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Ґеорґ Гайм — майстер апокаліптичних візій і макабричних картин, який менш ніж за два роки до своєї трагічної смерті у водах річки Гафель описав у щоденнику сновидіння, що дуже нагадувало її обставини.
В оповіданнях, що входять до збірки, Гайм, розробляючи теми одержимості, божевілля, соціальних потрясінь, убивств і хвороб, гранично чесний і прямолінійний. Він цілком відкрито говорить про речі, яких усі намагаються уникати: страждання, огида, смерть. Але в його світі вони не стоять навпроти радості, краси і життя. У Гайма не існує таких меж. Прекрасне живе в огидному, страждання породжує радість, а смерть щоденно працює у вирі життя. Він цілить у самісіньке серце людських страхів і ріже їх скальпелем на дрібні шматки, оповідаючи нам правду, яку ми вперто і старанно намагаємося не чути.
В оповіданнях, що входять до збірки, Гайм, розробляючи теми одержимості, божевілля, соціальних потрясінь, убивств і хвороб, гранично чесний і прямолінійний. Він цілком відкрито говорить про речі, яких усі намагаються уникати: страждання, огида, смерть. Але в його світі вони не стоять навпроти радості, краси і життя. У Гайма не існує таких меж. Прекрасне живе в огидному, страждання породжує радість, а смерть щоденно працює у вирі життя. Він цілить у самісіньке серце людських страхів і ріже їх скальпелем на дрібні шматки, оповідаючи нам правду, яку ми вперто і старанно намагаємося не чути.
80 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1913
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388 people want to read
About the author
Georg Heym
67 books24 followersGeorg Heym was a German writer. He is particularly known for his poetry, representative of early Expressionism.
Heym was born in Hirschberg, Lower Silesia in 1887 to Hermann and Jenny Heym. Throughout his short life, he was constantly in conflict with social conventions. His parents, members of the Wilhemine middle class, had trouble comprehending their son's rebellious behavior. Heym's own attitude towards his parents was paradoxical; on the one hand he held a deep affection for them, but on the other he strongly resisted any attempts to suppress his individuality and autonomy.
In 1900 the Heyms moved to Berlin, and there Georg began unsuccessfully attending a series of different schools. Eventually, he arrived at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Gymnasium at Neuruppin in Brandenburg. He was very unsatisfied, and as a way to achieve some release he began writing poetry. After he graduated and went to study law at Würzburg, he started writing plays as well. However, publishers largely ignored his work.
In 1910 Heym met the poet and writer Simon Guttmann, who invited Heym to join the recently founded Der Neue Club, a descendant of a student society at the University of Berlin. Other members of this Club included Kurt Hiller, Jakob van Hoddis, and Erwin Loewenson (also known as Golo Gangi); often visiting were Else Lasker-Schüler, Gottfried Benn, and Karl Kraus. Although the Club had no actual stated objective, its members all shared a sense of rebellion against contemporary culture and possessed a desire for political and aesthetic upheaval. The Club held "Neopathetisches Cabaret" meetings in which members presented work, and it was here that Heym first gained notice. His poetry immediately attracted praise. In January 1911, Ernst Rowohlt published Heym's first book and the only one to appear in his lifetime: Der ewige Tag (The Eternal Day).
Heym later went through several judicial jobs, none of which he held for long due to his lack of respect for authority. On 16 January 1912, Heym and his friend Ernst Balcke went on a skating trip to the frozen river Havel. They never returned. A few days later their bodies were found. Appearances indicated that Balcke had fallen through the ice and Heym had attempted to save him but fell in as well. Heym remained alive for half an hour, calling out for help. His cries were heard by some nearby forestry workers, but they were unable to reach him.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg...
Heym was born in Hirschberg, Lower Silesia in 1887 to Hermann and Jenny Heym. Throughout his short life, he was constantly in conflict with social conventions. His parents, members of the Wilhemine middle class, had trouble comprehending their son's rebellious behavior. Heym's own attitude towards his parents was paradoxical; on the one hand he held a deep affection for them, but on the other he strongly resisted any attempts to suppress his individuality and autonomy.
In 1900 the Heyms moved to Berlin, and there Georg began unsuccessfully attending a series of different schools. Eventually, he arrived at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Gymnasium at Neuruppin in Brandenburg. He was very unsatisfied, and as a way to achieve some release he began writing poetry. After he graduated and went to study law at Würzburg, he started writing plays as well. However, publishers largely ignored his work.
In 1910 Heym met the poet and writer Simon Guttmann, who invited Heym to join the recently founded Der Neue Club, a descendant of a student society at the University of Berlin. Other members of this Club included Kurt Hiller, Jakob van Hoddis, and Erwin Loewenson (also known as Golo Gangi); often visiting were Else Lasker-Schüler, Gottfried Benn, and Karl Kraus. Although the Club had no actual stated objective, its members all shared a sense of rebellion against contemporary culture and possessed a desire for political and aesthetic upheaval. The Club held "Neopathetisches Cabaret" meetings in which members presented work, and it was here that Heym first gained notice. His poetry immediately attracted praise. In January 1911, Ernst Rowohlt published Heym's first book and the only one to appear in his lifetime: Der ewige Tag (The Eternal Day).
Heym later went through several judicial jobs, none of which he held for long due to his lack of respect for authority. On 16 January 1912, Heym and his friend Ernst Balcke went on a skating trip to the frozen river Havel. They never returned. A few days later their bodies were found. Appearances indicated that Balcke had fallen through the ice and Heym had attempted to save him but fell in as well. Heym remained alive for half an hour, calling out for help. His cries were heard by some nearby forestry workers, but they were unable to reach him.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews
November 6, 2020
Seven short stories first published in 1913. Heym had a knack for writing bleak, creepy and sometimes gory stories. His style lies somewhere between German expressionism and Gothic literature, and he has been compared to Edgar Allan Poe. But in my opinion Heym was far superior to Poe. Good stuff.
January 2, 2024
Every story here, from memory, is a relentless ride to doom. Nor do they even qualify as “stories”, really, in many ways. Not that nothing happens – plenty happens, it all happens, all the worst and most appalling things in life and beyond – but there’s never a choice: no road not taken, no crossroads, just a one-way trip to hell. Morbid, yes, as only the young can be. (Heym died at 25, a year before these pieces saw publication.) But shot through with veins of preternatural gold also unique to youth:
Not that the horrid stuff isn’t preternatural too. Oh, it is. Even as Heym the narrator (same third-person semi-omniscient voice in all, with touch of “free indirect discourse” and sudden jolts to present tense at peaks of disturbance) retains an uncanny sobriety to which he falls back when things get crazy.
