Harry´s Blog

Herbert Kuhner
from Swing Man and Women

Louis

Louis played a fine Dixie horn
then he went on to swing
and he swung.

And what’s more,
Sing, Sing, Sing
is to his credit,
as well as other tunes
like Robin Hood
and Oh Babe.

Whenever and whatever Louis played,
he played pretty for the people.

This Louis,
like his namesake,
was good at scat
and got his act going
and went on to be a performer.

He teemed up with Keely Smith
and tenor man Sam Butera.
Keely had a melodic foggy voice
and she and Louis
did jivey-jokey vocals
with Sam providing sassy riffs
in a rock ‘n’ roll style.

Every one of their numbers,
like Angelina and Oh Marie,
is a humdinger,
with Louis dishing out
pommarola
over spaghetti and meatballs,

I know they’re not jazz,
which is okay,
everything doesn’t have to be jazz.

But my question is
didn’t Louis, Keely and Sam
ever get the urge to jam?

Didn’t Louis Prima
ever have the itch
to go at it again?

Couldn’t there have been
one more recorded session?

Did those wonderful commercial pieces
cancel jazz out?

Why is it that once you sell something else,
there seems to be no coming back?

Read more »

From Violence Under the Guise of Art
or Third Reich Recycling.

In 1977 Valie Export was brought to trial for having engaged in cruelty to animals and found guilty of having tied a canary to a perch. However the scalding of the birds with boiling wax, which had been filmed, came under the statute of limitations. (1) This “art object” was on view as part of the Export Exhibition in the Museum of the Twentieth Century in Vienna in March of 1997. On March 17, 1997, in Treffpunkt Kultur, a program devoted to culture on ORF, Austrian State TV, films by Export were broadcast. In one scene Export uses a bloody kitchen knife to slice the neck of a turtle, a mouse and a parrot, but the actual decapitations are deleted by film cutting.(2)

Valie Export “herself”: “A bird is tied to a rostrum with thin cord. I kneel in front of the bird on the rostrum and pour hot liquid wax on it. Then I pour wax on my feet and my left hand; the wax container is knocked over and the bird’s head is covered with wax. I free myself by cutting the cord with a knife which I lifted from the rostrum with my mouth and use it. The rostrum is encircled by nails.” (3)

After Export was invited to submit a design for the monument on Judenplatz some years ago, she had thoughts about the Holocaust. “Not directly or for a specific reason, as happened when I was invited to participate in the competition.” She didn’t win that one, but on August 28, 1999, her anti-fascistic monument in Allentsteig, Lower Austria, was unveiled. She may be able to contribute a valid analysis since violence plays a primary role in her work.

In the spring of 1995, an official Austrian exhibit commemorating prominent Austrians who were forced to emigrate was shown at 565 Fifth Avenue in New York. The organizer of the exhibit and co-editor of the accompanying book, The Cultural Exodus from Vienna (5)  is Peter Weibel, who is also co-editor of the previously-mentioned Wien. Among the highlights of the latter scholarly work are photos of co-editor Export engaging in fellatio with Weibel. Here’s a quote from the horse’s mouth: “When Valie Export is sucking my cock, one can see it.”(6)

Also featured in this volume is the depiction of an event in Cologne organized by Weibel and Export in which bullwhips, coils of barbed wire, beer bottles and ether were used to injure actionists and members of the audience. (7)  One of the most revolting aspects of the book is the juxtaposing of documentary photos of murdered children with photos of Hermann Nitsch actions with innards. (8)  Thus, infanticide too is part of Show Biz. Nitsch: “Killing was and is beyond all moral judgments.”(9)

During the Third Reich children were taught to kill birds
with their hands in a camp called Kinderland,
which translates as “Children’s Land.”(10)

Read more »

Andy by Andy  

There he is: Andy on canvas
with the hair of his white wig standing on end,
as if he had stepped on a live wire.
It’s worth millions.

You can’t prove that it’s great.
And you can’t prove that it’s not.

You can’t prove that it’s worth the tab
and you can’t prove that it’s not.

It’s all a matter of opinion.

But what difference does it make?
Money is money.
And in these days of recession,
there are millions to be made
and millions are changing hands,

Van Gogh goes for millions too.
So you can compare Andy to Vincent.
Nobody’s going to call you crazy if you do.

Andy has it all over Vincent.
Andy made a mint in his lifetime
and Vincent sold only one painting.

The only thing that you can prove
is that in these days of recession,
there are millions to be made
and millions are changing hands.
Or is it billions or trillions?

-Herbert Kuhner

Theodor Herzl
had gone the gamut.
First he thought
that assimilation
would solve the problem,
but he realized
that the dark clouds
looming on the horizon
would not be blown away
by neglect of religious practice
or mass conversions.
Besides, although there were many
who favored assimilation,
others wanted to continue
to lead a life within religious tradition.
So that idea had to be cast aside.

The vision of the dark clouds
oppressed him.
Although he lived a civilized life
in a civilized country
he saw murder in the future,
and then he came upon the idea
of a homeland somewhere,
and finally he pinpointed Palestine,
which was not unpopulated,
but had never been a state
since Biblical times.

Only by having a state of their own
could Jews be saved from the swords
that were being sharpened on whetstones.

