er nimmt zwei vögel ab
er nimmt zwei vögel zu
er paust grimassen auf die luft
und unter das wasser
sieht er drei eier
so ruft er
ei ei
und zählt doch richtig
ein bei bei zwei
zwei bei bei drei
er hebt an der urgrossvaterstadt
das rechte bein hoch
er hebt an der urgrossmutterstadt
das linke bein hoch
er nimmt zwei vögel ab
er nimmt zwei vögel zu
er heisst mit vornamen zwölf
und mit familiennamen zwölf
das macht in summa vierundzwanzig
er hat eine vorderseite
und eine hinterseite
das macht in summa sechsundzwanzig
er hat eine rechten männerarm
und einen linken frauenarm
das macht in summa achtundzwanzig
er huldigt der mode der doppelgängerei
mit fahnen aus haaren
und segeln aus federn
er ist vorne so lang wie hinten
er nimmt zwei vögel ab
er nimmt zwei vögel zu

Hans Arp: Weisst du schwarzt du, No. 6

Der dadaistische Glaube Ohnesinn ist kein Unsinn, kein Ulk. Der dadaistische Glaube Ohnesinn ist ebensowenig Unsinn wie die Pflanze, die Kinderzeichnung, die Musik, die Schönheit, die Liebe, die Hoffnung, der Kreis, das Quadrat, die Farbe. Und wie diese hat er das Glück, keine ‘vierfache Wurzel eines zureichenden Grundes’ zu haben. Der Glaube Ohnesinn hat den Dadaisten vor der Überschätzung der Vernunft bewahrt, die zur Überheblichkeit, zum vernünftigen Wahnsinn führt, der meint, die Welt erklären zu können.

Hans Arp in Dadakonzil.¹

The title of the collection of poems Weisst du schwarzt du is already an example of Arp's ‘Ohnesinn’, the ‘Ohnesinn’ that arises when words are lifted from their normal, expected roles and suddenly given new parts to play. ‘Weisst’ recalls ‘weiβt’, which is lifted from its habitual mode of ‘wissen’ (which is also what should happen to the reader), and is transformed into the colour white in juxtaposition with ‘schwarzt’, and both colours are suddenly verbs. But this verbal configuration is not ‘Unsinn’ because of the identical transformation of colour to verb that is expressed in identical grammatical patterns and because of the potential of the word ‘weiss’ to evoke ‘schwarz’, its opposite.

Poem 6 of the collection [‘er nimmt zwei vögel ab’] reveals the same basic elements of ‘Ohnesinn’ order that are to be found in the title, an order which, although it does not appear ‘ausgeklügelt’ in the terms of an ordinary ‘sensible’ poem, has as a recognizable basis of construction pairs in which one element evokes the next element as either its opposite or its complement. There is also an emphasis in the poem on numbers and on mathematical operations, and the mathematics consistently yield two or a multiple of two, thus supporting the ‘pairs.’

‘Er nimmt zwei vögel ab / er nimmt zwei vögel zu’: if one extracts the ‘Ohnesinn’ element of ‘zwei vögel’ which would not normally be involved in a ‘serious’ mathematical operation, one is left with the two natural opposites, ‘abnehmen’ and ‘zunehmen’, words that fit into a normal pattern of association. The ‘zwei vögel’ announces the number that is to govern the poem. And one is probably meant to associate the ‘vögel’ with the idiom ‘er hat einen Vogel’, indication of more ‘Ohnesinn’ to come.

In the next two lines there is the normal association between ‘auf’-‘unter’ and ‘luft’-‘wasser’. But the action of ‘er’, tracing grimaces on the air and under the water, puts these ‘reasonable’ associative pairs into the ‘Ohnesinn’ context. Although there is not an exact repetition of rhythmic pattern in these two lines as there is in the first two lines, there is a close organization of sound: ‘paust’, ‘auf’, ‘luft’, ‘und’, ‘unter’, ‘grimassen’, ‘wasser’.

In the next stanza there are two associative pairs of two lines each with ‘tête-à-tête’, taken literally, as the opposite of ‘pied-à-pied’, and ‘hand’ evoking ‘fuss’ and ‘vornehm’ as the opposite of ‘gemein’. The ‘Ohnesinn’ context is reinforced by the last two lines modifying how ‘er lebt’, ‘leib an leib / mit seinem leib’. The effect of these adverbial pairs is to split ‘er’ in two. This split anticipates the eighth stanza in which ‘er huldigt der mode der doppelgängerei’.

In the fourth stanza ‘eier’ suddenly enter the picture. But they have already had two associative invitations, one from the ‘vögel’ and the other from the ‘ei’ sounds of the two preceding lines: ‘und leib an leib / mit seinem leib’. And just as the threat of the number one to the ‘two’ pattern was solved in the previous stanza by splitting the single ‘er’, so there must be some solution to these threatening three eggs. ‘So ruft er / ei ei’, but that's not three, ‘und zählt doch richtig / ein bei bei zwei / zwei bei bei drei’. And by the repetition of the paired ‘ei’ sounds, two sets of ‘ei's in the two paired lines, and by the alignment of the ‘ein’ and ‘drei’ beside their mutual numerical neighbour ‘zwei’, who appears in both lines, the three is reduced to pairs, to two. And because of the meaning of the preposition ‘bei’, why shouldn't it be allowed to reproduce itself and illustrate its function with the presence of two ‘bei’'s, side by side?

