Gottfried Benn

[quasimodo1]

EXPRESS TRAIN

Brown as cognac. Brown as leaves. Red-brown. Malayan yellow.
Express train Berlin-Trellegorg and the Baltic Sea resorts
Flesh, that went naked
Tanned to the very lips by the sea.
Deeply ripe, for Grecian pleasure.
And yearning for the scythe: how long the summer seems!
Almost the end of the ninth month already!

Stubble and the last almond thirst in us.
Unfoldings, the blood, the weariness,
The nearness of dahlias confuses us.

Man-brown hurls itself upon woman-brown

A woman is something for a night.
And if it was good, for the next night too!
Oh, and then again this being by oneself!
These silences! This letting oneself drift!

A woman-light-brown reels towards man-dark-brown:

Hold me, dear; I'm falling.
I'm so weary at the neck.
Oh, this feverish sweet
Last fragrance blown from the gardens.

{1912, translated by Michael Hamburger, from The Morgue Cycle}

[quasimodo1]

RADIO



I


"—science per se—"
my God, when I hear them on the radio saying that,
it slays me.
Is there a science that's not per se?
I don't get out much, rarely get to see any lakes,
gardens only sporadically and then behind fences,
or in allotments, that's about the size of it,
I rely on ersatz:
radio, newspaper, magazines—
so how can people say such things to me?


It makes you wonder
whether there are any surrogates for hollyhocks,
for warm life, French kisses, hanky-panky,
all those things that make existence a little luxurious,
and all of them somehow of a piece!


No, all this cerebration is not my cup of tea,
but there are sometimes hours on end
where there's no woman on any wavelength
(I receive medium-wave, short-, long-, and VHF),
no voice saying, "first you say no, then
maybe, then yes,"
nothing but these opinionated pedagogues,
it seems that everything the West thinks of as its
higher product is produced by the seated male—
as I say, give me the hanky-panky any day!



{first of two parts}



Translated by Michael Hofmann

[quasimodo1]

Gottfried Benn (1886-1956) was born the son a Lutheran minister. He served in the German army’s medical corps during WWI, drawing on his clinical experiences as inspiration for his first collections of poetry, Morgue (1912) and Fleisch (1917). Today Benn is widely considered the foremost German poet of literary modernity. {from the Poetry Foundation website}

[quasimodo1]

http://i840.photobucket.com/albums/zz321/quasimodo1/artbyGotfriedBenn.jpg

[stlukesguild]

Actually, Salvador Dali- Autumn Cannibalism dating 1936... gives form to the growing civil war in Spain (which began July 1936) in which the nation would devour her own... including the murder of Dali's beloved friend (and artistic conspirator) Federico Garcia-Lorca in August 1936.

[quasimodo1]

They Are Human After All


They are human after all, you think,
as the waiter steps up to a table
out of sight of you,
reserved, corner table—
they too are thin-skinned and pleasure-seeking,
with their own feelings and their own sufferings.


You’re not so all alone
in your mess, your restlessness, your shakes,
they too will be full of doubt, dither, shilly-shallying,
even if it’s all about making deals,
the universal-human
albeit in its commercial manifestations,
but present there too.


Truly, the grief of hearts is ubiquitous
and unending,
but whether they were ever in love
(outwith the awful wedded bed)
burning, athirst, desert-parched
for the nectar of a faraway
mouth,
sinking, drowning
in the impossibility of a union of souls—


you won’t know, nor can you
ask the waiter,
who’s just ringing up
another bock,
always avid for coupons
to quench a thirst of another nature,
though also deep.http://i840.photobucket.com/albums/zz321/quasimodo1/gottfried-benn-ii.jpg
{Translated by Michael Hofmann }

[kittypaws]

this photo is so intense....it screams of much that you have shared of Gottfried Benn...the experiences he had as a medic in WW1 could only be mind blogging....

I keep looking at the picture and wonder what I might be missing as there is so much to interpret...

Great post!!

Kittypaws