The First World War in the expressionist lyric

The aim of this paper is to analyze expressionist poems whose authors tried to make their war experiences as a front-line soldier lyrically. What one knew, even before the outbreak of war as a social disaster and rendered in countless verses, it materialized later full of ferocious violence. Young authors in close proximity to the “empire of the flames” and the “fiery labyrinths of battle” (Ernst Jünger) experienced, they found in poetry a form suitable for expression of senses under misery and danger of death. Apocalyptic images came in not uncommon. The certain euphoria that prevailed at the outbreak of war among the Expressionists and signaled the possibility of a revolutionary transformation, died quite soon, by mechanized warfare turned out in full horror and terror. War, hatred, misery, chaos, destruction, madness, horror, violence and death could be represented profoundly in the aesthetics of Expressionism.