Literary awareness of the crisis
A Sense of Crisis Among German-language Authors
and Russia’s War Against Ukraine
and Russia’s War Against Ukraine
To what extent does Russia’s war against Ukraine affect German-language authors? What influence does it have on their literary self-image, their subjects and their language? Texts by Durs Grünbein, Kerstin Preiwuss and Marcel Beyer will be analyzed in this context. All three authors see the war as a radical turning point and are struggling to find new forms of literary expression for this sense of crisis.
What influence does Russia’s war against Ukraine have on the writing of authors who are not directly affected by it? What literary reactions can be observed among those who are writing in German, and who are not directly involved because of where they live or where they come from?1 Since 24 February 2022, many writers in Germany have expressed their opinion, particularly through their public stance for or against the provision of arms, in the form of petitions, open letters, interviews and essays.2 In some literary texts, the subject is the war itself or reflections on it. The conditions under which these texts are created, at a safe distance from the reality of the war, cannot be compared to the conditions in which Ukrainian authors are living and working: conditions in which their very existence is threatened. Marcel Beyer emphasizes this difference at the very start of his Wuppertal Poetry Lectures on Factual Narration from Spring 2022: “My life is not in danger. I am in safety.”3
Below I will focus on poetic, essayistic and poetological texts that can be described as literary forms of expression that respond to this sense of crisis. They are tentative attempts by three authors who have been affected by the war against Ukraine in such a way as to make them question their own patterns of thought and perception as well as those of society.
Presence of mind and a sense of crisis: Durs Grünbein
Since the escalation of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine,
Durs Grünbein
Durs Grünbein
The work of poet and essayist Durs Grünbein, born in Dresden in 1962, has been celebrated with, among other things, the Georg Büchner Prize (1995) and the Friedrich Hölderlin Prize (2005). His poems and essays, such as Schädelbasislektion (1991), Nach den Satiren (1999), and Äquidistanz (2022), often address historical, philosophical and political issues. As a critical intellectual, he also reflects on current affairs in the feature pages.
has often taken a public position, signed appeals, written essays in which he analyses the crisis and given interviews.4 But he has also responded with literature, most recently with his poetry anthology Äquidistanz (2022; English title: Equidistance, 2022) and the novel Komet (2023; English title Comet, 2023), both influenced by the current war in Europe. He signed an appeal by artists about the situation in Ukraine even before 24 February 2022.5 At the beginning of April 2022 he published an essay in the Süddeutsche Zeitung with the title, Nichts berechtigt uns zur Hoffnung (Nothing gives us reason to hope). In it he refers to the flagrant break with rules-based order that occurred in world politics on 24 February 2022:
On 24 February the unthinkable happened. The armed forces of the Russian Federation, known in the West as Russia, invaded its neighbor, the sovereign state of Ukraine. They attacked a country whose independence they had repeatedly guaranteed in bilateral agreements. The Russians have now been at war for several weeks. They are waging a war that they cannot even call a war: this is pitiful. They are waging a war under pretexts that convince nobody, not even themselves: this is absurd. They are waging it in a botched manner and with high losses on their side: this is self-destructive. They are waging it, miserable military strategists that they are, against a defenseless civilian population: this is a war crime.6
In this war, Grünbein recognizes the programmatic objectives of Russia under Putin and lays bare their authoritarian, expansive and inhuman mechanisms. This essay expresses not only the mendacity of Russia’s reasons for going to war, but also demonstrates the author’s attitude towards Russia’s war of aggression – an attitude that is unambiguous and that is based on international law.. He traces the development of a “Russo-fascism”7 and perceives as a decisive step Putin’s “turning point in the politics of history, that came with the end of the clarifications regarding the crimes of Stalinism and the Stalinist system of concentration and work camps”.8 His analysis is based on a narrow focus on history and the present day. In addition to 24 February 2022, he introduces another date from world politics to the debate: the date of the signature of the Hitler Stalin Pact, 23 August 1939.
