Synopses & Reviews
This is the most comprehensive English translation of the work of Günter Eich, one of the greatest postwar German poets. The author of the POW poem "Inventory," among one of the most famous lyrics in the German language, Eich was rivaled only by Paul Celan as the leading poet in the generation after Gottfried Benn and Bertolt Brecht. Expertly translated and introduced by Michael Hofmann, this collection gathers eighty poems, many drawn from Eich's later work and most of them translated here for the first time. The volume also includes the original German texts on facing pages.
As an early member of "Gruppe 47" (from which Günter Grass and Heinrich Böll later shot to prominence), Eich (1907-72) was at the vanguard of an effort to restore German as a language for poetry after the vitriol, propaganda, and lies of the Third Reich. Short and clear, these are timeless poems in which the ominousness of fairy tales meets the delicacy and suggestiveness of Far Eastern poetry. In his late poems, he writes frequently, movingly, and often wryly of infirmity and illness. "To my mind," Hofmann writes, "there's something in Eich of Paul Klee's pictures: both are homemade, modest in scale, immediately delightful, inventive, cogent."
Unjustly neglected in English, Eich finds his ideal translator here.
Review
This is an extremely important book. Gnter Eich is a highly significant German poet and Michael Hofmann is the master translator of contemporary German literature--both poetry and prose--into English. These pieces of Eich's are powerful, bitter, and compressed poems in English, and they will enlarge the landscape of postwar German poetry for Anglophone readers. Eich and Hofmann meet in blessed conjunction.
Review
"Scenes of isolated survival amid bewildering change appear throughout Angina Days, an excellent comprehensive bilingual selection of Eich's poems edited and translated by Michael Hofmann."--John Palattella, Nation
Review
"In the German-speaking world, Eich is widely accepted as a twentieth-century classic, the supreme poet of unease. His poem "Inventur" ("Inventory") is one of the best known poems in the language. Born in 1907 in Lebus on the Oder, a small village near Berlin, Eich was a member, along with Heinrich Böll and Günter Grass, of the Gruppe 47, a literary association "called into being to cleanse and adjust and simplify" the German language after its abuse by the Third Reich, as Hofmann explains in his excellent introduction." --Siriol Troup, The Times Literary Supplement
Review
Of the three postwar writers whose work seems most clearly to answer to Adorno's sense that no poetry can be written after the Holocaust, it is Eich (Beckett and Celan are the others) whose refusal of rhetoric is most thorough, with the result that the speaker--the authorial presence--whoever it is who would have persuaded, blamed, or badgered us, seems to have vanished into thin air, leaving nothing to come between ourselves and the pure experience offered by the poems.
Review
"Michael Hofmann’s judicious selection allows the reader to follow Eich’s development as a poet in detail. It is a journey which accompanies and reflects upon the personal, political and social issues of his time, the Cold War, rearmament, the German “Economic Miracle”, the Vietnam War, the suffering of the poor and oppressed. It is also an inner journey which was going to lead Eich far away from his earlier beginnings." --Axel Vieregg, Berlin Review of Books
Review
Angina Days, a crisp new selection translated by Michael Hofmann and published in Princeton's 'Facing Pages' series, is an opportunity for Eich to secure at last the English-speaking readership he has long deserved. In the German-speaking world, Eich is widely accepted as a twentieth-century classic, the supreme poet of unease. His poem 'Inventur' ('Inventory') is one of the best known poems in the language. Born in 1907 in Lebus on the Oder, a small village near Berlin, Eich was a member, along with Heinrich Böll and Günter Grass, of the Gruppe 47, a literary association 'called into being to cleanse and adjust and simplify' the German language after its abuse by the Third Reich, as Hofmann explains in his excellent introduction. . . . Hofmann's translations in Angina Days have the confidence, clearness and clout to offer Eich salvation from obscurity. . . . Hofmann's new translations are neither cumbersome nor dull. They