Editorial

Michael Hamburger’s association with MPT goes back more thanforty years, almost to our very beginning. He is named among theadvisoryeditorsin thesecondissue, Summer 1966; andto the third, Spring1967, he contributedtranslationsofIngeborg Bachmann’s‘LeavingEngland’ and Helmut Heissenbüüttel’s ‘the future of socialism’. InMayof this year he sent us four of his own poems and ten days later the translations of Robert Walser, which we publish here. My letter thankinghimfor Walser arrivedat MarshAcres the morninghe died. We were awayinFrance whenhe sent it; hadwe beenhome, I shouldhave writtensooner, emulating him, thepromptestof correspondents. Howcanwethankthe dead? Whenwe askedMichael for work or gratefully accepted whatheoffered, weneverfittedhimintoanyof ourparticular themes;but,asithappens,heispeculiarlyin placein thisissue called ‘Getting it Across’. Poet, translator, literary critic, tirelessly goingtoand frobetween thelanguages, couldanyone havedonemore?I wroteabout himalmost twentyyears ago: an introduction to a Bibliography of the Publications of Michael Hamburger. Ihaveahorrorof bibilographies, buthis wascuriouslymoving. Thereyousawit: proof of theloveand labour, thegoingbetween, thegettingit across. I calledmy