Just two things

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A poem by the German lyric poet Gottfried Benn is just two things . It is dated January 7, 1953 and was first published in the Frankfurt edition of the Neue Zeitung on March 26, 1953. In May of the same year it appeared in Benn's collection of poems Distillations . The last volume personally edited by Benn, the Gesammelte Gedichte from the year of his death in 1956, only concludes two things before the lyrical epilogue.

The poem looks back on a life in a thou address, asks the question of meaning and finds the answer in enduring the predestined. After the insight into the general transience, the poem closes with a juxtaposition of emptiness and drawn self. In contrast to the abstract, nihilistic statements, there is the closed and catchy form of the poem, which is characterized by traditional stylistic devices. Here, let cipher-like formulas to ambiguous interpretations. Only two things are among Gottfried Benn's most popular poems and were also understood as his personal life balance.

content

The first stanza of the three-verse poem reads:

"Walked through so many forms,
through I and We and You,
but everything remained suffered
by the eternal question: why?"

This is known as the child question. Only late did the you of the poem realize what life had to be endured:

"Your remotely controlled: You have to."

In view of the general impermanence, of which roses, snow and seas are named as examples, the conclusion remains:

"There are only two things: the void
and the drawn self."

shape

Structure of the poem
 verse  meter  rhyme 
1  υ - υ - υ υ - υ  a
2  υ - υ - υ -  b
3  υ - υ - υ - υ  a
4th  υ υ - υ υ - υ υ -  b
5  υ - υ υ - υ - υ  c
6th  υ - υ υ - υ -  d
7th  υ - υ - υ υ - υ  c
8th  υ - υ - υ - υ  c
9  υ - υ - υ υ -  d
10  υ - υ υ - υ - υ  e
11  υ - υ υ - υ υ -  f
12  υ - υ υ - υ υ - υ  e
13  - υ υ - υ υ -  f
-: stressed syllable
υ: unstressed syllable

The poem consists of three stanzas . The four verses of the two outer stanzas are in the cross rhyme and end alternately with an upward or downward movement. The inner stanza is expanded to five verses by means of an additional pair of rhymes . By inserting it as a parenthesis , the eighth verse drops out of the poem, which could just as easily be read without it. According to Gisbert Hoffmann, the effect of the additional line is a ritardando , a delay in the end of the verse. At the same time, she reinforces the previous verse 7, “There is only one thing: endure,” and makes it the focus of the poem. Benn used the stylistic device of an additional verse in his work repeatedly in individual stanzas; two of his poems consist entirely of five-line stanzas. Hoffmann explained the restless effect of the metric of only two things with the varying number of syllables per verse and the irregular and unexpectedly distributed verse feet . All three-part verses consist of different combinations of iambs and dactyls with the exception of the purely iambic verses 2, 3 and 8, the verse 4 made up of anapasts , and the final verse 13, which is the only one that begins with an accentuation and thus accentuates the closing formula. However, different scandals are also possible, according to which verse 4 is emphasized, verse 13, on the other hand, begins unstressed and thus repeats the scheme of verse 9.

If every subject is still missing in the first stanza of the poem, a thou address appears in its place from the second stanza. This can be understood as a monological self-address, however Kaspar H. Spinner pointed out that the statements are spoken to you from a higher consciousness. The you-form lifts the verse beyond an identification of the author as the speaker, it gives the poem an autonomy in the statement instance. While the “you” takes on the role of the lyrical self , the “I” transforms itself as a substantiated pronoun into an object , in the last verse even with an article and adjective. Gernot Böhme and Gisbert Hoffmann saw the ego split up into an early and a late ego. The latter turns to his earlier consciousness, his biographical self, on the basis of the acquired knowledge. According to Ulrike Draesner, this “I-You-Circle” invites the reader “to join in the rondo of speaking and being spoken to” by opening up a level of communication that is otherwise reserved for intimate self-talk.

Theo Meyer emphasized the contrast between the open question and the definitive answers of the poem, which showed a tendency towards generalization and theses . The first two stanzas in particular consist exclusively of abstract statements without any pictorial element. A historical-current reference is also completely hidden. However, Hans-Martin Gauger saw the abstraction as "rhetorically rustling" with rhyme and rhythm. The sentence structure is hypotactic , the “linguistic splendor” creates a “high pitch”. According to Achim Geisenhanslüke, the structure of the poem adopts a traditional song form . Jürgen Schröder described a “ parlando-like poetry ” that contrasts with the “ apodictic content”. The soft tone of the poem is evoked by assonances , alliterations and anaphors . The first six verses begin with the letter D, which is taken up again at the end of the last two stanzas. Other repeated stylistic devices are the series of three nouns mounted in each stanza , the colon used several times to accentuate it, and the enjambement of the closing verses. According to Schröder, the result is a rhythmic ascent and descent of each individual stanza, as well as a cycle from the beginning to the end of the poem, which rounds from the "I" of the second to the "I" of the last verse. Overall, the lyrical means only gave two things a strong suggestiveness that led the reader to identify with the radical content-related statements. For Helmuth Kiesel , the rhyme in particular had a superficial effect in the sense of a “mitigation and digestion” of the disillusioning content, but it also sends a subliminal counter-message of beauty.

