Enzensberger's poems are seldom what poetry lovers like to call "poetic".
Goethe's "Röslein auf der Heiden" is just as far away from them as George's "shimmer away smiling shore".
They are mostly didactic poems, thought poems, theses poems, and this one here discusses a fairly old, eternally topical question, namely whether language – and thus literature in general – is capable of truth.
Truth now does not mean something transcendental, but something very earthly, happiness for example.
The truly happy moment, according to the first thesis, is never the same moment when someone calls themselves "happy".
He says that when he says it, only afterwards.
The same goes for the orgasm.
Those who climax will not be able or in the mood to say, "Ha, now I'm having an orgasm!"
Well, one will ask, isn't there worse?
As a matter of fact.
Anyone who is in despair, who is in danger of dying of thirst, who is dying, will not want to or be able to say: I despair, I am dying of thirst, I am dying.
At least that's what the other theses claim.
Of course one can imagine that someone dying of thirst would call out "Water!" and someone in despair would call out "Help!" But this is not the point Enzensberger is getting at.
His problem is that the words want to designate something, but they always remain just signs.
You can never become the thing itself.
They are, as the medieval theologian Roscelin is supposed to have said, just a "flatus vocis", just a breath of voice.
You come too late or too early.
You are pretending.
You don't create reality.
One cannot sit on a painted chair
The poem sharpens this argument: because words are cheap, they enable vicarious speaking.
Anyone who speaks of the "working class" does not belong to it.
He uses only one word to refer to others, perhaps with benevolent intentions.
The others, however - and the poem runs towards this harsh point with increasing speed - remain silent.
The word is not available to them, ultimately it is none of their business.
It in no way brings them the “happy moment”, and certainly not the rescue from dying of thirst or death.
The headline claims that the poets lie.
The accusation, it is often said, goes back to Plato.
That's not exactly what he said.
In his "Politeia" (the state) he deals with Homer.
He accuses him of denigrating the world of the gods and creating a moral mess.
The central criticism of Plato, however, is that poets are only capable of imitation, of mimesis.
In conversation with Glaucon, Socrates explains the idea using the example of the chair.
The craftsman who builds a chair can only do this if he has understood the idea of the chair.
However, the idea of the chair, which encompasses all its conceivable forms, does not come from him, but from God.
The craftsman is the executive organ of the second class.
Now the artist who paints a chair, or depicts it in words, only tries to imitate it.
He's third rate.
He has neither really grasped the idea nor has he mastered the technique of realizing it.
He deceives, and to that extent he lies.
Enzensberger adds “further reasons” to this thought.
If we also regard poetry as a craft, he subjects his craft to a radical critique.
But he has mastered it to the extent that his poem resembles a cold and clear plea that takes decisive steps towards the sobering conclusion.
The finding is up-to-date and (if the comparative were allowed) it will become more and more up-to-date.
Because speaking by proxy is rampant.
Those who can speak, and that includes the poets, always speak for others, for real or even just supposed victims, and hope to attract attention by doing so.
It remains the strongest and ultimate reason why poets lie: "Because it is someone else / always someone else / who is speaking / and because / of whom the speech is being made / is silent."
The poem first appeared in Enzensberger's epic poem The Sinking of the Titanic (1978).
It is subtitled "A Comedy" and contains poems, prose pieces and 33 "songs" - like each of the three parts of Dante's "Commedia".
In the “Fifth Song” an agitator appears who calls on the disenfranchised to finally defend themselves: “Steal what has been stolen from you / take at last what is yours .
.
.
“.
But they don't react.
“His words were not her words.
/ They were eaten up by other fears / than he, and by other hopes.”
"The sinking of the Titanic" reflects Enzensberger's political hopes and disappointments.
In 1968 he had broken off his guest lectureship at an American university and traveled to Cuba, where a number of Western intellectuals were staying at the time to observe, if not admire, the Cuban revolution.
The result was disastrous.
Enzensberger's friend, the writer Heberto Padilla, was imprisoned as a "counter-revolutionary"; the promise of Cuba had been overtaken by the fate of the Titanic.
Since then, Enzensberger has distrusted the poetic background music with which the various projects for the betterment of the world and people are always garnished.