“Increatum” first appeared in Hilbig's third and final volume of poetry, “Images of Narration”, published in 2000.
In terms of time, it spans an arc that extends into childhood and adolescence, with sleep, writing and dreams being central terms for Hilbig's lyrical work.
Hilbig, who was born on August 31, 1941 in Meuselwitz, often revised his texts several times, so that there are various drafts of individual poems in the estate, which show how intensively he searched for the valid version.
In addition to undated and mostly untitled drafts, there is also a handwritten version of the poem “Increatum” from 1989 entitled “The Continuation”.
Like the published poem, it begins with the words: "I wrote, I wrote: nobody who wrote".
The second verse is different: "in the ash-grey tween deck of my room".
The third line – “where shadows and foam fight each other” – also deviates from the version that was printed.
Hilbig wrote the title "The Sequel" under the draft and framed it in a small box.
However, the author rejected this title.
Another handwritten version of the poem from the year 2000 entitled “Monolog zwei” was also found in his estate. The opening line remained unchanged: “I wrote, I wrote: nobody who wrote”.
But deviating from the printed version, the following lines read: "in the ashen steerage of my room / and weather parted / thunder flared / ah!
this white, foaming spray scrawl on the window glass / and sea-like rain that extinguished the forest in my brain".
The mystery of the origin of poetry
When comparing these two versions, it is striking that in “The Sequel” it is still the sea that “invented” the lyrical I, while in “Monolog Two” the forest is said to have “invented” the I.
In the published version it finally says: "The forest that invented me passed away / drove away covered itself in the precipitation of sleep".
Hilbig mentioned in an interview that it was the forest that “shaped” him: “I come from the forest.
I grew up in the forest.” Brown coal was mined in the Thuringian region around Meuselwitz, where he spent his childhood and youth.
Immediately behind his hometown began the "lignite forest", which was part of the landscape that was massively affected by coal mining.
Hilbig recalls this when the poem says:
Twice in the poem the I expresses: “I wrote”.
But it retracts the statement in the same line: "no one who wrote".
In this narrowing of "I" and "nobody" there is a reference to Homer's "Odyssey".
Odysseus denies his real name to Polyphemus and pretends to be "nobody".
Through this act of self-denial, he succeeds in outwitting the one-eyed man.
Hilbig, however, refers to Paracelsus with the title, which he only found definitively shortly before the poem was published.
Because on a note found in the estate he stated: "Poetry is an 'increatum' = uncreated = according to Paracelsus 'prima materia'".
Paracelsus understood the “prima materia” to mean the primordial substance, the primordial matter from which everything emerged.
But if poetry is uncreated,
Hilbig's decision to finally publish the poem under the title "Increatum" came at a time when he admitted that he had lost the "original" in writing.
In light of this experience, he wanted to find out what the enigma of poetry and writing was all about.
With melancholy he remembered that former “original state” of carefree writing that was familiar to him from his childhood and youth.
At that time he had only written out of a passion for writing.
In the GDR, Hilbig was a nobody as an author for many years.
When he was still working as a stoker, he wrote "on the side".
He was also not known in the country in which he lived because his debut volume of poetry, Absence, could only be published in the Federal Republic.
The poem "Increatum" takes us back to a time when poetry came about by itself, when he wrote in a frenzy between sleep and dream.
Writing, he went on a long journey, he set off into unknown regions.
Then the room in which he wrote resembled a ship.
And on the glass of the window pane, "spray scrawl" appeared as a secret message for a moment.