Morgue and Other Poems

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Cover of a 1923 edition from Verlag der Bucherwinkel Gottfried Benn - Morgue und andere Gedichte, 1924 Hoerschelmann.jpg
Cover of a 1923 edition from Verlag der Bücherwinkel

Morgue and Other Poems (German : Morgue und andere Gedichte) is a 1912 poetry collection by the German writer Gottfried Benn. It is a booklet with twelve expressionist poems, the first six of which are the Morgue cycle, which describes images and incidents from a morgue. [1] [2]

Published in 500 copies in March 1912, in the series lyrisches Flugblatt from Berlin's A. R. Meyer Verlag, Morgue and Other Poems was the debut book of Benn, a 25-year-old medicine student. [3] It was widely discussed by literary critics upon publication and has continued to inspire a large amount of analysis. Its cold, eerie atmosphere and descriptions of sickness and decay have led to comparisons to Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire. Richard M. Meyer  [ de ] connected its imagery to Pieter Bruegel's depictions of Hell. For the 100th anniversary in 2012, Klett-Cotta Verlag  [ de ] published an edition with original illustrations by Georg Baselitz. [4]

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References

  1. Travers, Martin (2007). The Poetry of Gottfried Benn: Text and Selfhood. Studies in German Literature. Vol. 106. Bern: Peter Lang. pp. 19–40. ISBN   978-3-03-910577-9.
  2. Mayer-König, Wolfgang (1974). "Zur Psychologie der Literatursprache in Gottfried Benns 'Morgue'". Colloquia Germanica . 8: 334–343. JSTOR   23979720.
  3. Opitz, Michael (22 May 2012). "Lyrik im Leichenschauhaus" (in German). Deutschlandfunk Kultur . Retrieved 20 May 2024.
  4. Schmitz, Rainer (20 May 2012). "Wilder Ekel – geiles Grauen" (in German). Deutschlandfunk . Retrieved 20 May 2024.