Lutz Hagestedt, University of Rostock, presents 'The Void and I.'

19 May 2016

Thursday 19^th May 2016 at 5pm in the CACSSS Mary Ryan Seminar Room, ORB G27

Lutz Hagestedt

University of Rostock

The Void and I.

Gottfried Benn’s Poetry of Thought and the Intellectual

Wasteland after the European Catastrophe

In his poems as well as his essays, Gottfried Benn repeatedly brought himself to the outskirts of society and aesthetics - and yet ultimately, he could hold his ground. Perhaps that sounds paradoxical, however, in the context of intellectual poetry, such paradoxes are nothing out of the ordinary - in fact, they are to be expected. Moreover, they correspond with the common pattern which the life of a scandalous intellectual, who read Nietzsche (and wrote poems on Nietzsche), deemed Darwin to be a ‘midwife’ and at the same time dismissed the theories of evolution, might follow.

Lutz Hagestedt is Professor at Rostock University and one of Germany’s leading experts on contemporary and modern literature.

Thursday 19^th May 2016, 5pm

CACSSS Mary Ryan Seminar Room, ORB G27

ALL WELCOME!