Auden (the latter of whom Benn introduced to the German audience), then a penetration of the many layers of thought in Benn's work is considerably easier. If, however, the reader is familiar with the art and technique of such men as Ezra Pound, T. The strange blend of scientific allusions and irrationalism, of intellectual and mystical references in Benn's poetry demands a tremendous effort on the part of the reader to absorb those hidden, secret, and deep meanings with which the work is filled. He has attempted to explain what to him-the irrationalist-is in the end utterly inexplicable: life, the intellect, the arts, and the life of the artist. Being the most celebrated figure of contemporary German literature, he recently looked back upon his life, his work, his political extravagances and disillusionments. But practically overnight he rose to fame. He remained silent until 1948, an almost forgotten man. Benn was condemned to silence by a general "Schreibverbot" issued by the NS-Kulturkammer in 1936. Jünger even opposed the regime in his writings. After an initial enthusiasm for the "new state," which seemed to promise a national regeneration in 1933, Benn very soon found the way back to a more sober state of mind. Their pride in the high intellectual standard of the German officer's corps, to which both belonged in time of war, found frequent expression in their works. Despite their cosmopolitanism and their admiration for French culture, they never left the camp of those believing in the great military tradition of Germany. The conflict between the Classicist and the Romanticist, between Rationalism and Anti-Rationalism, between the Apollonian and the Dionysian has found another manifestation.īoth Jünger and Benn belonged to the group of "inner emigration" under the Nazi regime, though in very different ways. The contrast of form and expression which dominated German literature in the decades when George and Rilke were in their prime seems to have been revived in the work of Jünger and Benn.
But after the second collapse of the German state, Benn came back with matured, richer, and more powerful poetry carrying German literature to an anti-rationalistic and Dionysian tendency. The younger generation, born after that war, did not know him at all. While Ernst Jünger, the prose writer, represented the more traditional, "classical," formalistic literary style, the lyricist Gottfried Benn was classed as an early Expressionist of the era before World War I.
They were prominent even before World War II. When the delicate question "What is important in contemporary German literature?" is raised, two names immediately come to mind: Ernst Jünger and Gottfried Benn.
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