If the back-cover blurb is to be believed, when Heym’s publisher “expressed fears that the grim nature” of his stories would “put off potential readers”, “Heym replied that his subjects had chosen him as much as he had chosen them.” And certainly, it’s hard to believe that choice played more part in Heym’s actions than in his characters’ – again, a singlemindedness maybe only accessible in youth. Relentless drive. Black fear. Perverse insistence on plumbing the depths. Fascination. I don’t know that I’d call his stories masterpieces, but I’d wager he was some kind of a master, or could have been. Strangely, given his death was accidental, it’s hard to imagine what might have followed such stories; they have that terminal quality that suggests maybe he never intended to follow them at all. The mark of a poet and playwright dallying in prose? In any case, despite the book’s briefness (seven stories, 100 pages) it seems complete. So complete, in fact, that it’s hard to know how to speak for it. It’s “not the image of a dark forest but the dark forest”, as Roberto Bolaño would have it. And actually, that’s a pretty apt description: the dark forest of youth, of nightmare, of bloodyminded determination. But what makes it is the delicacy. For all its blunt drama, its “suddenly”s, its exclamations, it’s animated by the most refined sensitivity.
It could be The Thief is a slight book, and it’s true I digested it with little afterthought; paradoxically, it went down easily, despite the gruesome chunks of horror it contains. But a unique flavour persists a year or more later, and the three or four stories I’ve re-read in that time have pleased me, like walks through the dark forest where I myself once dwelt, though maybe never with the lucidity of Georg Heym.
How I love you! I have loved you so much. Shall I tell you how I love you? As you moved through the fields of poppies, yourself a flame-red fragrant poppy, the whole evening was swallowed up in you. And your dress, which billowed around your ankles, was like a wave of fire in the setting sun. But your head bent in the light, and your hair was still burning and flaming from all my kisses.
(“The Autopsy”)
Not that the horrid stuff isn’t preternatural too. Oh, it is. Even as Heym the narrator (same third-person semi-omniscient voice in all, with touch of “free indirect discourse” and sudden jolts to present tense at peaks of disturbance) retains an uncanny sobriety to which he falls back when things get crazy.
He kneels on his victim and slowly crushes her to death.
All around him is the great golden sea, with towering waves on either side like brilliantly shimmering roofs. He is riding on a black fish, he embraces its head with his arms. It certainly is fat, he thinks. Deep below him, he sees in the green depths, lost in a few trembling rays of sun, green castles, eternally deep green gardens. How far away might they be? If only he could just get down there, down below.
The castles go further down, the gardens appear to sink ever deeper.
He weeps; of course he’s never going to get there. He’s only a poor devil. The fish under him is turning disobedient too; it’s still wriggling. Never mind, the beast will deal with it. And he breaks its neck.
(“The Madman”)
If the back-cover blurb is to be believed, when Heym’s publisher “expressed fears that the grim nature” of his stories would “put off potential readers”, “Heym replied that his subjects had chosen him as much as he had chosen them.” And certainly, it’s hard to believe that choice played more part in Heym’s actions than in his characters’ – again, a singlemindedness maybe only accessible in youth. Relentless drive. Black fear. Perverse insistence on plumbing the depths. Fascination. I don’t know that I’d call his stories masterpieces, but I’d wager he was some kind of a master, or could have been. Strangely, given his death was accidental, it’s hard to imagine what might have followed such stories; they have that terminal quality that suggests maybe he never intended to follow them at all. The mark of a poet and playwright dallying in prose? In any case, despite the book’s briefness (seven stories, 100 pages) it seems complete. So complete, in fact, that it’s hard to know how to speak for it. It’s “not the image of a dark forest but the dark forest”, as Roberto Bolaño would have it. And actually, that’s a pretty apt description: the dark forest of youth, of nightmare, of bloodyminded determination. But what makes it is the delicacy. For all its blunt drama, its “suddenly”s, its exclamations, it’s animated by the most refined sensitivity.
And that was the first time in the boy’s life that he drank the cups of rapture and of torment in the same day. So many times afterwards it was to be his lot to suffer the extremes of joy and the depths of grief, like a precious vessel that has to be able to withstand many passages through the fire without cracking.
It could be The Thief is a slight book, and it’s true I digested it with little afterthought; paradoxically, it went down easily, despite the gruesome chunks of horror it contains. But a unique flavour persists a year or more later, and the three or four stories I’ve re-read in that time have pleased me, like walks through the dark forest where I myself once dwelt, though maybe never with the lucidity of Georg Heym.
December 27, 2014
She was never so beautiful as when the fires of the sinking sun lay shimmering in the dust of the room upon her forehead, and her dark hair began to gleam as if with its own light. Then she seemed to grow forward out of the dark background, to become flesh, and to bask in the light of her own shamelessness.- 'The Thief'
The Mona Lisa is his laughing hell and a mocking heaven. Forces gathering behind in the picture. Maybe it was the curtains with an ominous whisper. Their heroine. She is blind to the madman, unyielding tears of penance. Nothing at all when he touches her hand. A fevered hand to her head. But she will not cry when he takes her. The Thief is afraid of them all. His man made fire eats her otherness, consuming firemen flesh and police are bacon too. The real world victims of his convictions aside, the curled up fetus sucking its brutal thumb of this was when Mona Lisa and the Louvre were his own hell floating in a starless galaxy. I am creeped the hell out by the "Purify their depravity" type of men (or women). I am lost in limbo between wanting to get the hell away from this guy, and the horror of what if you couldn't.... To flop about in his skin like this is even too much. I felt like he was commanding his man is a space ship. His own madness.
Something about Georg Heym's walking and talking hells strangled my sympathies. Or maybe I'm just heartless. They COULD have written these stories and not Heym after all. My book jacket says he told his worried publishers that they chose him. I thought it would be exactly what The Thief would want the world to know the detail he succeeded in every one of his brainiac endeavors.
