An Anna Blume
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An Anna Blume ("To Anna Flower" also translated as "To Eve Blossom") is a poem written by the german artist Kurt Schwitters in 1919. It has been described as a parody of a love poem, an emblem of the chaos and madness of the era, and as a harbinger of a new poetic language.[1]
Originally published in Herwarth Walden's Der Sturm magazine in August 1919, the poem made Schwitters famous almost overnight. The poem was parodied in newspapers and magazines, and strongly polarized public opinion.[2]
Whilst Schwitters was never an official member of Berlin Dada, he was closely linked to many members of the group, in particular Raoul Hausmann, and the poem is written in a dadaist style, using multiple perspectives, fragmentations of the text, and absurdist elements to mirror the fragmentation of the narrator's emotional state in the throes of love, or of Germany's political, military and economic collapse after the First World War.
"Elements of poetry are letters, syllables, words, sentences. Poetry arises from the interaction of those elements. Meaning is important only if it employed as one such factor. I play off sense against nonsense. I prefer nonsense, but that is a purely personal matter." Kurt Schwitters, 1920[3]
[edit] Publication Of The Artist's Book
Later in the year Schwitters would publish the poem in an artist's book called Anna Blume, Dichtungen.[4] The book contains several poems and short stories, including Die Zwiebel (The Onion), a fairy story about the dismemberment of the narrator Alves Bäsenstiel, who, when reassembled, becomes the new King. The book also includes the poems Grünes Kind (Green Child) and Nächte (Nights).
The book was published by Verlag Paul Steegemann, Hannover, 1919. A second version was published by Der Sturm, Berlin, in 1922
[edit] Notes
- ^ The Collages of Kurt Schwitters, Dietrich, Cambridge, 1993 p75
- ^ Kurt Schwitters, Centre Georges Pompidou, 1994, p72
- ^ Quoted in The Collages of Kurt Schwitters, Dietrich, Cambridge, 1993 p77
- ^ [1]
[edit] External Links
A Critical Commentary on An Anna Blume [[2]]
An Online Version of the Whole Book [3]
A gallery of Schwitter's Works, including Schwitter's own Translation of the Poem [4]
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