Foreword to 'Messer' - by Gert Hof

I'M BACK, AND I HAVE THE FOREWORD TO MESSER.

This is the hardest section I've translated. It's long, for one, and Gert Hof was not a slouch when it came to prose writing. It is nevertheless an incredibly honest approach to Till's poetry and shows the man he truly was.

Disclaimer: This post does not include photos/illustrations from 'Messer'. The original German text is also not included. This is only a interpretive translation and accuracy is not guaranteed.





FOREWORD
Poetry without Return

The choice of whether one ought to drink gasoline or freshly squeezed orange juice for breakfast is a relatively rare one. But just by thinking about this alternative one tends to take a step back further away from normalcy. I think the decision would be the easiest to answer for the waiter who would pose that question: Raskolnikov (note: the protagonist of Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky). Lindemann has a choice.

Sometime during the autumn of 1995 I first met Lindemann. It was no normal conversation; rather, a cautious one. Lindemann had something special about him; one could remain silent with him. No pressure was given, only an agreement about an addictive longing (note: ‘Sehnsucht’ in the original text) carried deep within the blood - one that needed no articulation. It was a start. Months later, Lindemann showed me his first poems - a vote of true confidence.

I read them. I quickly realized that these were not poems classifiable on a scale between, say, Gottfried Benn or Vladimir Mayakovsky. These were the poems of Till Lindemann.

Earlier this year, we had the idea to make a book containing these poems. They were written between 1995 and 2002 - from over a thousand poems I have chosen the ones published here. And they have never been published elsewhere - truly, a world premiere. I would have liked all of them published - the rest will come, later.

The photos contained here are a self-contained work of art - a theater production, which would provide the basis for those poems. Those photos were taken exclusively for these book of poems and published here for the first time. A meeting of a fictional character, with other fictional characters, in an artifical world. A journey into a strange, alien landscape. The photos, however, should not be considered illustrations of the poems themselves. Photography and poetry together provide a new, subjective approach.

Those poems are like a crack through reality. They tell of situations rather above or below the usual room temperatures. Lindemann’s poems are verbal executions - poetic suicide - they are as a guillotine of words. There are wounds of despair and hope. The flight of lonely thoughts, fired from a heart filled with courage and desire (note: ‘desire’ was ‘Sehnsucht’, again. That is a very difficult but versatile word). A foil against mediocrity, against hypocrisy; a lyrical accounting, an enforcement.

Lindemann’s poetry cannot, and should not, be a solution to problems. They can be a torch; they can cut through the night for a moment, like a scalpel of light - no more, and yet so much. These poems are your own enemy. The moral high ground that they possess is that they do not have hope towards the individual. Perhaps they can mediate the pain - the only comrade, loyal for a lifetime.

The poems describe the structure of angst (note: I have maintained this as ‘angst’ instead of the equivalent ‘fear’, as ‘Angst’ is a complex emotion), the burn-degrees of dreams, and the destruction of human relationships - a collection of material from passion. Diagnoses of silence, they speak of chambers one has long since closed in the past. Warships on the move, sailing against the tide of the broken sky within us. In a time when contemporary German poetry has degraded into what might as well be a pair of pseudo-intellectual bears in Zwickau Zoo, Lindemann’s verses seem like a firestorm sweeping over the oasis of night. The explosive, uncompromising force of an organic pacemaker. They are tunnels to the screams of burnt time. A modern-day exorcism, leading us to the veins of our souls. Echoes, carved within the walls of our pain. Poetry without return, defending itself.

Lindemann speaks of wounds in times of betrayal. As if in a vessel of blood the words are skinned alive; the vocal cords cut with much severity and a hammer within the quarry of the heart. How would one write like anything else, when one wears the stigma of nails upon the eyes?

We - and German poetry as a whole - would be rather poorer off without those poems; it is as if the power of verse blew through the open window to rekindle the since-depleted fire in us. Lindemann’s poems are self-determined, lacking in vanity, without opportunism, without cowardice. Lindemann is a honest thinker, a faithful man, a loyal friend.

For your trust and friendship, I thank you.

Gert Hof

Comments: I'm somewhat stunned that Till had one thousand poems and over in 2002. Now I'm antsy as to when they're going to come along... if they do at all.