Static poems

Statische Gedichte is a volume of poetry by Gottfried Benn from 1948. The work was mainly composed between 1937 and 1947 and was published in 1948 by Arche Verlag . Benn had published fourteen poems such as Turin , Sils Maria and Anemone in 1936 in his volume Selected Poems . In addition to morgue and other poems and aprèslude, the poems established the poet's literary fame. Furthermore, they contributed to Benn's recognition in the literature business of the post-war period, for example he was awarded the Georg Büchner Prize in 1951 .

content

Year of origin	title	genus
1941-1944	Oh, the distant land
1945-1946	quaternary
1944	Chopin	Portrait poem
1945-1946	Orpheus' death
1939	Verses
1941	Poems
	photos
1920-1940	Wave of night
1930-1933	At the edge of the Nordic sea
1935	Day that ends summer
1937	The fellows
1944	Then
1944	5th century
1935	Asters	Nature poem
1944	September	Nature poem
1943	All the graves
1943	When something is easy
1941	A word
1943	Gardens and nights
1933	Sils-Maria
1943	A late look
1943	According to drawing
1927	In memoriam amount 317
1943	Lost me
1941	Henri Matisse: "Asphodèles"	Thing poem
1938	Isn't that harder
1943	St. Petersburg - mid-century
1943	Mediterranean
1936	Never lonely	Nature poem, didactic poem
1936	Who is alone	Didactic poem
1934	Late in the year
	Are you looking for
	The dream
	anemone
1936	Turin
1936	Life - lower delusion	Didactic poem
1935	Oh, the sublime
	Summer
1941	farewell
	Form
	Static poems

Edition history

After the end of the war, Benn was in contact with numerous publishers, including Ernst Rowohlt , Peter Suhrkamp , Eugen Claassen and Karl Hein Henssel , but it wasn't until 1946 that an opportunity to publish the static poems arose. The project failed despite the printing license. Only five copies were made as private prints. In 1947 Gottfried Benn no longer believed that his works would be published during his lifetime. Benn's collaboration on Johannes Weyl's Pandora resulted in the rejection of the project by the Direction de l'Education Publique a year earlier . The journalist Erhard Hüsch, who met Gottfried Benn in 1946, finally established the contact between the publisher Peter Schifferli from Arche Verlag Zürich and Benn.

reception

Reviews and votes

After the essay “The Ptolemy” was published by Limes Verlag in 1949 and shortly afterwards a license edition of “Static Poems” and other works by Benn, the younger critics of the post-war period such as Ernst Kreuder , Max Bense , Curt Hohoff and Hans Egon Holthusen expressed their praise about Benn's recent work. Alfred Andersch stylized Benn as an ostracized poet. Compared to the Expressionist poems, he attested the volume a certain simplicity as well as a "commitment to spirit and form". In conclusion, he says: "Benn's artistry probably reaches its peak in the poem" Poems ", three eight-line stanzas of incomparable linguistic and intellectual power"

"With a single flap of the wing, a new poem by Gottfried Benn tears us high above the jumble of voices in the present, which is striving for lyrical expression," said Friedrich Sieburg with enthusiasm. He also paid tribute to Benn's departure from his earlier poetry, primarily referring to the band Morgue. About the meaning of the poems, he says: "It cannot be imitated and it cannot be used as a school, since the painstakingly painful path to clarify it reaches the limits of the possibilities of expression". For Ernst Kreuder, the Static Poems were the beginning of German literature after the end of the war.

Literary studies

Helmuth Kiesel places the static poems in relation to contemporary history. After his enthusiasm for National Socialism, Benn summed up and committed himself to a world of the spirit. Friederike Reents refers to the poetological poems “Ein Wort”, “Gedichte” or “Statische Gedichte” contained in the volume, which have the reflection of form as their content, and the poem “Wave of the Night”, which is widely interpreted by Benn research. The latter poem is "everything that can be said about Benn's poetics of a completed poem: the inherent reflection of form and the poetics conveyed in it".

