Helle Nacht

After the chaos and wordplay of Dada, Emmy Hennings found something still: faith. This collection of poems, dedicated to her husband Hugo Ball, traces her spiritual awakening from the movement that sought to shatter language toward a Catholic mysticism that sought to transcend it. The "helle Nacht" of the title is both literal and spiritual, a brightness that comes after the Dadaist night of absurdity and war. Hennings writes of rosaries, candles, and sacred silence with the same experimental spirit she brought to her Dada work, but transformed. These are poems of conversion, of a woman who found peace not in rejection of art but in its sanctification. For readers who know Hennings only as a Dadaist, these poems reveal another dimension: a mystic wrestling with eternity, writing love letters to God while thinking of the man she married.