Primal Vision: Selected Prose & Poetry

by Gottfried Benn

Gottfried Benn, a German writer and doctor who served in both World War I and World War II, occupies a curious place in the annals of modern literature. His contribution to German letters in the 20th century is undeniable, but his work centers so strongly on the grotesque and horrible that he has never risen to the levels of adoration reserved for poets like Rilke. This is understandable, but a bit of a shame. (Benn's obsession with images of death, decay, and disfigurement are not surprising, considering the fact that during World War I he was stationed in Brussels, where he was in charge of treating the venereal diseases of prostitutes and prisoners of war.) Benn was also a supporter of National Socialism in its early days but turned against the regime after the Night of the Long Knives. Primal Vision is a comprehensive collection of his poems and prose. The prose works are translated into English (including his essay 'National Socialism and Art'), and the poems are printed in both English translation and in the original German. This book is perfect for English readers who have never before encountered Benn.

Genres: Poetry, Fiction, Germany

294 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1971

About the author

Gottfried Benn was a German essayist, novelist and expressionist poet. A doctor of medicine, he became an early admirer, and later a critic, of the National Socialist revolution. Benn had a literary influence on German verse immediately before and after the NS regime.

Reviews

[Jenna · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is half prose, half poetry: so far, I've read all the poems, none of the prose. Some of the poems, originally written in German, evidently don't translate well into English; the result is that the reader often finds his face shoved into an indigestible heap of words sprinkled with far-too-frequent commas, the way a barbershop floor is strewn with several-days'-worth of wet hair-curlicues. These poems certainly seem huffy and congested with disdainful Teutonic emotion, but Lord knows what they are trying to say. I challenge you to find me an intrepid grammar-school student who could diagram such woefully constipated sentences as these.

The poems that successfully crossed over into English without being "splinched" (thanks, Harry Potter, for adding that "word" to my lexicon) include some real stunners, fortunately. Verily, no one does lyricism like the Germans. The book starts off with Benn's infamous "Morgue" poems: a handful of mesmerizingly repellent little gems that Benn, who in fact performed many autopsies in his career as a physician, seemed to compose with the deliberate design of scarring his readers' minds and chilling their hearts. The next couple of poems, "Night Cafe" and "Express Train," indicate that Benn viewed other people's courtship rituals with the same feelings of detachment-verging-on-disgust with which he viewed the rotting cadavers on his dissecting-table. Here, cynicism and lyricism mingle until they are indistinguishable, and the result is breathtaking beauty in spite of itself.

Still, though, you'd have to be utterly tone-deaf to finish this book with the belief that Benn is really the heartless bastard/Nazi-sympathizer that he has gone down in history as. Do there exist poems more simple-hearted, more big-hearted and humane, than Benn's "People Met"? More empathetic, more misanthropic-and-yet-not-misanthropic than his "Chopin" or "What's Bad"? Though his verse teems with as much bile as Baudelaire's, it is also suffused with twelve times as much heart.

[Donald · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gottfried Benn was a tremendously influential writer in his time. This is a great selection, unfortunately it is merely a selection, leaving the anglophone reader waiting until someone bothers to translate the full works excerpted in Primal Vision.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't think I'm really qualified to talk about the poetry but the prose in here is fascinating and often oblique, very complex and filled with brilliant imagery and allusions to all kinds of topics. Pretty cool that he was a weird pessimist who thought that formally complex artistic expression is the only source of meaning in the world. Quite a few of the prose pieces here are only excerpts from longer works, none of which seem to have been translated into English in full, which is kind of annoying.

[D. Stark · Rating 4 out of 5]

His work rises above the ridiculous admiration for Spengler, Nietzsche and his duty towards the Third Reich("The people were with them. How could I turn away?") which he, openly, despised. His prose pieces are provocative and offer insight, poetry starkly beautiful as Trakl's(also a medical officer in WWI, like Benn).

[Joey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting read, more or less as a historical artefact

[Simone · Rating 3 out of 5]

in all transparency, i read only a sampling of benn’s prose and found it to lack the teeth and life of his poetry, for which i bought this volume. all in all, the poetry was pretty good.

[Zoe Laris · Rating 2 out of 5]

putting this one in the Little Free Library at the Unitarian Universalist church at the top of the block

[Affasf]

Un cadavere canta:
fra poco attraverso di me vanno i campi e i vermi.
Il labbro della zolla rode: la parete crolla.
La carne infrollisce. E nelle oscure torri
delle membra irrompe esultando la terra eterna.

Redento dal mio da lacrime sommerso
carcere. Redento da fame e da spada.
E come i gabbiani d’inverno verso le acque
dolci migrano: così: rimpatriato. –