From Benn to Rushdie

*** Today Gottfried Benn would turn 120. One of these days I will have to write a longer esay on his work (& my pilgrimage, video-camera in hand, to his various haunts in Berlin when I was there in 2003) — he was extremely important to me when I first started to think about writing. Of the poetry I can reread with pleasure all the early MORGUE (1912) poems, but don’t care too much for the later icy-aesthetics. But the essays still draw me, especially “Weinhaus Wolf” which I reread every few years, plus the biographical pieces which are examplary for an understanding of early to mid-20C European, and even more so, German, man as “intellectualist.”

*** An interesting piece by Salman Rushdie on the writing of his second novel, Midnight’s Children, 25 years ago, can be found in the current issue of Outlook India, here.