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HERBERT
MARC USE
the form of the subversive content, not as artificial revival, but as a
"return of the repressed." The music, in its own development, carries
the song to the point of rebellion where the voice, in word and
pitch,
halts
the melody, the song, and turns into outcry, shout.
Junction of art and revolution in the aesthetic dimension,s in
art itself. Art which has become capable of being political even in
the (apparently) total absence of political content, where nothing
remains but the poem - about what? Brecht accomplishes the miracle
of making the simplest ordinary language say the unutterable: the
poem invokes, for a vanishing moment, the images of a liberated
world, liberated nature:
DIE LIEBENDEN
Sieh je.ne Kraniche in grossem Bogen!
Die Wolken, welche ihnen beigegeben
Zogen mit ihnen schon, als sie entflogen
Aus einem Leben in ein and.res Leben.
In gleicher Hohe und mit gleicher Eile
Scheine.n sie alle beide nur daneben.
Dass so der Kranich mit der Wolke teile
Dean schOnen Himmel, den sie kurz befliegen
Dass also keiner liinger hier verweile
Und keines andres sehe als das Wiegen
Des andern in dem Wind, den beide spuren
Die jetzt
im
Fluge beieinander liegen
So
mag der Wind sie in das Nichts entfuhren
Wenn sie nur nicht vergehen und sich bleiben
So
lange kann sie beide nichts beruhren
So
lange kann man sie von jedem Ort vertreiben
W
0
Regen drohen oder Schiisse schaUen.
So
under Sonn und Monds wenig verschiedenen
Scheiben
Fliegen sie hin, einander ganz verfalle.n.
8. One only has to read some of the authentic-sounding poems of young
activists (or former activists)
in
order to see how poetry, remaining poetry,
can be political also today. These love poems are political as love poems:
not where they are fashionably desublimated, verbal release of sexuality, but
on the contrary: where the erotic energy finds sublimated, poetic expression
- a poetic language becoming the outcry against that which is done to men
and women who love in this society. In contrast, the union of love and
subversion, the social liberation inherent in Eros is lost where the poetic lan–
guage is abandoned in favor of versified (or pseudoversified) pig language.
There is such a thing as pornography, namely, the sexual publicity, propa–
ganda with the exhibitionist, marketable Eros. Today, the pig language and
the glossy photography of sex have exchange value - not the romantic love
poem.
