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Friday, October 28, 2011

Expressionist Realism 2

I nominate this poem by Gottfried Benn as a mine of expressionist realist examples:

Oh, that we were our primordial ancestors.
Small lumps of plasma in a sultry swamp.
Life and death, conception and parturition—
All emerging from those juices soundlessly.

A piece of seaweed or a dune of sand,
Formed by the wind and bound to the earth.
Even a dragon-fly's head or the wing of a gull
Would be too remote and mean too much suffering.

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