IMPROMPTU: SELECTED POEMS OF GOTTFRIED BENN TRANSLATED BY MICHAEL HOFMANN
Gottfried Benn, Impromtus: Selected Poems, translated by Michael Hofmann (Faber & Faber, 2013) The poetry of Gottfried Benn (1886-1956) explains a gap in the coherence of Twentieth-century literature. Benn was a doctor, a scientist who served the interests of German militarism and latterly the Nazi regime and was possibly one of the few men to have served in both wars. As a poet he might have reflected that once was enough but his disappearance into the military a second time has a different explanation. Benn was more than a poet, a surgeon specialising in skin diseases and venereal disease. His role was therefore vital to an army displaced from its normal civilian functions, his age largely irrelevant. He cared for the health of prostitutes who have followed every army in history and he therefore had a role as a sensitive interrogator of often brutal realities. Benn’s poetry career began before 1914, when his profession of surgeon and dissector of bodies led him to author Mo