Some classic German poetry from Anvil

Goethe: Roman Elegies and other poems TRANSLATED BY MICHAEL HAMBURGER

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) is mainly known in the English-speaking world as the poet of Faust. His other poetry, for all its richness and variety, has received comparatively little attention. This edition collects all the versions made over many years by Michael Hamburger. His selection and introduction provide a valuable account of ‘a writer so many-sided as to constitute a whole literature’. Here are poems from all periods of Goethe’s creative life, including a complete version of the erotic Roman Elegies.

Friedrich Hölderlin: Poems and Fragments

TRANSLATED BY MICHAEL HAMBURGER

Michael Hamburger, who died in 2007, was engaged in translating the poetry of Friedrich Hölderlin (1770–1843) for over half a century. This fourth edition includes several new and revised translations and other supplementary material. It contains the greater part of Hölderlin’s odes in classical metre, the most characteristic of the later elegies, all the free-verse hymns (including many fragments of hymns drafted before the poet’s withdrawal from society) as well as the second and third versions of his great tragedy Der Tod des Empedokles. It is likely to remain the standard bilingual edition of Hölderlin’s poetry for many years.

“Readers of more than one generation owe a debt to Michael Hamburger as a translator. Few can have done more to enhance (and in many cases create) the appreciation of German poetry among an Anglophone audience”

– Sean O’Brien, Times Literary Supplement