Max Bense
Max Bense (February 7, 1910 in Strasbourg – April 29, 1990 in Stuttgart) was a German philosopher, writer, and publicist, known for his work in philosophy of science, logic, aesthetics, and semiotics. His thoughts combine natural sciences, art, and philosophy under a collective perspective and follow a definition of reality, which – under the term existential rationalism – is able to remove the separation between humanities and natural sciences.
Max Bense spent his early childhood in his birthplace Strasbourg and in 1918 his family was deported from Alsace-Lorraine as a consequence of World War I. Starting in 1920, he attended grammar school in Cologne and after 1930 he studied physics, chemistry, mathematics, geology, and philosophy at the University of Bonn. During his studies, his interest in literature is revealed by several contributions to newspapers, journals, and broadcast, for which he wrote several radio dramas. In 1937 he received his doctor's degree (Dr. phil. nat.) with his dissertation "Quantenmechanik und Daseinsrelativität" (Quantum Mechanics and Relativity of Dasein). He used the term Relativity of Dasein, which he adopted from Max Scheler, for explaining that novel theories do not have to contradict classical science. Bense – declared opponent of national socialism – knowingly opposed the Deutsche Physik of the Nazi regime, which rejected the theory of relativity due to Einstein's Jewish origin. Therefore he did not receive his postdoctoral qualification.
In 1938 Bense initially worked as a physicist at the Bayer AG in Leverkusen. After the outbreak of World War II he was a soldier, firstly as a meteorologist, then as a medical technician in Berlin and Georgenthal, where he was mayor for a short time after the end of the war. In 1945 the University of Jena appointed him to curator (Chancellor of the University) and offered him the possibility of postdoctoral work (habilitation), which was likely to be cumulative, at the Social-Pedagogic Faculty, which was followed by an appointment to Professor extraordinarius of philosophical and scientific propaedeutics.
In 1948, Bense fled from the political development of the Soviet occupation zone to Boppard; and he was appointed as a guest professor in philosophy and theory of science by the University of Stuttgart in 1949, and as senior lecturer (associate professor) there in 1950. In 1955, Bense raised a controversy concerning mythologizing tendencies of German postwar culture. Thereupon he became the target of public polemics, resulting in a postponement of his appointment to full professor until 1963.
In addition, he worked at the adult education centre and at the College of Design in Ulm from 1953 to 1958; he was also guest professor at the Hamburg College for Visual Arts from 1958 to 1960 and in 1966/67.
Max Bense became professor emeritus on February 7, 1978 and died in 1990 as an internationally accredited scientist.
Mathematics in art and language
Already in his first publication, "Raum und Ich" ("Space and Ego"; 1934), Bense combined theoretical philosophy with mathematics, semiotics, and aesthetics; this remained his thematic emphasis. For the first time, he phrased a rational aesthetics, which defines the components of language – words, syllables, phonemes – as a statistical language repertoire, and which opposes literature that is based upon meaning. Conversely, Bense studied the concept of style, which he applied to mathematics – following Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz' Mathesis Universalis –, designing a universal markup language. "Die Mathematik in der Kunst" ("Mathematics in Art"; 1949) was his starting point for investigating mathematical principles of form in the history of art. From this, Bense developed a perspective to see the mathematical spirit in works of literary art, especially in metrics and rhythm. Bense's thoughts assumed the correlation of a mathematical and linguistic consciousness, which have a common origin and have grown into complementary modes of thought. He considered the atomistic structures of the linguistic modes to be equivalent. By using non-interpretable basic elements (characters) and rules or operators, these forms give meaning, impart information and make stylistically formed language possible. He considered the aesthetic and the semantic information to be generally separated and not to be defined until they are used. This was the first German integration of Ludwig Wittgenstein's work into the field of aesthetics.
Some of Bense's knowledge is based on the investigations of the American mathematician George David Birkhoff. Thus some termini like "redundancy" and "entropy" have to be equated with "Ordnungsmaß" and "Materialverbrauch" (consumption of material) from Birkhoff's aesthetics research.
[edit] Technology and ethics
Bense considered the destruction of the social and intellectual middle-class world since the beginning of the 20th century a parallel to the destruction of the concept of being in philosophy. He saw the natural world replaced by an artificial one. As a forerunner of the computer age, Bense thought about the technical counterparts of human existence; unlike many of his contemporaries he considered machines as pure products of human intelligence, having algorithms as a basis, but soon he posed ethical questions, which were not discussed in ethics of technology until decades later. His pragmatic views of technology, influenced by Walter Benjamin, which lacked either belief in progress or its rejection, brought him the criticism of Theodor W. Adorno – and again put him in the role of the opposition.
