Cherrypicker | Literature
Failing in love

Michel Decar's love poem tells the story of an on-off relationship full of misunderstandings and metamorphoses. A fast-paced ride in search of the language of love.

By Benedikt Arnold

First he is a bullet, then a snowflake. A little later he is a CEO and shortly afterwards a Chihuahua. The ego in Michel Decar's love poem is multifaceted. The title of his book already hints at this. Ich kam in Gestalt eines Elefanten (I came in the shape of an elephant).

Rapid on-off relationship

It tells the story of a pair of lovers who search for each other and never find each other, who talk to each other and don't understand each other. Here, an "I" addresses a "you" and tells of a love that resembles an on-off relationship. In the process, the two lovers repeatedly transform into new characters in the fervour of their emotions. The transformations resemble attempts to get closer to each other and to be seen for who they are. But no matter how they present themselves, no constellation seems to fit. In their world of love, they are "sometimes like this, sometimes like that", every moment seems fragile and fleeting. "I lay there, next to you/ and looked at you/ Your teeth, your eyes/ And the very next moment/ they were no longer there// Yet everything is always there/ Everything is there,/ you said,/ and at the same time,/ you said,/ it's not there". ("Ich lag da, neben dir/ und sah dich an/ Deine Zähne, deine Augen/ Und schon im nächsten Augenblick/ waren sie nicht mehr da// Dabei ist immer alles da/ Alles ist da,/ sagtest du,/ und gleichzeitig,/ sagtest du,/ ist es nicht da".) The love poem plays with fiction and the simultaneity of different worlds. The world, unstable and fragile like the ego in the text, is remodelled with the help of language. The ego imagines new images and thus penetrates to the core of the poetry in its reverie: "I said,/ everything you can imagine,/ exists, doesn't it?“ ("Ich sagte,/ alles was man sich vorstellen kann,/ existiert doch, oder nicht?“)

Moving Comedy

Michel Decar fills the intellectual space in his text with comic scenes in places, which also make the book a cheerful read. But it is part of the tragedy of the story that lively pirouettes and the power of poetry cannot avert the inevitable tragedy of the two lovers. 

Jealousy, resignation and mistrust are inscribed in their hearts. Not least because they don't share a language. "I said,/ we speak the same language/ but every word/ means something different to you/ every word means what it doesn't mean to me." ("Ich sagte,/ wir sprechen dieselbe Sprache/ doch jedes Wort/ bedeutet bei dir etwas anderes/ Jedes Wort bedeutet das,/ was es bei mir nicht bedeutet.")

The Language of Misunderstanding

It is in the nature of things that they misunderstand each other. Again and again, he tries to find a new language to communicate himself and his love, to be understood. But no form or language seems suitable in the end. The question rightly seems to stand between all the transformations: Why is it not enough that we love each other?

Eventually they separate, the baseball and the chestnut, the February evening and the VW Sharan—and yet they can't let go of each other, see each other again and once again see things very differently: