EN
This essay analyses and reflects upon the numerous intra- and intertextual references in Oswald Egger’s long poem “Herde der Rede” (1999). The recourse to prior literary models in terms of surprising reversals of form and content, self-quotations as well as reversals of his own figures of speech are counted among Egger’s distinctive poetic strategies. Alert − like a widely open ear – to voices from different religious and poetical traditions, the text perceives, integrates and plays with different poetic registers and language worlds (such as the Song of Solomon, the ancient Corpus Hermeticum, Hesiod, Vergil, Hölderlin, Rilke …). “Herde der Rede” is a highly dialogic and polyphonic text (in the sense used by M. M. Bakhtin). Ultimately, quotations, repetitions and reversals become strategies of a poetic discourse which uses literary and religious traditions as subtexts for a metapoetic speech.