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Abstract
Gottfried Benn was one of the few representative poets of the twentieth century, while never fitting squarely into any movement. Today his work raises important questions about how we understand Expressionism. Benn was one of the first to take the empirical sciences into his poetry. His ‘Morgue und andere Gedichte’ (1912) was a literary breakthrough that still inspires poets today. However, analogous to the general decline of Expressionism, Benn’s poetry pursued the struggle with modernity into a moral and aesthetic cul de sac that has much to say about the twentieth century and the possibilities of poetry within it.
Notes
1 See Moritz Schramm, ‘Gottfried Benn’, in Deutschsprachige Lyriker des 20. Jahrhunderts, ed. by Ursula Heukenkamp and Peter Geist (Berlin: Schmidt, 2006), pp. 108–26 (p.108). See also ‘Fünfzig Gedichte des 20. Jahrhunderts’, selected by Durs Grünbein, Thomas Kling, Barbara Köhler, Friederike Mayröcker and Peter Waterhouse, in Lyrik des 20. Jahrhunderts, ed. by Heinz Ludwig Arnold (Munich: text + kritik, 1999), pp. 5-62.
2 Michael Hamburger is an exception. See his Reason and Energy (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1957). References to Benn’s work will be to Gottfried Benn, Sämtliche Werke, Stuttgarter Ausgabe, ed. by Gerhard Schuster with Ilse Benn (vols. i–v) and by Holger Hof (vols. vi–vii/2) (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1986–2003). The phrase ‘Nihilismus und Musik’ is from Benn’s 1913 poem ‘Hier ist kein Trost’ (ii, 32).
3 Benn’s influence can arguably be seen in Michael Hofmann’s own poems; a notable essay (in Michael Hofmann, Behind the Lines: Pieces on Writing and Pictures (London: Faber, 2002), pp. 74–83) finds him ‘heart-breaking’, and Hofmann’s Faber Book of 20th-Century German Poems (London: Faber, 2005) gives Benn a generous selection, pp. 19–34.
4 Hugo Friedrich, Die Struktur der modernen Lyrik. Von Baudelaire bis zur Gegenwart (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1956), p. 11.
5 Thomas Kling, ‘Sprach-Pendelbewegung. Celans Galgen-Motiv’, in Paul Celan, ed. by Heinz Ludwig Arnold (Munich: text + kritik, 2002), pp. 25–37 (p. 25); see also Norbert Hummelt, ‘Mein Onkel Gottfried Benn’, in Lyrik des 20. Jahrhunderts, ed. by Arnold, pp. 125–37. For an overview see Hermann Korte, ‘Säulenheilige und Portalfiguren? Benn und Celan im Poetik-Dialog mit der jüngeren deutschsprachigen Lyrik seit den 1990er Jahren’, in ‘Schaltstelle’: Neue deutsche Lyrik im Dialog, ed. by Karen Leeder, German Monitor 69 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007), pp. 109–38.
6 Helmut Böttiger and Durs Grünbein, ‘Benn schmort in der Hölle: Ein Gespräch über dialogische und monologische Lyrik’, Text + Kritik, 153 (2002), 72–84 (p. 83). See also Durs Grünbein, ‘Palette für Mohn. Nachwort’, in Gottfried Benn and Thomas Florschuetz, Blumen (Berlin: Insel, 2011), pp. 79–90; Grünbein, ‘Elegien für einen Irrtum. Vorwort’, in Benn, Statische Gedichte (Gedichte 1937-1947) (Berlin: Insel, 2011), pp. 7–34. On Grünbein’s debt to Benn, see Karen Leeder, ‘Durs Grünbein and the Poetry of Science’, in Durs Grünbein: A Companion, ed. by Michael Eskin, Karen Leeder and Christopher Young (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter: 2013), pp. 67–93.
7 Menschheitsdämmerung: Ein Dokument des Expressionismus, ed. by Kurt Pinthus (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1959), p. 31.
8 Benn himself reflects on being the only survivor and the duties that brings with it in ‘Lyrik des expressionistischen Jahrzehnts’, vi, 208–20 (218–20).
9 Fritz J. Raddatz, Gottfried Benn: Leben – niederer Wahn. Eine Biographie (Berlin and Munich: Propyläen, 2001), p. 152.
10 Benn, ‘Lyrik des expressionistischen Jahrzehnts’, vi, 208–20.
11 Franz Werfel, ‘An den Leser’, in Menschheitsdämmerung, p. 279.
12 Kasimir Edschmid, ‘Expressionismus in der Dichtung. Rede gehalten am 13. Dezember 1917’, in Expressionismus – Manifeste und Dokumente zur deutschen Literatur 1910-1920, ed. by Thomas Anz and Michael Stark (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1982), pp. 42–55 (p. 46).