[edit] Structural analysis of language
Inspired by neuroscience, informatics, and the occupation with electronic calculating machines, but also by Wittgenstein's concept of the language-game, Bense tried to put into perspective or to extend the traditional view of literature. In that, he was one of the first philosophers of culture who integrated the technical possibilities of the computer into their thoughts and investigated them across disciplinary boundaries. He statistically and topologically analysed linguistic phenomena, subjected them to questions of semiotic, information theory, and communication theory using structuralistic approaches. Thus Bense became the first theoretician of concrete poetry, which was started by Eugen Gomringer in 1953, and encouraged e.g. Helmut Heißenbüttel, Claus Bremer, Reinhard Döhl, Ludwig Haring, and Franz Mon to perform further experiments, and also had influence on Ernst Jandl's language deconstruction (see also Stuttgarter Gruppe/Schule).
Discussion with writers
In his work with literature and literary language, Bense was not content with only theoretical considerations; he had close contact to authors like Alfred Andersch and Arno Schmidt. His constructions of analogy to visual arts made major contributions to the understanding of cubism and dadaism.
Understanding of science
As a theoretician of science, Bense represented the synthetic intellectual concept, where classical humanism and modern technology constructively complement one another. From this concept of science, he hoped for progressive knowledge, which must always be ethically scrutinized, and at the same time, for the prevention of regression. Because of that, Bense argued for enlightenment and put himself into that tradition.
After 1984 Max Bense applied his theories of visual art to screen media. Because of that, early thoughts of media studies concerning the internet, especially the concept of digital poetry, can be traced back to Bense.
Texto de Elisabeth Walther sobre Max Bense
Max Bense (1910-1990) studied mathematics, physics, geology and philosophy at the Bonn University where he gained his Ph.D. + Sc. in december 1937. Already as a student, he began to publish.
In many of his publications, Max Bense exposed his aesthetical conceptions. In founding and guiding the Stuttgart Universitary Gallery from 1958 until 1978, and opening approximately 100 exhibitions, he possessed a forum to test his aesthetical ideas. In the first place, all his publications were concerning the exploration, the deepening and enlarging of aesthetical and semiotical theories, particularly of the theory of the "aesthetical state" of the works of art as realized signs, sign processes and sign systems. The work of art being situated between the author and the observer, Max Bense always took into consideration the communicational function of art. Nevertheless, one cannot name Max Bense's aesthetics "Gefallensästhetik" or "aesthetics of pleasure". As an epistemologist he distiguished clearly between aesthetics, sociology of art and psychology of perception which concern the domain of art, too, but are different from aesthetics.
Already in his first book "Space and I" [Raum und ich. Eine Philosophie über den Raum (1934)] which he wrote as a young student one finds particularly aesthetical views. The titles of chapters like "Mathematics and Beauty" [Die Mathematik und das Schöne] , "Space and Dance" [Raum und Tanz], "Gestalt and Mind" [Gestalt und Geist] show the starting point of all his researches, namely, that art and mathematics are very closely connected. Many concepts which are investigated in later books are already introduced here , i.e.: "aesthetical experience", "aesthetical process", "uniqueness", "fragility", "act of selection", "aesthetical state", "state of relativity", and so on. He sees the most compelling connection between mathematics and aesthetics in the "act of selection", in mathematics through the "selection of consciousness", in aesthetics through the "selection of feeling".
The connection of mathematics and art or aesthetics is, of course, not Max Bense's discovery. He names many of his forerunners, but, in our century, he is one of the few who called attention to it and defended it as the very foundation of aesthetical research. He considers the artist's and the scientist's creative work to be swinging between "chaos and Gestalt" to reach a "whole" [Ganzes]. He explains also that
there is "no substance without form" and "no reality without Gestalt idea", or "no ideality without matter". Many other concepts such as symbol, word, sense, image, order, system and so on, being introduced programmatically, but rather vaguely, and explained only in later books, are to be found in this first book.