This date, which has a firm place in the memory of East (Central) European countries such as Poland or Estonia, is also the title and subject of a poem that the poet included in his anthology Äquidistanz, which appeared in July 2022. In this poem, turning points in history and in the present day are connected to each other in various ways:
This date, which has a firm place in the memory of East (Central) European countries such as Poland or Estonia, is also the title and subject of a poem that the poet included in his anthology Äquidistanz, which appeared in July 2022. In this poem, turning points in history and in the present day are connected to each other in various ways:
[…]
Fly back to the beginning, my soul, back
to the years of formation, years of illusion 10
for millions, back to the eerie threshold,
where the dragons almost kissed, like the
towering pavilions at the Paris World Fair,
and the Polyp Cosmocrator, harbinger of destruction,
fell as a shadow over the masses. 15
Do your rounds through peacetime Europe
before the massacres began, the purges
in the paranoia-capital of the new workers’ paradise,
the labor camps, construction sites, steel works
in the second as the world trembled, when anything was possible 20
between Fascism and Communism,
[…]
It was an unremarkable day, when a few 25
squat men, inferior characters, tyrants,
exchanged whole peoples between them,
when the blind leading the blind of the century
decided to hold their peoples as hostages,
to play with borders, with landscapes. 30
The hour of the cartographers in their offices
The hour of the massing of files (Soviet state security,
Gestapo),
registration of all people in their own state
as in all occupied zones
with identification numbers, photos, fingerprints 35
for continued use (work or death).
[...]9
Numerous sections can be read not only as descriptions of the effects of the Hitler Stalin Pact at the time but also as expressions of the horrors of the present: "Do your rounds through peacetime Europe before the massacres began, the purges" (lines 16-17); "in the second as the world trembled" (line 20);“imagine the ‘world of yesterday’ still whole and undestroyed” (line 24); “ when the blind leading the blind of the century // decided to hold their peoples as hostages, // to play with borders, with landscapes” (lines 27-30)
Both his essay Nichts berechtigt uns zur Hoffnung and the poem allude to the suicide of Walter Benjamin in the summer of 1940, and having established the parallels between 1940 and 2022, end with a haunting warning.
For Grünbein, who is both a historical and a political poet, engaging in contemporary politics and writing poetry are not mutually exclusive but mutually dependent. His texts are steeped in history and at the same time, based on the present. Geistesgegenwart (“Presence of Mind”), the title of the essay he wrote in Spring 2023, is how he describes the moment of lyrical inspiration as well as the alert participation in current events10. The Hitler Stalin Pact was seen as a turning point in Poland, Ukraine and the Baltic but not in post-war Germany. If he presents this Pact, in his poem of the same name, as a historical rupture, he is also calling for a change in our perception of the narrative that has become established in the West. Grünbein links the current Russian aggression to the aggression with which Hitler and Stalin divided up Eastern Europe between themselves. On this, his position is quite different to that of Juli Zeh, Simon Urban and Alexander Kluge, who also use the Second World War as a historical reference point but who, in their pacifism, remain blind to the experience of the “Bloodlands” between Moscow and Berlin. As Jana Mende has pointed out, in this manner these authors have managed to shift the discourse away from the suffering of the victims of the war to the fear of war and the memories of war on the part of the Germans.
Both his essay Nichts berechtigt uns zur Hoffnung and the poem allude to the suicide of Walter Benjamin in the summer of 1940, and having established the parallels between 1940 and 2022, end with a haunting warning.
