy, if it is not at the same time connected with what I have already pointed out as our will and duty towards enlightenment, which we must devote ourselves to. Precisely the fact that these very places of destruction of peoples and systems, erected and run with such perfectly operated organization, could never have existed without the help of hundreds of thousands of accomplices and quiet protectors; this very fact, if transferred to today’s situation and the present possibilities of destruction that threaten all, can teach us something: that we must resist in time, worldwide, in order to stop those quiet protectors, with their silence, submissiveness, obedience and docility, from rendering possible what must be prevented.
We must oppose and we must instigate opposition! We must take the responsibility by giving the answers. Answers to the question: What can we do? But then, we must act all together and in unison.
Vienna, 1985
Translated by the Slovenian P.E.N.
LITERATURE AND VIOLENCE
Writers in prison and exile
In the year 1939, when I was born in a little village near the Czech border, already many Austrian writers and authors had left their country -which in those times was not any longer the traditional Austria – and had gone to other countries in exile or they were fleeing or intended to escape; those who had the chance to escape to safety or who were destined for survival in better living circumstances. Others were already in prison or the concentration camps and their murderers were waiting for torturing them to death. About 2.500 German speaking writers had to leave their country for going into exile, appr. 700 of them were Austrian. A great number did not succeed in escaping and died a violent death. Only a few of them – compared with the great number of exiled writers – came back into their native country after 1945. Some of them remained in exile for the rest of their life and did not come back, nor they were called back. They remained abroad – and outland remained their only home.
Long is the list of Austrian exiled writers and authors. Principally, only the prominent names are still in our mind, so as: Stefan Zweig, Joseph Roth, Franz Werfel, Ödön von Horvath, Hermann Broch, Robert Musil, Elias Canetti, Manes Sperber, Friedrich Torberg, Franz Theodor Csokor, Fritz Hochwälder, Albert Ehrenstein, Robert Neumann, Alfred Polgar, Theodor Kramer – and of course also Paul Celan and Erich Fried. – Many names have been forgotten, they have been erased from our memory through the years. They do not appear in the Austrian history of literature, nor they are known to students of German. For who is remembering the missing and these forgotten names? Are we remembering for instance the old-Austrian poetess Alma Johanna König who was murdered in Minsk, or Heinrich Steinitz, murdered in Auschwitz, further Felix Grafe, executed in Vienna in the year 1942 as resistance fighter or Jura Soyfer, perished in the concentration camp Buchenwald at an age of only 27 years?
Who commemorates the great number of forgotten writers; those mostly forgotten owing to their literature in exile, those nearly entirely forgotten from the history of literature? Only in a most recent time, by innovative activities, aspirations, investigations, following traces and by exhibitions – p.e. ,,Die Zeit gibt die Bilder (an epoch is creating its pictures) of 1992 in the ,,Wiener Literaturhaus (house of literature of Vienna) and articles in periodicals; further, with the help of innovative research and publications, this literature written so far from home and its rather unknown literary world written in exile has been elaborated scientifically searching for traces of such literary texts from those missing and forgotten writers far too early cancelled and obliterated from life or our memory, bringing to light and publishing them. All these activities are followed prevalently by young committed Germanists and contemporary historians; all these activities also as a result of a modified, new political attitude.
Only nowadays we are able to comprehend the actual dimension of this loss. Maybe -and many human beings hope and require- that this would be also an expression of one’s own guilt, also of one’s own being involved, and to be -after all- prepared to assume part of the responsibility for these events of our history.
And exactly this rejection of willingness to accept to be also involved in these events and incidents during the years between 1938 and 1945, the mere reduction by the official Austria to an easy role of victim without any responsibility, the not-recognizing of any obligation of compensation, the inner and actual deny of compensation-activities which nevertheless often could be only reduced to a mere gesture of symbolical character -and particularly the circumstance in which sensitiveless way Austria was prepared to assimilate its own history- impeded so many writers in exile to come back and did no~ make possible their repatriation. This ?is and continues to be a blame, prevalently towards all those people, but also a blame towards the demand of veracity in front of the own history. And this guilt is still existing.
