Sämtliche Gedichte

This volume contains all of Benn's printed poems as well as those that remained unpublished during his lifetime. Benn's poetry articulates the themes of European nihilism in a language whose fascination has not faded to this day. In 1912, he made his public debut with the shockingly cynical poems of "Morgue," radically rejecting the primacy of reason and history. Between the wars, the wild formlessness of his early work is replaced by meter and rhyme, adopting a style in which the "lyrical I" adheres to traditional forms. Benn's poems capture the material of history in symbols that resonate with the "Valse triste," the gesture of farewell, and the mood of life in the "Aprèslude." His aesthetics, which posits the "transcendence of creative pleasure" against the final state of its epoch, continues to have an immeasurable impact on German literature to this day.