H. C. Artmann and the Austrian Literary Renaissance

Abstract

H. C. Artmann, multilingual poet, translator and Austrian Surrealist, was the most important member of the ‘Wiener Gruppe’. His range of style contributed significantly to a literary renaissance which has been in progress in Austria since 1950. Artmann's ‘Eight Point Proclamation of the Poetic Act’, published in 1953, was the first manifesto of an eclectic circle of Viennese poets and composers. Now known in the histories of literature as ‘die Wiener Gruppe’, this circle proved to be the vanguard of Austria's post-war avant-garde movement. Artmann was widely read, ten years older than the others and a bohemian ‘radical’ around whom the younger artists gathered. He represented the Surrealist and Romantic traditions, and was joined by Gerhard Rühm, a serialist composer who experimented with Constructivist procedures, such as the mathematical permutation of words, for the composition of poetry. During its most creative phase, 1952–58, the ‘Wiener Gruppe’ achieved a synthesis of the two divergent trends of post-war experimental art in Europe, Surrealism and Constructivism. Fluctuating between Artmann's Surrealist attitude and Rühm's Constructivist approach, the ‘Wiener Gruppe’ developed into the most diversified and innovative of the post-war experimental movements.