Review of “Mann und Frau gehn durch die Krebsbaracke” (1912)
Gottfried Benn (writer).
Read in 2022.
Read in its original language and in Swedish-language prose translation.
The state of cancer care in 1912.
The poem reminds me of the public morgue in Thérèse Raquin (1867). Indeed, there is more of Zola’s prurient naturalism than of Baudelaire’s decadence in it. Benn was an expressionist, but also a medical doctor, more specific in his images than the likes of Georg Trakl.
References here: Modern utländsk lyrik (1975/1985).