Gottfried Benn Electronic Library
- Benn at Amazon
- Gottfried Benn in Transition
- Gottfried Benn's Static Poetry
- Consistency of Phenotype: A Study of Gottfried Benn's Views on Lyric Poetry
- Gottfried Benn and His Critics
- Change and Permanence: Gottfried Benn's Text for Paul Hindemith's Oratorio Das Unaufhörliche
- Gottfried Benn the Artist and Politics 1910-1934
- Beyond Nihilism: Gottfried Benn's Postmodernist Poetics
- Biography - Benn, Gottfried
- Related Links
- Gottfried Benn at Wikipedia
Free etexts by 20th century German expressionist Gottfried Benn.
Gottfried Benn (1886-1956) was by training a doctor who came to specialize in the treatment of venereal diseases. An ambivalent figure who stayed in Germany under the Nazis but was himself repressed by them, Benn came to be considered a great national writer after the war.
While Supervert considers Benn mostly overrated, his early Expressionist verse — particularly the Morgue cycle — is matchless for its economy, precision, and irony. Walter Kaufmann, the famous translator of Nietzsche, wrote that its "shocking power," which was "far greater than that of most beatnik poetry," was due to the "brutal honesty of an unprecedented perception."
Downloads
Gottfried Benn, Morgue & Expressionist Verse (zipped PDF, 40k)
Poems include: Little Aster (Kleine Aster), A Fine Childhood (Schöne Jugend), Cycle (Kreislauf), Nigger Bride (Negerbraut), Requiem (Requiem), Appendectomy (Blinddarm), Man and Woman Go Through the Cancer Ward (Mann und Frau Gehn Durch die Krebsbaracke), Labor Room (Saal der Kreissenden Frauen), Night Cafe (Nachtcafe), Express Train (D-Zug), Subway Train (Untergrundbahn), Before a Cornfield (Vor Einem Kornfeld).
Recommended Reading at Amazon
Benn, Primal Vision
Benn, Prose, Essays, Poems
For a writer so highly regarded in his native country, there's not much of Gottfried Benn available in English translation. These are the two major collections of prose and poetry. If you dig around you can find a few plays and other assorted tidbits in other books.
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