About Jandl

I would make Ernst Jandl's words my own when he stated that modern art is not accepted because it is not known . If we look at his work, it can be said that both his phonetic and his concrete poetry were and still are unknown. To tell the truth I have often wondered why, but I have never found a clear or convincing enough answer. It is just coming to me now that it might be because both creative practices embrace a not very explored field. Somewhere between poetry, music and painting, he creates a mysterious, unknown territory that attracts but also scares contemporary art traveller-spectators. However I also think that artistic creation consists of and deals with exploring the unknown, no matter what period in history. Besides our common experience is constantly crossed by unknown words, objects, gestures and movements, and we exist side by side daily. So the "unknown" is something ordinary and close to the human experience. Any communication attempts open doors to the unknown about the other, and also to the unknown we all have inside. We are all as equally attracted to this ordinary unknown as we are scared of it. We fear it because it could lead us too close to loss or dissolution. However when the unknown turns into something known, we make it ours; we integrate it to our way of thinking and acting, we sew it to our lives; we accept it, as Jandl said. Personally I would add that the phonetic and concrete field I was talking about at the beginning is not a close stranger. We might not desire it and fear it at the same time; it could be a doubly unknown space: the one unknown even by our own unknown. Probably that is the problem: we do not even know about its existence; if we knew about it, we would feel undoubtedly attracted to that form of creation and specifically to this fascinating character, soaked with Dadaism: Jandl. With his language clothing, we are irremediably seduced and captivated by his creation. 

If I had to highlight some of the most surprising features of this phonetic and concrete poet, I would choose his use of passage. We know that both phonetic and concrete poetry are based on decomposing and dismantling language. Its re-composition brings life to unexpected visual and hearing architectures of writing and speaking. The way in which the architect Jandl uses the language waste is both rare and admirable. I'm referring to his singular composing methods, which stress some of the most characteristic semantic features of the notion of passage.

On the one hand, the relationship between passage and discontinuity should be discussed; all passages imply and demand a cut, a gap, the void, the distance to the next one. If we observe, or rather listen to, one of the most well-known pieces by Jandl, his Ode auf N, we realise that behind a certain appearance of continuity, the language passages are separated by a world of distance. The wastes interweave through a transparent web that lets us see the lack of a net. It's an invitation to hear a lack of continuity continuity; there is no sense in it, but its superficial web shows us the slow appearance of certain understandable words. Speaking lumps of fraying bodies, both asymmetric and enigmatic; they are surrounded by this nothingness that increases their own bewilderment; they are totally isolated but they are aware of their (almost suspending) links with many other clots of the phonetic piece.

On the other hand, I would stress, in Jandl, that each one of his passages has personal and unique features. Each unity of waste is shown as a whole, as a unity consolidated by its own lack of sense. The relationship between passage and totality was already stated by Umberto Eco in his classic Obra abierta . Eco mentioned execution, interpretation or a passage reading as totality. Here I'm referring to the global entity of a residual linguistic body in Jandl. I'm then talking about the unity matter of each poetic lump. Dorfles referred to it when he stated that in certain abstract recent paintings , a single piece of it could be considered as an autonomous unity, as it often had more importance than the whole painting.

A dense charge surrounded by an involving void makes Jandl's fragmentary poems a cosmic black, a doubly unknown. They become a net of particles that, as dada said, snatched out of their context, discover the essence of things .

Bartomeu Ferrando


1. Jandl, Ernst. Materialienbuch, Darmstadt und Neuwied, Sammlung Luchterhand, 1982, p.104.
2. Eco, Umberto. Obra abierta.. Barcelona-Caracas-México, Ed. Ariel, 1979, p. 98-99
3. Dorfles, Gillo. Naturaleza y artificio, Barcelona, Editorial Lumen, 1972, p. 244-245
4. Dadá y Constructivismo. Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, march-may 1989, p. 43