For Grünbein, who is both a historical and a political poet, engaging in contemporary politics and writing poetry are not mutually exclusive but mutually dependent. His texts are steeped in history and at the same time, based on the present. Geistesgegenwart (“Presence of Mind”), the title of the essay he wrote in Spring 2023, is how he describes the moment of lyrical inspiration as well as the alert participation in current events10. The Hitler Stalin Pact was seen as a turning point in Poland, Ukraine and the Baltic but not in post-war Germany. If he presents this Pact, in his poem of the same name, as a historical rupture, he is also calling for a change in our perception of the narrative that has become established in the West. Grünbein links the current Russian aggression to the aggression with which Hitler and Stalin divided up Eastern Europe between themselves. On this, his position is quite different to that of Juli Zeh, Simon Urban and Alexander Kluge, who also use the Second World War as a historical reference point but who, in their pacifism, remain blind to the experience of the “Bloodlands” between Moscow and Berlin. As Jana Mende has pointed out, in this manner these authors have managed to shift the discourse away from the suffering of the victims of the war to the fear of war and the memories of war on the part of the Germans.
Personal and social upheaval: Kerstin Preiwuss
Kerstin Preiwuss
Kerstin Preiwuss
Kerstin Preiwuss, who was born in Lübz, a small town in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in 1980, has published numerous volumes of poetry and two novels. Mention should be made of her poetry anthologies Gespür für Licht (2016) and Taupunkt (2020) as well as her novels Restwärme (2014) and Onkalo (2017). She lectures at the Literaturinstitut in Leipzig and holds the Chair of Literary Aesthetics there.
has for several years been taking part in meetings between German and Ukrainian authors under the title Brücke aus Papier (Paper Bridge).11 She is one of the authors who have kept in closer contact with their Ukrainian colleagues. The war against Ukraine is a topic of her book Heute ist mitten in der Nacht (Today is the Middle of the Night), published in 2023. The structure of the essay-style text makes it difficult to assign any clearly defined genre. Alongside narrative and descriptive passages there are reflections as well as poems (not by the author) as well as fictional letters. The first-person form predominates but is often interspersed with a “we” or a “one”, and in the letters there is a tension between something that is addressed to the recipient personally and the publication of a universally accessible text. This tension is reflected in the subject matter of the work. Heute ist mitten in der Nacht is essentially biographical; the opening describes two personal “catastrophes”12: a “near accident” (see ibid., p. 6) in road traffic and an attempted sexual assault that the narrator only just manages to escape.
The author is aware of the issues surrounding the display of such private experiences and fears. However, according to her, socio-political upheavals have changed the relationship between the personal and the public, between one’s own and a more general catastrophe, as is made clear in the section on the Covid pandemic:
The author is aware of the issues surrounding the display of such private experiences and fears. However, according to her, socio-political upheavals have changed the relationship between the personal and the public, between one’s own and a more general catastrophe, as is made clear in the section on the Covid pandemic:
In the moment when personal misfortune and general catastrophe coincide, misfortune paradoxically ceases to be private and becomes communicable, since everyone suffers in the catastrophe.13
With this, Preiwuss draws an arc linking the private catastrophes at the start of the text to experiences that touch the whole of society, in which the distinction between private and public collapses. This leads in the final third of the text to the escalation of the Russian war against Ukraine. On the one hand, it follows the sequence of crises and catastrophes whose impact she has already described: “Catastrophes do not pass, they simply displace each other. After illness comes war.”14 On the other hand, differences are highlighted and there is a discernible sense of searching – not least for language. While the first two parts, about the personal catastrophes and the catastrophe that affected everyone, are linked together, the third is differentiated since here the language itself – not the recounting of experiences – is affected. “Since then, words have taken on a different meaning.”15 The expressions “stillness” and “waiting” are given as examples. With respect to the warlike aggression that is portrayed by the media, these words describe something other than that which we are used to. This linguistic re-coding becomes an indicator of how the boundaries of meaning and understanding have become disturbed or have faltered entirely:
