SOURCE: "The Significance of Love in the Poetry of Else Lasker-Schuler," in German Life & Letters, Vol. XVIII, 1964-65, pp. 177-88.

In the following essay, Guder compares Lasker-Schüler's concept of love to that of the German Expressionists, and examines the effect of her personal experiences on the emotional outlook of her poetry.

Undoubtedly there are many unresolved problems of critical evaluation which await resolution for Else Lasker-Schüler's work. Despite some exquisitely finished poems, she leans to stylistic carelessness and is not immune to rashes of saccharine sentimentality. No one would claim that all her poems are guided by a coherent logic (but, then, what about [Georg] Trakl and [Gottfried] Benn?). Nevertheless, a good deal of her imagery is original and symbolically well-founded, and many of her poems dynamically cohere through verbal and psychological association, in a way unrecognized by hasty and condescending critics. In particular, her visual...