An extraordinary collection of poetry and prose from the master of
German expressionism
The first poem in Gottfried Benn's first book, Morgue (1912)--written
in an hour, published in a week, and notorious ever after--with its
scandalous closing image of an aster sewn into a corpse by a playful
medical student, set Benn on the path to celebrity and notoriety. And
indeed, mortality, flowers, and powerful aesthetic collisions typify
much of his subsequent work.
Over the decades, as Benn suffered the vicissitudes of fate (the death
of his mother from cancer; the death of his first wife, Edith; his brief
attempt to ingratiate himself with the Nazis, followed by their
persecution of him; the suicide of his second wife, Herta), the harsh
voice of the poems relented and mellowed. His later poetry--from which
Impromptus is chiefly drawn, many of the poems translated into English
for the first time--is deeply affecting: it reflects the routines and
sorrows and meditations of an intelligent, pessimistic, and experienced
man. Written in the low, unupholstered monologue of the poet talking to
himself, these works are slender ribbons of speech on the naked edge of
song and silence.
With this collection of poems and essays--edited and translated by the
award-winning poet Michael Hofmann--Benn, at long last, promises to
attain the presence and importance in the English-speaking world that he
so richly deserves.
