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| Zerrissenheit. Clockwise from top left: "Study of a Head," 1952, painting by Franics Bacon; still from the movie "Of Men and Gods"; sculpture depicting "Lost Faith"; photo of Richard Burton as Hamlet, 1953. |
The New Cassell's German Dictionary defines Zerrissenheit as raggedness, want of union, inner strife. It comes from the verb zerreissen, to tear up, lacerate, dismember.
From page 242 of the book: "...The Germans refer to his condition as Zerrissenheit, a state of being torn apart. It was thus that Owen hadn't been able to satisfy the demands of his own individual world with those dire necessities of the real, objective world. Zerrissenheit ran through his veins."