Starved to pity, scared tired. A stilled sea of white faces buried alive in their filthy streets. 'The Fifth of October'. Rise up, everyone will have the same dream. Wake up or are they sleep avenging. Head sea bobbing together, parting arms of justice. Here comes the flood. To Versailles! I liked best about this story that invisible hand holding them, directing them. Just like if you were in a dream you couldn't wake from if you tried the things you're supposed to be able to wake yourself up in a dream. I think of them silently screaming and pinching while asleep for so long that it just had to happen this way. If you're in the mob, or in their path, you're sacrificed to its judgement. I liked this story the best, except for maybe 'The Ship', because they were the stories that felt organically rising from the subconscious and not so much the monster's self comforting fairy tale. I'm torn on feeling in their head as opposed to their hostage.
They actually let The Madman out of the asylum. I doubt the people in charge had enough time to send his wife, a victim letter about his release. He blazes the trail to home sweet home in corpses. The Madman froths at the mouth and zombie rabies eyes as great beasts within him. They take care of him. Within him he experiences his "immeasurable happiness". It's like this for 'The Thief' when dying in victory. Danilo Kis once said something about not trusting people who could come out of horror unscathed (he said it better than that but the gist, y'know). There's another side to that, though. The hissing in the dark of meeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. Bright and shiny pain. How do they emerge from the hell they inflict on others? Yeah, insane but this way the incredible happiness doesn't feel like happiness. I don't FEEL like they did win in dying (since these feel like nightmares....nightmares recur, so no winning this way). It feels like enjoying crying because everyone ever should be oh so sorry! What they did to YOU. A Joker's smile of tombstones turned upside down. It is something else than escaping.... I don't know what it is. Maybe that's why these stories made me feel so other than human.
He preserved his loneliness nervously. When people came he sprang up, ran away and crept into the dunes. Once they had gone by, he ran forward again to the sea, whose enormous expanse was the only cup into which he could pour the flood of his endless excess. - 'An Afternoon- Contribution to the History of a Little Boy'
The dying in 'The Autopsy', 'Jonathan' and 'An Afternoon' have the kind of love that is sewn eyes to me and gaping mouths. Trembling lips dream of love that I love you beary much stuffed menageries. Another corpse is the happiest, mutual deafness to tools of his morticians. I just can't embrace this floating above the world on an infinity cloud happiness. I get a different feeling about "seeing" it. Maybe a young girl practicing kissing on her pillow. Not longing, maybe a foreign ritual. I would have felt as lost if he were rejoicing in his sweet lord, I guess. The doctors are business in the front and business in the back. Neither world lived longer enough to haunt the other. You know in short story collections there's a "Huh...." story and passing ships in the night? It's this one for me.
Before the amputations 'Jonathan' had a man's legs. Now a boy's Bambi stumps waltz slow summer days. A child's everlasting words of love with the white girl face he glimpses in the room next to his own. It was the little boy thing that set me off, I'm sure. She's a voice in another room to him, could have been a shape speeding by in a train window. But she can disappoint him, already owes herself and her two week stay too close. I couldn't stand this, this baby talking himself deep down in his soul. I would have her a picture on the wall he dreams can speak to him. Little boys and girls in the hands of the cruel nurse, dancing visions in the wallpaper. The world loses its size to the big takeover of pain. He Benjamin Buttons to a baby, the center of the womb. The best part about this story was how Jonathan's pain called the other hospital inmates to respond in their own helpless pain. I can see them just settled before, trying to go to sleep. Hey, wait, this must still hurt....
I have no sympathy at all for the boy in 'An Afternoon' when the girl of his desire does not meet him for another kiss, as he has bent all of his hopes on discovering her. I feel nothing for dashed romantic hopes. For them to get what they want someone else cannot go free. (Another boy is distraught and on the wrong side of rage when perceiving a female as laughing at them. I wonder why there are only like two stories in this collection to not feature that? This is bothering me a lot.) I have to look for other angles to get inside stories as this aspect is cold to me. I've got it in that he will do it again and again. To do it on purpose to feel the joy to feel the pain or is it the pain to feel the joy. Sleepwalking daywalking all the time. Heym was so good at the savoring the build up. I wish it wasn't like the light falls on one side of the story so much, though. Anna Kavan could irritate the fuck out of me in some of her short stories with the intense neediness, like "Why doesn't everybody see my pain?!" until you want to shake them but maybe you don't ever see them, maybe it's not all about you. And you're feeling sick with them, like watching Dennis Potter's The Singing Detective you forget you weren't burned alive. I have to reassure myself, constantly testing my flesh.... Hedayat could point the righteous finger too. I will want out, want a "but life isn't just" poetic footprint since they are so intense you feel like you DID see them, couldn't do anything..... but it wasn't enough you were caught? Something like swinging on it, between theirs and you. Fish on make believe land. I want to shake them so much. I can't stand it how much.
My favorite story is 'The Ship', I think. It has to be enough to sail on that black ship on ancient prayers. This must be a timeless end of time. Good old fashioned plague. That's what I'm talking about. Maybe we don't all die alone, left with the embryonic walls closing in of only one very ugly very bloody thought. Well, I say that now because their reality didn't threaten to smother mine in their writhing the-world-is-me ugliness. There's no way it isn't going to be 'The Thief' I never forget.... His repulsive ownership will black out to secrets. Probably will go that way.
December 9, 2025
ця збірка оповідань жахлива і прекрасна.
жахлива, бо жахає.
але прекрасно описано: людські емоції, щось первинне і тваринне в кожному з нас, залежності та страх, обсесія, божевілля.
це було моторошне та захопливе читання.
жахлива, бо жахає.
але прекрасно описано: людські емоції, щось первинне і тваринне в кожному з нас, залежності та страх, обсесія, божевілля.
це було моторошне та захопливе читання.
June 26, 2025
Маю у своїй бібліотеці три книги від Франківського видавництва Видавництво «П’яний корабель».
Всі три - знакові і дорогі для мене.
Блейк, як кумир, водночас геніальний художник і поет.
Гайм, як ще один Кафка, але поетичніший.
Моррісон, як один з улюблених співців і взагалі архетип мандрівника пустелями підсвідомості.
Їм добре на одній полиці.
Всі три - знакові і дорогі для мене.
Блейк, як кумир, водночас геніальний художник і поет.
Гайм, як ще один Кафка, але поетичніший.
Моррісон, як один з улюблених співців і взагалі архетип мандрівника пустелями підсвідомості.