The first two words of the fifth stanza recall by means of rhyme the third stanza: ‘er lebt’, ‘er hebt’. Again there are associative pairs: ‘urgrossvater’-‘urgrossmutter’, ‘das rechte bein’-‘das linke bein’. Here it is groups of two lines each that are paired with each other, and both groups have the same rhythmic pattern as well as the same source in the cliché ‘Vaterstadt’. The gesture described may seem to make no sense at all unless one would think of the glee with which a Dadaist might send a dog to pay his respects to such a hallowed traditional spot as the ‘urgrossvaterstadt’ or the ‘urgrossmutterstadt’.

The next lines are a recapitulation of the first stanza and are to reappear as the last stanza. The lines seem to be a sort of unifying refrain that gives the poem an outward semblance of traditional order. Yet it is interesting to note that the stanza appears three times, violating the established symmetry of two's, giving the poem a touch of the asymmetry to be found in Arp's painting and sculptures.

The next stanza, in which ‘er’ is again split in two in various manners, consists of three groups of lines paired by association, each group followed by one line stating the sum of what has gone before. Although the arithmetic is correct, a basic rule of mathematical operations is violated in that unlike units are included in a single mathematical operation. The violation of this rule of mathematics is legitimate in the operations of this ‘Ohnesinn’ poetry in which unlike units, elements that do not belong together in the ‘sensible’ constructs of language, can be juxtaposed. And each element assumes a life of its own when it is no longer subordinated to the ‘sense’ of a traditional context. In ‘Ohnesinn’ the reader experiences the word in a fresh and immediate sense. Hans Arp is fulfilling his dictum of creation: ‘Wir wollen unmittelbar und nicht mittelbar bilden.’

The associative pair in the first two lines of the stanza are ‘vornamen’-‘hinternamen’. The next pair is ‘vorderseite’-‘hinterseite’. There are two pairs in the next paired lines, ‘rechten’-‘linken,’ and ‘männer’-‘frauen’. The arms of these lines are paired with the legs of stanza five, and ‘männer’-‘frauen’ echoes ‘urgrossvater’-‘urgrossmutter’. The name ‘zwölf’ contains in numerical form the number 2 and is a multiple of two. The same is true of ‘vierundzwanzig’, ‘sechsundzwanzig’ and ‘achtundzwanzig’.

In the next stanza, ‘er’ is split in two as the ‘doppelgänger’. In the line ‘mit fahnen aus haaren’, ‘fahnen’ can mean the feather of a quill. Thus it would correspond to the ‘federn’ in ‘und segeln aus federn’. The ‘segeln aus federn’ recall the wings of a bird, or of ‘zwei vögel’ to accommodate the ‘doppelgänger’. Each of the lines is held together by a paired vowel sound: ‘fahnen’, ‘haaren’; ‘segeln’, ‘federn’.

Just as three has intruded with the three repetitions of the refrain, one intrudes with the single line ‘er ist vorne so lang wie hinten’. But one is overcome by its transformation into a statement of two by dividing ‘er’ into the associative pair ‘vorne’-‘hinten’.

The poem ends with the third appearance of the refrain. But three, just like one, is overcome by its transformation into a statement of two: in stanza four by the tonally manipulated counting of ‘ei ei … ein bei bei zwei / zwei bei bei drei’, and in the refrain by the two lines identical except for the separable prefixes ‘ab’ and ‘zu’, the associative pair ‘abnehmen’-‘zunehmen’, and the presence of the ‘zwei vögel’.

Hugo Ball's explanation of what Arp was trying to achieve in the plastic arts might also be applicable to what he achieves in this poem.

Er möchte die Dinge strenger geordnet wissen, weniger willkürlich, weniger strotzend von Farbe und Poesie. Er empfiehlt die Planimetrie gegen die gemalten Weltauf-und-untergänge. Wenn er für das Primitive eintritt, meint er den ersten abstrakten Aufriss, der die Komplikationen zwar kennt, aber sich nicht mit ihnen einlässt. Das Sentiment soll fallen … Gestalten heisst ihm: sich abgrenzen gegen das Unbestimmte und Nebulose. Er möchte die Imagination reinigen und alle Anspannung auf das Erschliessen nicht so sehr ihres Bilderschatzes als dessen richten, was diese Bilder konstituiert. Seine Voraussetzung dabei ist, dass die Bilder der Imagination bereits Zusammensetzungen sind. Der Künstler, der aus der freischaltenden Imagination heraus arbeitet, erliegt in puncto Ursprünglichkeit einer Täuschung. Er benutzt ein Material, das bereits gestaltet ist, und nimmt also Klitterungen vor.²

In this example of Arp's poetry, the verbal imagination has been cleaned out. The highly associative nature of language cannot be eliminated without eliminating language itself. But spontaneous, natural word associations, relatively free of sentimental and cultural ‘Klitterung’, can be employed to juxtapose words in new verbal images that could not come into existence in the language of ‘Vernunft’. Such a technique in this poem seems a means of tapping the vital energy of the imagination beyond its ‘bereits zusammengesetzte Bilderschatz’.

Notes

1. Hans Arp, Richard Huelsenbeck, Tristan Tzara, Dada (Zürich, 1957), p. 8. The poem is quoted from Gesammelte Gedichte I. Zürich (Arche Vlg.) 1963, pp. 133-4.

2. Ibid., pp. 112-13.