interpretation

Despite the direct formulation of the poem, according to Hermann Korte, no clear decoding of the content is possible. Although the topic can be narrowed down with the terms transience , futility and loneliness , the verses are composed of ambiguous ciphers that do not fully reveal their meaning. The recourse to the principles of reduction and lacony shows hermetic tendencies. For Dieter Liewerscheidt , only two things were characterized equally by semantic openness and syntactic fuzziness. The coded short formulas and spaces in the poem invite the aesthetics of reception , the general allusions and the different interpretability of the terms allowed the reader to “sympathize with the general mood of Weltschmerz” .

"Walked through so many shapes"

Edith A. Runge, one of the earliest interpreters of Nur two things , saw the poem as "the sum of existence", with the first line expressing resignation , insignificance and transience. She interpreted the forms "I", "We" and "You" crossed as the self, the community and the opposite. For Gisbert Hoffmann, on the other hand , the three personal pronouns symbolized a life path through different stages of existence, similar to Helmuth Kiesel, who started out from past attempts at a fulfilled life through individualism , collectivism and partnership . Jürgen Schröder explained the stadiums historically: According to this, the "we" stand for the year 1933 and thus for Benn's own involvement in National Socialism .

Friederike Reents took a completely different approach. According to your interpretation, Benn as a poet strides through literary forms, through poetry , prose and essay , in order to create the finished poem in which form and poetics are fulfilled. In this respect, the “emptiness” and the “drawn self” do not ultimately stand for nihilistic resignation for her, but for the poet's belief that art can create something immortal out of nothing. Jürgen Egyptien established a connection between aesthetic forms in the first verse and social relationships in the second verse, while for Hans Bryner forms of existence and language are linked in both verses and a connection between life and writing is established: For the poet Benn it is about that Shaping life in writing.

"The eternal question: what for?"

According to Hans Bryner, the question of what for includes three things in the context of the poem: the question of the meaning of life , the expectation of a negative answer and suffering from this fact. Dieter Liewerscheidt saw the subject's suffering and the question of the reasons connected by the preposition "through" in two ways: On the one hand, suffering that has arisen from life can be made more comforting by searching for meaning. On the other hand, the naive question word, later labeled as a “child question”, can be understood as the cause of all suffering. Eva Maria Lüders stated that asking the wrong question had distracted too long from the actual problem of how people could cope with their imposed life situation. In contrast, Gisbert Hoffmann assessed the question of meaning not as a cause, but as a consequence of the suffering. It arises only from the disillusionments that go hand in hand with going through the stages of life.

According to Hans Bryner, the term "eternal question" can also be explained in two ways: the question of meaning as a primal question of human existence that has been asked over and over again for ages despite the lack of an answer, and as "eternal questioning", as an annoying repetition of an absurd " Child question ". While Hans-Martin Gauger explicitly denied a theological-religious meaning and understood the adjective "eternal" purely colloquially, Hermann Korte saw the role and meaning of the question of what in the poem ultimately unexplained and opened up a "wide field of metaphysical reflections." Friedrich Kienecker called the question with a quote from Benn's poem sentence structure “overwhelmingly unanswerable”.

"Whether sense, whether addiction, whether legend"

The triple alliteration on S inserted as a parenthesis allows a variety of interpretations. Eva M. Lüders recognized in the terms "the three areas in which our existence can become our own experience, a 'requirement'". According to this, the "sense" stands for the metaphysical urge to recognize life, but also for the sensory perception, the "addiction" for the desire of the instincts, but also for the root of the search, the "legend" for the myth, the literature or imposed work of the poet. Gernot Böhme described meaning, addiction and legend as the three possible world views , the explanatory patterns of human life, which experiences its determination from ideal goals, inner impulses or predetermined coincidences.

Fred Lönker explained the meaning as an attempt at world and self-interpretation, the addiction as self-forgetfulness in intoxication. Gisbert Hoffmann interpreted the legend from Benn's poem Abschied as “his own legend -: That was you -?” The self-image or the image of others of one's own self. Hans Helmut Hiebel linked the trinity with the previous personal pronouns: the you of love with addiction, to which he later also added the roses, the we with the collective search for meaning, the I with the arts of legend. However, Jürgen Egyptien relativized the meaning of the enumeration, because regardless of whether a drive is identified as a fulfillment of meaning, obsession or prophecy, with the following verse it reveals itself as externally determined, an inherent compulsion.