The comparator Dieter Lamping devalues ​​the majority of the poems as conventional. Although the montage poetry is still being realized in poems like Quaternary and Lost Me , traditional poems, including him, would become familiar poems like asters. Lonely never or oh the sublime counts clearly predominate. He also sees a turning away from the subject of the big city to the genre of natural poetry . According to Hugo Ridley, the choice of themes and form corresponds to the overall character of the collection, but the poems are not exhausted in a repetition, "rather, smaller shifts in focus can be seen again".

literature

Text output

• Gottfried Benn: Static poems. Arche, Zurich 1948.
• Gottfried Benn: Static poems. Arche Zurich 2006, ISBN 3-7160-2356-6 .
• Gottfried Benn: Static poems. Poems 1937–1947. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2011, ISBN 978-3-608-93935-4 .

Secondary literature

• Werner Helwig: Gottfried Benn. Static poems. In: Willi Weismann (Ed.): Literary Revue. Issue 5, Munich 1949, pp. 326–328.
• Simon Karcher: Objectivity and elegiac tone. The late poetry of Gottfried Benn and Bertolt Brecht - a comparison . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2006, ISBN 3-8260-3344-2 .
• Harald Steinhagen: The static poems by Gottfried Benn. The completion of his expressionist poetry . Klett, Stuttgart 1969.
• Joachim Vahland: Are the “Static Poems” static poems? In: Bruno Hillebrand (Ed.): Gottfried Benn. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1979, pp. 350–366.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See Thorsten Ries: Metamorphosis as an anthropological motif in Gottfried Benn's poetry. Text genetic edition of selected poems from the years 1935-1953 . In: Bodo Plachta (Ed.): Exempla Critica. Historical-critical single edition on recent German literature . Vol. 1, Gruyter, Berlin, Boston 2014, ISBN 978-3-11-035063-0 , p. 571.
2. ↑ See Thorsten Ries: Metamorphosis as an anthropological motif in Gottfried Benn's poetry. Text genetic edition of selected poems from the years 1935-1953 . In: Bodo Plachta (Ed.): Exempla Critica. Historical-critical single edition on recent German literature . Vol. 1, Gruyter, Berlin, Boston 2014, ISBN 978-3-11-035063-0 , p. 572.
3. ↑ See Thorsten Ries: Metamorphosis as an anthropological motif in Gottfried Benn's poetry. Text genetic edition of selected poems from the years 1935-1953 . In: Bodo Plachta (Ed.): Exempla Critica. Historical-critical single edition on recent German literature . Vol. 1, Gruyter, Berlin, Boston 2014, ISBN 978-3-11-035063-0 , p. 572.
4. ↑ Cf. Dyck, Joachim: Gottfried Benn. In: Killy Literature Lexicon. Authors and works from the German-speaking cultural area. Edited by Wilhelm Kühlmann, 2nd edition, Berlin, New York 2008ff., P. 446.
5. ^ Alfred Andersch: Static poems . In: The New Week, November 20, 1948.
6. ^ Friedrich Sieburg: Who is alone . In: The Present, on February 15, 1949
7. ↑ See Helmuth Kiesel: History of literary modernity. Language, Aesthetics, Poetry in the Twentieth Century. C. H. Beck, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-406-51145-7 , p. 420. ( limited preview in Google book search)
8. ↑ Cf. Frederike Reents: Only two things - On the double vision of the modern lyrical self . In: Frederike Reents (ed.): Gottfried Benns Modernität . Wallstein, Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-8353-0151-1 , p. 82.
9. ↑ Frederike Reents: Only two things - On the double vision of the modern lyrical self . In: Frederike Reents (ed.): Gottfried Benns Modernität . Wallstein, Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-8353-0151-1 , p. 83.
10. ↑ Cf. Dieter Lamping: The lyrical poem. Definitions of theory and history of the genus . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2000, ISBN 3-525-20778-6 , p. 231.
11. ↑ Cf. Dieter Lamping : The lyrical poem. Definitions of theory and history of the genus . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2000, ISBN 3-525-20778-6 , p. 231.
12. ↑ Hugh Ridley: Gottfried Benn. A writer between renewal and reaction . Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1990, ISBN 978-3-531-12043-0 , p. 100.