Їм добре на одній полиці.
October 13, 2020
Heym's tale "The Autopsy" has been reprinted in the Vandermeer's collection of weird fiction The Weird and in The Dedalus Book of German Decadence, among other places. But that story takes up a mere three pages in this book which is full of many other great (and better) tales. I am genuinely shocked this collection is not better-known.
Heym's prose is florid and exquisitely overwrought; the stories are mostly horror but even the stories that aren't explicitly horror are full of phantasmagorical imagery, take this picture of the starving poor of pre-Revolution Paris:
The scattered figures resembled the frozen steps of a sombre minuet, a danse macabre petrified by the passage of Death into a great black heap of stones, transfixed by pain into pillars of silence. Uncountable Lots, melted down by the flames of a hellish Gomorrah into eternal rigidity.
All of these stories are quite grim; tales of madness, violence and suffering, alternating between the surreal and the decadent, and several have a rough, unabashed gritty naturalism. What shines most is Heym's command of language, his dreamy way of describing things.
I think one could argue that some of these stories come off as just slightly raw and unpolished, showing an author who was not fully matured perhaps. Still, I think this slim volume ought to be considered a classic of central European fantastique and horror.
Unfortunately Heym never had a chance to fully mature his style -- he died at the age of 24, evidentially attempting to save a friend who fell through the ice while skating. Both perished. This book is available to borrow for free on archive.org.
The Thief - This is a great story of madness and obsession, turning quite horrific at the end. I was especially taken in by the evocative prose, "The evening sun threw a blazing torch inside, and the deep Lombard colours of the portrait came to life in vivid purple. Her gown burst into a rush of flame and the red light spread up over her face and was caught in the golden net of her quiet laughter. And gradually she appeared to dissolve into the dusk, like a perfume, like a breath..." A man separates himself from society and becomes convinced that God wishes him to destroy a painting which is the cause of man's downfall.
The Fifth of October - This story contrasts moments of decadent excess with the bitter, grueling squalor of naturalism. Many beautiful passages of passionate, colorful prose here. A group of starving Parisians suffer and hallucinate as they wait for bread to arrive as France is on the brink of the Revolution.
The Madman - Wow, this one is equal parts shocking, explicit violence and hallucinogenic prose, and I loved how this story slips between the two so seamlessly. A madman is released from an institution and proceeds to cause chaos as he seeks to murder his wife.
The Autopsy - This is a gory, descriptive story that attains a sort of ghastly romanticism. A dead man is laid out for dissection, the doctors take him apart with relish, as he lays there and thinks of a girl he loved, still alive in his soul.
Jonathan - A story of sickness and pain, capped with more hallucinogenic imagery. A young man lies ill in a gloomy hospital, the only thing giving him hope is to speak to a girl across the hall.
The Ship - This is by far the most explicitly creepy story, a very effective sea-based horror tale that reminded me of the great sea stories of Jean Ray or William Hope Hodgson. The crew of a small ship explore an island, and bring something horrible aboard with them.
An Afternoon - This is a much simpler, straight forward story of a boy encountering his first heart-break.
Heym's prose is florid and exquisitely overwrought; the stories are mostly horror but even the stories that aren't explicitly horror are full of phantasmagorical imagery, take this picture of the starving poor of pre-Revolution Paris:
The scattered figures resembled the frozen steps of a sombre minuet, a danse macabre petrified by the passage of Death into a great black heap of stones, transfixed by pain into pillars of silence. Uncountable Lots, melted down by the flames of a hellish Gomorrah into eternal rigidity.
All of these stories are quite grim; tales of madness, violence and suffering, alternating between the surreal and the decadent, and several have a rough, unabashed gritty naturalism. What shines most is Heym's command of language, his dreamy way of describing things.
I think one could argue that some of these stories come off as just slightly raw and unpolished, showing an author who was not fully matured perhaps. Still, I think this slim volume ought to be considered a classic of central European fantastique and horror.
Unfortunately Heym never had a chance to fully mature his style -- he died at the age of 24, evidentially attempting to save a friend who fell through the ice while skating. Both perished. This book is available to borrow for free on archive.org.
The Thief - This is a great story of madness and obsession, turning quite horrific at the end. I was especially taken in by the evocative prose, "The evening sun threw a blazing torch inside, and the deep Lombard colours of the portrait came to life in vivid purple. Her gown burst into a rush of flame and the red light spread up over her face and was caught in the golden net of her quiet laughter. And gradually she appeared to dissolve into the dusk, like a perfume, like a breath..." A man separates himself from society and becomes convinced that God wishes him to destroy a painting which is the cause of man's downfall.
The Fifth of October - This story contrasts moments of decadent excess with the bitter, grueling squalor of naturalism. Many beautiful passages of passionate, colorful prose here. A group of starving Parisians suffer and hallucinate as they wait for bread to arrive as France is on the brink of the Revolution.
The Madman - Wow, this one is equal parts shocking, explicit violence and hallucinogenic prose, and I loved how this story slips between the two so seamlessly. A madman is released from an institution and proceeds to cause chaos as he seeks to murder his wife.
The Autopsy - This is a gory, descriptive story that attains a sort of ghastly romanticism. A dead man is laid out for dissection, the doctors take him apart with relish, as he lays there and thinks of a girl he loved, still alive in his soul.
Jonathan - A story of sickness and pain, capped with more hallucinogenic imagery. A young man lies ill in a gloomy hospital, the only thing giving him hope is to speak to a girl across the hall.
The Ship - This is by far the most explicitly creepy story, a very effective sea-based horror tale that reminded me of the great sea stories of Jean Ray or William Hope Hodgson. The crew of a small ship explore an island, and bring something horrible aboard with them.
An Afternoon - This is a much simpler, straight forward story of a boy encountering his first heart-break.
