Improvisation 1, 2 & 3

A couple of years ago a friend of mine asked me to contribute some text to an article he was writing on Rolf-Dieter Brinkmann’s poem “Improvisation 1, 2 & 3.” The piece was eventually published as “Wer war Han Shan? Buddhistische Denkfiguren bei Rolf Dieter Brinkmann,” in Karl-Eckhard Carius (ed..), Rolf Dieter Brinkmann Schnitte im Atemschutz (Rowohlt: München: text + kritik, 2008), pp. 132-141. If you’re interested, here’s a pdf of the publisher’s catalog (scroll down). In an unusual display of academic magnanimity, my friend and collaborator, Martin Kagel, gave me co-author credit.

The article is in German. One of these days I’ll translate the entire piece. For now, I thought I’d give my translation of Brinkmann’s poem and include an English translation of my contribution. If you want to know more about Brinkmann, here’s a good source to begin. For Han Shan, start here.

A word about the title. I wonder if it’s a reference to the famous remark that the cook made to Dogen; namely: “Words and scriptures are: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Practice is: nothing in the universe is hidden.” My source for this comment is Heinrich Dumoulin, Geschichte des Zen-Buddhismus. Band II: Japan. Francke-Verlag, Bern 1986. The German reads: “Wörter und Schrift sind, eins, zwei, drei, vier, funf. Die Ubung bedeutet, nichts ist verborgen im Universum.” The “verborgen/hidden” makes a gentle reference to the title term improvisation. In it’s original Latin, improvisus carried the sense of not previously seen, not provided, hidden.

One caveat. The form of the original German text differs from how I present it here. When my WordPress skills improve, I’ll fix that. In the original, the first two stanzas have jagged, irregular lines. In the second stanza, the parts in parentheses (both here and in the original) are put off to the far write of the main body of the poem. The effect of this form is, as you can imagine, disorienting, even somewhat confusing (who is the speaker; who, the interlocutor, etc.?). The third stanza is given here just as in the original, namely, orderly. The effect, after the frenzy of the previous stanzas, is soothing and settling–somewhat paradoxical given the devastating final two words.

Here goes.

____________________

Improvisation 1, 2 & 3
(after Han Shan)
Rolf-Dieter Brinkmann
(Translated by Glenn Wallis)

“No one knows from where Han Shan came.”
He climbed from level ground onto
Cold Mountain,

wrote, “now what?” in the stone,

titles were missing, no numbering

he sat and looked at the snow,

explanations, “footnotes,” came later, explained nothing.

The calligraphy in the cold, white,
the staring at the stone, the forgetting

of memories, which is

an achievement. He wrote, “the wise one
has not a single penny,” as he was again

surprised
by a longing to leave the mountain,
plagued by the “consolation of flies”

&, as he swept out his room, was content.

2.

Clack, clack: society
is the abstract

(“everyone is gaping
at me since I lost
the way”)

you hear the many

sounds the shoes,

(“the people in the plot
are freely invented,
the same goes for the plot”)

it is the same unending sound

that fills the world everywhere where you are.
And, let’s say, yet again: “suddenly”
as you took the curve,
drove out of the city,

at night on the highway,

(if there is something to
delight in, delight
in it/when once the weeds
sprout through the skull
etc.)

and the light chains came to
an end, you had

clack, clack (like cha cha cha)

the realization. And really
it’s difficult no longer to behold it
but solely.

3.

To sing a song
with no other purpose than
to sing a song,
is a hard job,
like sitting before the snow-covered
mountain, staring
at it year after year, without
distraction and
then, one day,
with a single
stroke of white ink
on white paper
so placed that all can
see that the mountain is
absolutely empty.

[The German text is below.]

The text knows more than its author.
In this case, the prescience of the text is nothing less than uncanny. Taken as a whole, the poem can be viewed as a haiku-like encapsulation of the matters lying closest to the heart of the peculiar blend of Daoism and Buddhism embraced by Han Shan. Today, we know this blend as Zen. The very title announces, for instance, that the poem will begin where Zen wisdom begins: unknowingness. In one of the most significant dialogues in Zen history, a monastery cook admonishes future master Dogen to repudiate linguistic pretense to knowledge and to simply see:

“Words and scriptures are: 1, 2, & 3.
Practice is: nothing in the universe is hidden [improvised].”