"Your remotely controlled: you must"

According to Gisbert Hoffmann, Benn equated life with “must live”. Nobody can get out of his skin, nobody is able to act differently than he was predetermined. A poet must write that his work is determined by someone else without being able to fathom the origin of the urge. Hans Helmut Hiebel located the motivation for action in a distant, dark past. Theo Meyer spoke of “being determined by an over-subjective, opaque and anonymous principle”, which is characteristic of Benn's monological poetry. Hans Bryner referred to other terms that Benn used to refer to that foreign determining authority in his poems: Moira , Kismet , Heimarmene , Doom , the Parzen . In “You must” he recognized an answer to the previously asked question about “why?” As well as a reduction of the Ten Commandments to the mere “You should”.

Gernot Böhme pointed out that one speaks of long-distance and not of foreign determination, thus not necessarily another authority is involved. Also do not follow this determination for the whole life, but only the “you must”, that is, the constellation in which a person is placed and which he understands as a task. Jürgen Schröder referred the verse to the biography of Gottfried Benn, who had initially welcomed National Socialism in his writings, for which he was later forced to justify himself. Through the "you must" fate is "misused as an alibi of moral and historical-political guilt", defeat and error are elevated to a prerequisite for fame. Benn's own guilt is thus canceled, the final “drawn self” as an expression of his self-justification.

"Whether roses, whether snow, whether seas"

The third row of nouns, which illustrates the transience of all things in the final stanza, again allows for a variety of interpretations. Gernot Böhme saw nature captured in its entirety in the Vanitas motif: the roses symbolized all living things, the snow the climatic influences and the seas the topography. In doing so, Hans-Martin Gauger added the observation that there are three extra-human phenomena. Edith A. Runge, however, read them as codes for natural beauty, dying and unfathomable being. For Maria Behre, time was the common denominator of the terms: roses, snow and seas illustrated the tenses of ripening, the moment and eternity for her. Eva M. Lüders, on the other hand, saw the world reduced to a fleeting growth and decay by three particularly changeable representatives, thus denying external reality as a whole.

Gisbert Hoffmann referred to the other use of these metaphors in Benn's work. There the rose symbolizes beauty and melancholy, the snow purity, the sea vastness and tranquility. Theo Meyer simply did not recognize a closed connection between the three nouns, but rather “indeterminate, versatile and general signs” that are not so much “concrete terms as cipher-like figures of meaning”. Jürgen Schröder brought Oswald Spengler's theory of cultural circles into play, which is naturalized in the three terms and short-circuited into a meaningless cycle. Since in the following verse the only “active-sensual” verb of the poem “bloomed” is immediately canceled by the following “faded”, only two things end in a passivity and statics of the nouns.

"The void and the drawn self"

In the last two verses Benn draws the conclusion of the poem. According to Theo Meyer, the relationship of the subject to the world is reduced to the opposition of “emptiness” and “I”, between which all references to meaning have dissolved. Only a formulaic self-assurance is possible. Achim Geisenhanslüke spoke of a “mixture of resignation and self-assertion”. Maria Behre deduced from the knowledge of emptiness, the absence of a metaphysical authority, the self-commitment to the autonomy of the self. According to Hans Helmut Hiebel, the ego is stigmatized by the "suffered" suffering and the "you have to" . In the double meaning of the word “drawn”, the I also try to draw itself into art. Dieter Liewerscheidt posed the question by whom, in the event of a denial of the outside world, the ego could even be drawn in order to answer himself that it could only be the position of one's own fatalistic loneliness that the ego suffers from. Thus he saw the poem under suspicion of "merely offering space for a narcissistic painful pose ".

While Hans-Martin Gauger understood the drawing in an exclusively negative way as an ego reduced by age and experience, Jürgen Schröder felt an awareness of calling and being chosen in the formulation. Benn linked here an elitist self- image and the reference to Christian models to a "Christ typology", which the poet cultivated in many notes from the period between 1934 and 1937. Friedrich Hahn sought another biblical reference, who contrasted the I drawn through the void with the drawing of Zion in a Christian-oriented interpretation : "I have drawn you in my hands" ( Isa 49,16  EU ). Hans Bryner, on the other hand, referred to the Cainsmark as the mythical beginning of humanity. The writer Ulrike Draesner recognized a literary reference in the drawn self: the “drawn self” as the draft of a poet.

