Summary "Long before I met him, I was a reader of his poems, I had his Mortuary - beside me on the bed: a horrific artistic miracle, a deadly dreamscape taking shape. Deep pains that tear throats and fall silent, cemeteries disguised as sanatoriums rising before the beds of immense pain. Pregnant women wailing from his distant chambers to the ends of the earth [...] Each of his verses is a leopard's bite, a wild beast's leap. His pen is the bone with which he resurrects the word" ELSE LASKER-SCHÜLER "Ben's nostalgia is unquenchable, his thirst for the great tragic eras of humanity, which were so far from the idea of progress [...] Whoever speaks like this stands isolated. He lets his voice resonate, but no longer expects an answer. What remains is bitterness, loneliness, hatred. But the hatred of such a lonely person is more positive, more fertile, stronger than our own courtesies, always ready to compromise." KLAUS MANN "Almost no other German-speaking poet of the 20th century remains so present in the consciousness of the reading public" MARCEL REICH-RANICKI Contents Introduction K. Koutsourelis || Poems || Notes || Appendix: Two essays by G. Benn on expressionism and the mission of literature || Comments || Gottfried Benn Chronology Observations Introduction - Translation - Epilogue: Kostas Koutsourelis Bilingual edition