»Die Leere und das gezeichnete Ich«. Eine persönliche Annäherung an Gottfried Benn von Volker Neupert

Just two things

Having passed through so many forms,
through “I” and “We” and “You,”
yet everything remained a struggle
by the eternal question: why?

That’s a child’s question.
You realized only late
there is only one thing: endure
—whether it be meaning, addiction, or legend—
your externally dictated fate: You must.

Whether roses, whether snow, whether seas,
whatever bloomed or faded,
there are only two things: the void
and the scarred self.

(1953, from: Gottfried Benn: Complete Works, Stuttgart Edition. Volume I: Poems 1.Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1986)

On July 7, 1956, the physician and poet Gottfried Benn—born in Mansfeld in 1886 as the son of a pastor—died in Berlin at the age of 70—in the same year as his polar opposite, Bertolt Brecht.

On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of his death, we would like to attempt to get a little closer to this expressive, form-loving poet, who was terribly mistaken politically, even though he, aloof as he was, would certainly have shied away from such an endeavor.And so we want to honor him—a poet who created a very special sound in his poems, one that remains hard to resist to this day—even for those who, without any claim to literary scholarship, approach his work simply as amateurs who love it in the best sense of the word.     

Info: VolkerNeupert,volker.neupert@respekt-und-mut.de, Cell:0152/55823791

An event organized by Düsseldorfer Beiträge “Respekt und Mut” in cooperation with the Gerhart-Hauptmann-Haus Foundation