Relation to other works by Benn

Gottfried Benn (1934)

In the center of Only two things is, according to Edith A. Runge one of the basic themes of the work of Gottfried Benn: the dualism between life and spirit to be incompatible ultimately him to nihilism led as the only appropriate attitude. Benn divided 1949 into a world of expression : “What lives is something different from what thinks.” He already described the process of having to come to terms with it at the time: “All of this is hard fought, suffered very much.” Benn In this dualism I have spoken out in favor of the spirit as the only valid one and more and more denied life, which has also poetically led to the principle of pure form that obliterates its object. By turning to complete transcendence, according to Runge, in the end only “the emptiness, the knowing self, and the suffering - all he really has left is silence”.

The poem Reisen , composed almost three years before Just two things , also poses the question of meaning and tells of a late experience, where the “emptiness” that a traveler travels on the streets of various cities manifests itself. Most striking, however, is the correspondence between the last verses: “the drawn self” and “the self-contained self.” Gisbert Hoffmann juxtaposed the two poems. There is always a confrontation of the ego with the void, which, however, is not separated from the ego in journeys , but arises from it. In addition, the ego is not drawn passively when traveling , but rather actively separates itself from the environment. Benn announced in 1949 in Der Radardenker that the emptiness should not only be met with the passivity of “bearing” from only two things , but with activity and personal design : “There is no emptiness and there is no abundance, there just is the possibility of filling the void here, immediately, at the window by means of plumbing and transformation. "

Jürgen Schröder referred to a poem from 1935 with the title Oh, the sublime :

"Only the marked person will speak,
and what is mixed remains mute,
it is not the teaching for everyone,
but no one should be rejected."

Already here the drawn is elevated to the chosen one, a tendency that is also continued in the story Weinhaus Wolf from 1937. There Benn justified his disappointed turning away from the National Socialist society and resorted to religious images from the Revelation of John for the drawn person . Schröder saw both the later “you must” and the “emptiness” in the historical-philosophical considerations from Weinhaus Wolf : “All great spirits of the white peoples have, it is quite obvious, only felt the one inner task of creating their nihilism cover up. "

Jürgen Haupt pointed out another “structural and largely also substantial continuity” of Just two things to a letter from 1938 to the Bremen businessman and long-time pen friend Friedrich Wilhelm Oelze. At that time, Benn's angry outburst concluded “that the whole thing is a big shit, humanity, their society, their organic and Sociology, all this stinky vermilion around us ", with a similar formulation:" There are only 2 things: dirty humanity and the like. lonely, silent suffering - no border shifts! "

Creation and publication

The poem Just Two Things was dated January 7, 1953 by Benn himself. Benn's notes contain preliminary work from the same month. An early version of the poem was split in two. The third stanza of the final version followed the introduction:

"No crises, no crown,
neither interior nor shape,
a well-groomed epigone
without self- content ."

A first draft of the first and second stanzas followed. Readings of the early versions read, for example: “How they blossomed and faded ”instead of“ everything that blossomed, faded ”,“ The man always knew ”instead of“ You only realized it late ”, and“ The one dark one: You have to ”instead of“ Your remotely determined: You have to ”.

The poem was first printed in the Frankfurt edition of the Neue Zeitung on March 26, 1953. In May of the same year it appeared as part of the collection of poems Distillations . In a letter to Oelze, Benn judged this volume: “I'm afraid they are boring, old-fashioned statements”. Almost twenty years earlier Benn had coined the phrase "rhyming worldview" for this. In the final edition of the Gesammelte Gedichte from Benn's death year 1956, Nur two things was originally intended to introduce the 1949–1955 section, but then moved to the end of the volume before the poem Epilog 1949 . Fred Lönker saw this as an indication of the special importance Benn attached to the poem. He had previously instructed to end the volume with one of the poems "that seem best to me". For Jürgen Schröder, the final positioning of Nur two things emphasized its “balance sheet and legacy character”, Helmuth Kiesel described the poem as part of Benn's “poetic testament”.

reception

According to Jürgen Schröder, only two things became one of Gottfried Benn's most popular poems. This had "brought to such catchy and melodious formulations that soon all depends firmly laid the author." For example, it the first paperback edition of Benn's letters bore the title The subscribed I . The poem enables the reader to break the content down to a few general statements: everything is fleeting and cannot be fathomed, each person ultimately alone. Especially in the post-war period, the existential self-justification of the poem hit the mood of the West German population. The mixture of sadness and melancholy brought about a catharsis without having to face concrete guilt and, according to Schröder, made it possible "to cope with the denied past in a poetic way". By the 1960s, such a reading was no longer relevant and Benn had become out of fashion. It was only in the eighties that a new, less time-related reading of the poem was possible.