work as poems independently from the German. They are animated, idiomatic, attractively spry, and above all they allow Eich's voice to reach us loud and clear--peevish, skeptical, true to itself, irresistible. -- Siriol Troup, Times Literary Supplement Scenes of isolated survival amid bewildering change appear throughout Angina Days, an excellent comprehensive bilingual selection of Eich's poems edited and translated by Michael Hofmann. -- John Palattella, Nation At last a major portion of the poetry of Günter Eich (1907-1972) has been made accessible to an English-speaking readership in a new translation. -- Axel Vieregg, Berlin Review of Books Fortunately, renowned poet and translator Michael Hofmann has brought a selection of Eich's late poetry into sharp, searing English in Angina Days, a book that will remain the definitive translated edition of Eich's late work. . . . Eich's scaled-back language--in Hofmanns deft translation--facilitates a devastatingly unsentimental tone appropriate for this clear-eyed consideration of what it means to be a prisoner, and what a prisoner's simple possessions mean to him. . . . Michael Hofmann's thrilling new translations of this neglected master will stick like barbs in the minds of English-language readers for years to come. -- Stephan Delbos, Prague Post Since I mention poetry, I should say that Michael Hofmann's translations of the poems of the German poet Guenter Eich, Angina Days, is one of the best books to come out in 2010. Eich's acerbic, chafing, sensuous verses, dealing with life's most basic anxieties and activities, refute, through a combination of stubbornness and technique, Adorno's stricture about the impossibility of poetry after Auschwitz. -- Amit Chaudhuri, Outlook India
Review
"Angina Days, a crisp new selection translated by Michael Hofmann and published in Princeton's 'Facing Pages' series, is an opportunity for Eich to secure at last the English-speaking readership he has long deserved. In the German-speaking world, Eich is widely accepted as a twentieth-century classic, the supreme poet of unease. His poem 'Inventur' ('Inventory') is one of the best known poems in the language. Born in 1907 in Lebus on the Oder, a small village near Berlin, Eich was a member, along with Heinrich Böll and Günter Grass, of the Gruppe 47, a literary association 'called into being to cleanse and adjust and simplify' the German language after its abuse by the Third Reich, as Hofmann explains in his excellent introduction. . . . Hofmann's translations in Angina Days have the confidence, clearness and clout to offer Eich salvation from obscurity. . . . Hofmann's new translations are neither cumbersome nor dull. They work as poems independently from the German. They are animated, idiomatic, attractively spry, and above all they allow Eich's voice to reach us loud and clear--peevish, skeptical, true to itself, irresistible."--Siriol Troup, Times Literary Supplement
Review
"At last a major portion of the poetry of Günter Eich (1907-1972) has been made accessible to an English-speaking readership in a new translation."--Axel Vieregg, Berlin Review of Books
Review
"Fortunately, renowned poet and translator Michael Hofmann has brought a selection of Eich's late poetry into sharp, searing English in Angina Days, a book that will remain the definitive translated edition of Eich's late work. . . . Eich's scaled-back language--in Hofmanns deft translation--facilitates a devastatingly unsentimental tone appropriate for this clear-eyed consideration of what it means to be a prisoner, and what a prisoner's simple possessions mean to him. . . . Michael Hofmann's thrilling new translations of this neglected master will stick like barbs in the minds of English-language readers for years to come."--Stephan Delbos, Prague Post
Review
"Since I mention poetry, I should say that Michael Hofmann's translations of the poems of the German poet Guenter Eich, Angina Days, is one of the best books to come out in 2010. Eich's acerbic, chafing, sensuous verses, dealing with life's most basic anxieties and activities, refute, through a combination of stubbornness and technique, Adorno's stricture about the impossibility of poetry after Auschwitz."--Amit Chaudhuri, Outlook India
Review
