Gottfried Benns Gladiolen: schön, böse, zerrissen

Abstract

Gottfried Benn’s Gladiolen: Beautiful, Evil, Torn

This article offers a new interpretation of Gottfried Benn’s late poem Gladiolen (1950), challenging earlier readings that align it with his often-quoted 1936 lyric Wer allein ist –. It argues that Gladiolen is a profoundly metapoetic text that probes the tensions between nature and art, utility and aesthetic autonomy. Through a close reading of its distinctive neologisms, tonal shifts, and paradoxical ekphrastic imagery, the analysis shows how the poem both invokes and rejects consoling notions of artistic permanence and perfection. In its final stanza, Gladiolen enacts a stark confrontation with transience and fragmentation, culminating in a dissonant triad – »beautiful, evil, or torn« – that unsettles traditional ideals of poetic Vollendung (completion). By situating the poem within the context of Benn’s evolving poetics and modernist skepticism, the article demonstrates how Gladiolen exemplifies the radical ambivalence and aesthetic rupture that define his late work’s departure from both Romantic and Neoclassical models of art and poetry.