In a survey by Westdeutscher Rundfunk in May 2000 about the Germans' favorite poems, only two things landed in 39th place. Marcel Reich-Ranicki included it both in his canon of German literature and in his personal selection of 100 poems from the 20th century. In a contemporary review of Benn's collection of poems, Distillations , Karl Krolow , who was very critical of other poems in this edition, classified only two things under “some wonderful pieces” and described: “Here fatality stands next to magic.” Hans Helmut Hiebel rated only two things as Benn's “life balance sheet”, in which he “expressed the reality of his experience in a compact, concise and coherent way”. The poem is "- despite the abstractions - speaking and covered with the 'glaze' of the beautiful." Looking back, Peter Rühmkorf felt himself passionately attracted to Gottfried Benn through poems such as Just two things in his "final fracking frenzy". For Wolfgang Emmerich , Nur two things was a “popular text that was perfect in its own way”.

The lyrical tone and the formal perfection of the poem were also criticized. Wolfgang Braungart spoke of a “famous and horrible” poem. The last stanza is "best poetry album level ('roses, tulips, carnations / all flowers wither'). The absurd combination (roses, snow, seas) reads like an involuntary parody. ”For Mathias Schreiber Nur two things was “ a nihilistic hit ”. He criticized: "The smooth, closed-form singsong simulating the end rhymes is without irony: It should in all seriousness carry the statement, reinforce it with pseudo-prophetic organ sound". Inadvertently, the self-confident language becomes a "mockery of the 'drawn self'". In the poem there is “depth without surface, so pseudo-radicalism: a prime example of kitsch .” Dieter Liewerscheidt also complained about the “brilliant aesthetic downside of a blanket reference that has become indifferent”. The “cult of form that has already left the world behind” is celebrating “a hollow triumph”.

In addition to the complete poem being printed in anthologies of poetry , the last two verses of Nur two things in particular were frequently cited. Friedrich Kienecker spoke of the “drawn self” as a metaphor “for the self-esteem and self-understanding of modern man”, which expresses “a basic human experience”, which he found again in a modified form in many contemporary poems. For Eva M. Lüders, too, the “'drawn self' was the bearer and hero of modern poetry”. It stands for "the end of that personal culture of life in which the 'lyrical self' was at home." However, Paul Celan rebelled against the final formula of Just two things when he met Hans Mayer . According to Mayer, Celan refuses to have such a "sentimental aura" because the poem is at the center of his poetics, while Benn is the drawn and condemned poet. With the poem After Gottfried Benn, the Spanish lyric poet Leopoldo María Panero wrote a "posthumous imitation of Gottfried Benn", which at the same time distances itself from the beautiful words of his role model. His drawn self is close to madness and waits for death in a stinking cell. Marcel Beyer published another reply to Nur two things in 1997 with his poem Nur two suitcases , which closes with the lines: “Only / the two suitcases, shaving marks remain here, and you: I / ask the children's question just as silently. What for."

Only two things were published several times on phonograms together with other poems by Benn, for example in readings by Gottfried Benn himself, by Will Quadflieg and Dieter Mann . By 1995 there were a total of six musical versions of the poem, among others by Heinz Friedrich Hartig as part of the oratorio Wohin (1963/64), Xaver Paul Thoma for alto voice and viola (1977) and Günter Bialas for medium voice and tenor saxophone (1987/88) . The Hamburg pop musician The Drawn I borrowed Benn's poem his pseudonym.

literature

Publications

  • First publication: Die Neue Zeitung . Frankfurt edition. No. 72 of March 26, 1953, p. 4.
  • Gottfried Benn: Distillations. New poems. Limes, Wiesbaden 1953, p. 19.
  • Gottfried Benn: Collected poems. Limes, Wiesbaden 1956, p. 358.