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December 16, 2023Након што ми је једна невешта и овештала нобеловка најстрашније извређала убогу интелигенцију, толико да сам хтео мртав-‘ладан да је зафрљачим кроз прозор воза, мој стари знанац Георг Хајм доноси ми преко потребан одушак и благодушје, пишући о духоклонућима, скрвнућима и поринућима, умотавајући телесни хорор у орнаментални кивот, попев врхунске прозаиде, пун гноја, и са капљицом црног хумора (у крвопролићима једног малигног мизантропа). Tasteless pedestrian-wannabe-celestial writing style уступа место мајсторству надилажења одурне натуралистичке садржине формом, резултујући естетским екстазама, са епифеноменима најежености и разнежености, барем када је пикадо уцентриран. Скице из заоставштине откривају несавршеност – панкерски уради-сам манир увек ће мамити мој наклон; пљујем на помагаче који глачају туђу глеђ! Прави поета је солитарна, а не симбионтска јединка, огољен и неокаљан икаквим козметичким интервенцијама, осим оним од сопствене руке.
Врла fin de siècle традиција – memento mori, danse macabre, болни Малармеови Прозори, запах Бодлерове Стрвине – уз патос тракловских апострофа и дескрипције есктерналија рефлектоване назад на лирски субјект, најављује први клапарави парни воз за експресионизам, у модроплавој измаглици дављеника Бенове Мртвачнице и хируршком светлу боје жутице.
“I njihov se strašan miris uvuče u park poput oblaka tamnog večernjeg rumenila, koje najavljuje strašno jutro. Povješali su se po rešetkama poput odvratnih paukova i njihove su oči lutale u daljinu parka, njegovim večernjim livadama, živicama, drvoredima lovora, njegovim mramornim kipovima, koji su im se odozgo sa svojih postolja sladunjavo smješkali. (…) Gledali su napred niz cestu, za kolima i kruhom, niz pustu cestu koju strahote Revolucije bijahu opustile i koja poput mrtvog crijeva više nije slala opskrbu u trbuh Francuske. Bijaše bijela i pružala se u nedogled prema gluhom nebu, koje je, masno poput popovskog lica, tusto poput biskupskog obraza i bez bora poput uhranjenog redovnika prosjačkog reda, svoje blijedo čelo pokazivalo na horizontu. Ono bijaše pitomo poput seoske mise, bijaše uokvireno malim, sivim popodnevnim oblacima kao neki stari opat, koji nakon ručka u svojoj sakristiji, u naslonjaču, blago utonuo, drijema, dok mu uvojci perike padaju na čelo.”
Остављам теоретичаре књижевности да се хватају за вратове при идентификацији књижевне врсте за сваки текст појединачно – скица, прозаида, кратка прича, новелета, приповетка или новела, питање је сад.
“On spuzne sa svog odra i odvuče se, dok je pred njim letjela sablast, preko polja, preko pustinja, sve dalje kroz tamu, kroz strašnu tamu.”
🎵 Сивый Яр – Из тьмы вымерших деревень
Врла fin de siècle традиција – memento mori, danse macabre, болни Малармеови Прозори, запах Бодлерове Стрвине – уз патос тракловских апострофа и дескрипције есктерналија рефлектоване назад на лирски субјект, најављује први клапарави парни воз за експресионизам, у модроплавој измаглици дављеника Бенове Мртвачнице и хируршком светлу боје жутице.
“I njihov se strašan miris uvuče u park poput oblaka tamnog večernjeg rumenila, koje najavljuje strašno jutro. Povješali su se po rešetkama poput odvratnih paukova i njihove su oči lutale u daljinu parka, njegovim večernjim livadama, živicama, drvoredima lovora, njegovim mramornim kipovima, koji su im se odozgo sa svojih postolja sladunjavo smješkali. (…) Gledali su napred niz cestu, za kolima i kruhom, niz pustu cestu koju strahote Revolucije bijahu opustile i koja poput mrtvog crijeva više nije slala opskrbu u trbuh Francuske. Bijaše bijela i pružala se u nedogled prema gluhom nebu, koje je, masno poput popovskog lica, tusto poput biskupskog obraza i bez bora poput uhranjenog redovnika prosjačkog reda, svoje blijedo čelo pokazivalo na horizontu. Ono bijaše pitomo poput seoske mise, bijaše uokvireno malim, sivim popodnevnim oblacima kao neki stari opat, koji nakon ručka u svojoj sakristiji, u naslonjaču, blago utonuo, drijema, dok mu uvojci perike padaju na čelo.”
Остављам теоретичаре књижевности да се хватају за вратове при идентификацији књижевне врсте за сваки текст појединачно – скица, прозаида, кратка прича, новелета, приповетка или новела, питање је сад.
“On spuzne sa svog odra i odvuče se, dok je pred njim letjela sablast, preko polja, preko pustinja, sve dalje kroz tamu, kroz strašnu tamu.”
🎵 Сивый Яр – Из тьмы вымерших деревень
February 3, 2014
This is a Ripper!!! Don't think I've read anything else like it!!! Short, expressionistic blows that fluctuate between the supremely "ugly" and dreamy beauty, between heaven and hell, violence and peace. My kind of "value-obsessed, Zoroastrian, bipolarism," but imaginative and lovely and colorful. Above all, everything is alive, particularly the imagination and inanimate objects, including the dead. Thieves, paintings, autopsies---this one is especially designed for Timmy......
"They punctured the bladder; the cold urine shimmered inside like yellow wine."
"They punctured the bladder; the cold urine shimmered inside like yellow wine."
August 28, 2025
Seven short stories make up this slim yet comprehensive body of work originally and posthumously published in 1913. I can well imagine readers being shocked at its violent and gruesome content back then; it's still rather disturbing today. There are some shades of Lautreamont here in its graphic depictions of cruelty, illness, gore and madness; I understand why the Expressionists enjoyed this one. Also like Lautreamont, Heym died very young...who knows what kind of work he might have left for us had he been able to mature in his craft.
The English translation of this book seems to have been out of print since the mid-90s, but it is available on the Internet Archive for anyone interested.
The English translation of this book seems to have been out of print since the mid-90s, but it is available on the Internet Archive for anyone interested.
August 10, 2016
Death and despair permeate these pages. Heym's stories aren't for the squeamish. More than once were there shattered skulls and bursting arteries. Each story contained in this volume is unified by an underlying fear, an eternal torment in a realm of unrequited love, mental anguish, and a disproportionate reality. Susan Bennett's translation conveyed the beautiful and diseased; the language, a convergence of sincerity and insanity. As you read the pages over and over in an obsessed manner, visualizing again and again the oppressive atmosphere of death, you'll realize that "The Theif" is a book close to psychological perfection. The disturbing cover, a detail from Meidner's "Drunken Street with Self-Portrait"expresses what you'll feelwhile reading: a lurking fear.
