Author: Anneke

“The only solace is: to be sad. When sadness degenerates into despair, you should become grotesque. You should go on living for the hell of it. Should try – recognising that existence only consists of brutal and vile hoaxes – to find uplifting.” Speaking is Kuno Kohn, Alfred Lichtenstein’s alter ego, who featured in Lichtenstein’s poetry and prose to mock life, society, colleagues and, not in the least, the poet himself. Lichtenstein’s merciless and expressionist Kuno Kohn poems were compiled and published as ‘Die Gedichte des Kuno Kohn’in 1914, only months before the poet died in World War I. Überfall, now published in English as Raid, was one of those poems…