Das Öffnen und Schließen des Mundes

In the winter semester of 1984/1985, Ernst Jandl gives a string of highly popular “Frankfurter Poetik” lectures, ravishing listening audiences. Since the 60s, Jandl is considered one of the most important German-speaking writers working on experimental and boundary-breaking poems and theatre plays. In the said winter semester lectures, he is being filmed: when he sings, whistles, blusters with his cheeks, pulls faces. And so one bears witness to this author performing his “visual lip poems” with striking speed, irony, malice, and utter joy for sounds and tones. And when he keeps his mouth closed and gives space to “a contribution to new inner self” or he lovingly recites Kurt Schwitter’s poem “Kleines Gedicht für große Stotterer”. Most of all he mocks the hypocritical bobo morale of the supposed “humanists”, exposing their inhumanity “in tattered language”, reworking it lyrically, and brandishing it at their faces.