„Enttäuscht buchstabiert man Ve-ne-dig, und es klingt wie ,Erledigt‘“. Kritische Annäherungen an Durs Grünbeins Venedig-Gedichte

Durs Grünbein, born in Dresden in 1962, is one of the very last writers who can be called «East German». After the fall of the Berlin Wall he started to travel around the world, thus enriching his poetic production with a remarkable variety of urban landscapes, in which he seeks to read the signs of (post-)modernity. Since his first visit to Venice back in 1998, Grünbein has been writing single poems as well as important cycles about the Italian city, from Veneziana (1999) to Venezianischer Dreisprung (2002) to Venezianische Sarkasmen (2007). This paper aims at offering a first overview on this production, which has mostly been un- explored by critics, and at inscribing Grünbein’s Venetian poems within the patterns of his poetics. Venice is presented through stereotyped elements and prototypical myths, as the many intertextual – mostly Goethean – references signal; it is an art city invaded (and gradually being destroyed) by tourists and pigeons, the capital of doubleness and ambiguity, a «heterotopia» where land merges into water and everything seems to be possible. But it is also a place the poet is able to con- struct a more personal and original image of, i.e. as he compares it to his hometown of Dresden or as he explores it to develop fascinating poetological reflections