Michael Backes: Experimentelle Semiotik in Literaturavantgarden: über die Wiener Gruppe mit Bezug auf die Konkrete Poesie (2001) [German]

“Mit einem beispiellosen theoretischen und praktischen Aufwand versuchte die Wiener Gruppe, etablierte Werte und realitätskonstitutive Symbolordnungen in ihren Grundfesten zu erschüttern. Die Mittel reichten von seriellen Formzerstörungen über die Dezentrierung “diskursiver Ordnungen” (Derrida, Foucault) bis hin zur aktionistischen Fiktionalisierung von Situationsdefinitionen. In einiger Hinsicht kann man also von einem Poststrukturalismus avant la lettre sprechen. Mit ihm hebt sich die Wiener Gruppe nicht nur von tradierten Literaturmodellen, sondern auch von jener Ästhetik der Selbstidentität ab, die Autoren wie Gomringer oder S.J. Schmidt vertreten. Am Leitfaden von exemplarischen Mikroanalysen entwickelt Backes ein Begriffsinstrumentarium, mit dem sich die experimentelle Semiotik der Wiener Gruppe im Verhältnis zur Konkreten Poesie adäquat erschließen und historisch situieren läßt.”

Publisher Wilhelm Fink, Munich, 2001
Das Problempotential der Nachkriegsavantgarden series, 1
ISBN 3770534506, 9783770534500
345 pages

Publisher
WorldCat

JPGs, PDF

Blaise Cendrars, Sonia Delaunay-Terk: La Prose du Transsibérien et de la petite Jehanne de France (1913) [FR, EN]

“La Prose du Transsibérien et de la petite Jehanne de France [Prose of the Trans-Siberian and of Little Jehanne of France] is a collaborative artists’ book by Blaise Cendrars and Sonia Delaunay-Terk. It features a poem by Cendrars about a journey through Russia on the Trans-Siberian Express in 1905, during the first Russian Revolution, interlaced with an almost-abstract pochoir print by Delaunay-Terk. The work, published in 1913, is considered a milestone in the evolution of artist’s books as well as modernist poetry and abstract art.” (Wikipedia)

Interview with Cedrars (Michel Manoll, trans. William Brandon, 1950/1966, EN)

Publisher Éditions des Hommes Nouveaux, 1913
200 x 36 cm; folded to 10 x 18 cm
via Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, MT Marcelo Gutman

View online, Portions in higher resolution (at Beinecke)
Version at British Library
PDF (2 MB)
JPG (2 MB)
MP3 (read by Vicky Messica, c1985, 54 MB, via continuo)

English translations
by Donald Wellman
by Ekaterina Likhtik

Wassily Kandinsky: Klänge / Sounds (1913–) [German, English]

Kandinsky’s self-described “musical album,” Klänge (Sounds), consists of thirty-eight prose-poems he wrote between 1909 and 1911 and fifty-six woodcuts he began in 1907. In it, he emphasizes the physiological impact of the sonic quality of language, often repeating words until focus on meaning subsides and new focus on aural character of words emerges. These poems were instrumental in Kandinsky’s development of abstraction.

“Klänge is one of his three major publications that appeared shortly before World War I, alongside Über die Geistige in der Kunst (Concerning the Spiritual in Art) and the Blaue Reiter almanac, which he edited with one of the group’s cofounders, Franz Marc. Fearing poor sales, Munich-based Reinhard Piper only reluctantly published Klänge, and Kandinsky had to guarantee the production costs. More than two years after its release, Klänge had sold fewer than 120 copies. The planned Russian version never materialized. The publication was nevertheless influential on other avant-garde artists, and Futurists in Russia and Dadaists in Zürich recited and published some of the poems.” (Heather Hess, source)

Publisher R. Piper, Munich, [1913]
Printer of Plates in color: F. Bruckmann A.G., Munich
Printer of Plates in black: Poeschel & Trepte, Leipzig
Printer of Text: Poeschel & Trepte, Leipzig
Book designer: Kandinsky
Typography: Grotesque
Edition of 300; plus 45 hors commerce
59 unnumbered folios, 28.1 x 27.7 cm
via MOMA

English edition
Translated and with an Introduction by Elizabeth R. Napier
Publisher Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1981
ISBN 0300025106
136 pages

Commentary (Christopher Short, Tate Papers, 2006)
Wikipedia (EN)

Klänge (German, 50 MB), View online (Flash viewer at Moma.org), Different scan from Bibliotheque Kandinsky (25 MB, added on 2016-3-14)
Sounds (English, 14 MB)