Abstract

While praising Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven as the ‘Queen of Dada,’ modernist scholarship ignores the German poetry of the Baroness. In the 1920’s the Little Review published three German poems by the Baroness, which let her appear in a different light. “Das finstere Meer,” “Irrender König,” and “Walküren” are poems with rhyme, meter, stanzas, and conventional content. Those German poems, despite their more conventional form, issue a more deadly attack on German language and culture than any warlike assault her English Dada poetry could lead towards the American culture.

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