Winterlings - thought flakes for a haiku seminar

2 reviews!
Review Petra Sela: WINTERLINGE

People like to pick up this beautifully designed ribbon, even if the topic is a frosty one: WINTERLINGE. But it wouldn't be Georges Hartmann if the first text didn't begin like this:
 
WINTER
It's the middle of July. the sun is pressing on the sweat glands and I feel how the apple juice spritzer, which has just been washed down, pushes out of the overheated body again ...
 
The volume contains impressions, reviews, critical issues and is repeatedly broken up with haiku - or is it loosened up? They dance through the short prose texts like snowflakes. There are quoted haiku of other authors to whom Georges Hartmann gives space. Towards the end, however, haiku - "winterlings" - by the author himself have their say. Here are some of them:
 
It's snowing again outside.
He reads the signatures
on the plaster leg.
 
In the ice at the window
I scratch the heart of my loved one.
Hopefully it stays cold.
 
Like a lantern
hangs the winter moon
in the bare branches
 
And as you can feel, the humor is not neglected.
I hope you enjoy browsing.

Review by Rüdiger Jung: WINTERLINGE

We experience the authors “shock frozen” - still remembering Erika Schwalm's haiku question: “Have you already got the winter topic ready for the next haiku seminar?” (P. 7) and accompany him where he was already in July makes his thoughts. This seasonal anachronism is full of comedy, what am I saying, joke, spirit, esprit. It is good when a conversation partner turns up - almost out of nowhere - who - as if he knew what it was about - interprets farmers' rules and natural phenomena of high summer for winter. And thus continues the trail that a squirrel collecting and hiding provisions has already laid. Georges himself then plows the great treasure of literary “winter fairy tales” and explores the word field of “cold” (smiling cold, chilling, chilling, cold pressing, cold bowl, cold start) - p. 20 f. that can be brought under control with any antics (p. 16 f)!

In addition, there is climate change, which opens up a gap between remembered and present winters: "My winter picture mixes the scraps of memory left behind from childhood with the motifs of those black and white photos in which the winters can still be recognized as real winters" (p. 23). And already we are right in the middle of it: Haiku - foreign and our own - are quoted and (-) suggested; Georges Hartmann's seminar treads the most rewarding of all paths, those of the questions that leave the own life and reading of the seminar participant and / or “Winterlinge” reader exactly the space that a haiku needs to arrive, to land. Udo Wenzel's haiku is given a thorough and detailed interpretation (p. 28; the “attempt at an interpretation” p. 28 to 36):

Blowing snow -
the gate to the monastery
will be closed

This most detailed examination of a single text was successful not least because the interpreter always tries again and varies possible basic assumptions that the text leaves open (monastery in the country or in the city; time in the middle of the day or in the middle of the night ). The interpreter goes to the point in full possession of his own subjectivity, and precisely in this way leaves the reader the opportunity to agree with his interpretation or to dare to make a completely different one.

Exactly as he encounters this haiku, the author encounters the phenomenon of winter, takes several attempts, picks out various aspects: the initial spark of winter with the first snowflakes, the "people" in the cold season, the festival calendar (Advent, Christmas, New Year , Carnival), finally winter sports, which have their own Olympics.

The “final chord” is set by Georges Hartmann's own haiku and a haibun that can hardly be appreciated other than with “sparkling” - the purest fireworks! Looking at a limited number of carefully selected texts and exposing them to the forces of tireless questioning - this is how a haiku seminar can truly succeed! Precisely because of
Author has put such care into the selection of foreign and own texts, I would like to quote part of them in conclusion:

Lost the way.
Limitless
the field in the snow

(P. 26, Arno Herrmann)

Suddenly fell silent
the piano next door.
The snow

(P. 40, Hubertus Thum)

snow falls
quiet and quieter
the birds

(P. 40, Horst-Oliver Buchholz)

first snow
the whole morning
not a word

(P. 46, Hubertus Thum)

It's snowing outside again.
He reads the signatures
on the leg cast

(P. 56, Georges Hartmann)

Through the coniferous forest
chainsaws eat their way
for the holy feast

(P. 61, Georges Hartmann)