SOURCE: A review of Primal Vision, in Symposium, edited by E.B. Ashton, Vol. 15, No. 2, Summer, 1961, pp. 151-55.

In the following review, Weisstein criticizes the editor of the collection Primal Vision for its omission of important poems, and its clumsiness and inaccuracy of translation. Weisstein, however, admits that Benn's poetry presents some insurmountable difficulties to any translator, and confirms that this first volume of English translations is an important introduction of Benn's poetry to English language readers.

The publication of [Primal Vision] can well be regarded as a literary event; for with it a representative selection from the prose and poetry of Gottfried Benn, Germany's leading poet after Rilke and the last torchbearer of Expressionism, has for the first time become available to the English-speaking public. This is not to say, however, that, hitherto, Benn's work has gone altogether unnoticed in the United States. The four excellent renditions...