And the masters down the ages would echo the cook: nothing is unforeseen, nothing is hidden; just look! Look, and you will see; know, and you are lost. Knowing, in Zen, is titles, numbering, explanations, and footnotes; it is, that is to say, mere thinking about reality via the ostentatious mediating forms of naming, categorizing, interpreting, and analyzing. “Look directly!” bellow the masters, and the crucial matter — “the absolute emptiness of the mountain”/the utter transparency of the phenomenal world — reveals itself spontaneously. It — emptiness — is right in front of us, present to our perceptual apparatus, but, like a “stroke of white ink on white paper,” concealed by the distracting clack, clack cacophony of the world’s endless abstractions.

Even more remarkably, the poem’s three sections replicate the slow cadence, shifting tones, and culminating insight of Zen meditation. As with Brinkmann’s Han Shan, the meditation practitioner begins by removing all contrived notions of what one should do. He then takes the posture, sits, resting his eyes on a single point — a wall, a stone. He sits in an alert, watchful state. Memories — thoughts, fantasies, preferences, ideas — inevitably arise; but they do so as calligraphy written in the snow, persisting for an instant, then vanishing. The meditator sits, empty of the slightest trace of identity; he is sitting “without a single penny,” for, in Zen parlance, only hollow, deluded, heads can hoard the counterfeit wealth of I-me-mine.

But our heads are hollow; so our deep habituation to the world’s agitation gives rise in us, like the cravings of an addict, a yearning for the “consolation of flies.” Whether knowingly or not, Brinkmann is articulating here the Buddhist concept of prapanca: the powerful force of proliferation that keeps us trapped in the swirling whirlwind of the world. The poem’s second section captures beautifully the Buddhist notion of this humming, vibrating, noisy, and endlessly annoying, compulsion.

Endless? Yes. But, as Brinkmann knows, that does not mean that there is no end. The Zen Buddhists call it satori. It is the pivotal moment of “and then.” It may come gradually after years of hard work; or it may come suddenly, like the dash of a single stroke of ink on paper. It is in that instant when we first see, with both freshness and finality, what had been there all along: the one reality, out from the shadows of intellect and language, as clear and cool as snow. This coolness of clear seeing the Buddha called nirvana. It prefigures, at last, the moment when place, time, and way of life become as inseparable as white from white. Where lay the difference, then, between Han Shan, Brinkmann, and the reader of the poem?

____________________

Here’s the German text.

Improvisation 1, 2 & 3
(u.a. nach Han Shan)

“Niemand weiß, woher Han Shan kam.”
Er stieg aus der Ebene auf den
Kalten Berg,

schrieb, “was soll ich hier tun?”, in den Stein,

die Überschriften fehlten, keine Numerierung

er saß und sah auf den Schnee,

die Erklärungen, “Fußnoten,” folgten später, erklärten nichts.

Die Kalligraphien in der Kälte, weiß,
das Anschauen des Steins, das Vergessen

der Erinnerungen, was

eine Leistung ist. Er schrieb, “der Wissende
hat keinen Pfennig,” als er wieder

überrumpelt
wurde vom Verlangen, den Berg
zu verlassen, geplagt von der “Kondolation der Fliegen”

&, als er das Zimmer ausfegte, war er zufrieden.

2.

Klack, klack: die Gesellschaft
ist das Abstrakte,

(“alle gaffen
mich an, seit ich den
Weg verlor”)

du hörst die vielen
Geräusche die Schuhe,

(“die Personen der
Handlung sind frei erfunden,
dasselbe gilt für
die Handlung”)

es ist dasselbe
unendliche Geräusch,

das die Welt erfüllt, überall, wo du bist.
Und, sagen wir, noch einmal: “plötzlich”
als du die Kurve nahmst,
aus der Stadt herausfuhrst,
nachts auf der Autobahn,

(“gibts was zu freuen, freue dich
daran”)/wenn erst
Unkraut durch den
Schädel sprießt
etc.)

und die Lichterketten zu Ende
waren, hast du’s gewußt,

klack, klack (wie Chachacha)

die Wirkung. Und wirklich
ist schwierig, das nicht länger anzusehen,
sondern einzelnes.

3.

Ein Lied zu singen
mit nichts als der Absicht,
ein Lied zu singen,
ist eine schwere Arbeit,
wie vor dem Schnee bedeckten
Berg zu sitzen,
ihn jahrelang, ohne
Ablenkung, anzuschauen und
dann, eines Tages,
mit einem einzigen
Strich weißer Tusche
auf das weißes Papier
zu setzen, daß jeder
sieht der Berg ist
absolut leer.

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