Riegel and Gruppe 47

In "Proklomation des Hektographismus," which first appeared in the second issue of Zwischen den Kriegen, Werner Riegel begins a paragraph with a cryptic critique of the post-war literary scene, speaking of the “Kilometerstein 47” on the highway of literary progress, as well as a list of the top three authors of the time: “Oberst Hemingway” (5 bestsellers), “Kuli Plivier” (3 bestsellers), and “Gerhardt Maria Kramer” (1 bestseller). Riegel then drops the code and issues a string of barbs against the members of Gruppe 47:

Es lohnt leider nicht, die Namen derer zu nennen, die sich da unten in Süddeutschland als Gruppe 47 etabliert haben, die über ihr schlechtes Leben stöhnen und sich gegenseitig Literaturpreise verleihen. Was heißt überhaupt verleihen! Jedenfalls ist es für uns ein Festessen, zu sehen wie die Spießerliteraten der »Literatur« auf die Spießer schimpfen, die nicht so doof sind, mit Bücherschreiben Geld verdienen zu wollen sondern lieber im Toto wetten.¹

This reminded me of Thomas Bernhard's characterization, in a letter to Siegfried Unseld, of Gruppe 47 as "Literaturtombola."²


1. Werner Riegel, Ausgewahlte Werke in Einzelausgaben, Band 1 (Stuttgart: Literarisches Bureau Christ & Fez, 2006) p. 42.
2. http://literaturgefluester.wordpress.com/2010/03/15/bernhard-und-handke-in-der-osterreichischen-literatur/.

Hiller gegen Hegel, addendum

Zizek recently in the Guardian:

"Politics," he reflects, "has always been shitty. It is something I am involved in often against my will. My first interest is theory. I am a Hegelian looking for facts to fit the theory."

The cruelest satirist could not have put it better. Hiller's anti-Hegelianism represents the reaction against exactly this sort of political detachment, which is only the after-effect of an intellectualized detachment from the real world into the world of theory (Zizek even admits that he privileges the theory before the fact, a completely irresponsible and untenable position only accepted by cynical academics and those poor souls they mislead). It is deplorable that this approach continues to exert influence in philosophical circles today, almost two centuries after the fact.

 "My thinking moves so quickly how could it not be full of contradictions?"

We turn to Wittgenstein in Culture and Value: "This is how philosophers should greet each other: 'Take your time!'"

LINK: Google me with a fire spoon

>>>Google me with a fire spoon @ Language Log

"Google Translate is a free translation service that provides instant translations between 58 different languages. It can translate words, sentences and web pages between any combination of our supported languages. With Google Translate, we hope to make information universally accessible and useful, regardless of the language in which it’s written."-Google, Inc.

Hiller gegen Hegel

I'm currently at the Deutsches Literatur Archiv in Marbach where I am researching the mostly forgotten post-war German writer Werner Riegel (more info from Wikipedia for the curious). As so often during research, what we find is not always what we initially look for, and I've had the pleasure of acquainting myself more with the work of Kurt Hiller, the essayist and publisher who was one of the first figures of the older generation to offer his support and guidance to Riegel and his colleague Peter Rühmkorf during the early stages of their careers.
Hiller is known primarily as a pacifist, a non-orthodox socialist in the tradition of Aktivismus and an early proponent of gay rights. His essays are hilarious, firebrand broadsides, maybe lacking the Verfeinung of Kraus' criticism, yet possessing a certain aggression which is undoubtedly what so attracted Riegel and Rühmkorf. Hiller's witticisms are anything but frivolous.
Yet the one aspect of Hiller's criticism that I find most fascinating is his anti-Hegelianism. Hiller always presented himself as part of a somehow Schopenhauerian Marxist tradition, a move which, in criticizing the Hegelianism of other Marxist movements, would bring him into conflict with certain communist groups. For Hiller the Aktivist, Hegel represents the passive observation of the historical process, and the intellectualizing reformation of history into a theory which only justifies, and cannot criticize. Hiller is close in spirit to Kierkegaard in such denunciations of Hegelian mystification.