Your references become dissolved in the tones of the sirens, the delicate systems within which you are used to thinking and simplify themselves brutally. The security of your established thought patterns dissolves with every bomb blast.16
The war challenges the author in another way, does not enable speech like illness does, but shakes her world and her self-image as poet, as author, as critical contemporary.17 This also relates to the issue of why the escalation of the war was not recognized earlier on in Germany:
Your early warning system did not work, although the threshold value was exceeded, piled up at the border, and all the while one could see how the assault took its course […] [W]hile you waited for a sign that was supposed to predict something for you, so that you could orientate yourself, in this summer between two waves, you overlooked the threatening scenery that was being built up piece by piece. The war was already here, but it did not cross the threshold.18
Preiwuss’ book ultimately ends with the conclusion that what it set out to do is impossible. For a brief period, the pandemic created a situation where one’s own experience and one’s own fears could be shared, but this was the exception for a public that had withdrawn into the private. Afterwards the tension between the exterior and the interior world returned; the war changed the conditions and the language again. The title Heute ist mitten in der Nacht can be read as the diagnosis of a somber present that is haunted by catastrophes like Covid and war. Despite this rather downbeat conclusion, in the final paragraph the author makes a plea for writing – writing that responds to the times instead of prophesying. With its work on language, literature can at best prepare future insights: “We have planted pines for future books.”19
Advocacy from a distance: Marcel Beyer
Marcel Beyer
Marcel Beyer
The work of Marcel Beyer, born in Tailfingen, Baden-Württemberg, in 1965, has attracted the Georg Büchner Prize (2016) as well as other accolades. His novels, stories, poems and essays centre around the relationship between mediality and reality. He often deals with contemporary and historical perpetrators, for example in his novel Flughunde (1995) and in his short-story collection Putins Briefkasten (2012).
, like Kerstin Preiwuss, has been a member of the German-Ukrainian writers’ group Brücke aus Papier for several years. He has spoken out against the Russian war of aggression in public, for example in his address at the Dresden event organised by the Deutschen Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung (the German Academy for Language and Literature) entitled “What we think, what we feel, what we hope for: Positions on the war in Ukraine” (“Was wir denken, was wir fühlen, was wir hoffen. Positionen zum Krieg in der Ukraine”, 27.05.2022).20 In the event organised by the Bundesinstitut für Kultur und Geschichte des östlichen Europa (Federal Institute for the Culture and History of Eastern Europe, BKGE) in the Literaturhaus Berlin, “Literature in times of crisis: Voices from Eastern Europe” (“Literatur in Krisenzeiten. Stimmen aus dem östlichen Europa”, 27.11.2023) he spoke with Tanja Maljartschuk (Ukraine) and Maarja Kangro (Estonia) about what the return of war to Europe meant for contemporary literature.21
In his literature he responded to the war as early as Spring 2022, directly after the escalation: at this time, he had just taken on the first poetry lectureship for factual storytelling in Wuppertal. As a result of events in Ukraine, he changed the project and set it entirely in the context of the media perception of the Russian war of aggression.22
In the time that today lies in the infinitely distant past, in that epoch that is two or three or four or five or six or eight or more weeks back, an epoch that is now closed off for all time, when one could still attempt to seek refuge at least mentally from an all-powerful, inescapable horror.23
According to Beyer, 24 February 2022 irritates our perception of time – this irritation is expressed through ambiguity of form – and calls our habitual parameters into question. The conditions for writing have changed too. The author reflects on the process of description or narration again and again and explains where the realm of imagination begins. How can we speak about this war? How should we deal with the obscenity and bestiality that it expresses? His participation is transmitted through the media, thanks to the fact that “Russia is carrying out its war of annihilation against Ukraine in front of everyone, before the eyes of the world.”24 His lectures in Wuppertal focus on this “obscene” exhibition25 and at the same time are directed against it and against the information war. War photographs are deliberately selected to provide a visual description to allow a picture to form in your mind’s eye, which conceals nothing and distorts nothing.26 In order to achieve this, he narrows the choice of pictures, which only ever show one section of reality, by focusing on animals in the war, thus altering the conventions of perception. He turns his attention to pets, dogs and cats who have been left behind or who are on the run with people. He also considers livestock, for example, burnt horses, and wild animals such as crows, pigeons, etc. The focus of his search is directed towards animals who are exposed to the noise of the war, the bombs and the destruction, like the “labrador, frozen in terror […] on a street in the middle of Irpin”.27
