Morgue and Other Poems

Poetry collection by Gottfried Benn

Cover of a 1923 edition from Verlag der Bücherwinkel

Morgue and Other Poems (German: Morgue und andere Gedichte) is a 1912 poetry collection by the German writer Gottfried Benn. It is a booklet with twelve expressionist poems, the first six of which are the Morgue cycle, which describes images and incidents from a morgue.[1][2]

Published in 500 copies in March 1912, in the series lyrisches Flugblatt from Berlin's A. R. Meyer Verlag, Morgue and Other Poems was the debut book of Benn, a 25-year-old medicine student.[3] It was widely discussed by literary critics upon publication and has continued to inspire a large amount of analysis. Its cold, eerie atmosphere and descriptions of sickness and decay have led to comparisons to Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire. Richard M. Meyer [de] connected its imagery to Pieter Bruegel's depictions of Hell. For the 100th anniversary in 2012, Klett-Cotta Verlag [de] published an edition with original illustrations by Georg Baselitz.[4]

## References

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1. ^ Travers, Martin (2007). The Poetry of Gottfried Benn: Text and Selfhood. Studies in German Literature. Vol. 106\. Bern: Peter Lang. pp. 19–40\. ISBN 978-3-03-910577-9.
2. ^ Mayer-König, Wolfgang (1974). "Zur Psychologie der Literatursprache in Gottfried Benns 'Morgue'". Colloquia Germanica. 8: 334–343\. JSTOR 23979720.
3. ^ Opitz, Michael (22 May 2012). "Lyrik im Leichenschauhaus" (in German). Deutschlandfunk Kultur. Retrieved 20 May 2024.
4. ^ Schmitz, Rainer (20 May 2012). "Wilder Ekel – geiles Grauen" (in German). Deutschlandfunk. Retrieved 20 May 2024.