Weltfreund

Franz Werfel's debut poetry collection announces a young writer who would become one of the twentieth century's most passionate humanists. Written before the devastation of World War I, these poems radiate an almost childlike wonder at existence, a longing to merge with something larger than the self. Werfel addresses the reader directly, confessing his single wish to be related to humanity, to dissolve the boundaries between individual and cosmos. Yet these aren't naive poems. Even in their earliest work, there's an awareness of fragility, of the small moments that contain everything. The slight twinkle the German description mentions is key: Werfel can be wry about his own earnestness, acknowledging the audacity of demanding kinship with strangers. These are poems from the last innocent year of a century that would soon learn what humanity was capable of doing to itself. Reading them now feels like finding a letter from before the fall.