Fitzgerald Kusz, the poet of the Franks, presented a lyrical late masterpiece: “Sunnablumma”. A conversation about the birth of the poet out of angry speech, the primacy of poetry that destroys nature and Franconian melancholy.
SZ: Mr. Kusz, is it actually true that you became the poet of the Franks out of a fit of anger?
Fitzgerald Kusz: That’s right, yes. There is evidence that I wrote my first dialect poem in 1970. I was transferred by a friend I was madly in love with and reacted emotionally to it. When it comes to emotions, of course, I’m a Franconian. So my first poem began: “suä ruudzbridschn suä elendichä.”
Not to practicesit in the newspaper.
No Please not. A verbal abuse. And that because the Kusz has been transferred.
You are even said to have spoken Franconian with a cat out of longing.
I was in a humanistic grammar school and had only had English since I was tenth. As an English studies student, I had a disadvantage, so I went to the island as an assistant teacher. Tilly was the name of my landlady’s cat. Out of sheer desperation – I had to speak High German with the students – I chatted with Tilly Fränkisch. You probably also insulted Franconian.
Can “Sunnablumma” be classified as a late master’s work?
Sure, from a literary point of view this is an old work. My God, I’m 76. There’s a lot of heart and soul in there.
One poem is called “silent boy” https://www.sueddeutsche.de/bayern/. “In miä drin is a bou deä gibd ka rouh”, it begins.
You have to keep your childhood self, otherwise you would immediately become a bureaucrat. My daughter says I am childish.
A compliment! When your eponymous drama “Schweig Bub” was staged for the 700th time in Nuremberg, the theater added up: 46.2 hectoliters of soup were spooned during the play, a ton of dumplings munched. These are the dramatic framework data.
The sunflower as a symbol for human existence – whereby: In Bamberg it is called “Sunnablumma”, in Nuremberg “Sunnäblummä”. These are the subtleties of the regional dialect that Kusz has mastered.
(Photo: Sebastian Gabriel)
There are two heroes in the play. The language. And the food. One conditionally affects the other. One of them once put it: The actors in “Schweig Bub” are all prisoners of their language. You have to hide the depth on the surface, says Hofmannsthal.
The piece you will be able to call a turning point in your professional career.
Sure, that was the basis. That has been translated into 13 dialects, I couldn’t complain. But it was both a blessing and a curse. A blessing, because I was able to quit my job as a college teacher. Curse, because of course you were always measured against this first work.
You once spoke of Nuremberg’s trinity of Protestantism, the club and social democracy. In the poem “oh heart” it now says at the end: “iich drooch di affm rechdn fleck: du schlächsd left.”
I was even a member of the SDS in 1968. And that’s still true, justice is still an important issue for me.
But another one is gradually becoming more important, it seems. “Sunnablumma” begins with Franconian lyrics that destroy nature.
Home on the verse, you could say. The concept of home is upheld in Bavaria and invoked a lot, at the same time nowhere is so much ground sealed as here. Concrete replaces home, nature is lost. Hence the elegiac tone that wrestles with disappearing.
Her poem “Eichen” is a classic natural lyric, trained by Hölderlin, as an appeal: “stay bidde sulang wäis gäihd schdäih!”
Recently I read a lot about Holderlin. The oak trees in front of our house must have been planted at the time when the Nazis started building their congress hall. Their architects lived in the row of houses where our house is.
Fitzgerald Kusz, 76, was actually called Rüdiger by first name. Because he looked so much like the then US President John F. Kennedy, Fitzgerald seemed to all to be the more appropriate name for an aspiring writer.
(Photo: Jonas Kusz)
“fiä däi, wou eich eibflanzd hamm woäd you” – so the oaks – “the ‘arier’ undä die baim”, you write. Apparently there is no Franconian word for “Aryans”?
For God’s sake, no. Linguistically this is called interference. It’s like the old radios: You are listening to a station – and suddenly the thing knocks you in on another program. The dialect is not that pure, you always get something different. My grandmother still had these French words in her language: Boddschamber, for example.
Pardon?
Pot de Chambre, the chamber pot.
Ah! “semmä ned alle sunnäblummä?” is the name of your verse, the volume is called “Sunnablumma”. Why this difference?
You have to ask the publisher that. Phonetically, my language always has the so-called Schwa sound at the end. I just say “Sunnäblummä”. But of course I know, in Bamberg it’s called “Sunnablumma”. The title is a compromise, so to speak.
Her lyrics have always had a permanent elegiac tone. Why is the Franconian so melancholy?
I can only describe it as a phenomenon. In terms of music history, the blues is at home in Franconia. And what is blues but melancholy? Dürer also worked on it. And Jean Paul, our greatest, says: Humor is suffering that has been overcome. This is Franconia.