Ivan Goll

Goll, Ivan or Yvan Goll, real name Isaac Lang (St Dié, Alsace, 1891-1950, Paris), a Jew bilingual in French and German, and a German citizen who also published under the pseudonym Iwan Lassang or Lazang. A pacifist, he avoided military service in 1915 by moving to Switzerland, where he associated with Romain Rolland in Geneva (Elegies internationales, 1915; Requiem für die Gefallenen von Europa, 1917). From 1919 to 1939 he lived in Paris, then in New York until his return to France in 1947. Though he is the author of novels (Lucifer vieillissant, in French, 1934, among others) and plays (e.g. the grotesque Methusalem oder Der ewige Bürger, 1922), he is primarily a lyric poet, writing successfully in German and French, and attempting, inadequately, to write poems in English (Fruit from Saturn, 1946). His early poetry was Expressionistic (Films, 1914; Der Panamakanal, 1914; Der neue Orpheus, 1918). In association with James Joyce, Apollinaire, Le Breton, and Eluard, he turned to Surrealism, writing poetry containing highly original imagistic elements. His first acknowledged masterpieces are the Poèmes d'amour written with his wife Claire, of which the Chansons malaises (not published until 1967 in their German version, Malaiische Liebeslieder) form the most arresting section. La Chanson de Jean sans Terre, a series of ballads, appeared 1936-9 (ext. bilingual edn. as Jean sans Terre. Landless John, 1944; critical edn. by F. J. Carmody, 1966). Some of Goll's most impressive German poems, including many of those which have appeared in anthologies, are in the collection Traumkraut (1951), in which biblical motifs and mineral, metallurgical, and chemical images are used to express the bitterness and disillusionment of Goll's life. The collection Dichtungen, Lyrik, Prosa, Dramen, ed. Claire Goll (1960) includes German translations of texts written in French. Œuvres (2 vols.), ed. C. Goll and F. X. Jaujard, appeared 1968-70, Gedichte 1924-1950, ed. H. Bienek in 1976, an edition of Jean sans Terre (Johann Ohneland) with hitherto unpublished poetry, ed. K. Wachinger with transl. by M. Fahrenbach-Wachendorff, in 1991; correspondence between Yvan and Claire Goll, Briefe, preface by K. Edschmidt, in 1966.