Of course, the relation between the aesthetic and political may be
uneasy or uncomfortable. Yet, it is important to notice how there is no
great divide between the aesthetic, political and historical, and to
remember how both politics and history are also aestheticized. This is
nowhere more prevalent than within the political history of Nazi
Germany that troubles Walking a Line and is found particularly in the
poem ëHegel and the War Criminalsí (p.42). Paulinís move into the
aesthetic world of Paul Klee is haunted by a history of imperial
Germany and members of the Bauhaus group who were murdered by
the Nazis. This is a reminder of how fascism acknowledged that
representation is a powerful political tool and sought to censor certain
artists whose work challenged fascist politics. In this way, Paulinís
use of Klee bears testimony to the view that politics and art are
entwined, and that the artist is a social being. Although both Klee and
Paulin take a critical stance away from received ideologies to provide
different visions of reality, neither is cut off from the world.
An example of this is found at the very beginning of Walking a
Line in the poem entitled ëKlee/Clover.í ëNightwatch after night-
watch/ Paul Klee endured ìhorribly boring guard dutyîí as an Infantry
Reservist at the Recruitsí Depot in 1916.^74 Here, he ëvarnished wings/
and stencilled numbers/ next to gothic insigniaí on the airplanes of
German pilots during the First World War. The artist was made to
paint what was prescribed by the state,
and every morning
outside the Zeppelin hanger
there was a drill then a speech
tacked with junk formulas (p.1)In the midst of the ëFlying School 5 (Bavaria)í, Klee ëwrote home to
Lilyí, his wife, and protectively disregards any of the information
presented to readers in the first stanza. Instead, he writes mostly of the
ëspring weatherí and his garden that he tends on the airfield.
Klee takes a subversive role apart from the received ideologies of
war and remains distanced from his prescribed place in a uniform at
Landshut. The poem remembers how in the midst of war, Klee created
artwork from the canvas of crashed airplanes and made the airfield at
74 Cf. Klee, Diaries, ëLandshut 1916í, p.327.