August 6, 2019
This review was previously posted on the Side Real Press website in 2013.
Georg Heym (1887-1912) was one of the leading literary lights of 'Expressionism', a short lived movement that arose in early twentieth century Germany and is now best remembered for its cinema in films such as 'The Cabinet of Dr Caligari'.
Like most movements it had no formal beginnings but many cite Kurt Hillers, piece in the 'Heidelberger Zeitung' (July 1911) in which he wrote “Those aesthetes who know only how to react, who are nothing more than wax-tablets for impressions, or delicately exact recording machines really do seem to us to be inferior beings. We are Expressionists.”
Expressionism sought to utilize the often violent inner turmoil of the mind for creative ends and found inspiration in writers such as Rimbaud, Baudelaire and the symbolists as well the emerging science of psychology and the philosophy of Nietzsche.
Heym's verses are charged with destruction often evoking the spirit of John Martin as in one of his most famous works 'Umbra Vitae' (trans: 'Shadow of Life') but in the last year of life he turned this towards prose works. These were posthumously published as 'Der Dieb. Ein Novellenbuch' (Rowohlt 1913), Heym having died the previous year attempting to save a friend who had fallen through the ice while skating on a frozen lake.
This translation contains all seven of those pieces, and they are just as destructive and macabre as his poetry. Poe's influence is apparent but Heym's voice is very much his own. 'The Thief' of the collections title is the inner battle of the obsessed protagonist as he contemplates and then executes his crime, while 'The Madman', newly released from asylum carries out crimes that would find a later echo in the real life Peter Kurten.
'The Ship' is probably the nearest we come to supernatural horror, and although this tale might remind one of images from 'Nosferatu' (though Heym is the precurser), his plague figure seems far more tangible if just as relentless.
We never forget that Heym is a poet, and a man with a mission. His narratives break a lot of heads in their desire to take the reader beyond the dull concensus reality of the everyday: "Some made a delicate sound, they were the thin ones; the childrens' skulls. It was a silvery sound, light and airy like a little cloud. But others creaked like puffballs when he trod on them, and their red tongues flickered out of their mouths, like bursting rubber balls". In 'The Autopsy' this treatment of the body extendeds post mortem as the corpse bears witness to its own dissection. It makes the books finale 'An Afternoon' seem relatively 'normal' in its narration of a brief love affair but death, of a sort, is not far away.
There is some beautiful dark imagary within the book. A figure in a painting is "sinking back onto the mysterious landscape behind her as though into a veil of green, still water", a road which the hungry look down for food carts is a "dead intestine" and hours spent in a sickroom bed are heard "trickling down the walls, like the continuous falling of slow drops in the dark hole of a cellar".
Any one of the stories taken by itself would make the book worth buying, but in combination they represent a huge tour de force. I had to re-read the whole book straight away and they remained just as brilliant second time around. A wonderful and essential text. Buy it!
For those seeking the poetry Libri have an edition of them, which took twenty years of work by translator Antony Hasler to bring to fruition. They are equally brilliant.
Georg Heym (1887-1912) was one of the leading literary lights of 'Expressionism', a short lived movement that arose in early twentieth century Germany and is now best remembered for its cinema in films such as 'The Cabinet of Dr Caligari'.
Like most movements it had no formal beginnings but many cite Kurt Hillers, piece in the 'Heidelberger Zeitung' (July 1911) in which he wrote “Those aesthetes who know only how to react, who are nothing more than wax-tablets for impressions, or delicately exact recording machines really do seem to us to be inferior beings. We are Expressionists.”
Expressionism sought to utilize the often violent inner turmoil of the mind for creative ends and found inspiration in writers such as Rimbaud, Baudelaire and the symbolists as well the emerging science of psychology and the philosophy of Nietzsche.
Heym's verses are charged with destruction often evoking the spirit of John Martin as in one of his most famous works 'Umbra Vitae' (trans: 'Shadow of Life') but in the last year of life he turned this towards prose works. These were posthumously published as 'Der Dieb. Ein Novellenbuch' (Rowohlt 1913), Heym having died the previous year attempting to save a friend who had fallen through the ice while skating on a frozen lake.
This translation contains all seven of those pieces, and they are just as destructive and macabre as his poetry. Poe's influence is apparent but Heym's voice is very much his own. 'The Thief' of the collections title is the inner battle of the obsessed protagonist as he contemplates and then executes his crime, while 'The Madman', newly released from asylum carries out crimes that would find a later echo in the real life Peter Kurten.
'The Ship' is probably the nearest we come to supernatural horror, and although this tale might remind one of images from 'Nosferatu' (though Heym is the precurser), his plague figure seems far more tangible if just as relentless.
We never forget that Heym is a poet, and a man with a mission. His narratives break a lot of heads in their desire to take the reader beyond the dull concensus reality of the everyday: "Some made a delicate sound, they were the thin ones; the childrens' skulls. It was a silvery sound, light and airy like a little cloud. But others creaked like puffballs when he trod on them, and their red tongues flickered out of their mouths, like bursting rubber balls". In 'The Autopsy' this treatment of the body extendeds post mortem as the corpse bears witness to its own dissection. It makes the books finale 'An Afternoon' seem relatively 'normal' in its narration of a brief love affair but death, of a sort, is not far away.
There is some beautiful dark imagary within the book. A figure in a painting is "sinking back onto the mysterious landscape behind her as though into a veil of green, still water", a road which the hungry look down for food carts is a "dead intestine" and hours spent in a sickroom bed are heard "trickling down the walls, like the continuous falling of slow drops in the dark hole of a cellar".
Any one of the stories taken by itself would make the book worth buying, but in combination they represent a huge tour de force. I had to re-read the whole book straight away and they remained just as brilliant second time around. A wonderful and essential text. Buy it!
For those seeking the poetry Libri have an edition of them, which took twenty years of work by translator Antony Hasler to bring to fruition. They are equally brilliant.
November 21, 2017
The Moon like the Eye of a Blind God
Georg Heym is primarily remembered by a small but loyal group of readers as the author of some of the strangest, darkest, and yet somehow beautiful poetry to emerge from Germany in the early part of the 20th century. He died young but demonstrated such a feverish and passionate imagination and wielded such keen descriptive powers that it would perhaps be inaccurate to say he died before he could reach his prime. What he left behind is not a lot in terms of quantity, but it is all of unassailable quality.
