1907年2月1日生在奥得河（Oder River）畔的莱布斯（Lebus）。父亲原为农庄管理员，后在柏林开设税务法律顾问事务所。1925年进入柏林大学学习汉学，并开始创作诗歌。

简介

冈特·艾希（Günter Eich）（1907.2.1- 1972.12.20）德国诗人、剧作家。

生平

1927至1931年 莱比锡、巴黎和柏林选修法学和汉学。

1929年 发表第一部广播剧《歌唱家卡鲁索的生与死》(与拉斯克合写)。

1930年 第一部《诗集》出版。

1931年 开始为电台编写广播剧。第二次世界大战爆发后，被征入伍。

1945年在前线为美军所俘。

1946年 获释，定居巴伐利亚州，从事文学创作，成为“四七社”最早的成员之一，也是“四七社奖金”的第一个获得者。

1953年 与奥地利女作家艾兴格结婚。

1963年迁居奥地利。

1972年12月20日在萨尔茨堡病逝。

主要成就

艾希的主要成就是1945年以后创作的诗和广播剧。

1956年曾获得毕希纳文学奖金。

冈特·艾希(1907-1972)德国当代著名广播剧作家兼诗人。1997年首次发表诗作。第二次世界大战中应征入伍，后被俘，其间写了不少诗歌。获释后接连发表诗集，不久便蜚声文坛，成为著名诗人。他是西德文学团体“四七社”的成员之一，曾获多种文学奖。艾希早年写的诗歌主要记录自己的经历，弥漫着淡淡的哀愁，也有的意象比较奇特，流于晦涩。战后，他的诗作面向现实，语言简洁明了，开了“砍光伐净”的一代诗风。后期的诗歌不尚韵律，趋向口语化。主要诗集有《偏僻的农家院落》(1948)、《地下铁道》(1949)、《雨的消息》(1955)和《诗选》(1960)等等。

作品风格

艾希早年的诗歌主要记录自己的经历，弥漫着淡淡的哀愁。战后，他的诗作面向现实，语言简洁明了，开一代诗风。后期诗歌不尚韵律，趋向口语化。艾希在作品中谴责世间一切不公平的、强暴的、罪恶的行为，呼吁人们在幸福中不忘世上还有疾苦。出版的主要诗集有《偏僻的小农庄》(1948)、《地下铁道》(1949)、《雨的音信》(1955)等。《清单》(1945)一诗，通过个人的贫困状况含蓄地勾勒出战后德国一片荒芜的情景，是西德战后“废墟文学”的代表作之一。  

Life

Eich made his first appearance in print with some poems in the Anthology of the Latest Poetry. His first radio play, written in collaboration with Martin Raschke, was performed in 1929. From 1929–1932, Eich lived as a freelance writer in Dresden, Berlin, and on the Baltic coast, writing mainly for the radio. From 1939–1945, Eich served in the German army in a signals unit. In 1945 he was held as a war prisoner in an American internment camp, and in 1946 he was released and moved to Geisenhausen in Bavaria. After being held as a prisoner of war, he was one of the founders in 1947 of Gruppe 47, and for poems in his then unpublished Abgelegene Gehöfte, he was one of the first two recipients, in 1950, of its Literature Prize for young writers. In 1953, he married the Jewish Austrian writer Ilse Aichinger. Their son Clemens was born on 22 May 1954, and their daughter Mirjam was born in 1958.

He continued to publish prose, poetry, and radio plays over the rest of his life. Eich died in Salzburg in 1972.

Writing

Weimar era (1929-1932)

Eich was a contributor to Ana Victoria, a literary magazine. "Die Kolonne" is seen as a reaction against contemporary Modernist literary trends, and rests on three central principles: "the essential timelessness of the inner life, the notion of the genius as representative of his age, and the religious function of art." Eich believed in a fundamental incompatibility between poetry and politics and in his essay, "Bemerkungen über Lyrik", he drew a line between the poet "als Lyriker" and "als Privatmann" which allows poets to be politically active as long as it does not impinge on their work.

Eich is regarded as a literary conservative and his public association with a staunchly critical review of Johannes R. Becher's poem "Der Große Plan" attests to this. According to Cuomo, "The most fitting overall characterisation of '[Die Kolonne]' would not be liberal or progressive, but conservative." "Die Kolonne" was strongly representative of Eich's own aesthetic and ideological views, and although largely apolitical, it appeared to favor conservative ideology. Despite this apparent conservatism, the journal aimed to separate literature from any political influence.

Nazi Germany (1933-1945)

The majority of Eich's literary output in this period were radio plays, which numbered 160. The most well known of these today is Rebellion in der Goldstadt, which was only recently discovered. The play was broadcast on 8 May 1940 in an anti-British radio campaign the Goebbels' Propaganda Ministry was waging. It deals with a South African mine and its workers striking against the poor wages they receive from the overtly capitalist British owner, Lord Pembroke. There is some contention surrounding Eich's complete authorship of the play as there is no broadcast text in his handwriting.

Response to the Machtergreifung

On 1 May 1933 Eich applied for membership in the Nazi Party but was not accepted.

After the war, Eich made many public statements about the role of artists in standing up against oppressive regimes: "If our work cannot be understood as criticism, as opposition and resistance, [...] then we are positive and decorate the slaughterhouse with geraniums." and "Seid unbequem, seid Sand, nicht das Öl im Getriebe der Welt!" which translates as "Be inconvenient, be sand, not oil in the gears of the world!"

These statements, however, stand in stark contrast to his actions during the Nazi era. His radio plays were often tailored to fit the propaganda needs of the Nazi party, extolling the Blut und Boden rural life and denouncing the decadent capitalism of the regime's enemies. It is believed that Eich had pragmatic reasons for writing all of his radio plays:

Eichs Rundfunktätigkeit beschränkte sich auf den Hörspielbereich und diente dem Broterwerb. [...] Wie viele Hörspiele, Märchenbearbeitungen, Kalenderblätter Eich auch schrieb, niemals hat er damit «Karriere« gemacht.

Eich's broadcasting activity was limited to radio plays and breadwinning. Like many of the radio plays, fairy tale adaptation and calendar pages that Eich also wrote he never tried to 'make a career' out of it.

His collected works were published in four volumes in 1991.

James Dickey opened his 1965 poem "The Firebombing," about a nighttime air raid on the Japanese town of Beppu, with this epigraph from Eich's work:

Denke daran, dass nach den großen Zerstörungen

Jedermann beweisen wird, dass er unschuldig war.

roughly:

Think of this: that after the great destructions

every man will attest that he was innocent.

Literary prizes

Eich received numerous literary prizes after World War II, including one from the literary association of which he was a member, Gruppe 47, in 1950. In 1953, he won the Hörspielpreis der Kriegsblinden for his radio play Die Andere und ich (The Other and I). Eich also won the Georg-Büchner-Preis in 1959 and the Schiller-Gedächtnispreis in 1968.

Notes

External links

• Valuable Nail: Selected Poems, trans. Stuart Friebert, David Walker, and David Young, ISBN 0-932440-08-8
• Oberlin College Press site for Günter Eich
• Axel Vieregg: 'The Spanner in the Works' (Review of G. Eich: Angina Days, Princeton 2010), The Berlin Review of Books, 30 March 2011