Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843) is now recognized as one of Europe’s supreme poets. He first found his true voice in the epigrams and odes he wrote when transfigured by his love for the wife of a rich banker. He later embarked on an extraordinarily amb
"In the writing of Paul Celan even we readers who can hear poetry only dimly in German can sense the greatness of his invention: the cadences of a music tilted against music's complacency; words punished for their plausibility by being reinvented and fuse
After Nature, W. G. Sebald’s first literary work, now translated into English by Michael Hamburger, explores the lives of three men connected by their restless questioning of humankind’s place in the natural world. From the efforts of each, “an orde
From the introduction by Michael Hamburger:“Baudelaire's prose poems were written at long intervals during the last twelve or thirteen years of his life. The prose poem was a medium much suited to his habits and character. Being pre-eminently a moralist
Biographies can never be wholly objective or comprehensive; for by selecting which facts will receive emphasis, a biographer is bound to underplay those aspects which he considers to be less important. Hence, a volume such as this will allow readers to co