In many of his following books, concerning epistemological, ontological questions or problems of the philosophy of nature or technique, Max Bense always considers aesthetical points of view, but only the second volume of his book "Contours of an Intellectual History of Mathematics" [Konturen einer Geistesgeschichte der Mathematik, II. Die Mathematik und die Kunst (1949)] is exclusively dedicated to the relation between mathematics and art. Firstly, he introduced as most important the concept of "perfection". Perfection, he maintains, was the mighty impulse in constructing our "technical world" which substitutes or penetrates the cultural world. Max Bense understands by perfection mainly the perfection of reasoning in constituting a "mathematical consciousness". He not only connects mathematics with poetry, literature, music or other artistical phenomena, but, accordingly, thinks that "aesthetical consciousness of form in general" is exclusively filled with mathematical thinking. The "original unity of aesthetical and mathematical categories" is expressed in his following sentence: "In the first approximation it suffices to have outlined the possibility of aesthetics which reduces mind to form and form to mathematics [...] For I don't know how to speak otherwise than mathematically about form, if one wishes to speak in general about form obligingly, acceptably and controllably."
Max Bense always endeavoured to combine rationality with art, and found new intermediary stages to show this close relation of art and science, or sensitivity and rationality. The conception of "mathesis universalis" or "the universal idea of humanism", he connects, for instance, with the program for the "Gesamtkunstwerk". Other concepts like "representation" he introduces on the basis of Leibniz.
In his book "Metaphysics of Literature" [Literaturmetaphysik. Der Schriftsteller in der technischen Welt (1950)], Max Bense utilizes beside mathematical, also metaphysical foundations, particularly ontological and cosmological conceptions, and also Heidegger's "fundamental ontology". On account of aesthetical researches, he expressively underlines the role of "methodology" which replaces "ideology". With this he connects formulations concerning "technical world" and "technical existence". Under the title "Technical Existence" [Technische Existenz (1949)], he published a very interesting book in which he defended, with great emphasis, technical civilization. Though not having worked out a real semiotics, he introduces concepts like sign, sign language, expression, representation, sign for something and sign for others, and so on. Also in the chapter "The spiritual purity of technique" [Die spirituelle Reinheit der Technik] of the book "World of Advertising" [Plakatwelt (1952)], he underlines the role of technique in artistical products. This positive outlook to technique explains the later defense of computer art, or, as he also said, the "programming of beauty". He writes: "We inhabit a technical world. A world which we made, the changes of which lies in our hands and perfection of which depends essentially on our reasoning and our imagination." But because of the technical world's constant changing, the perfection was never to be seen as an final state, but only as provisory point in developing processes. Beside, already in "The spiritual purity of technique" he cites Norbert Wiener's "Cybernetics" (1949) and comes to the promising statement that cybernetics will become the "queen of all sciences". In "Kafka's Theory" [Die Theorie Kafkas (1952)], another small book, Max Bense underlines the provisory character of his "Metaphysics of Literature" and points out that it served also as an "explanation of the writer in the technical world".
Now, I wish to speak about his main work on aesthetics. The fist volume has the title "Aesthetica [I]. Metaphysical observations on beauty" [Aestetica [I]. Metaphysische Beobachtungen am Schönen (1954)]. Max Bense presents there "observations, experiences, considerations and conclusions" in literature and painting. He divides aesthetics in three parts: 1) aesthetical object, 2) aesthetical judgment, and 3) aesthetical existence. The old conception of beauty is now understood as a modality of works of art, technical products and products of industrial design, and he distinguishes also between beauty of art, beauty of technique and beauty of nature. Here, we meet for the first time George David Birkhoff's "aesthetical measure" which is the quotient of "order and complexity". In all his following books, Max Bense retained this formula but completed it by considerations from the general information theory. Birkhoff's main idea, that in every work of art there are certain elements in a special order, is a very old thought, but he was the first to bring it in a mathematical relation. The "aesthetical measure" is a comparision measure related only to similar objects, objects of a "family", he said. In the same way as Birkhoff, Max Bense analyzes the works of art as such, not their effects on observers nor their role in history, or their trading value. Now, he reaches a new and clearer understanding of the semiotical state of the works of art. "Not the represented object, but the sign that represents the object is beautiful", he says. He introduces also the concepts of "object message", "existence message" and "form message" to make further distinctions, but he did not yet gain the theoretical foundation of semiotics.
