»Es grüßt uns sehr / Herr Apollinaire«

Abstract

In this article I want to show how Rolf Dieter Brinkmann, most commonly known for having translated and brought into the German literary scene new American poets of the 1960’s, such as Frank O’Hara, John Ashbery or Ted Berrigan, has, from his very beginnings on, been deeply influenced by French poetry of the so-called ›Avantgarde‹. As the French literary Avantgarde I consider that mouvement of writers and artists during the first third of the 20th century which, following in its intentions Arthur Rimbaud’s earlier investigations, is especially linked with the figure of Guillaume Apollinaire, and which has left magnificent traces upon poets throughout the 20th century. Rolf Dieter Brinkmann, who often denied an influence of any European ›tradition‹ on his poetry, had to admit that his American associates actually had their precursors in just that French-European artistic mouvement. His approach towards French poetry is hence a very special one: He makes these French poets part of his own writing by not treating them as ›historical‹ but as ›fictive‹ persons who are present in his imagination, and so they determine the present of his poems. This unique approach towards that ›other European tradition‹ makes the intentions of the ›historical‹ Avantgarde still vivid for Brinkmann’s own times and visible in the conception of his own poetry.