In any case, all the above mentioned facts have become history and things of the past; crossed off, as many may believe or desire. But this ,,once it happened is not valid. Because unfortunately, history is repeating itself, even not immediately and -per consequence- also the fate of the single human beings: of these afflicted, the expelled, the pursued, he exiled, the incarcerated, the tortured, the assassinated; these victims.
And since that time again so many – important, renowned writers, but also so many less known, often nameless writers who offered Opposition, had to leave their country or were incarcerated, were suffering in prison as victims of their pursuer, some of them died ore were assassinated. The easy way of violence with the purpose to silence the critics. And even this is not the past, not history, but still contemporary and daily incident, also in the so-called civilized world. Which importance is attached to the value of Human Rights in the world of economy and balances of trade. And criticism is not apt to win friends or trading partners; it does not increase the growth rate nor the gross national product. The not important and the important members of the international Community of States is aware of that. And therefore everything is so, as it is.
The numerous victims of the national socialist but also communist ideology and practice, any kind of fascist and totalitarian state- and society-variant in every continent, in every imperium, in so many countries, states, nations! And with them always involved also the intellectual, the writer, the poet. Every ideology, every totalitarian regime, every state based on them has its victims. And there are no victims without perpetrators.
A long list of names of the expelled, incarcerated, perished, died and assassinated human beings runs throughout the already distant past of the national socialist and Stalinist up to the contemporary terror. An enormous balance of victims can and must be confronted with the international trade balance. The criteria are always the policy of interests and exercising of power instead of Human Rights.
And even nowadays, assault -so, as in the past and there – is executed officially and also clandestinely. If we know the names of the victims, often we do not know the identity of the victims.
A bow of suppression, assault and violence, often even violence based on law, is bending from Alexander Solschenizyn to Salman Rushdie, from Nazim Hikmet, Kemal Tahir and Nagib Nafus up to Taslima Nasrin and Ken Saro-Wiwa. And under the cloak of taciturn silence and oblivion there are lying the dead. And they have been lying there for a long time, in the shadow of time and history.
And there is coming somebody, an Austrian poet and he is travelling in winter, to the rivers Danube, Soave, Morava, Drina; and he is explaining to people history and the world and he is teaching justice and also he is advising the victims.
And those thousands buried in the mass graves round Srebrenica cannot contradict him there, not any more. And he does not realize that his own literature has become his own prison, reduced to an artificial exile, composed of fantasies and chimeras which have not anything to do with reality and veracity. But all this is sheer disdain towards these victims on both sides and everywhere.
How elaborated and artistic the text may be, it is not expressing veracity but is disseminating untruth, self-deception or is simply a result of incomprehensible but irresponsible naiveté, only analyzing the balance sheet -but erroneously- according to my opinion; so much the more as composed in the light of a retrospective view.
What are thinking the perpetrators, the victims about it? The writers, the poets who escaped from this former country Bosnia-Herzegovina and have gone into exile and now are living also here, between ourselves.
Today, while I’m thinking and writing this, a book had come by post: the second book of Kemal Mahmutefendić, a Bosnian-Muslim poet of Sarajevo who has been living in Austria in exile since several years. In this moment I have opened it and now, I am reading the following verse: “Vergiß nun denn die letzte Silbe am Ende der Lippen, Vergiß nun denn den Vogelruf über unseren Köpfen, Vergiß alle lügenhaften Tröstungen im Raum, verbrannt von Verzweiflung”, (Let’s forget the last syllable at the end of the lips,/ let’s forget the bird’s cry above our heads, /forget all insincere consolations in this area, burnt up by despair).
Well, I think that this is an answer dear enough against any kind of deny of reality and foolish talk. Because here we have despair and affliction. And I believe more in them than in the overbearing, elaborated, even may be, literary word. Because life is the ultimate testimony and not literature.
Vienna, February 23, 1996
Translation of seminar paper for the Regional Conference of the Czech P.E.N.-Centre in Prague, from 29th February to 2nd March, 1996 having for theme ,,PRISON (or EXILE) IN LITERATURE -LITERATURE IN PRISON (or EXILE)”.