13 Menschheitsdämmerung, pp. 30–31.
14 Benn, ‘Lebensweg eines Intellektualisten’ (1934), iv, 160.
15 Schramm, p. 109.
16 Or more precisely: ‘Phase II des expressionistischen Stils’ (v, 170).
17 The records of the journal for 1904 preserved in the catalogue of the Benn exhibition at Marbach in 1986 demonstrate Benn’s (almost) reliable memory: ‘G.B. in M. Warmes Gefühl, unzureichender Ausdruck’. Quoted in Wolfgang Emmerich, Gottfried Benn (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 2006), p. 139.
18 Benn, ‘Gespräch’, vii/1, 163–71.
19 Benn, ‘Unter der Großhirnrinde. Briefe vom Meer’ (vii/2, 355–63) was discovered in 2003 by Andreas Kramer (see vii/1, 657–58). Identical passages appear in Benn’s ‘Ithaka’ which was published three years later.
20 Benn: Wirkung wider Willen. Dokumentation zur Wirkungsgeschichte Benns 1912-1966, ed. by Peter Uwe Hohendahl (Frankfurt a.M.: Athenäum, 1971), pp. 97 and 91.
21 Cited in Schramm, p. 109.
22 Benn, ‘Frühe Lyrik und Dramen: Vorbemerkung’, vi, 69–71 (69).
23 Rainer Maria Rilke, Werke, 4 vols, ed. by Manfred Engel et al. (Frankfurt a.M. and Leipzig: Insel, 1996), i, 467 and 540.
24 Georg Heym, ‘Die Morgue’, in Menschheitsdämmerung, pp. 97–99.
25 Gottfried Benn, ‘In Memoriam. Rede auf Else Lasker-Schüler’ (1952), vi, 54–57.
26 Benn, ed. by Hohendahl, p. 98.
27 Ibid., p. 97.
28 Friedrich Wilhelm Wodtke, ‘Introduction’, in Gottfried Benn, Selected Poems (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 30. It is noteworthy that he includes only one poem from this collection in his edition: ‘Mann und Frau gehn durch die Krebsbaracke’.
29 Georg Heym, ‘Ophelia’, in Menschheitsdämmerung, pp. 107–08.
30 Further comparisons with other poems of the period also serve to highlight the cynicism of Benn’s stance; for example: Brecht’s slightly later ‘Vom ertrunkenen Mädchen’ (1916), or Trakl’s ‘Vorstadt im Föhn’ (1911). Raddatz draws together a selection in Gottfried Benn, pp. 102–08.
31 Raddatz, Gottfried Benn, p. 108.
32 Georg Lukács, Die Theorie des Romans (1920; Darmstadt and Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1971), p. 52. Quoted in Emmerich, Gottfried Benn, p. 35.
33 Wodtke, Gottfried Benn, p. 110.
34 Emmerich, Gottfried Benn, pp. 35–36.
35 Hamburger, Reason and Energy, p. 281.
36 Benn, ‘Nietzsche – nach 50 Jahren’ (vii/2, 250); see also ‘Monologische Kunst’ (vi, 80–86).
37 Compare T. J. Reed, ‘Nietzsche’s Animals: Idea, Image, and Influence’, in Nietzsche: Imagery and Thought, ed. by Malcolm Pasley (London: Methuen, 1978), pp. 159–219 (p. 198).
38 Benn, ‘Epilog und Lyrisches Ich’, iii, 127–33 (127–28).
39 Schramm, p. 112.
40 This phrase first comes up in ‘Expressionismus’ (iv, 76–90), Benn’s uncomfortable attempt to justify himself and the movement in 1933, against charges that it is ‘entartet, anarchisch-snobisch’ […] ‘Kulturbolschewismus’ […] ‘eine Verhöhnung des Volks’, but it is taken up again in his ‘Das expressionistische Jahrzehnt’ of 1955 (vi, 216).
41 I argue that Benn’s existential lateness is a facet of much of his work in Karen Leeder, ‘“Das Gen des Todes”: Altersstil, Spätstil und Spätsein bei Gottfried Benn’, in Benn Forum. Beiträge zur literarischen Moderne, vol. iii (2012/2013), ed. by Joachim Dyck, Hermann Korte and Nadine Jessica Schmidt (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 2013), 193–211.
42 Hamburger, Reason and Energy, p. 347.
43 Helmut Lethen, Verhaltenslehren der Kälte (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1994).
44 Durs Grünbein, ‘Den Körper zerbrechen’, in Galilei vermiβt Dantes Hölle und bleibt an den Maβen hängen. Aufsätze 1989-1995 (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1996), pp. 75–86.
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Karen Leeder
Karen Leeder is Professor of Modern German Literature and Fellow and Tutor in German at New College, Oxford. She has published widely on modern German literature, especially poetry. Three edited volumes will appear in 2013: Re-reading East Germany: The Literature and Film of the GDR 1949–2009, Figuring Lateness: Lateness, Belatedness and Late Style in Modern German Culture, and Durs Gru¨ nbein: A Companion.