Critical Essay | Critical Essay by James Rolleston

Critical Essay by James Rolleston

SOURCE: “Double Time, Double Language: Benn, Celan, Enzenberger,” in his Narratives of Ecstasy: Romantic Temporality in Modern German Poetry, Wayne State University Press, 1987, pp. 133-74.

In the following excerpt, Rolleston discusses the influence of German Expressionism on poetry during the period 1920-1970.

It is becoming possible to view the period roughly from 1920 to 1970 (the lifetime of Paul Celan) as essentially closed, historically describable. Celan's extraordinary poetic enterprise, so wholly and desperately logical while in process, is unimaginable now; its cultural premises have ceased to exist. The question remains whether or not one can say anything reasonably coherent about a period so recent and filled with so many clashing voices. One risks banality, a statement so cautious and generalized that it fails to advance understanding; one also risks making a formulation that is so esoteric it does not seem applicable to specific major voices of the epoch.

My...
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