Secondary literature

  • Gernot Böhme : The question for what? - a child's question? In: Gernot Böhme, Gisbert Hoffmann: Benn and we. Existential interpretations of poems by Gottfried Benn . Xenomoi, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-936532-81-4 , pp. 33-52, also online as a lecture as part of the Lindau Psychotherapy Weeks (pdf; 156 kB).
  • Hans Bryner: The rose motif in Gottfried Benn's poetry. Sketches for picture and construction. Peter Lang, Bern 1985, ISBN 3-261-04087-4 , pp. 119-132.
  • Hans Helmut Hiebel : The spectrum of modern poetry. Interpretations of German-language poetry 1900–2000 in the international context of modernity. Part I (1900-1945) . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2005, ISBN 3-8260-3200-4 , pp. 238–242.
  • Gisbert Hoffmann: Transience and Duration. In: Gernot Böhme, Gisbert Hoffmann: Benn and we. Existential interpretations of poems by Gottfried Benn . Xenomoi, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-936532-81-4 , pp. 53-89.
  • Fred Lönker: Gottfried Benn. 10 poems. Explanations and documents. Reclam, Stuttgart 2010, ISBN 978-3-15-016069-5 , pp. 134-145.
  • Eva M. Lüders: The lyrical self and the drawn self. On the late poetry of Gottfried Benn. In: Wirkendes Wort 15/1965, pp. 361–385.
  • Theo Meyer : Art problems and word combinations with Gottfried Benn . Böhlau, Cologne 1971, ISBN 3-412-93071-7 , pp. 341-344.
  • Edith A. Runge: Gottfried Benns “Only two things”. In: Wolfgang Peitz (Ed.): Thinking in contradictions. Correlaries for Gottfried Benn Research . Becksmann, Freiburg im Breisgau 1972, pp. 343-364. First print in: monthly books for German teaching, German language and literature . Vol. XLIX, 1957, pp. 161-178.
  • Jürgen Schröder : Distilled history. About Gottfried Benn's poem Just two things. In: Walter Hinck (Ed.): Poems and interpretations. I present . Reclam, Stuttgart 1982, ISBN 3-15-007895-4 , pp. 20-28.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The full text can be viewed online, for example in the following article: Stefanie Golisch: Möblierter Herr. Gottfried Benn and Leopoldo María Panero: Only two things. On poetenladen.de , June 21, 2006.
  2. ↑ Gottfried Benn: Only two things. In: Complete Works. Volume I. Poems 1st Stuttgart edition, edited by Gerhard Schuster. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 3-608-95313-2 , p. 320.
  3. ↑ After Fred Lönker: Gottfried Benn. 10 poems. P. 139.
  4. ↑ Mario Leis: Gottfried Benn. Poems. Reading key. Reclam, Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 978-3-15-015410-6 , p. 59.
  5. ↑ Gisbert Hoffmann: Transience and Duration. Pp. 67-69.
  6. ↑ Fred Lönker: Gottfried Benn. 10 poems. P. 139.
  7. ↑ Gisbert Hoffmann: Transience and Duration. P. 68.
  8. ↑ Kaspar H. Spinner: On the structure of the lyrical self. Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft, Frankfurt am Main 1975, ISBN 3-7997-0253-9 , pp. 144-147.
  9. ↑ Gernot Böhme and Gisbert Hoffmann: Introduction: Existentielle Interpretationen In: Gernot Böhme, Gisbert Hoffmann: Benn and we. Existential interpretations of poems by Gottfried Benn . Xenomoi, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-936532-81-4 , pp. 26-27.
  10. ↑ a b Ulrike Draesner : Little Ghost. Thoughts on the lyrical self. In: Jan Bürger (Ed.): I am not inwardly. Approaches to Gottfried Benn . Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2003, ISBN 3-608-93621-1 , p. 26.
  11. ^ A b Theo Meyer: Art problems and word combinations with Gottfried Benn. P. 342.
  12. ↑ Hans-Martin Gauger : High style as escalating writing. Gottfried Benn: "Restaurant" and "Only two things". In: German Academy for Language and Poetry . 1996 yearbook . Wallstein, Göttingen 1997, ISBN 3-89244-252-5 , pp. 124-125.
  13. ↑ Achim Geisenhanslüke: Energy of the characters. On the tradition of artistic poetry with Gottfried Benn, Paul Celan, Thomas Kling and Marcel Beyer. In: literature for readers 25, issue 1/2002, p. 12.
  14. ↑ a b Jürgen Schröder: Distilled history. About Gottfried Benn's poem Just two things. Pp. 20-22.
  15. ↑ Helmuth Kiesel : Rhyme as a message. In: Marcel Reich-Ranicki (ed.): Hundred poems of the century . Insel, ISBN 3-458-17012-X , Frankfurt am Main 2000, pp. 122–123.
  16. ^ A b Hermann Korte : Poetry from 1945 to the present . Oldenbourg, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-637-88681-2 , pp. 51-52.
