Gridi di guerra e gridi di pace nell’espressionismo

Abstract

World War I changed radically the sensorial experience of the reality of individuals. The essay shows to what extent Expressionist poetry reflects this epistemic transformation. Starting from the critical reading of some poems by Ernst Toller, Wilhelm Klemm, Kurt Heynicke, Max Beckmann and Alfred Lichtenstein, the paper identifies the linguistic and extra-linguistic strategies by which Expressionist poets tried to transfigure the visual and acoustic experience of the war.