foudebassan (foudebassan) wrote in gedichte, @ 2008-04-25 23:32:00 |
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Entry tags: | benn, expressionismus |
Gottfried Benn
(1886-1956)
Benn's father was a pastor; his mother came from the French-speaking part of Switzerland. He started studying theology and philology but switched to medecine, became a doctor, and served as medical staff during WW1. After that he moved to Berlin and specialised in treating skin diseases and STDs. His wife died in 1922.
He became increasingly partial to national-socialism in the 20s. Why he did it is a point that has caused many debates. It is generally agreed that he was more attracted to the concept of distancing himself from the (leftist) existing literary establishment that to the Nazi ideology. He was banned from publishing anything from 1938 onwards, and his surgery was closed in 1934, so he applied to, and was taken into the Wehrmacht. At that point he married his secretary, who later killed herself as the Russians arrived in Berlin to avoid the serial rapes. After the war he took up medecine right where he'd left it.
The Allies didn't lift the ban on publishing due to his former Nazi sympathies until 1948. Despite the big chronological gap, there are few significant stylistic changes in his verse before and after the war. He remarried a dentist, had an affair with another woman, fell ill, and eventually died in 1956.
His main works are Morgue und andere Gedichte (1912), Statische Gedichte (1948) and the essay Probleme der Lyrik (1951) that rehabilitated him, so to speak.
Today's poem was written in 1917.
Synthese Schweigende Nacht. Schweigendes Haus. Ich aber bin der stillsten Sterne; Ich treibe auch mein eignes Licht Noch in die eigne Nacht hinaus. Ich bin gehirnlich heimgekehrt Aus Höhlen, Himmeln, Dreck und Vieh. Auch was sich noch der Frau gewährt, Ist dunkle süße Onanie. Ich wälze Welt. Ich röchle Raub. Und nächtens nackte ich im Glück: Es ringt kein Tod, es stinkt kein Staub Mich, Ich-begriff, zur Welt zurück. |
Synthesis Still night. Still house. I am the stillest of stars; I also drive my own light Until the end of my own night. I have gone back home into my own brain From the caves, the skies, the mud and cattle. Even that what is still bestowed on the woman Is dark and sweet onanism. I roll the world. I moan the theft. And by night I wallow naked in happiness: Neither the wrestle of death nor the stink of dust Bring me, the concept of me, back into the world. |