Parallel Events

Dreizehn Engel/Thirteen Angels

poems by Alfred Brendel

etchings, drawings, and sculptures by George Nama

Jack Rutberg Fine Arts

The method is to enumerate the fantastic. The resulting list is presented to the nose of the sublime but unwary spectator. “Why thirteen angels?” asks such a one. “Strange enough,” replies the poet, but it is there in the first poem:

Komm

süsser Engel

singe ich

und verrate mir

dein Geheimnis

2 x 2 = 13

sagt der Engel

The precedents are cited as Rilke, Swedenborg and Handke-Wenders (Der Himmel über Berlin). Let us portray the method in its own likeness:

The angel of reason

does not protect us

Wherever it treads

tall grass grows

Whoever it touches

spreads out his arms

and flies

with eyes wide-open

for five minutes

through filtered air

Its voice tells us

that’s not what you are

That it resembles us

is the beautiful delusion

According to the poet, the artist’s representations are “parallel events.” Goya is rendered abstract, and so are the little clay models fabricated by Degas and after him in bronze.

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