Devastation

Text

Devastation

The sky is wind
and bodies march
march
on a thousand
bootsoles.

The sky is wind
and bodies advance
advance
onto a thousand
automatics.

The sky is wind
and bodies crack
crack
into a thousand
fragments.

The sky is wind
but bodies prevail
prevail
from a thousand
positions.

The sky is wind
and bodies tense
tense
into a thousand
black sacks.

The sky is wind
and heartbeats halt
halt
on a thousand
operations.

Source

The Last Drop. Versions of August Stramm, translated by Alistair Noon (Colchester: Alistair Noon, 2009), p. 6. Free eBook (pdf), http://www.lulu.com/shop/alistair-noon/the-last-drop/ebook/product-5464480.html (last accessed: 05.08.2015).

Citation

Original text: August Stramm; Translator: Alistair Noon, “Devastation,” War in other words, accessed April 25, 2024, https://warinotherwords.exeter.ac.uk/items/show/15.

Output Formats

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Item Relations

This Item

translation of

Item: Vernichtung

Description

Stramm wrote ‘Vernichtung’ (‘Devastation’) in Neubreisach in November 1914 and it was published in the January issue of Der Sturm, 1915.

About the writer

Born in Münster (Westfalia) in 1874, August Stramm grew up in Düren, Eupen and Aachen. He visited the ‘Post- und Telegraphenschule’ in Berlin and started publishing alongside his education in 1903. Enrolled as a guest student at the Berlin University, he received a PhD from the University of Wittenberg/Halle for a thesis on worldwide postal charges. Back in Berlin, he increased his literary work and got to know Herwath Walden, the publisher of the magazine Der Sturm and himself a key figure in pre-War Berlin culture. The newly established contacts reassured Stramm in his radical working with language. Since he was called to arms in August 1914, he focussed on war poetry, of which he wrote about 70, mainly short pieces. He first served at the Oberrhein and in Alsatia, before he was sent to the Western Front in January 1915 where he immediately was confronted with the trench warfare. In April 1915 he was moved to the Eastern Front, where he died on September, 1^st the same year.

In his writing, Stramm engages with language in a unique way, making use of the creative powers of the German language like no one else of his generation. Though he shares insights and fears with other Expressionist authors, he is more radical in his innovative playing with words. His syntax is often twisted and distorted to the ultimate level, words shift their classes and with it new and sometimes surprising meanings arise from his ‘working in the language’. His war poems are radically reduced experiments in wording, for which the Germans coined the phrase ‘Wortgedichte’.

Creator

Original text: August Stramm;

Translator: Alistair Noon

Date of Publication

2009

Rights

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Format

Online

Language

English

Contributor of item

Gert Vonhoff

Type

Poem