{"id":45717,"date":"2021-04-09T11:51:02","date_gmt":"2021-04-09T15:51:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/?p=45717"},"modified":"2021-04-16T23:16:40","modified_gmt":"2021-04-17T03:16:40","slug":"underground-to-a-remaindered-poet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2021\/04\/underground-to-a-remaindered-poet.html","title":{"rendered":"Underground: To a Remaindered Poet"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Excerpted from a heroic poem of more than 200 lines, entitled <\/em>‘Laudatio for the great Roman Folkpoet Giuseppe Gioacchini Belli : 1791-1863’, by Helmut Maria Soik:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Translated from the German by Georg M. Gugelberger in Rimbaud under the Steel Helmet<\/em>, a collection of previously unpublished poems by Helmut Maria Soik. The book, now out of print, was issued in 1976 by The Red Hill Press. <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
You won't find much about Soik online. Even the German Wikipedia has no page for him. In his introduction to the book, Gugelberger tells us that in 1940 Soik \"was sent to the Russian front, fought in the battle of Stalingrad, and was made a prisoner of war. Until 1950 he was forced to work in a Polish mining camp. When released, he returned to Germany and settled in Celle, a lonely but undestroyed northern city, and retreated more and more from competitive society in order to lead the dedicated life of a writer. In a Germany beyond recognition he himself was rather unrecognized for a long time. Whenever he wrote, the war experience infiltrated his poems. It became impossible to erase this particular 'German experience.' He became a figure similar to Franz von Gerlach in Jean-Paul Sartre's Les S\u00e8qu\u00e8stres d'Altona [The Condemned of Altona]. [He lived] 'underground' with his memory and a lost culture which he once admired but which did not prevent its own barbarism, and which is perhaps best summarized in Soik's own lines about a German officer\u201d:<\/strong> <\/strong>\n\nThat he enjoyed man-hunting<\/strong> <\/em><\/strong>\nbehind the front lines<\/strong> <\/em><\/strong>\nand loved to read H\u00f6lderlin after executions<\/strong> <\/em><\/strong>\nshall never be known to posterity<\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Gugelberger goes on to point out that “We can still hear [Paul] Celan’s voice delyricized by [G\u00fcnter] Eich’s simplicity in these lines from Soik’s ‘Night and Naught,'” another poem in the collection:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A man went to bed\nwith a bundle of poems,\nwrote on his knees\ndespite the cold in the room.\nHe knew:\nfor industrial society,\nfor competitive society\nhe was useless.<\/em><\/strong><\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An ancient shadow led the exiled Dante
\nthrough the hell of his neurotic soul.
\nYet you, oh poet, are silent about your escape
\nand slipped into the brown hide of a bookseller
\nto sell me your remainder of 2000 sonnets.
\nYou did not die like the laurel-wreathed tribune
\nunder a cloak of daggers.
\nNo, not you, rebellious citizen . . .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":45773,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[26,18,4,23,17],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-45717","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"category-literature","9":"category-main","10":"category-news","11":"category-political-culture","12":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/helmut-maria-soiks-rimbaud-under-the-steel-helmutenh.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-bTn","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45717"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45717\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45910,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45717\/revisions\/45910"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}