Übrigens ist unter den Gattungen philosophischer Hochstapelei jene, die sich bemüht, die Vernunft verächtlich zu machen, nur die zweitärgste. Die ärgste ist die, deren fauler Tiefsinn uns weismachen möchte, die Vernunft herrsche bereits, sie sei das der Welt immanente Prinzip, sie komme in jedwedem vorgefundenen Staat nicht minder zum Ausdruck als in den Bahnen der Gestirne, und unsre einzige Aufgabe sei, ihrer gewahr zu werden, gerade in den zufälligen und überlebten Organisaten fragwürdiger menschlicher Macht. Den vorgefundenen Staat nicht kritisieren, ihn nicht ändern und umformen wollen, nein, ihn als Ausdruck der Weltvernunft begreifen lernen, um sich mit ihm zu "versöhnen", mag er beschaffen sein wie -auch-immer, - das lehrte Hegel und das impliziert auch die mit einem fashionablen Ismus beklebte moderne Hegelei. Wir dürfen Hegel definieren: Hegel oder die Deutung des Massenmords an Kindern als Ausdruck der Weltvernunft.

Hiller would also criticize this philosophical distancing from political reality (which has a rich history in German literature, stemming most prominently from Goethe's aloof attitude towards the political events of the 1790s) in Thomas Mann. Yet the question is not simply political for Hiller. It is concerned more generally with ethics, and the conservative collusion between philosophy (in the Hegelian tradition) and power.

'Das, was ist, zu begreifen, ist die Aufgabe der Philosophie, denn das, was ist, ist die Vernunft.' Dieser Ausspruch, Damen und Herren, stammt aus keinem Parodien-Atelier; dieser Ausspruch ist von Hegel. Es ist der Schwertstich durch alle Ethik, es ist der konservativste, der schmierigste Satz der Weltlitteratur.

Stuttgart 2 days ago. (Hegel: exactly wrong)

Mann speaks annoyingly and condescendingly of his respect for Hiller before claiming that "Hillers Feindschaft gegen mich ist die der Aufklärung gegen die Romantik," as if Hiller wasn't an Aktivist/socialist and Mann himself didn't stand for the worst bourgeois, un-political non-engagement.

More gems from Hiller can be found here: http://www.hiller-gesellschaft.de/prosa.htm

"A trifle consoles us because a trifle upsets us."

Recent screens

From Robert Kramer's Notre Nazi, Claude Goretta's L'Invitation, and Krista Fleischmann's Das war Thomas Bernhard

Tony Coulter on D.D.A.A.

>>>Tony Coulter on Deficits Des Années Anterieures

Against the charitable gesture there is no defense, that I know of. You sink your head, you put out your hands all trembling and twined together and you say, Thank you, thank you lady, thank you kind lady. To him who has nothing it is forbidden not to relish filth.

[from Molloy]

Francisco Franco at the Red Light District

Francisco Franco at the Red Light District, Far Rockaway, NY, April 17, 2011. 

Rob Francisco: guitar, drum machine; Matt Franco: guitar; Nate Davis: electric bass. 

Video by I don't know who. 

Songs: Ivory City, Abel Manor, Dance For Me.

Francisco Franco – Instrumental Demos CS available from Silvox Recordings.

Introduction

Welcome to my new blog.

Ausmalen will continue where I left off with my last blog, Saving, which I ran from 2004-2010, and which used to be located at saving.blog-city.com but has now been erased from the internet.

The founding of this blog also coincides with the deletion of my Facebook account, with the intention of funneling my 'content-creative' energies towards a more public outlet, which at the same time will be less connected to the marketing-oriented culture-spying that seems to happening on Facebook. I'm no privacy freak, but I do feel that, if I have any hand in the creation or distribution of any cultural data, information which concerns the cultural investments of myself and my friends, I would prefer that it be open to the wandering eyes of human blog readers rather than those of statistical marketing robots. This is not to say that my content here (hosted by Google, nonetheless) is in any way protected from data collectors, but at least with a blog there is a possibility of viewing it anonymously.

This move is also nostalgic, in that I already pine for the days of email and blogs, which were simpler tools of communication, completely public, more independent, less constrained by the format of Web 2.0 gimmicks. Back to basics. 

Ausmalen will differ slightly from Saving in that I'll try to focus more in writing. Short critical pieces will be mixed with fictional or experimental writing, as well as personal commentary in the tradition of the literary Tagebuch. I'll also be fairly unrestrained in my posting of videos, photos, and links— indeed, one of the few positive developments of Web 2.0 is the prevalence of the un-commented "forward-ing" of information from other sources.

Moreover, I aspire to tell the truth: