Das lyrische Gesamtwerk - Review by Erich Wolfgang Skwara

It would lead nowhere to offer quotations from the many hundreds of poems assembled in Das lyrische Gesamtwerk, a long-overdue, necessary, and beautiful book. Here it is not a living writer with a new title that is being presented, but rather the tremendous achievement of a courageous editor and a literary discovery that should be hailed. Roman Rocek, whose enlightened essays on Austrian writers are welcome for their daring originality, has now surprised us with the complete poems of one of Austria's major yet thoroughly forgotten authors, Alexander Lernet-Holenia.

There are obvious reasons for the rapid oblivion which befell this poet, many of them of the merely political kind. It is true that Lernet-Holenia earned his early fame with drama (he was awarded the Kleist Prize in 1926 for a work of theater) and that in his later life he wrote a great number of short-lived novels and plays in order to earn a living. It is equally true, however, that few writers of our century professed such great awe and respect for literary talent and quality as did Lernet-Holenia. His uncompromising way forced him into a distant and often ridiculed aristocratic stance when the world of the sixties around him turned increasingly vulgar and turbulent.

Lernet-Holenia served as president of the Austrian PEN Club during the difficult postrevolutionary years from 1968 to 1972, which brought PEN into sharp contrast to literary newcomers such as those assembled in Graz and later known as the Grazer- Autoren-Versammlung. The unnecessary conflict between the two literary camps in Austria worsened until a rapprochement of sorts took place in recent years under the wise PEN presidency of the late Gyorgy Sebestyen. It shoud be stressed, however, that Lernet-Holenia's personality was not one of reactionary shortsightedness but rather one of supreme demands made on talent and work ethics. In a letter written in 1969 he stated: "Ich habe nichts gegen Dreckige, nur gegen Unbegabte".

Despite the many plays and novels that obscure his artistic line, he considered his poetry his major work. Nevertheless, the books of verse were published at great intervals and in small editions only. Today most of those volumes are forgotten and impossible to find. Therefore, to present the general reader as well as the scholar with the complete poems of Lernet-Holenia is a major event. The excellent introduction and commentary by the editor himself and the detailed Anmerkungen at the book's end contribute to the usefulness and pleasure the book provides. Moreover - and more important - the collected poems validate Lernet-Holenia's claim that he was a poet above all else. Indeed, wonderful discoveries can be made when diving into this thick poetic universe.

Erich Wolfgang Skwara
San Diego State University