ABSTRACT
Having been forced to end history and philosophy studies prematurely, Kirsch worked in various jobs before joining the Johannes R.Becher Institute of Literature in Leipzig, the only university school of creative writing in Germany, in 1963. Married from 1960 to 1966 to Sarah Kirsch, his first publications were collaborations with her (the poems Gespräch mit dem Saurier (1965), the reportages Berlin-Sonnenseite (1964) and the radio plays in Die betrunkene Sonne-Der Stärkste (1963)). His poems, which have appeared in Ausflug machen (1980) and the West German selection from his work in several genres Auszog das Fürchten zu lernen (1978), convey usually in strict conventional forms a critical view of aspects of GDR reality, especially the inflexibility and complacency of the older generation. His play Heinrich Schlaghands Höllenfahrt, published in 1973 and again in the above selection but unperformed, is a variation of the Faust legend which, set in a housing construction project in the GDR, opposes the individual aspirations of its leader to the inefficiency of the system and the control exercised over private life by the party, thus representing a more radical version of problems treated in Hacks’s Moritz Tassow, Lange’s Marski and Volker Braun’s Die Kipper. Kirsch has also translated the major Russian poets of the interwar years, produced a series of portraits of eminent GDR scientists and academics, Kopien nach Originalen (1974), and written stories which convey their point through the adaptation of fairy-tale motifs and other forms of fantasy (‘Erste Niederschrift’, ‘Die Rettung des Saragossameeres’ in the collection Sauna oder Die fernherwirkende Trübung (1985)). Anna Katarina oder Die Nacht am Morbusch (1991) is sub-titled ‘a Saxon ballad of terror’.