With the concept of message the work of art is explained as "information" in the sense of "innovation" and "originality". The wrtings about information theory led to his conception of "aesthetical information" as a special kind of information in every-day life. The sentence of Claudius' poem: "The moon is rising", is a semantical information, but connected with the other sentence: "The golden stars are shining brightly, and clearly in the sky" represents an aesthetical information because of the new order depending on rhyme and rhythm in the German version. Max Bense completes the old concepts of "content" and "form" with the concept of "medium", "material" or "means". They are the elements of complexity distinguished by Birkhoff. "An aesthetical information rests on its means, on its singular realization", he writes. But to connect Birkhoff's measure with information theory, Max Bense transforms his formula into the informational measure: redundance divided by statistical information. Redundance is obviously the same as order by which the elements are connected. The simplest redundance is, by the way, symmetry. Now, with this enlargement, Max Bense differentiates aesthetics in macro-aesthetics and micro-aesthetics. Macro-aesthetics is concerned with the evident realms of perceptions of the aesthetic object, micro-aesthetics with the not-evident realms of the aesthetic object. Obviously, these conceptions are borrowed from modern physics.
By all these considerations, Max Bense proceeds from metaphysical aesthetics through mathematical aesthetics to informational or statistical aesthetics. Aesthetic communication is elaborated in Volume 3 of "Aesthetica" (1958) with the subtitle "Theory of aesthetical communication" [Aes<thetische Information]. The general scheme of communication is: sender or emitter -> channel -> receiver. In aesthetics it becomes: sender -> aesthetical object -> observer, and is understood as "play" in the sense of Friedrich Schiller or "play theory" by John von Neumann.
In "Aesthetica 4", with the subtitles "Programming of Beauty. General Text Theory and Text Aesthetics" [Programmierung des Schönen. Allgemeine Texttheorie und Textästhetik (1960)], Max Bense investigates the works of art as "vehicles of aesthetical information". He determines the aesthetic process as sign process and replaces the concept of literature by the concept of text, because the letter comprises literature, and all other kinds of possible "linear and non-linear texts", he maintains. The discussion of text, metatext, and context leads to the classification of texts of all kinds. His "text theory" consists also of text materiality, text phenomenality, text statistics, text logic, and so on. But only in his book "Theory of Texts" [Theorie der Texte. Eine Einführung in neuere Auffassungen und Methoden (1962)], he develops his methods more exactly and presents them more didactically. He speaks more comprehensively about sign theory, but also about "sign beauty", a term which the German philosopher Johann Augsut Eberhard published in 1806.
The development of Bense's Aesthetics is shown best in "Aesthetica. Introduction to New Aesthetics" [Aesthetica. Einführuung in die neue Aesthetik (1965)] which comprises the foregoing four volumes together with a new fifth part. He demands here of aesthetical "minimal conditions": extensionality, materiality, realization thematics, process thematics, and communication, and for aesthetical "maximal conditions": triadic sign function, order relation, aesthetical uncertainty relation, and value relation. But only in the paperback "Introduction to Informational Aesthetics" [Einführung in die informationstheoretische Aesthetik (1969)], Max Bense represents the Peircean semiotics in formalizing his only verbal given conceptions. The Peircean triadic sign relation consisting of M or medium relation, O or object relation, and I or interpretant relation, is written down as a function or relation of M, O, I which were divided by Peirce in three parts or trichotomies, so that three subsigns (an expression of Bense) result which were called by Peirce for M: qualisign, sinsign, legisign; for O: icon, index, symbol; and for I: rhema, dicent, argument.
In the second part of this book with the subtitle "Small Text Theory" [Kleine Texttheorie], Bense utilizes also the Peircean ten triads or sign classes, each of which combines one subsign of M, O, and I. The already known conception of "situation" is now discussed once more in connection with the thematics of signs. But these connections of signs, and the system of ten sign classes were analyzed only in his next book "Sign and Design" [Zeichen und Design. Semiotische Aesthetik (1971)]. Particularly interesting are the explanations of creativity, semiotics of design, colour and form, and the communicative and creative scheme in advertising. Sign connections and the system of ten sign classes are extensively analyzed, and founded on Peirce's universal categories of Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness, and on his particular catergories of Firstness of Firstness, Firstness of Secondness, and so on. Now, Max Bense understands aesthetics as a theory of aesthetical processes and/or systems, and he introduces the relevant semiotical operations of adjunction, superisation and iteration. In doing so, he can distiguish different aesthetical states. The concept of "creation", already introduced, is understood as "methodological creation" which refers to art and science, likewise. The concepts of information, creative process, intellectual work, innovation, selection, construction, and so on, gain consequently a clearer meaning. Max Bense considers aesthetics here as "essence of the theory of mathematically and semiotically describable states", and characterizes it as provisory, not as absolute.