"The Thief and Other Stories" features some of Heym's rare forays into the comparatively longer form of the short story. The works on display here deal with the same themes present in Heym's poetry, namely madness, religious ecstasy, the appearance of various demons, strange cosmological aberrations, death and disease, sex and love, all punctuated by unexpected outbursts of humor and horror. My favorite in the collection was easily "Jonathan," a story about a young man ailing in a hospital ward in a room across the hall from a girl whom he pines after; the description sounds like a minor cliched affair, but its Heym's handling of the story and his natural sense of the poetic that makes it so memorable. The most disturbing story is easily "The Madman", and seems to be of a piece of the "Lustmord" cannon that so many Germans contributed to during the Weimar years. Probably the most notable among long form excursions is Alfred Doblin's formidable "Berlin Alexanderplatz" but Heym's much shorter work packs quite a wallop and is so harrowing and accurate in its depiction of madness that one can almost feel themselves understanding things from the perspective of a psychopathic killer, if not exactly sympathizing with him.
I was less enamored of some of the other stories, though I'd be remiss if I didn't save a final mention for "The Autopsy," an ultra-short description of an autopsy (from the perspective of the corpse, no less) that reminded me of fellow German pathologist-turned-poet Gottfried Benn's early oeuvre. This one has to be read to believed, and could be considered an early entry in the proto-flash fiction genre. Recommended, though it is certainly not for all tastes, dispositions, or constitutions. It is a nightmarish, perhaps hopeless offering of stories from a condemned genius.
Georg Heym is primarily remembered by a small but loyal group of readers as the author of some of the strangest, darkest, and yet somehow beautiful poetry to emerge from Germany in the early part of the 20th century. He died young but demonstrated such a feverish and passionate imagination and wielded such keen descriptive powers that it would perhaps be inaccurate to say he died before he could reach his prime. What he left behind is not a lot in terms of quantity, but it is all of unassailable quality.
"The Thief and Other Stories" features some of Heym's rare forays into the comparatively longer form of the short story. The works on display here deal with the same themes present in Heym's poetry, namely madness, religious ecstasy, the appearance of various demons, strange cosmological aberrations, death and disease, sex and love, all punctuated by unexpected outbursts of humor and horror. My favorite in the collection was easily "Jonathan," a story about a young man ailing in a hospital ward in a room across the hall from a girl whom he pines after; the description sounds like a minor cliched affair, but its Heym's handling of the story and his natural sense of the poetic that makes it so memorable. The most disturbing story is easily "The Madman", and seems to be of a piece of the "Lustmord" cannon that so many Germans contributed to during the Weimar years. Probably the most notable among long form excursions is Alfred Doblin's formidable "Berlin Alexanderplatz" but Heym's much shorter work packs quite a wallop and is so harrowing and accurate in its depiction of madness that one can almost feel themselves understanding things from the perspective of a psychopathic killer, if not exactly sympathizing with him.
I was less enamored of some of the other stories, though I'd be remiss if I didn't save a final mention for "The Autopsy," an ultra-short description of an autopsy (from the perspective of the corpse, no less) that reminded me of fellow German pathologist-turned-poet Gottfried Benn's early oeuvre. This one has to be read to believed, and could be considered an early entry in the proto-flash fiction genre. Recommended, though it is certainly not for all tastes, dispositions, or constitutions. It is a nightmarish, perhaps hopeless offering of stories from a condemned genius.
October 29, 2023
Heym's topics are religious delusions; a psychotic murderer; rage of masses on the way to French revolution; a young adventurer now confined to hospital bed; a corpse's dreaming during the autopsy session; symbolic ghost of a plague epidemic; fresh pain of unrecruited first love. What makes these bleak topics beautiful is Heym's expressionistic style - weaving between raw violence and poetic metaphors. Only handicap is that some stories may have been a bit shorter to avoid needless repetition. "Jonathan" is my favorite from this collection; I felt his thirst for human contact and also his endless pain (from body to soul), as if I was in that hospital-prison with himself.
November 8, 2017
Eneagram
Zagreb, 2008.
Prevela Izida Pavić
Gerog Heym je jedan od značajnijih predstavnika njemačkog ekspresionizma, bar po pogovoru ovog izdanja, time je čudno što se njegovo ime ne spominje u našem školstvu. Osobno saznah za njega, i ovu knjigu, preko sjajne izdavačke kuće "Eneagram", čitajući"Eneagram" znate da imate posla s oštroumnim i britkim tekstovima, bili oni književnoumjetničke ili teorijske naravi.
Dio zarađenog novca će se zasigurno preliti u "Eneagram", svaka čast navedenoj izdavačkoj kući!
"Eneagram", "Demetra" i "Fraktura" su sveto trojstvo hrvatskog izdavaštva!
Sam naslov vjerno upućuje da se radi o ekspresionističkim fragmentarnim tekstovima, pretežito crticama i kratkim pričama, no izdanje donosi i nedovršeni roman "Istraživači Južnog pola". Heymov nedovršeni roman mi je čista petica, sadržajno najavljuje Lovecraftove "Planine ludila", u vidu toga što tematizira nepoznatu civilizaciju Antarktike gdje ljudi posjeduju paranormalne sposobnosti uma. U Heymovom nedovršenom romanu nailazimo, dakle, na topos Hiperboreje. Ja se palim na Hiperboreju! "Istraživači Južnog pola" čak i konstrukcijom teksta podsjećaju na "Planine ludila", zato jer je radnja prezentirana u obliku dnevnika, baš kao i u "Planinama".
Kraća proza je tipično ekspresionistička, u vidu njene liričnosti, kratkih rečenica, onomatopejštine, važnosti boja te tematike. Izdvojio bih priči "Lijesovi", gdje se lijesovi personificiraju kao živa bića koje vlasnik grobarskog poduzeća mazi kao psiće, a oni ga pozdravljaju otvaranjem sebe samih (vrata lijesa).
Trojka je dana kao ocjena cjelokupne knjige jer ipak mi nije genijalna Heymova kreativnost. Ekspresionizam se može shvatiti kao odbljesak romantizma, uostalom cijela moderna je bila svojevrsniv neoromantizam, ali samo je jednom bila 1817. 1917. i 2017. su ništa prema 1817.
Zagreb, 2008.
