Gottfried Benn's First Public Poetry Reading in Spring, 1913
Anecdotes about a legendary gathering of Expressionist poets on 8 March 1913
Here, a flyer image advertising Gottfried Benn's first poetry reading in the spring of 1913. This was something the culturally conservative Benn had to be talked into at some length.
This reading by poets is somewhat legendary. To me, anyway. It was done under the auspices of DIE AKTION magazine, an Expressionist literary mag edited by Franz Pfemfert, whose role in shepherding and promoting this new generation of German avant-garde writers is under-appreciated.
About this reading, Benn's first: There's an account of it in Martin Travers' excellent 2015 biography of Gottfried Benn, THE HOUR THAT BREAKS. One poet was late and "the lineup" had to be changed and Benn nearly walked, upset with the, uhm, "lineup changes." The experience recounted in Travers' book reminded me in a humorous way of booking bands and putting on a show and dealing with similar stuff.
Most of the crowd had shown up to see Benn but he insisted he not be "the headliner"/last poet to speak. Nervous, he paced backstage "in military steps" and was in a foul mood. Eventually, he read the shocking poems from MORGUE that most had come to hear, in a very monotone, rapid-fire manner that wasn't like the usual dramatic effusiveness employed many of the poets of the time (then as now, I suppose). In the crowd was Else Lasker-Shuler, the older Jewish German poetess with whom Benn would have a steamy affair soon after.
"Art is always a matter of about 50 people, 30 of whom are not normal. What big publishers bring out is not art but people who are simply doing justice to their literary mediocrity," Benn said to a colleague around this time. His own MORGUE had been published by a small avant-garde literary press in 500 copies, and sold out in 8 days, in March of 1912.
See my post on Benn’s MORGUE II here.
This is Twilight of Humanity: German Expressionist Poetry in English.
