1. Yvan Goll was a French-German poet who was bilingual and wrote in both French and German.
14 Facts About Yvan Goll
1. 2.
Yvan Goll had close ties to both German expressionism and to French surrealism.
3.
Yvan Goll was born at Sankt Didel, Alsace-Lorraine, in what was then in Germany.
4.
Yvan Goll's father was a cloth merchant from a Jewish family from Rappoltsweiler in Alsace.
5.
In 1913, Goll participated in the expressionist movement in Berlin.
6.
Yvan Goll's first published poem of note, Der Panamakanal, contrasts a tragic view of human civilization-destroying nature, with an optimistic ending that evokes human brotherhood and the heroic construction of the canal.
7.
Yvan Goll wrote many war poems, the most famous being 1916's "Requiem for the Dead of Europe", as well as several plays, including The Immortal One.
8.
Yvan Goll formed many friendships with artists and his collection The New Orpheus was illustrated by Georg Grosz, Robert Delaunay and Fernand Leger.
9.
Yvan Goll published anthologies of other French and German poets, as well as translations.
10.
Yvan Goll wrote the scenario for Der Neue Orpheus, a cantata set by Weill, and the opera Melusine, set by Marcel Mihalovici in 1920 and again, this time in German, by Aribert Reimann in 1971.
11.
Yvan Goll looks for love and identity and yet the absence of these things acts as a kind of freedom.
12.
Between 1943 and 1946, Yvan Goll edited the French-American poetry magazine Hemispheres with works by Saint-John Perse, Cesaire, Breton.
13.
Yvan Goll died aged 58, at Neuilly-sur-Seine, and was buried at Pere Lachaise Cemetery opposite the grave of Frederic Chopin.
14.
Claire Yvan Goll died in 1977, and bequeathed to the town of Saint-Die-des-Vosges several French manuscripts, the couple's library, their works of art and furniture.