The idea of a Jewish state
took precedence over everything else,
and he dedicated himself to it.

Unfortunately, Herzl proved to be right.
The Third Reich made Israel a necessity,
and the Jewish State was founded,
but it was founded too late to save
European Jewry
from what he foresaw,
too late for his daughter Trude,
who met her death in Theresienstadt,
too late for his son-in-law Richard,
who followed his wife by a month,
and too late for the prophet’s grandson,
Stephan Theodor,
who committed suicide
in Washington, D. C.
after the murder of his parents
had been confirmed.

The prophet’s other children,
Pauline and Hans,
had taken the same way out
in Bordeaux in 1931,
just before the advent
of  the Third Reich.

Like Moses,
Herzl had led
but was not fated to arrive.
He died in 1905
decades before,
his prophecy became a reality
and the Jewish State was founded.

Read more »

 “Harry’s Fest”
Freitag 16. April, ab 19:00, Studio Leander Kaiser, 1100 Wien, Pernerstorfergasse 47/3b

Einladung

 Lyrikabend mit Gedichten aus der einzigartigen Sammlung von Herbert Kuhner (Lyriker, Dramatiker, Übersetzer, Poet)

Mit ausgewählten Gedichten bedeutender jüdischer LyrikerInnen (Alter Brody, Else Keren, Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger, Tamar Radzyner, Stella Rotenberg, Thomas Sessler, Herbert Kuhner)

Es interpretieren: Rita Dummer, Karsten Rühl, Herbert Kuhner

Republikanischer Club, Rockhgasse 1- 1010 Wien

25.Feb 2010 19Uhr

Rita DUMMER & Karsten RÜHL

This brilliant acting duo will be reading Austrian exile poets,
from collections by Herbert Kuhner
& poetry by Alter Brody, the American Jewish poet,
in German translations by Heinrich Eggerth and others

Rein literarisch: Jüdische Lyrik aus Österreich ist eine der interessantesten Lyrikanthologien, die ich kenne.
- Konstantin Kaiser, Literatur und Kritik

Daß tragische Töne in dieser Anthologie überwiegen, kann nicht verwundern. Mit Sicherheit ist in Österreich seit 1945 kein wichtigeres, kein erschütternderes literarisches Sammelwerk erschienen als dieses.
- Klara Köttner-Benigni, ORF; Die Gemeinde, Wien

Herbert Kuhner hat tatsächlich mit Erfolg subtile Abstraktionen mit kontrollierter Einbildungskraft von einer Sprache in die andere transportiert, und nicht ein Wort hat in der Prozedur Schaden erlitten. Inhalt und Übersetzung sind für Sprachunterricht in beide Richtungen geeignet.
- James Wilkie, Austria Today, Wien

Else Keren
Verloschene Funken

Verloschene Funken

aschentrüb
auf den entlegenen Schienen
streckenweit

Viele Züge fuhren diese Wege

Der entgleiste Wind
ruft
nach den toten Namen

Read more »

Herbert Kuhner

Ethical Necessities

The Hermann Nitsch debate has been truncated long ago…
like the Valie Export debate.
Viennese actionism can no longer be the basis
for dispute in a civilized state;
it has been canonized for quite some time
and found its place in museums.
Today anyone who opposes actionism
simply disqualifies himself.
- Sigrid Löffler, star critic, Profil, Sept. 21, 1992

During the Third Reich children were taught to kill birds
in a camp called Kinderland,
which translates as “Children’s Land.”
- Hitlers Kinder (Hitler’s Children),
Documentation Series, No. 4, Arte TV, March 1, 2000

Birds were the first singers.
They ushered in
the season of birth
with their songs
before man was there to hear them.

For doing that,
among all the creatures
of the earth,
they were singled out
to be tormented to death.

An Austrian artist
launched a career
and achieved international fame
with the help of birds.

She used them as models
to create a work of art.

First, the birds
were made docile
by the injection of a sedative,
not for the purpose
of easing their pain,
but in order to prevent
their wings from fluttering.
Then she poured scalding wax
over them,
petrifying their moment of agony.

The dead birds
were then exhibited
as “art objects.”

Beauty is a thorn in the side
of those who love ugliness.
They hate it with passion
and are compelled destroy it.

An essential part of demolition
is making beautiful voices mute.

That’s how birds were rewarded
for singing their songs.

This action
propelled her to prominence
and won her the support
of Austrian and German industry,
and indeed she has become
one of the foremost representatives
of Austrian culture
with an undisputed place in art.

Yes, that is the state of art today.
Art has always been aligned
with the forces of light,
but now it is in the forefront
of the dark forces.

And irony of ironies,
this artist
was chosen to design
an anti-fascist monument,
if you can imagine that.

Of course torturing and killing birds
is the best requisite
for commemorating
human victims
who were tortured and killed.

It could be said that this monument
commemorates the spirit of the Third Reich.

News item titled: “Yes, we wanted to kill!”
Three Styrian youths planned to murder a woman. They wanted to hear death cries, so they set bird chicks on fire. Nineteen-year-old Karlheinz recalls that Daniel told him how “terrific” it is to kill animals. “We got right down to it.” says Daniel, “I took a cigarette lighter and tried to set the animals alight, but they didn’t burn very well. So I went to a garbage bin and took some newspaper.”

Read more »