Nihilism and “tierische Transzendenz” in Gottfried Benn's Gehirne

As an Expressionist, Gottfried Benn sought to solve the dichotomy between an increasingly endangered self and a world ever more experienced as a source of suffering. He attempted to establish a utopia outside the world of science and technology, in what he called, in a reference to a statement by Thomas Mann, a “tierische Transzendenz.” The road towards this peculiar utopia is perhaps best traced in the Novellen cycle Gehirne (1916). In it, as in a kaleidoscope, Benn shows us various ways in which the self might attempt to establish itself, to find a stable point. These include an aggressive scientism, the assertion of bourgeois values, contact with others, and erotic experiences. The road ends in a submission to the Südkomplex , a chiffre intended to signify a complex of associations which allows the subject to regress into a primitive, pre‐logical, quasi‐vegetative existence, free from intellectual doubt and inquiry. This state is reached fully in “Der Geburtstag,” but remains nevertheless problematic, since, despite the elimination of the self, the description of the process of the loss of self is rendered in highly cerebral terms. The opposition between primitivism and intellect remains, since it is anchored in Benn's own personality.