Poetry
Morgue und andere Gedichte
Not translated into English
Gottfried Benn · 1912
Synopsis
Nine short poems, the first six of which form a morgue cycle. In one, the gold tooth of an unidentified dead prostitute is pulled out by the dissecting-room attendant, who pawns it to go dancing. Other pieces show an appendectomy from the surgeon's point of view, or a night café where the customers are identified only by their illnesses. The vocabulary is that of medicine, softening nothing.
Context
The notebook appeared in March 1912, in five hundred copies, in a series of lyric sheets from the Berlin publisher Alfred Richard Meyer; it sold out in less than a week and made its author famous overnight. The scandal was immediate: one critic referred these poems to the psychiatrists, while Ernst Stadler hailed a true poet. They have often been compared to Les Fleurs du mal. For the centenary, in 2012, Klett-Cotta brought out an edition illustrated by Georg Baselitz.
Who it is for
Nine short poems; the vocabulary is medical and precise, and nothing in them comes to console the reader.
Prizes and reception
Its author's first book and one of the great scandals of German poetry before 1914; it made him one of the voices of the emerging Expressionist poetry.