Frankfurt anthology: Heiner Müller: "Tooth decay in Paris"

All this was almost forty years ago.

At that time I was the literary editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

The GDR still existed and I came across the first book of poetry by a young man from East Berlin, his name was Sascha Anderson.

In his poems, he abbreviated the party newspaper “Neues Deutschland” to “eNDe”, meticulously listed all the words from Goethe’s poem “Dämmerung” alphabetically (“dämmerung der der der die das durchs”) or brought up the logic of trumping that got stuck in the bloc confrontation from east and west to such succinct lines as "east-western the delusion" or "every satellite has a killer satellite".

What was that?

A linguistically playful form of political criticism?

A new Dadaism?

A punk lyric that made fun of the ideologies of both hemispheres and the prostrate German worship of Goethe at the same time?

I wanted to know more about this Anderson.

So I went to East Berlin, met him in the Pankow ceramics workshop where he was living at the time, and then wrote a portrait about him.

That was in 1983. I was surprised: he hardly ever talked about his own poems, he clearly had no desire to praise his qualities as a writer to a critic.

Instead, he tried to get me excited about the poetry of his friend Bert Papenfuss or the works of the painter Cornelia Schlemme.

He appeared completely open and fearless, although he spoke of being "regularly followed, interrogated, threatened" by the Stasi.

A shock that does not wear off

Of course, he did not tell me what he told his officers in charge during these interrogations.

His exposure as a Prenzlauer Berg informer who had betrayed his closest friends to the Stasi did not happen until eight years later.

Since then, the verdict on him as an author seems to have been spoken.

But back then, in 1983, it was all unimaginable.

In a corner of the ceramics studio I discovered a piece of paper pinned to the wall with two thumbtacks and Heiner Müller's handwriting on it.

It was the five lines of Tooth Decay in Paris signed HM.

Before that I had studied Müller's work for a long time, but I didn't know this poem.

I was impressed.

Anderson noticed this, pulled the thumbtacks out of the wall and gave me the sheet.

He did so without much fuss—a nice (perhaps demonstrative?) display of his frankness.

Since then, for almost forty years, the sheet has been hanging next to my desk.

No move, no change of office could change that.

Admittedly, it's a somewhat gruff lyrical life companion.

Some friends who stand in front to decipher the poem find my attachment strange, to put it mildly.

Even the title leaves no doubt about the disillusioning attitude, committed to an aesthetic of the ugly, with which Müller writes here.

It is somewhat reminiscent of Gottfried Benn's Morgue poems.

In the glossy world of toothpaste advertising, the term caries is often used, and it stands for a trivial disease that can be medically controlled without any problems.

In the word "tooth decay", on the other hand, there is a clearly audible indication of a decomposition process, a physical process of destruction that cannot be repaired.

With the first line, Müller then expands this allusion to decay and agony to generality.

The rot not only eats at the teeth, but at the people, at "me".

I understand the first seven words of the poem as the briefest possible memento mori: as a premonition of death that can catch up with you even in Paris, the capital of pleasure.

Then the poem changes perspective a bit.

The "I" that speaks in these five lines draws attention to himself, to his habit of smoking and drinking too much.

It states this fact as factually as possible, without subterfuge or euphemism.

In psychology, such addictive behavior is often understood as an indication of hidden tendencies towards self-destruction, towards auto-aggression.

Or to put it succinctly and brutally: as the unacknowledged wish to die faster.

In fact, Heiner Müller was rarely seen in public without two constant companions: the cigar and the whiskey glass.

His poem works with a typical modern stylistic device, shock.

The shock should open everyday perception for a moment for an art experience that penetrates deeper into consciousness - for example through the painfully pointed self-assessment: "You die too slowly."

For me, the poem is a reminder that will soon be forty years old.

Not one for healthy living.

But the request to stay on the track of the hidden, unconscious motives of one's own actions.