In these 99 meditations, poet and novelist Hans Magnus Enzensberger celebrates the tenacity of the normal and routine in everyday life, where the survival of the objects we use without thinking—a pair of scissors, perhaps—is both a small, human victory and a quiet reminder of our own ephemeral nature. He sets his quotidian reflections against a broad historical and political backdrop: the cold war and its accompanying atomic threat; the German student revolt; would-be socialism in Cuba, China, and Africa; and World War II as experienced by the youthful poet.
Enzensberger’s poems are conversational, skeptical, and serene; they culminate in the extended set of observations that gives the collection its title. Clouds, alien and yet symbols of human life, are for Enzensberger at once a central metaphor of the Western poetic tradition and “the most fleeting of all masterpieces.” “Cloud archaeology,” writes Enzensberger, is “a science for angels.”
Praise for the German edition
“After reading this wonderful volume of poetry one would like to call Enzensberger simply the lyric voice of transience.”— Sueddeutsche Zeitung
“With this book Enzensberger reveals himself both as a spokesman of persistence and as a decelerator.”—Neue Zuercher Zeitung
Reviews
Table of Contents
I
Remembering the Poignant Moment
Sins of Omission
Invariably
Division of Labour
Lost
Genetics
Underground Station Wittenbergplatz
After-Dinner Speech at an Engagement
Obscure Camera
My Wife’s Merits
Nude Shot
Temperatures
In Semi-Darkness
Surfaces
Thunderstorm in Winter
Surprises
Profane Revelation
Thirst
To the Spoilsport
II
The Way Out
Before Techno and After
For Max Sebald
The Copy
Low Notes in Liepāja
A Cosy Evening
One Day
Sans-papier. Boulevard de Port-Royal, March 1999
Peace Talks
Motivational Research
Poem in Parentheses
Child Soldiers
Interference
The Energy Field of the Dead
Stars
III
Malfunction
Further Cause for Complaint
All Kinds of Grievances
Astronomical Sunday Sermon
Little Theodicy
Ever Briefer Conversations
Concerning the Question What is More Blesséd
At Times
Spectators
So Much for Good International Relations
Lovely Days in Xinjiang
Pakse
Better Prospects
A Little Swan Song to Mobility
Power of the Keys
IV
Also One Half of Life
The Party
Pet
Voices
The Buttons
The Instruments
An Earth-Coloured Ditty
Fish Knives and Ideas
19 Berggasse
Will and Representation
A Pity
Tripp’s Cabinet of Curiosities
Words Fail Me
The Words, the Words
Parliamentary
The Autobiographer
Little Night Music on a Hotel Toilet
Interim Report
Superfluous Elegy
A Small Contribution Towards Reduction
V
Final Remarks on Certainty
It Might Escape Some Souls
Swans
Credit
The Advantages of the Finite
Theory of Names
Gaps in Our Knowledge
Problems Falling Asleep
Orders of Magnitude
Take Note, Bishop Berkeley
Questions for the Cosmologists
Augurs
If You Believe It
Astrolabe
Chemistry of Transparence
Lead
Climate Machine
Atomic Weight 12.011
VI
History of Clouds