In this manner Beyer conceives of non-human life-forms “as protectors of humanity” in times when humanity is called into question.28 On the one hand he exposes our media mechanisms, that is, the selection of pictures and their presentation as well as our patterns of perception. On the other, Beyer frees us, through his focus on animals in war and the shift in perspective that this creates, from this blunting of experience and enhanced representation of the horrors of war. This use of displacement challenges our habits of perception and at the same time extends the space in which we experience. Moreover, the expansion continues by transcending the boundaries between the senses, since Beyer extends our view of the silent photographs to include the obvious acoustics of our imagination. Presumably the dog on the street in Irpin is having its ears covered by its owner, because the explosions sound much louder for the dog; as soon as we understand what is being depicted, the events in the silent picture (which does not show any horror, only a man concerned about his dog) can be experienced through the ears of the dog. Beyond the obscenity of war that is transmitted through the media, the horror of war becomes visibly audible here.
In this way, the author’s dismay at the inhumanity of war is illustrated through gestures of humanity addressed not to humans but to animals. The explosions heard by the dog are set in stark contrast to the concern of the dog’s owner. The inclusion of these passages in an otherwise factual text demonstrates the strong emotional involvement of an author who is “on the side of Ukraine”.29
In this manner Beyer conceives of non-human life-forms “as protectors of humanity” in times when humanity is called into question.28 On the one hand he exposes our media mechanisms, that is, the selection of pictures and their presentation as well as our patterns of perception. On the other, Beyer frees us, through his focus on animals in war and the shift in perspective that this creates, from this blunting of experience and enhanced representation of the horrors of war. This use of displacement challenges our habits of perception and at the same time extends the space in which we experience. Moreover, the expansion continues by transcending the boundaries between the senses, since Beyer extends our view of the silent photographs to include the obvious acoustics of our imagination. Presumably the dog on the street in Irpin is having its ears covered by its owner, because the explosions sound much louder for the dog; as soon as we understand what is being depicted, the events in the silent picture (which does not show any horror, only a man concerned about his dog) can be experienced through the ears of the dog. Beyond the obscenity of war that is transmitted through the media, the horror of war becomes visibly audible here.
In this way, the author’s dismay at the inhumanity of war is illustrated through gestures of humanity addressed not to humans but to animals. The explosions heard by the dog are set in stark contrast to the concern of the dog’s owner. The inclusion of these passages in an otherwise factual text demonstrates the strong emotional involvement of an author who is “on the side of Ukraine”.29
Ruptures and new beginnings
The texts by Durs Grünbein, Kerstin Preiwuss und Marcel Beyers can be seen as poetic or poetological attempts to find an appropriate response following 24 February 2002. Despite their different goals and strategies, their literary responses have some features in common: all three authors started work on their books before 24 February 2022 but modified them as a result of the attack. Grünbein inserted poems with explicit historical, philosophical and political references into his poetry anthology. Its central figure is the incursion of the past into the present. Preiwuss includes the catastrophe of the escalating war in her book about crises and catastrophes and in the tension between personal and social or political experience. She reflects on the fact that a seamless sequence is impossible – not least because language is not unaffected by war. War displaces the meaning of words and changes our patterns of thinking. Beyer changes the emphasis of his lectures on factual narration and devotes them entirely to media coverage of the war. By shifting the focus to animals or the animal gaze, he develops a poetics of war reporting beyond the obscenity of war.
The works of Grünbein, Preiwuss and Beyer display a pronounced awareness of the turning point marked by 24 February 2022. The authors struggle to find appropriate literary means to capture and convey the scope of the events. They share the sense that the war upsets social or personal patterns of thought and perception and are all searching for forms of language to express this confusion and shock.
