Hugo Ball and the development of sound poetry.
Item
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Title
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Hugo Ball and the development of sound poetry.
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Identifier
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AAI9917625
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identifier
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9917625
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Creator
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Babilon, Susan.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Martin Anderle
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Date
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1999
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Literature, Germanic | Literature, Comparative
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Abstract
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On 23 June 1916 Hugo Ball announced his "invention" of sound poems. The announcement was made one year after he had received a copy of F. T. Marinetti's parole in liberta poetry which proposed a linguistic revolution. Following the receipt of this work on 9 July 1915, Ball's journal entries reveal a growing interest in linguistic regeneration. Both Ball and Marinetti displayed a keen dissatisfaction with conventional language which they saw as having become so laden with connotations from centuries of misuse that it had become devoid of meaning. Ball appeared to be heeding Marinetti's call for the development of a new language, freed of conventional grammatical restraints and thereby more capable of immediate and accurate expression.;While Marinetti's stylistic influence was unmistakable, Ball's theoretical development also bears the mark of his earlier associations with the painter-theorist Wassilly Kandinsky with whom he maintained contact from 1914 through 1917 when he spoke on Kandinsky as part of a lecture series in which artists and writers discussed their strongest influence.;Ball's artistic theory echoes Kandinsky's in its desire to make articulated thought and language more suited to the expression of the spiritual. Ball saw his mission as one of finding a manner of communicating one's inner, spiritual experiences to the outer, material world in the most immediate, i.e. unmediated, manner possible, thereby battling the innate problem of communicating experiences that defy verbal, conceptual forms.;Kandinsky most likely introduced Ball to the ideas of the two Russian zaum practitioners, Alexei Kruchenykh and Velimir Khlebnikov, whose prolific theory and poetry reflect both Ball's call for total abandonment of conventional linguistic restrictions as well as attempts at rediscovery of an adamic language enabling spiritual expression.;Ball's interest in bridging the inner, spiritual world with the outer, material remained fundamental to virtually all his enterprises and resulted in sound experiments quite distinct from those of his contemporaries.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