The "creative principle" is examined in relation to semiotics, and particularly to its operations of adjunction, superisation and iteration thoroughly in his book "The Improbability of Aesthetics, and the Semiotical Conception of Art" [Die Unwahrscheinlichkeit des Aesthetischen und die semiotische Konzeption der Kunst (1979)[. The creative principle, going back to a sentence of Peirce, is given in the creation scheme:
Thirdness over Firstness creates Secondness, or: interpretant over medium creates object. Herewith, the analogy with Biskhoff's formula is evident, if one identified order with interpretant, complexity with medium, and the product (which is Birkhoff's measure) with object. But most important in this book is the determination of the "aesthetical state" by a special sign class which is different from all others. By the numerical representation of subsigns and sign classes and by considering the connection between triads (or sign classes) and trichotomies (or thematizations of reality), Max Bense found out that this one corresponds to the "aesthetic state". If one uses numbers, the connection is expressible by dualization. Then, one sees that the Peircean sign class "rhematical iconical legisign" has the identical inverse as its corresponding trichotomy, and this is a unique property. One sees, too, that there is a full symmetry. To take this sign class as binding for the aesthetic state of the works of art, Max Bense freed himself from Morris' meaning who held that the work of art can be characterized only as an icon. He found out, too, that this triad /trichotomy represents not only the "aesthetical state" but also the "sign as such" and the "number as such". The identity of sign, number and aesthetical state which he suggested in all his former publications, finally becomes for him convincing on account of his semiotical investigations. And he remarks that he does not change other authors' meaning of beauty.
The theme of this special sign class appears, once more, in his last book which I edited after his death: The self-reality of signs" [Die Eigenrealität der Zeichen (1992)]. Here, all his reflections about this sign class are discussed in reference to the self-reality of the sign. Representation and reality are connected inseparably in the sign, and signs are relating consciousness and world. Perception, experience, and reasoning depends on signs. Because nothing is representable without signs, the mentioned three domains: aesthetics, mathematics and semiotics are inseparably connected, and so, Max Bense reaches in his last book the themes of his first one, with the difference that he can prove now what he anticipated so many years ago.
Eugen Gomringer
La constelación es la posibilidad más simple de diseño en la poesía, basada en la palabra. Ella comprende un grupo de palabras al igual como si ella comprendiese un grupo de estrellas e hiciese de éstas una configuración estelar. En ella hay dos, tres o más palabras, puestas unas con otras o junto con las otras no han de ser demasiadas en una relación dada de modo pensante y material. ¡Y eso es todo! Con la constelación se pone algo en el mundo. Ella es una realidad en sí y no un poema sobre, y podemos reconocer de lejos que, en una constelación se pueden vincular un principio mecánico con uno intuitivo, de la forma más pura.
(Gomringer,1992)
1. El poeta boliviano-suizo Eugen Gomringer es el fundador de la poesía concreta. Fue creador de una corriente estética que, desde 1950 en adelante, revolucionó la poesía en Europa y en América latina.
2. La publicación de su libro Constelaciones, en 1953, marca el inició de ese nuevo tipo de poesía concreta, un término inclusivo que aglomera la poesía visual en general.
3. El movimiento fue asumido con entusiasmo por escritores del mundo entero pero, en su definición más puntual, su fundación se debe exclusivamente a Eugen Gomringer en Europa y simultáneamente al Grupo Noigandres en Brasil.
4. El manifiesto del grupo Noigandres, Plan Piloto para la Poesía Concreta, aparece en la revista Noigandres y nombra como antecedentes del concretismo poético a una serie de autores: Stéphane Mallarmé con Un coup de des, 1897. Ezra Pound con The Cantos, 1925. James Joyce con Finnegan's Wake, 1939. E.E. Cummings. Apollinaire con Calligrammes, 1918. Oswaldo de Andrade, Anton Webern en el ámbito musical. La serie de pinturas Boogie-Woogie de Piet Mondrian, entre otros.
5. El grupo Noigandres fue enteramente responsable del acuñamiento del nombre y el primer manifiesto. En 1952, los poetas Dêcio Pignatari, Augusto de Campos y su hermano Haroldo de Campos habían fundado el grupo Noigandres en São Paulo, Brasil, publicando además el primer número de la revista Noigandres. Sus actividades y experimentos conducirían más adelante, entre 1953 y 1956, a la fundación del movimiento de poesía concreta.