The works of Grünbein, Preiwuss and Beyer display a pronounced awareness of the turning point marked by 24 February 2022. The authors struggle to find appropriate literary means to capture and convey the scope of the events. They share the sense that the war upsets social or personal patterns of thought and perception and are all searching for forms of language to express this confusion and shock.
This article relates to the conference, “30 Jahre – aktuelle Grenz(über)fälle, Grenzbegehungen, Grenzgänge ab 2000” (“30 years – contemporary border raids, perambulations and border crossings”), which took place from 18 to 20 September 2023 at the University of Lódz, and is a modified version of my essay, “Ausdrucksformen für Krisenbewusstsein. Durs Grünbeins, Kerstin Preiwuß’ und Marcel Beyers Reaktionen auf Russlands Krieg gegen die Ukraine” (“Forms of expression for a sense of crisis. Reactions to Russia’s war against Ukraine by Durs Grünbein, Kerstin Preiwuß and Marcel Beyer”), which will soon appear in the conference proceedings “Grenz(über)fälle” (edited by Gudrun Heidemann and Maja Debska)
English translation: Gwen Clayton
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Authors
Footnotes
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2.
See the open letter to Chancellor Scholz. In: Emma (29.04.2022). Available at: https://www.emma.de/artikel/offener-brief-bundeskanzler-scholz-339463 (15.09.2024) and as a counter-reaction, the open letter from DIE ZEIT 19 (2022). Available at: https://www.zeit.de/2022/19/waffenlieferung-ukraine-offener-brief-olaf-scholz (15.09.2023).
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See the open call by intellectuals dated 16.11.2022 for support for Ukraine during wartime in winter, which Grünbein signed: https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/aufruf-von-70-intellektuellen-helfen-wir-der-ukraine-diesen-kriegswinter-zu-ueberstehen-a-bb30f0bd-4455-452f-8488-c6f09bcc879e (15.10.2024). Out of the various interviews with the author, the conversation conducted by Tobias Rüther on 10.07.2022 for the FAZ is worth mentioning: https://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/durs-gruenbein-ueber-putin-tellkamp-und-aequidistanz-18154932.html (13.11.2024).
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“Am 24. Februar geschah das Undenkbare: Die Streitkräfte der Russländischen Föderation, im Westen kurz Russland genannt, marschieren in ein souveränes Nachbarland ein, die Ukraine. Sie überfallen ein Land, dessen Unabhängigkeit auch Russland in bilateralen Verträgen mehrfach verbürgt hat. Seit mehreren Wochen führen die Russen nun Krieg. Sie führen einen Krieg, den sie nicht einmal Krieg nennen können, das ist erbärmlich. Sie führen ihn unter Vorwänden, die ihnen niemand abkauft, nicht einmal sie selbst, das ist absurd. Sie führen ihn stümperhaft und unter hohen eigenen Verlusten, das ist selbstzerstörerisch. Sie führen ihn, miserable Militärstrategen, vor allem gegen die schutzlose Zivilbevölkerung, und das ist ein Kriegsverbrechen.” Grünbein, Nichts berechtigt uns zur Hoffnung. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung. 2./3.04.2022. Any further references to this work are given in the main body of the text.
