As Expressionism gradually declined, new poetic expressions unfolded. Specifically, during World War I, the Dada movement grew, launching a revolutionary assault on Expressionism. It became more active after the end of the war, in a seething revolutionary atmosphere in Berlin. However, Dadaism was not the only child born from this historical frame; there were also the New Objectivity movement and Merz Poetry.

This article analyzes the transition from Expressionism to Merz Poetry in depth.

Looking at Expressionist poetry, one can see the effort to both maintain and break traditional forms. The latter is precisely accomplished by bursting the poem’s shape, particularly by using free rhythm and stanzas, the destruction of syntax, and the diversified way of speech. The Expressionists are not just trying to build direct contact with the audience; they insult and provoke it, calling for reflection on its shadows and identity. To achieve this contact, they choose the stage, such as cabarets and Varietés, where they recite their texts. At this point, an alternative solidarity human feeling emerges, one that isn’t oriented toward the civil social stratum but toward marginal groups.

Expressionist artists, inspired by Baudelaire and Rimbaud, introduce the hideous into literature, reshaping the human being and emphasizing the synchronicity of poetry. This ‘O-Human-Poetry’ of expressionism creates new metaphors and symbols, connecting with Sturm-Circle’s Word Art.

The Sturm-Circle defines ‘word art’ as the repetition of the meaning and emotion of the experienced, expressed through the word, and its rhythmic alignment to an overall expression. This innovative approach blends various art forms, allowing poetry, music, play, dance, and fine art to collaborate in a synesthetic way. The interaction between text and picture is a key aspect of Sturm-Circle’s methodology, stimulating visual perception in a unique and simultaneous way.

The word in poetry becomes important by delivering terms through alignment with other words, with which the writer can later work.

At this point, attaches language criticism due to its confidence that words can no longer represent their conceptual meaning; therefore, awareness of the world can’t be expressed through speech.

This language crisis doesn’t affect only the world’s cognition but also how humans interact socially. This contact is marked by insufficient interaction and communication.

By criticizing open knowledge and language, the Expressionists express their doubts about the natural sciences, their causal and mechanical thinking, and their claim to represent truth and the rational, independent subject exclusively.

Regarding “Wordart,” which initiated the Sturm-Circle, develops later Kurt Schwitters his “Merz-” poetry. The term “MERZ” evolves from the word “commerce. “

According to Schwitters’s conception, the mission of art is to liberate human beings from the pressures of life, whether confrontations in the national, political, or commercial arena. Furthermore, in the sense of the avant-garde, art has to change the practice of life and thereby try to remain autonomous. Schwitters writes down all these notions in his manifest, which he places in a social context. Schwitters experiments with the visual and poetic for his artistic productions, which go beyond parody. He deals with events of his time, like the following: 1. World War, the Weimar Republic, and the social restructuring. In these significant changes, which also include a revolutionary spirit, Schwitters recognizes the initiation of a renewal of artistic production. He even uses garbage in his art, which he calls “Merz.”

Merzart wants to break free from every constraint, but without rules, the artistic result also depends on organization and logical combination. Therefore, composition plays a vital role: the singular parts must be formed into a whole so that the artist’s intended feeling can be conveyed. Schwitters wishes to aestheticize life and vitalize art through his art. These two parts, life and art, are his material and originate from the world.

Later, Kurt Schwitters transmits the attributes of Merzkunst to his poetry and identifies himself with it. In addition, he demands a stage open to experiments so that the complete Merz work of art can come to the fore. On this stage, everything possible is accepted as an artistic medium, even a human being, as it is in his everyday life, where the normal is considered an exceptional case.

However, the press stamps Schwitters’s art as madness, but Schwitters forestalls and declares that his art encourages the healing of this madness.

Schwitters opposes sense and nonsense, preferring nonsense. Thus, the individual parts of a complete work make sense once they are in their proper positions and relations to one another. Equally, it receives the linguistic sign with its linkage with other parts of art, its meaning, and the more alienated it emerges, the greater its artistic effect. As for language usage, Schwitters turns from its semantic function to its structural and rational function. Abstract poetry evaluates values against values or Words against words. Syllables, words, and sentences are elements of poetry, and their composition proceeds not in the sense of the spoken language, as it has another intention. These elements are removed from their common use and arranged into a different relation to one another. Regarding Sturm-Circle with its Wordart, Schwitters notices that the actual element of poetry is the single letter, and with its fixed alignment, clarity can only be established. Wordart can’t be interpreted because the sense and idea behind it can be followed only by the existing relation among the letters. However, all this depends on the recipient’s observation. Be it the single parts or materials that have already been used. In that case, it doesn’t play any role, even in the case of poetry, because poetry utilizes pre-formulated and applied phrases from daily newspapers, posters, and everyday speech.

In his creative work, Schwitters employs expressionistic metaphors, neologisms, advertising techniques, and figures of speech. Thus, he points to the “Collage” as a type of art, since the genre’s borders are erased throughout the artwork. The procedure is that the pictures are transcribed, the scripture is displayed and confirmed by a rhythm, and the music is displayed and made appropriate for reading.

Schwitters delivers an example with the poem “An Anna Blume,” which firstly reminds one of a traditional love poem but is released from its purpose and parodied to express a critical point of view. Therefore, he uses the material of love poems and love songs for this poem. These material elements undergo an estrangement and are combined with other parts, such as grammatical alterations and typification of erotic characteristics.

However, Schwitters emphasizes that only those with specific experiences can understand this critical, humorous expression. Otherwise, this art remains incomprehensible because he views language from a historical angle and subordinates it to the norm, ratio, and relativism. This results in our discussing a system in which signified and significant must be interpreted due to their different relations. Schwitters speaks of an uninterpretable work of art due to this binary relationship.

The poem “An Anna Blume” functions as a bridge to concrete poetry, as concrete poetry engages with its reception.

To Anna Blume

You, oh you, beloved of my twenty-seven senses, I

love ya! - You thine thou yours, I you, you me. - Us?

This (incidentally) does not belong here.

Who are you, countless woman? You are

- are you? - People say you are - let

them say it, they don't know where the steeple is.

 

You wear a hat on your feet

and stand on your hands,

on your hands you walk.

 

Hello, your red clothes, sawed into white pleats.

Red I love, Anna Blume, red I love ya! –

You thine thou yours, I you, you me. - Us?

That (incidentally) belongs in the cold embers.

Red flower, red Anna Blume, what are people saying?

_{Source Poem Translation: BABELMATRIX, Babel Web Anthology}

_{Bibliography:}

_{Fähnders, Walter: Avantgarde und Moderne 1890-1933.}

_{Anz, Thomas (2002): Literatur des Expressionismus. Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler.}

_{Zeller, Christoph (2008): „Aus Müll Gold gesponnen: Kurt Schwitters’ Merzkunst und die Inflation“. In: German Studies Review 31, H.2, S. 345.}

_{Hereth, Hans-Jürgen (1996): „Die Rezeptions- und Wirkungsgeschichte von Kurt Schwitters, dargestellt anhand seines Gedichts „An Anna Blume“ “. In: Kreuzer, Helmut / Riha, Karl (Hg.).}

_{Forschungen zur Literatur- und Kulturgeschichte. Frankfurt a. Main: Peter Lang (= Bd. 53).}