Prevela Izida Pavić
Gerog Heym je jedan od značajnijih predstavnika njemačkog ekspresionizma, bar po pogovoru ovog izdanja, time je čudno što se njegovo ime ne spominje u našem školstvu. Osobno saznah za njega, i ovu knjigu, preko sjajne izdavačke kuće "Eneagram", čitajući"Eneagram" znate da imate posla s oštroumnim i britkim tekstovima, bili oni književnoumjetničke ili teorijske naravi.
Dio zarađenog novca će se zasigurno preliti u "Eneagram", svaka čast navedenoj izdavačkoj kući!
"Eneagram", "Demetra" i "Fraktura" su sveto trojstvo hrvatskog izdavaštva!
Sam naslov vjerno upućuje da se radi o ekspresionističkim fragmentarnim tekstovima, pretežito crticama i kratkim pričama, no izdanje donosi i nedovršeni roman "Istraživači Južnog pola". Heymov nedovršeni roman mi je čista petica, sadržajno najavljuje Lovecraftove "Planine ludila", u vidu toga što tematizira nepoznatu civilizaciju Antarktike gdje ljudi posjeduju paranormalne sposobnosti uma. U Heymovom nedovršenom romanu nailazimo, dakle, na topos Hiperboreje. Ja se palim na Hiperboreju! "Istraživači Južnog pola" čak i konstrukcijom teksta podsjećaju na "Planine ludila", zato jer je radnja prezentirana u obliku dnevnika, baš kao i u "Planinama".
Kraća proza je tipično ekspresionistička, u vidu njene liričnosti, kratkih rečenica, onomatopejštine, važnosti boja te tematike. Izdvojio bih priči "Lijesovi", gdje se lijesovi personificiraju kao živa bića koje vlasnik grobarskog poduzeća mazi kao psiće, a oni ga pozdravljaju otvaranjem sebe samih (vrata lijesa).
Trojka je dana kao ocjena cjelokupne knjige jer ipak mi nije genijalna Heymova kreativnost. Ekspresionizam se može shvatiti kao odbljesak romantizma, uostalom cijela moderna je bila svojevrsniv neoromantizam, ali samo je jednom bila 1817. 1917. i 2017. su ništa prema 1817.
June 30, 2017
Georg Heyn is best known for his Expressionist poetry in German. His short stories are what amaze me most as the subtleties of language are not as easily lost in translation because precise words are not so necessary. After I read The Autopsy for the first time I felt as though I had been kicked in the stomach. I was crumpled by the stark brevity, the longing, the escape of life, and its shortness. It remains my favorite love story after all these years. The Thief shares an obsessive sickness and paranoia when someone/something we love (and hate) eats away at us a bit at a time. This is a set of stories worth reading.
October 3, 2017
Як для доволі похмурої збірки Гейм мальовничо описує події із розповідей, залишаючи мене розриватися між почуттям похмурості і повним захопленням картинами, які він так вміло малює словами. Місцями навіть думаєш, що зміст не настільки важливий на скільки суттєва саме подача. Важко придумати кращий переклад, адже так смачно було його читати.
November 5, 2019
Словами Аїда з мультика про Геркулеса: трохи темно, трохи похмуро, повно мерців.
Переклад шикарний!
Переклад шикарний!
March 16, 2020
Tenho este pequeno livrinho de contos há vários anos, talvez desde 2002 ou 2003; "A Autópsia" continua a provocar-me imensamente, adoro o conto...
December 15, 2025
The lyricism of these stories is born from the tension between the beauty of the image and the violence of the meaning, of the restlessness of the mind that cracks in silence -the moment when the real trembles and can no longer be distinguished from hallucination. Death, madness, loneliness are not themes, but constant presences, shadows that stretch over each sentence. Heym writes as if he were listening to the dark beats of his time, transforming the anxiety of the era into a harsh, expressionist music. Thus, his stories are not just read, but lived: like a crossing of a city at dusk, when the city lights come on too early, and the soul senses the storm.
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February 18, 2021In alto, sopra le loro teste, nel freddo cielo d’ottobre, avanzava il ferreo aratro del tempo che arava i suoi campi col dolore, che seminava le pene perché, un giorno, ne spuntasse la fiamma della vendetta, perché un giorno le braccia di migliaia di uomini divenissero leggere, alate e gaie come lievi colombe al servizio della ghigliottina, perché un giorno essi potessero avanzare, come divinità del futuro, sotto quel cielo, a testa scoperta, nell’eterna Pentecoste di un’aurora infinita.
July 6, 2025
One of my favourite books! Georg Heym was a figure of german expressionism. His writing style is raw and deep, often featuring motives such as death, loneliness, agony and a world consumed by darkness. In the center of his stories he puts objectively bad people, mad men outcasts and murders.
Reading the stories, I felt like I was apart of the plot. I loved the writing style.
Reading the stories, I felt like I was apart of the plot. I loved the writing style.
November 26, 2019
Wow, this was better than Poe, I think. I can’t really say which story was my favourite because they all were, except for the third, The Madman, which I couldn’t really read properly as it turned my blood to ice...
May 17, 2023
Read:
The Dissection - 2/5
The Dissection - 2/5
July 5, 2025
Too much obsession with death, dying and violence.
January 1, 2016
Many years ago I read a Portuguese translation of 5 stories from this book: "Grin" [Grimace?], "The Autopsy", "Jonathan", "The Madman" and "The Thief", and immediately Georg Heym became one of my favourite writers. I was at the time already aware of his poetry, and when reading his prose there was no deception whatsoever. He preserves here the style and the themes that made him one of the best examples of german expressionism.
If you want to know what "expressionism" is, do not search for it in wikipedia. Just read Heym.
If you want to know what "expressionism" is, do not search for it in wikipedia. Just read Heym.
April 27, 2016
Μέχρι την προηγούμενη εβδομάδα δεν γνώριζα καν την ύπαρξη του Χάιμ -τώρα είμαι εντυπωσιασμένος από τη δύναμη της γραφής του.
Want to read
September 4, 2016titre BU: La dissection : et autres nouvelles
September 30, 2018
Голод, революція, трупи, навіжені
December 7, 2022
Сборник практически всегда жутковатых, но очень ярко и современно (хоть и сто лет назад) написанных рассказов.
April 24, 2025
Never read anything like this. The stories are crazy
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