{"id":9240,"date":"2018-03-14T16:38:32","date_gmt":"2018-03-14T15:38:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=9240"},"modified":"2018-03-14T16:39:09","modified_gmt":"2018-03-14T15:39:09","slug":"memorial-to-the-future-by-volker-von-torne-trans-jean-boase-beier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=9240","title":{"rendered":"<em>Memorial to the Future<\/em>, by Volker von T\u00f6rne, trans. Jean Boase-Beier"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Volker von T\u00f6rne, <em>Memorial to the Future<\/em>, trans. Jean Boase-Beier, Arc \u00a310.99<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i64.tinypic.com\/2rdl0zk.jpg\" width=\"220\" align=\"left\" style=\"margin: 10px\"><\/p>\n<p>Volker von T\u00f6rne was clearly a very interesting man.  The son of an SS unit commander, he dedicated his life to reconciliation, particularly with camp survivors, and became a director of Aktion S\u00fchnezeichen Friedensdienste (AS) (Action Reconciliation-Service for Peace) and befriended a number of Auschwitz survivors.  He died in 1980.  The inevitable question is, \u2018does all that make him an interesting poet?\u2019 And the answer is a qualified \u2018yes\u2019, as a number of the poems in this selection from his poetry, deal directly with the psychology of Nazism, its defenders and its aftermath.  In his introduction, David Wheatley suggests that von T\u00f6rne is a poet of \u2018skeletally reduced lines\u2019 with a \u2018seeming auto-allergic reaction to the very existence of his poetry after the great catastrophe\u2019, with \u2018stripped-stripped down yet bountiful landscapes\u2019.  And such a sense of von T\u00f6rne\u2019s \u2018minimalism\u2019 is most true of the more political of the poems.  In these poems von T\u00f6rne\u2019s unvarnished attack on the political legacy of Nazism is a kind of anti agit-prop. <\/p>\n<p>In \u2018History\u2019s True Heroes\u2019, dedicated to two fellow workers in the ASF, von T\u00f6rne writes \u2018What will become of us?\/ How should I know?\/ We are history\u2019s true heroes \u2013 \/ That\u2019s easily said\/ But I know for certain\/ If we fail in this\/ The earth itself\/ Will cease to be\u2019. Such writing does sit uneasily in English, and particularly in the British poetry tradition of stiff-upper-lip and irony; particularly when written about political engagement.  But that is possibly why this book is so important in English. It shows at close cultural hand, what such engagement must surely entail for those so close to the worst excesses of history. And this is particularly true in an age of populist politics, where the forces von T\u00f6rne fought against all his life are now in resurgence.  <\/p>\n<p>Elsewhere, von T\u00f6rne\u2019s language can almost be opulent.  In \u2018Autumn Festival\u2019, for example, von T\u00f6rne\u2019s attachment to the German countryside shows itself in rich detail, \u2018Darker rush the waters of evening \/ And deeper grows the silence of stones \/ In the wind drifts the angling-line of autumn \/ And the leaves shudder on the trees\u2019. Those line initial inversions are true in the German, so von T\u00f6rne shows he can \u2018poeticise\u2019 the line when he wants.  Thus, the poetry can be very atmospheric.  As David Wheatley notes in his introduction, von T\u00f6rne is also capable of depicting the German countryside with a Michael Hanake like sense of disturbance, of things occurring behind curtained windows. In \u2018Midday Light\u2019, for example, the narrator of the poem seems alive to both the beauty and the aftermath of the rural landscape; \u2018Summer, leafy gold, thorn-bush \/ Burning in the wind, the corn calls out \/ For the scythe, empty I haul \/ The bucket out of the well \/ My heart is cracked like the earth \/ Crying out for rain\u2019. In the poem, there is no explanation for why the corn has not been harvested or the narrators heart \u2018cracked\u2019, and in many ways the poem is better off for that lack of explanation. <\/p>\n<p>Here and elsewhere the poetry is clearly haunted by both the definable and indefinable legacies of the past. And Von T\u00f6rne is clearly in a particularly strong position to explore that haunting.  He does that with a variety of styles and approaches, and the final result is both illuminating of a particular attitude in German literature, and also deeply affecting.  <\/p>\n<p><strong>by Ian Pople<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Volker von T\u00f6rne, Memorial to the Future, trans. Jean Boase-Beier, Arc \u00a310.99 Volker von T\u00f6rne was clearly a very interesting man. The son of an SS unit commander, he dedicated his life to reconciliation, particularly with camp survivors, and became a director of Aktion S\u00fchnezeichen Friedensdienste (AS) (Action Reconciliation-Service for Peace) and befriended a number [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[13,283],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.2.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Memorial to the Future, by Volker von T\u00f6rne, trans. 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