Poetry in a Provisional State. The Austrian Lyric 1945–1955 by Anthony Bushell

Abstract

Reviews 213 Poetry in a Provisional State. The Austrian Lyric 1945-1955-By Anthony Bushell. Cardiff: University ofWales Press. 2007. 188 pp. ?75. isbn 978-0-7083 2080-8. Twentieth-century Austrian literary history knows in principle four dates that figure as important caesuras for the differentiation of aesthetic tendencies and paradigms: 1918 (the end of the FirstWorld War), 1938 (the year of Austria's Anschluss to the Third Reich), 1945 (the year of Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender) and 1986 (the year of Kurt Waldheim's problematic inauguration as Austria's president). Anthony Bushell has chosen one of these historical milestones as the starting point forhis project ? the year 1945, a date that is rather misleading in itsglobal inflationary prominence in historical, political and aesthetical analyses as the beginning of an era thathas seemingly been thoroughly and sufficientlyexplored. But most analyses across disciplines, not only in German Studies, usually go on to cover the 1950s and 1960s in order to understand the shiftsbetween values and in the world's economical, political and philosophical status quo between 1950 and 1968. Anthony Bushell, however, focuses on the period between 1945 and 1955 inAustria (the year of the State Treaty, premised on permanent neutrality), knowing well thathis approach requires a slightlydifferent set of questions that only peripherally touch on theusual topics examined in connection with thepost war period inEurope. Bushell's informed and enjoyable study thus focuses on an era in Austrian literary history that is known for the emergence of conflicting ideologies and aesthetic tendencies and for itsparadoxical reliance on and simultaneous rejection of traditions.The social climate in the Second Republic ofAustria that emerged after the end of thewar was a direct resultofAustria's role in theThird Reich and was dominated by a peculiar confusion as to how and towhat extent the recent past had to be dealt with. Bushell's aim is to discuss Austria's post-war identity formation and ambivalent attitude to its recent past by looking at lyricpoetry, thus putting himself in the tricky situation of having to account for the inextricable link between form and content when looking at a poem's contexts. It's a challenge he tackles elegantly by structuring thebook as an overview of the Second Republic's phases of identity formation, using the phenomenon of literary journals, which functioned after 1945 as programmatic cultural authorities, as a framework forhis discussion of individual poets. One of the volume's merits is thatBushell bases his study on the historically ambivalent relationship between Austria and Germany and keeps coming back to this problematic relationship that is reflected in both the non-literary (e.g. the publishing situation, see. p. 48) and in the literary (e.g. canon-building). Bushell's book is divided into six chapters, some ofwhich have rather lengthy headings that seem to reflect the complex nature of his project. The first chapter, entitled 'The Task Ahead: Political and Cultural Reconstruction inEarly Post-war Austria', looks at Austria's unprecedented historical situation after 1945,which allowed her to appear as both perpetrator and victim before theworld's eyes. The chapter setsout to give amore detailed account of the socio-political facts that led 214 Reviews toAustria's refusal of any joint responsibility for the course of thewar, politically as well as culturally. Bushell, in line with previous research, describes Austria's cultural development after 1945 as stifledby a strongdesire for continuity,which facilitated the re-establishment of conservative writers like Alexander Lernet Holenia, who became the leading aesthetic authorities in the post-war years. Most of the first chapter recounts research findings from the past twenty years, and, indeed, the study sports an impressive bibliography that shows a balanced approach to the research in thefield, including scholarlyworks of conservative aswell as left wing, progressive origin. But this survey isneeded to understand theprominence of some literary traditions (e.g. neo-realistic writing) and the absence of others (e.g. avant-garde poetry before the 1950s).Bushell also looks beyond the narrow perspective of an Austrian literary scholar and offers fresh insights. For example, he refers toAdorno 'sdictum ofwriting a poem afterAuschwitz being an act of barbarism (p. 67) in theAustrian context and discusses...