  17. ^ A b Dieter Liewerscheidt : Gottfried Benns Lyrik. A critical introduction . Oldenbourg, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-486-17721-4 , p. 65.
  18. ↑ Edith A. Runge: Gottfried Benns "Only two things". Pp. 343-344.
  19. ↑ Gisbert Hoffmann: Transience and Duration. P.56.
  20. ↑ Helmuth Kiesel: Rhyme as a message. P. 122.
  21. ↑ Jürgen Schröder: Distilled history. About Gottfried Benn's poem Just two things. P. 27.
  22. ↑ Friederike Reents: Only two things - On the double vision of the lyrical self. In: Friederike Reents (Ed.): Gottfried Benns Modernität . Wallstein, Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-8353-0151-1 , pp. 75-88.
  23. ↑ a b Jürgen Egyptien: Lines of Development in Gottfried Benn's Lyrik und Poetik 1920 to 1956. In: Dieter Burdorf (Hrsg.): Liebender Streit. Else Lasker-Schüler and Gottfried Benn . Institute for Church and Society, Iserlohn 2002, ISBN 3-931845-60-5 , p. 86.
  24. ^ A b Hans Bryner: The rose motif in Gottfried Benn's poetry. Sketches for picture and construction. P. 120.
  25. ↑ Dieter Liewerscheidt: Gottfried Benns Lyrik. A critical introduction. P. 63.
  26. ↑ Eva M. Lüders: The lyrical I and the drawn I. On the late poetry of Gottfried Benn. P. 382.
  27. ↑ Gisbert Hoffmann: Transience and Duration. P.56.
  28. ↑ Hans Bryner: The rose motif in Gottfried Benn's poetry. Sketches for picture and construction. Pp. 120-121.
  29. ↑ Hans-Martin Gauger: High style as escalating writing. Gottfried Benn: "Restaurant" and "Only two things". P. 125.
  30. ↑ Gottfried Benn: sentence structure. In: Complete Works. Volume I. Poems 1 , p. 238.
  31. ↑ Friedrich Kienecker : The human being in modern poetry. A handout for interpretation. Ludgerus, Essen 1975, p. 40.
  32. ↑ Eva M. Lüders: The lyrical I and the drawn I. On the late poetry of Gottfried Benn. P. 383.
  33. ↑ Gernot Böhme: The question why? - a child's question? P. 37.
  34. ↑ Fred Lönker: Gottfried Benn. 10 poems. P. 137.
  35. ↑ Gottfried Benn: Farewell. In: Complete Works. Volume I. Poems 1 , p. 221.
  36. ↑ Gisbert Hoffmann: Transience and Duration. Pp. 65-66.
  37. ^ A b Hans Helmut Hiebel: The spectrum of modern poetry. Interpretations of German-language poetry 1900–2000 in the international context of modernity. Part I (1900-1945). P. 239.
  38. ↑ Gisbert Hoffmann: Transience and Duration. P. 66.
  39. ↑ Hans Bryner: The rose motif in Gottfried Benn's poetry. Sketches for picture and construction. Pp. 122-123.
  40. ↑ Gernot Böhme: The question why? - a child's question? Pp. 39-40.
  41. ↑ Jürgen Schröder: Distilled history. About Gottfried Benn's poem Just two things. Pp. 26-27.
  42. ↑ Gernot Böhme: The question why? - a child's question? Pp. 36-37.
  43. ^ A b Hans-Martin Gauger: High style as escalating writing. Gottfried Benn: "Restaurant" and "Only two things". P. 124.
  44. ↑ Edith A. Runge: Gottfried Benns "Only two things". P. 345.
  45. ^ A b Maria Behre: Holderlin in the poetry of the 20th century. In: Heinz Ludwig Arnold (Hrsg.): Poetry of the 20th century . text + kritik, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-88377-613-0 , p. 112.
  46. ↑ Eva M. Lüders: The lyrical I and the drawn I. On the late poetry of Gottfried Benn. P. 366.
  47. ↑ Gisbert Hoffmann: Transience and Duration. P. 74.
  48. ^ A b Theo Meyer: Art problems and word combinations with Gottfried Benn. P. 343.
  49. ↑ Jürgen Schröder: Distilled history. About Gottfried Benn's poem Just two things. Pp. 21-22.
  50. ↑ Achim Geisenhanslüke: Energy of the characters. On the tradition of artistic poetry with Gottfried Benn, Paul Celan, Thomas Kling and Marcel Beyer. P. 13.
  51. ↑ Hans Helmut Hiebel: The spectrum of modern poetry. Interpretations of German-language poetry 1900–2000 in the international context of modernity. Part I (1900-1945). P. 240.
  52. ↑ Dieter Liewerscheidt: Gottfried Benns Lyrik. A critical introduction. Pp. 64-65.
  53. ↑ Jürgen Schröder: Distilled history. About Gottfried Benn's poem Just two things. P. 23.
  54. ↑ Friedrich Hahn: Bible and modern literature. Big life questions in text comparisons. Quell, Stuttgart 1966, pp. 118-120.
  55. ↑ Hans Bryner: The rose motif in Gottfried Benn's poetry. Sketches for picture and construction. P. 124.
