- New Arrivals
Fiction- Historical FictionCrime & ThrillersMysteryScience-FictionFantasyPoetryRomanceChildren’s BooksYoung Adult
- Biographies & MemoirsHistoryCurrent AffairsTech & ScienceBusinessSelf-DevelopmentTravelThe ArtsFood & WineReligion & SpiritualitySportsHumor
Children’s BooksListsGift CardsWhat To ReadMy ListsGames- About & Help
- About Tertulia
- Membership & Co-Ownership
- Shipping & Delivery
- Orders & Payments
- Contact Support
- Send App Feedback
- Follow us
- Download the app
The co-op bookstore for avid readers
Odes and Elegies
Powerful translations of a seminal figure in modern poetry
Gladly the boatman turns home to the river's calm
From his harvest on faraway isles;
If only I too were homeward bound;
Yet what harvest have I but sorrow?--
O blessèd riverbanks that raised me,
Can you ease the sorrows of love? Ah, when I come
To you, woods of my youth, will you
Grant me peace once again?
--From "Home"
For more than a century, Friedrich Hölderlin has been considered one of the key figures in modern European literature. The translations in Odes and Elegies, including poems never before available in English, render forcefully and directly the deep longing and heartbreak of Hölderlin's poetic world. A bilingual edition, this book is the first major translation of these poems since the 1960s. Odes and Elegies opens to the English reader the unique poetic voice that marks Hölderlin's achievement and continuing influence on poetry and philosophy today.
Sample Poem:
Gladly the boatman turns home to the river's calm
From his harvest on faraway isles;
If only I too were homeward bound;
Yet what harvest have I but sorrow?--
O blessèd riverbanks that raised me,
Can you ease the sorrows of love? Ah, when I come
To you, woods of my youth, will you
Grant me peace once again?
--From "Home"
Book Details
- Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
- Publish Date: Jan 7th, 2020
- Pages: 260
- Language: English
- Edition: undefined - undefined
- Dimensions: 8.40in - 5.50in - 1.00in - 0.85lb
- EAN: 9780819511904
- Categories: • European - German• European - German• Subjects & Themes - General
About the Author
Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843), whose work has influenced such figures as Rilke, Celan, Heidegger, Adorno, and Benjamin, is considered by many to be one of the most important German lyric poets. Nick Hoff is a writer and translator who lives in San Francisco. His translations have been published in Telos, Left Curve, and other journals.
Praise for this book
"Hölderlin, the greatest of all German poets, explored the outer limits and the deepest depths of the German language, and has been considered untranslatable. We have waited so long for an English translation that does justice to the inexplicable mystery of his early mature work; with Hoff's beautiful versions we have one at last."--Werner Herzog
"Hoff's version of the odes and elegies of Holderlin is worthy of comparison to Richard Sieburth's parallel but not competing volume. At every point, Hoff finds extraordinary ways of conveying the astonishing force of Hölderlin's work."--Harold Bloom
"The poems come out as English poems, but--as Dryden would have put it--poems Hölderlin might have written, had he been writing in English."--Keith Waldrop, translator of Charles Baudelaire's The Flowers of Evil
"His influence on me is great and generous, as only that of the richest and most inwardly powerful can be."--Rainer Maria Rilke
""Hölderlin, the greatest of all German poets, explored the outer limits and the deepest depths of the German language, and has been considered untranslatable. We have waited so long for an English translation that does justice to the inexplicable mystery of his early mature work; with Hoff's beautiful versions we have one at last.""--Werner Herzog, director of Rescue Dawn
"The poems come out as English poems, but--as Dryden would have put it--poems Hölderlin might have written, had he been writing in English."--Keith Waldrop, translator of Charles Baudelaire's The Flowers of Evil