Inversionen. Marie Luise Kaschnitz’ literarische und lyrische Interviews

Abstract

In her literary texts Marie Luise Kaschnitz comments and questions journalistic interviews as a literary genre and as a social practice. The poem Interview is rather a monologue or a soliloquy than a dialogue with the interviewer. This lyrical interview mixes the literary genre of the journalistic interview with others, namely the poem, the confession, and the example. The conventions which constitute the literary genres are performed and inverted at once. By this strategy of inversion, the poem does not only expose how the conventions are constitutive for literary genres, but also challenges the aim of an interview: The reader of a journalistic interview wants to learn more about the famous person, which is being interviewed, but the poem Interview refuses to communicate. However, a shared understanding of literary genre is required for this refusal.