  56. ↑ Gottfried Benn: World of Expression. In: Complete Works. Volume IV. Prose 2 (1933-1945) . Stuttgart edition, edited by Gerhard Schuster. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1989, ISBN 3-608-95316-7 , p. 335.
  57. ↑ Edith A. Runge: Gottfried Benns "Only two things". Pp. 343, 346-348, citation p. 354.
  58. ↑ Gottfried Benn: Travel. In: Complete Works. Volume I. Poems 1 , p. 307.
  59. ↑ Gottfried Benn: The radar thinker. In: Complete Works. Volume V. Prose 3 (1946-1950) . Stuttgart edition, edited by Gerhard Schuster. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1991, ISBN 3-608-95317-5 , p. 76.
  60. ↑ Gisbert Hoffmann: The futility of traveling. In: Gernot Böhme, Gisbert Hoffmann: Benn and we. Existential interpretations of poems by Gottfried Benn. Pp. 91, 120-130.
  61. ↑ Gottfried Benn: Oh, the sublime. In: Complete Works. Volume I. Poems 1 , p. 173.
  62. ↑ Gottfried Benn: Weinhaus Wolf. In: Complete Works. Volume IV. Prose 2 (1933-1945) , p. 237.
  63. ↑ Jürgen Schröder: Distilled history. On Gottfried Benn's poem Just Two Things, p. 23.
  64. ↑ Gottfried Benn: Letters to FW Oelze. First volume 1932–1945. Edited by Harald Steinhagen and Jürgen Schröder. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1979, ISBN 3-596-22187-0 , p. 203.
  65. ↑ Jürgen Haupt: Nature and Poetry. Relations with Nature in the 20th Century. Metzler, Stuttgart 1983, ISBN 3-476-00530-5 , p. 106.
  66. ↑ a b Gottfried Benn: Complete Works. Volume I. Poems 1. p. 572.
  67. ↑ Gottfried Benn: Complete Works. Volume VII / 2. Preparatory work, drafts and notes from the estate. Stuttgart edition, edited by Holger Hof. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 3-608-93634-3 , pp. 578-579.
  68. ↑ a b Jürgen Schröder: Distilled history. About Gottfried Benn's poem Just two things. P. 20.
  69. ↑ Fred Lönker: Gottfried Benn. 10 poems. P. 135.
  70. ↑ Gottfried Benn: Complete Works. Volume I. Poems 1. p. 336.
  71. ↑ Helmuth Kiesel: Rhyme as a message. P. 124.
  72. ↑ Gottfried Benn: The drawn me. Letters from the years 1900-1956. Edited by Max Niedermayer and Horst Bienek . dtv, Munich 1962.
  73. ↑ Jürgen Schröder: Distilled history. About Gottfried Benn's poem Just two things. Pp. 27-28.
  74. ↑ Lutz Hagestedt (ed.): The Germans' favorite poems. Artemis & Winkler, Düsseldorf 2001, ISBN 3-538-06923-9 .
  75. ^ Karl Krolow : Subtlety and platitude. Gottfried Benn: "Distillations". In: Die Neue Zeitung from 27./28. June 1953. Reprinted in: Bruno Hillebrand (Ed.): About Gottfried Benn. Critical Voices 1912–1956 . Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1987, ISBN 3-596-25258-X , pp. 244-246.
  76. ↑ Hans Helmut Hiebel: The spectrum of modern poetry. Interpretations of German-language poetry 1900–2000 in the international context of modernity. Part I (1900-1945). Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2005, ISBN 3-8260-3200-4 , p. 242.
  77. ↑ Peter Rühmkorf : Where I learned . Wallstein, Göttingen 1999, ISBN 3-89244-364-5 , p. 39.
  78. ↑ Wolfgang Emmerich : Gottfried Benn . Rowohlt, Reinbek 2006, ISBN 3-499-50681-5 , p. 123.
  79. ↑ Wolfgang Braungart : "What I still think and what I add / What I still love carries the same features". Stefan George's performative poetics. In: Heinz Ludwig Arnold (Ed.): Stefan George . text & kritik 168, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-88377-815-X , pp. 16-17, footnote 3.
  80. ^ Mathias Schreiber: The unimaginable art. The strength of the weak as a poetic principle. Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 1970, pp. 126–127.
  81. ↑ Friedrich Kienecker: The human being in modern poetry. A handout for interpretation. Ludgerus, Essen 1975, pp. 113-114.
  82. ↑ Eva M. Lüders: The lyrical I and the drawn I. On the late poetry of Gottfried Benn. P. 385.
  83. ↑ Hans Mayer : Memory of Paul Celan. In: Hans Mayer: Contemporaries. Memory and interpretation . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1998, ISBN 3-518-40963-8 , pp. 122-123.
  84. ↑ Stefanie Golisch: Furnished gentleman. Gottfried Benn and Leopoldo María Panero: Only two things. On poetenladen.de , June 21, 2006.
  85. ↑ Marcel Beyer : Only two suitcases. In: Wrong food . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 3-518-12005-0 , p. 79.
  86. ↑ Helmut Heintel: Gottfried Benn's work in music. Hatje, Stuttgart 1995, ISBN 3-7757-0538-4 , pp. 10, 18, 34, 95.
This article was added to the list of excellent articles on November 11, 2010 in this version .