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“Russofaschismus”, Grünbein, Durs: Nichts berechtigt uns zur Hoffnung. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung. 2./3.04.2022. https://www.sueddeutsche.de/projekte/artikel/kultur/putins-krieg-gastbeitrag-von-durs-gruenbein-e641071/?reduced=true (18.09.2023).. On the search for an appropriate description see Karl Schlögel’s essay Wie von einem Blitzstrahl erhellt: “We do not even know how one should describe today’s Russia under Putin: autocracy, despotism, mafia state, kleptocracy, imperial or Russian fascism, fascism, […]. But we do not have to wait for the appropriate expression to be established. The time to decide is now: to stop Putin’s Russo-fascist regime and do everything necessary for the defence of Ukraine.” German original: “Wir wissen nicht einmal, wie man das heutige Russland unter Putin bezeichnen soll: Autokratie, Despotie, Mafia-Staat, Kleptokratie, Imperial- oder Russo-Faschismus, Raschismus […]. Aber wir brauchen nicht darauf zu warten, bis sich der angemessene Begriff eingestellt haben wird. Die Zeit der Entscheidung ist jetzt. Das russofaschistische Regime Putins aufzuhalten, alles zu tun, was für die Verteidigung der Ukraine nötig ist.”, Schlögel, Karl: Wie von einem Blitzstrahl erhellt. In: Mishchenko, Kateryna; Raabe, Katharina (Hrsg.): Aus dem Nebel des Krieges. Die Gegenwart der Ukraine. Berlin 2023, p. 250.
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Putins “Wende in der Geschichtspolitik, das Ende der Aufklärung über die Verbrechen des Stalinismus und des Stalin’schen Systems der Konzentrations- und Arbeitslager”, Grünbein, Durs: Nichts berechtigt uns zur Hoffnung. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung. 2./3.04.2022. https://www.sueddeutsche.de/projekte/artikel/kultur/putins-krieg-gastbeitrag-von-durs-gruenbein-e641071/?reduced=true (18.09.2023).
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The meetings have taken place alternately in Ukraine and Germany since the Euromaidan demonstrations and have led to a lively dialogue around literature and culture that goes beyond linguistic borders; German authors such as Kerstin Preiwuss, Marcel Beyer, Ulrike Almut Sandig, Michael Zeller and Thomas Lang have been involved. Link: https://paperbridge.de/.
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A similar diagnosis was reached by the poet Anja Utler, who published a “mourning chorus” of 209 short, haiku-like poems as a reaction against the escalation of the war against Ukraine. The trigger was the experience of grief that war causes. As the accompanying essay explains, this is about mourning one's own poetic concept and mental framework of understanding: “In the face of Russia's large-scale attack on Ukraine, my compositional poise collapsed. I fell into a grieving process and could only write my way through it. [...] it was the opposite of concept and control.” German original: “Angesichts von Russlands großflächigem Angriff auf die Ukraine kollabierte meine kompositorische Position. Ich fiel in meinen Trauerprozess und konnte mich nur noch an ihm entlangschreiben. […] Ich war ins Gegenteil von Konzept und Kontrolle geraten.”, Utler, Anja: Es beginnt. Trauerrefrain. Wien 2023, p. 245.
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“Dein Frühwarnsystem hat nicht funktioniert, obwohl der Schwellenwert überhandnahm, sich an der Grenze anstaute und man doch dabei zuschauen konnte, wie der Angriff seinen Lauf nahm. […] [W]ährend du auf Zeichen gewartet hast, die dir etwas vorhersagen sollten, damit du dich orientieren konntest, in diesem Sommer zwischen zwei Wellen, übersahst du die Drohkulisse, die sich Zeichen für Zeichen aufbaute. Der Krieg war schon da, aber er drang nicht über die Schwelle.”, Preiwuss, Kerstin: Heute ist mitten in der Nacht. Berlin-Munich 2023, p. 150 et seq.
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“In jener heute unendlich weit zurückliegenden Zeit, in jener mittlerweile zwei oder drei oder vier oder fünf oder sechs oder acht oder mehr Wochen zurückliegenden, ein für alle Mal abgeschlossenen Epoche, als man noch versuchen konnte, sich angesichts eines allgegenwärtigen, unentrinnbaren Grauens wenigstens geistig in Sicherheit zu bringen”, Beyer, Marcel: Die tonlosen Stimmen beim Anblick der Toten auf den Straßen von Butscha. Wuppertaler Poetikdozentur für faktuales Erzählen 2022. Göttingen 2023, p. 9.
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