6. El término lo acuñó Augusto de Campos en la segunda edición de Noigandres en el título de uno de los artículos y el nombre se propago rápidamente por los medios escritos. El lanzamiento público del movimiento se dio lugar en la "Exposición Nacional de Arte Concreta" de São Paulo en Diciembre de 1956 y luego en febrero de 1957 en Río de Janeiro.
7. El concepto de poesía concreta lo emplea, por vez primera, Gomringer, tras su encuentro con Dêcio Pignatari, miembro fundador del grupo brasileño de poetas concretistas Noigandres, en 1955, en Ulm, cuando aquél trabajaba (1954-57) como secretario de Max Bill, en la Escuela Superior de Diseño.
8. El concepto de lo concreto existía ya en las artes plásticas desde 1930, año de aparición del Manifiesto del arte concreto, formulado por Theo van Doesburg, cuyas ideas recogiera Max Bill y precisara más tarde en sus trabajos teóricos.
9. El concepto de poesía concreta fue acuñado por Gomringer en analogía con aquel concepto desarrollado en el arte concreto, y es documentado por las innumerables concordancias y paralelismos entre los escritos de Bill y Gomringer.
10. Gomringer nació el 20 de enero de 1925 en Cachuela Esperanza. De padre suizo y madre beniana, muy joven se traslada a Suiza, donde concluye sus primeros estudios. Entre 1946 y 1954, realizó estudios de economía e historia del arte en universidades de Berna y de Roma. Después fue secretario del pintor concreto Max Hill.
11. Gomringer vivió en Alemania Federal donde dictó cátedra de Teoría Estética en la Academia de Arte Dussendorft. Visitó Bolivia en dos oportunidades y dio conferencia en el Goethe Institut de La Paz, el 23 de marzo de 1972 y a mediados de los años 90.
12. En 1955, Gomringer lanzó su manifiesto “Del verso a la Constelación: función y forma de una nueva poesía” que resume su posición estética. Cinco años más tarde publica su segundo libro de poemas Ideogramas.
Dos poemas
schweigen schweigen schweigen
schweigen schweigen schweigen
schweigen schweigen
schweigen schweigen schweigen
schweigen schweigen schweigen
ordung ordung
ordung ordung
ordung ordung
ordung ordung
ordung unordun g
ordung ordung
ordung ordung
(ordung=orden,
unordung=desorden)
Gerhard Rühm
Gerhard Rühm es un escritor, compositor y artista visual austriaco, nacido el 12 de febrero 1930 en Viena. Estudió piano y composición en la Universidad de Música y Arte Dramático de Viena y produjo, en los años 50, lo que se llamó poesía sonora, poesía visual y los libros objeto y fue co-fundador del Grupo de Viena al lado de Friedrich Achleitner, Hans Carl Artmann, Konrad Bayer y Oswald Wiener. [1] Sus influencias fueron August Stramm, Kurt Schwitters, Gertrude Stein, Carl Einstein y Paul Scheerbart.
De 1972 a 1996 fue profesor de la Escuela de Bellas Artes de Hamburgo y desde 1968 hasta 1982 Presidente de la Asamblea de autores en Graz.
El 25 de enero de 2010 Rühm recibió el doctorado honoris causa por la Universidad de Colonia.
Haroldo de Campos
Haroldo Eurico Browne de Campos (São Paulo, 19 de agosto de 1929 — 16 de agosto de 2003) fue un poeta y traductor brasileño.
Haroldo realizó sus estudios secundarios en el Colégio São Bento, donde aprendió latín, inglés, español y francés. Ingresó en la Faculdad de Derecho de la Universidad de São Paulo. Su primer libro fue publicado en 1949, O Auto do Possesso, cuando, al lado de Décio Pignatari, participaba en el Club de Poesía.
En 1952, Décio, Haroldo y su hermano Augusto de Campos rompieron con el Club de Poesía por divergencias con el conservadurismo predominante entre los poetas, conocidos como "Generación del 45". Fundaron el grupo Noigandres, pasando a publicar los poemas en la revista del grupo, del mismo título. En los años siguientes defendieron las tesis que llevarían a los tres a inaugurar en 1956 el movimento concretista, al cual se mantuvo fiel hasta 1963, cuando comenzó un proyecto personal centrando su atención en el libro-poema Galáxias.
