Peter Rühmkorf was a master of all lyrical classes.
And he excelled in one of those classes: he could rhyme like no other;
he tied together extraordinarily disparate things and circumstances with his rhymes.
In the love poem treated here, such unusual rhymes can be found: -gechatsche / Apatsche - Schwalber / for the sake of justice.
The poet from Övelgönne reflected on this mastery of rhyme throughout his life as a poet.
Reflection on rhyme reached its climax in Rühmkorf's poetological main work: "agar agar zaurzaurim - On the natural history of rhyme and human nerves of appeal", published in 1981.
The handwritten diary contains preliminary considerations, including on February 11, 1980: "A few more beautiful works released into the world: Essay on rhyme + a book full of fairy tales".
On March 31: “Social position d.
Reims': To be reconsidered: From the tam-tam to the differentiated arts of differentiation, tam-tam + artistry”.
On April 13th: “ Yesterday until 2:30: Die Vision, Audio-Vision, I discovered the doubling as the prelude to all rhyming verses, which is not true.
Nevertheless: profoundly new entry into the doubling as: confirmation - proof - appearance + being - figure + shadow - sound + answer - identity + communication - confirmation of existence".
On April 14th: "Will the rhyme ever come back?: in full size, in old fullness - - The rhyme is not adornment - adornment, but magic - binding word.
Cancels Individuation + creates them:
Towards the end of 1980 the poet is already traveling with lectures from the almost ready-to-print manuscript “agar agar”.
Overall success and Marcel Reich-Ranicki's comment build it up.
Diary November 30th: “The bathe in applause in applause + compliments.
How nice to be briefly outshone.
.
.
MRR – keep me f. prophet of rhyme: now everything rhymes again”.
The Prophet of Rhyme
In the diary he collects words for which he wants to find rhymes, for example in the entry from February 22, 1980. In the margin he notes them with the abbreviation RH (probably for rhythm): "Rh) hartgeburtes ((hard born)". Quer a marginal note can be read on this RH line, which names the collector of rhymes and words: "Many will be submissive / dependent in time. To have in the days of need. Hunters & gatherers + stockpiling - -". At the first rhyme lecture in Frankfurt he notes: "Yesterday evening almost anxiety/surges about rhyme -/ lecture in Ff / M".
The poem "Waking up and re-finding", first published in 1986, celebrates, confidently and elegantly secured by the final rhyme, the compatibility of what is actually incompatible: man and woman, precisely the paired peculiarity noted in the diary.
The seven stanzas come along with boldness and verve, with movement and melancholy, with wisdom, experience and goodness.
This is due to the beguilingly beautifully crafted verses, including those of opposing anapaests and dactyls, tatatám tatatám tatatám tám /tatatám tam támtata tám, which increases to a high level of mastery when, in the infinity mania, the emphasis is on -end and is opposed to -dying in the next verse – everything is immediately clear: love carelessly relies on infinity and knows (in diametrically different dimensions for man or woman) about its finiteness.
The cosmos of love is created, measured, invoked, sung about.
Love takes place (that's new and we've only known that since Rühmkorf) under a tilt and turn sky (because it can be found in all dimensions of heaven).
And the sky stage is giving a salmon drive tonight: there are: fishermen and the fished, drifters and driven, travelers and those who stay, standing and walking.
Movement of man, woman is always there, the blues is there, accordingly also Blueberryhill with the big red Indian moon (to which a bit of Matthias Claudius still hangs) and the child boy's longing for flying as well as the evergreen parable of pear tree (behind the probably the "old fountain" peeks out) and ivy.
The love journey leads through the world in burning travel shoes and the lovers to and into each other,
The greatest comforter is the sleep of lovers: it lets the world traversed by a thousand farewells rise fresh in the morning, and new eternities awaken – for the indivisible couple who could hardly be closer or more distant.