SOURCE: “The Expressionist Poet—‘Realism of the Uninhibited’,” in The Magic Bishop: Hugo Ball, Dada Poet, Camden House, 1998, pp. 27-43.

In the following essay, White explicates four of Ball's Expressionist poems, observing the ways in which these works “offer a compendium of styles and mannerisms and reflect the diversity of Ball's work.”

Ball's poetic gift was given new impetus by theories that gained prevalence during his Munich years. These theories were in turn influenced by his work in the theater: in Munich he became an expressionist poet. Ball was a spectacular expressionist, given to manic exaltation. His poetry, much like Gottfried Benn's Morgue und andere Gedichte (Morgue and Other Poems, 1912), is a “raw” mixture of lyricism and sexual transgression. Leybold characterized Ball's expressionist poetry as “exaltierte Phantastik” (exalted fantasy).¹ His first prose texts were aphorisms published in Jugend (Youth, March 1913). Art is intoxication, rapture, Ball writes, “Rausch”: “L'art...