The collection Die Wolkenpumpe contains a good number of poems
that have affinities with the automatic poems of surrealism; like the
latter, they were directly transcribed with no reflection or revision.
Dialect expressions, archaic sounds, fractured Latin, confusing onoma-
topoeias, and verbal spasms are particularly striking here.  But these
"cloud pumps" are not just automatic writings, they actually anticipate
my papiers déchirés, in which I gave free rein to "reality" and "chance." 
By tearing up a piece of paper or a drawing, one permits the entry of
the very essence of life and death.  As of 1917, the poems in Die Wol-
kenpumpe were expressing this concern.

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