Lucebert over Arp

Abstract

On three occasions in his literary career the poet and painter Lucebert (1924-1994) has engaged in writing poetry on the sculptor, painter and poet Hans Arp (1886-1966). One particular poem, ‘arp’, dates from 1950 and was designed to be a part of a series of poems, ‘de getekende naam’, on contemporary artists. The authorship of this poem has been questioned in the 1980s as a result of a publication on the poetry of Arp. This article demonstrates that the translation of the poem of Lucebert into German by Ludwig Kunz, published in the catalog of an art exhibition in Cologne in 1960, has been mistaken for a poem of Arp. The mistaken identity of the authors, this contribution proposes, is more than the result of an editorial mishap: the confusion points to a deep-seated kinship between the authors. By comparing Lucebert’s and Arp’s poems, as well as the extant scholarship on the work of the two authors, it is argued that Lucebert’s close affinity with Arp offers valuable insights into the Dutch poet’s own work and poetics.