Poems (English and German Edition)
by Hermann Hesse
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Book Summary Information
Author: Hermann HesseTranslator: James Wright
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published); German (Published)
Published: 2008-03-18
ISBN: 0374526419
Number of pages: 96
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Book Reviews of Poems (English and German Edition)
Book Review: Great poetry, unfairly neglected
Summary: 5 Stars
I will never understand why Hermann Hesse's poetry is as underappreciated as it seems to be. Translated by Pulitzer Prize winning poet James Wright, who set the standard for many aspiring poets in the twentieth century (and whose son later came to regain his father's crown), Hesse's work has an infectious melancholy to it, some of which we see in his fiction and some of which we don't. Many deal with the waste of human life in WW1, but never once does Hesse put on the mantle of a political ideologue: he is always a romantic, and he always knows just how to do it.
I say without exaggeration that his poem "Thinking of a Friend At Night" is one of the best pieces of poetry that I have ever read (certainly equalling anything Wright wrote during his short life.) I have trouble reconciling the translator's introduction, which posits Hesse as "irretrievably adolescent", with this masterpiece:
"In this evil year, autumn comes early.../I walk by night in the field, alone, the rain clatters/The wind on my hat...And you? And you, my friend?/You are standing--maybe--and seeing the sickle moon/Move in a small arc over the forests/And bivouac fire, red in the black valley/You are lying--maybe--in a straw field and sleeping/And dew falls cold on your forehead and battle jacket/It's possible tonight you're on horseback
The farthest outpost, peering along, with a gun in your fist,
Smiling, whispering, to your exhausted horse/
Maybe--I keep imagining--you are spending the night/
As a guest in a strange castle with a park
And writing a letter by candlelight/and tapping
On the piano keys by the window/
Groping for a sound..."
Not many perpetual adolescents could match that. Wright seems more sympathetic to Hesse's poetry than Stephen Koch (who?), the novelist who first convinced the literati that Hesse's image of himself a poet was erroneous. I would disagree. You could even say, after reading this collection, that his poetry rivals some of his fiction. Anyway, this is an important, extremely enjoyable read for anyone who enjoys German Romanticism brought to a more modern level.
Summary of Poems (English and German Edition)
Few American readers seem to be aware that Hermann Hesse, author of the epic novels Steppenwolf and Siddhartha, among many others, also wrote poetry, the best of which the poet James Wright has translated and included in this book. This is a special volume--filled with short, direct poems about love, death, loneliness, the seasons--that is imbued with some of the imagery and feeling of Hesse's novels but that has a clarity and resonance all its own, a sense of longing for love and for home that is both deceptively simple and deeply moving.
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