Haroldo se doctoró en Filosofía, Letras y Ciencias Humanas, bajo la supervisión y orientación de António Cândido, habiendo sido professor de la Pontificia Universidad Católica de São Paulo, así como de la Universidad de Texas, en Austin, Estados Unidos.
Tradujo al portugués poemas de autores como Homero, Dante, Mallarmé, Goethe, Mayakovski, además de textos bíblicos, como el Génesis y el Eclesiastés. Publicó numerosos ensayos de teoría literaria, entre ellos A Arte no Horizonte do Provável (1969).
La poesía de Haroldo de Campos ha tenido una recepción más bien fragmentaria y escasa en España, su última publicación, Hambre de forma, pretende cubrir ese vacío importante. Esta antología bilingüe ofrece la más amplia muestra de su creación -desde la ortodoxia concretista hasta sus aristas más neobarrocas-, vertida al castellano de la mano de los mejores poetas y traductores interesados en Haroldo (Gonzalo Aguilar, Roberto Echavarren, Daniel G. Helder, Reynaldo Jiménez, Eduardo Milán, Marcelo Pellegrini, Néstor Perlongher y el mismo Fisher).
Ernst Jandl
Ernst Jandl (August 1, 1925, Vienna, Austria – June 9, 2000, Vienna) was an Austrian writer, poet, and translator.
Influenced by Dada he started to write experimental poetry, first published in the journal "Neue Wege" (New Ways) in 1952.
He was the life partner of Friederike Mayröcker. In 1973 he co-founded the "Grazer Autorenversammlung" in Graz, became its vice president in 1975 and was its president from 1983 to 1987.
In his poems, he plays with the German language, in many different ways, often at the level of single characters or phonemes. For example, in his famous poem "Ottos Mops" (= "Otto's Pug"), the only vowel used is "o". Of course, poems like this cannot easily be translated into other languages.
Most of his poems are better heard than read. His lectures were always known as very impressive events, because of the particular way he pronounced his poems. Poems like "schtzngrmm" (his version of the word "Schützengraben" which describes the trenches of the World War I) can be understood only if read correctly. "schtzngrmm" is an experimental poem in which he tells the sounds of war only with combinations of letters, which sound like gunfires or detonating missiles.
He has translated Gertrude Stein, Robert Creeley's The Island, and John Cage's Silence.
Some other of his best known poems are "lichtung" (also known as "lechts & rinks", in English "light and reft") and "kneiernzuck".
An example of a short poem, written in English:
three wives[1]
i never remember my second wife
i never remember my third wife
i always remember what i always remember
ain't ever even had a first wife
Augusto de Campos
Augusto Luís Browne de Campos (n. el 14 de febrero de 1931 en São Paulo) es un poeta, traductor y ensayista brasileño.
[editar] Carrera
Publicó su primer libro en 1951 con "Rei Menos o Reino", cuando aún era estudiante de la Facultad de Derecho de la Universidad de San Pablo. Es uno de los creadores del movimiento llamado Poesía Concreta, junto con su hermano, Haroldo de Campos, y Décio Pignatari, que al romper con el Club de Poesía, lanzaron la revista Noigandres. Usando distintos recursos visuales como la disposición geométrica de las palabras en la página, la aplicación de colores y de diferentes tipos de letras, Augusto creó Poetamenos (1953), Pop-cretos (1964), Poemóbiles (1974) e Caixa Preta (1975). Buena parte de esa producción está reunida en las colecciones Viva Vaia (1979), Despoesia (1994) e Não (2004). Los poemas concretos de Campos no se restringiran a lo medio impreso, sus poemas fueran transformados en videos, computación gráfica y también en hologramas; con el artista multimidia brasileño Moysés Baumstein desarollo un trabajo que resultó en muchos poemas concretos holográficos.
Además de traducir a Stéphane Mallarmé, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, Vladímir Mayakovski, Arnaut Daniel y E. E. Cummings, entre otros, publicó las antologías Re-Visão de Sousândrade (1964) y Re-Visão de Kilkerry (1971). Sus textos críticos pueden ser leidos en Teoria da poesia concreta, Balanço da Bossa, À margem da margem y Anti-crítico, entre otros.
Su obra se relaciona con la música, siendo autor de canciones grabadas por Caetano Veloso y Arrigo Barnabé y grabó el CD Poesia é Risco, junto a su hijo, Cid Campos (1994).
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