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.

Impromptus: Selected Poems and Some Prose

Literature & Fiction

Benn, Gottfried

Poetry

Farrar. Straus and Giroux

Primal Vision: Selected Writings of Gottfried Benn

Ashton, E. B.

Marion Boyars

Primal Vision: Selected Writings

History & Criticism

Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd

These selected writings of Gottfried Benn or "primal visions" of the 1920s anticipated in certain ways the positions of such writers today as Beckett and Genet, the French "antinovelists" and the American "Beats." Gottfried Benn (1886-1957) occupies a position in modern German literature often compared to that of T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound in English. This volume presents a comprehensive anthology of the author’s finest work-poetry (with the German originals en face), short stories, a scene from one of his plays, essays and autobiographical writings, including a unique insight into the German intellectual metamorphosis before, under and after Hitler. And in a long introduction, the editor, E. B. Ashton, places Benn in the perspective of recent German history and gives an account of his life––a dramatic and moving story in its own right. By profession a physician, Benn was fascinated by the philosophical aspects of many branches of science, and over the years he wrote a number of extraordinary essays in which the poet’s intuitive vision was accorded the utmost imaginative freedom.

Primal Vision: Selected Prose & Poetry

Dramas & Plays

New Directions

Prose, Essays, Poems (German Library) (English and German Edition)

Sander, Volkmar

Continuum Intl Pub Group

Double Life

Politics & Social Sciences

Politics & Government

Plutarch Pr

Literary

Literary Licensing, LLC

These selections from the esteemed career of Gottfried Benn—one of the most significant German poets of the 20th century—showcase his early, shockingly graphic depictions of human suffering and degradation, as well as the isolation and fragmentation of the human being adrift in a nihilistic world found in his later work. Translator David Paisey presents two selections, of verse and prose respectively, from Benn’s large oeuvre, which are ordered chronologically to enable readers to perceive the developments of Benn’s art and thought. In an important biographical introduction, Paisey tackles the difficult question of Benn’s compliance with the Nazi regime and its impact on his life and work.

Selected Poems and Prose

Carcanet Press Ltd.

Un poète et le monde

Gallimard]

Ausgewahlte Gedichte

Contemporary

Diogenes Verlag AG

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