"Contemporary literature would be a great deal duller, sparser and more insular without Michael Hofmann. . . . Eich (1907-72) is among the most significant voices in post-war German poetry. For anyone new to [Eich], Hofmann's selection, drawn mainly from his later work, is an excellent introduction."--Dennis O'Driscoll, PN Review
Review
Angina Days, a crisp new selection translated by Michael Hofmann and published in Princeton's 'Facing Pages' series, is an opportunity for Eich to secure at last the English-speaking readership he has long deserved. In the German-speaking world, Eich is widely accepted as a twentieth-century classic, the supreme poet of unease. His poem 'Inventur' ('Inventory') is one of the best known poems in the language. Born in 1907 in Lebus on the Oder, a small village near Berlin, Eich was a member, along with Heinrich Böll and Günter Grass, of the Gruppe 47, a literary association 'called into being to cleanse and adjust and simplify' the German language after its abuse by the Third Reich, as Hofmann explains in his excellent introduction. . . . Hofmann's translations in Angina Days have the confidence, clearness and clout to offer Eich salvation from obscurity. . . . Hofmann's new translations are neither cumbersome nor dull. They work as poems independently from the German. They are animated, idiomatic, attractively spry, and above all they allow Eich's voice to reach us loud and clear--peevish, skeptical, true to itself, irresistible. Siriol Troup
Review
Winner of the 2012 Thornton Wilder Prize for Translation, American Academy of Arts and Letters
Runner-Up for the 2011 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation, PEN American Center
Runner-Up for the The 2011 Schlegel-Tieck Prize (for German Translation), The Society of Authors
Review
"At last a major portion of the poetry of Gnter Eich (1907-1972) has been made accessible to an English-speaking readership in a new translation."--Axel Vieregg, Berlin Review of Books
Synopsis
This is the most comprehensive English translation of the work of Günter Eich, one of the greatest postwar German poets. The author of the POW poem "Inventory," among one of the most famous lyrics in the German language, Eich was rivaled only by Paul Celan as the leading poet in the generation after Gottfried Benn and Bertolt Brecht. Expertly translated and introduced by Michael Hofmann, this collection gathers eighty poems, many drawn from Eich's later work and most of them translated here for the first time. The volume also includes the original German texts on facing pages.
As an early member of "Gruppe 47" (from which Günter Grass and Heinrich Böll later shot to prominence), Eich (1907-72) was at the vanguard of an effort to restore German as a language for poetry after the vitriol, propaganda, and lies of the Third Reich. Short and clear, these are timeless poems in which the ominousness of fairy tales meets the delicacy and suggestiveness of Far Eastern poetry. In his late poems, he writes frequently, movingly, and often wryly of infirmity and illness. "To my mind," Hofmann writes, "there's something in Eich of Paul Klee's pictures: both are homemade, modest in scale, immediately delightful, inventive, cogent."
Unjustly neglected in English, Eich finds his ideal translator here.
Synopsis
A bilingual edition of one of the most important German poets of the twentieth century
This is the most comprehensive English translation of the work of G nter Eich, one of the greatest postwar German poets. The author of the POW poem "Inventory," among one of the most famous lyrics in the German language, Eich was rivaled only by Paul Celan as the leading poet in the generation after Gottfried Benn and Bertolt Brecht. Expertly translated and introduced by Michael Hofmann, this collection gathers eighty poems, many drawn from Eich's later work and most of them translated here for the first time. The volume also includes the original German texts on facing pages.
As an early member of "Gruppe 47" (from which G nter Grass and Heinrich B ll later shot to prominence), Eich (1907-72) was at the vanguard of an effort to restore German as a language for poetry after the vitriol, propaganda, and lies of the Third Reich. Short and clear, these are timeless poems in which the ominousness of fairy tales meets the delicacy and suggestiveness of Far Eastern poetry. In his late poems, he writes frequently, movingly, and often wryly of infirmity and illness. "To my mind," Hofmann writes, "there's something in Eich of Paul Klee's pictures: both are homemade, modest in scale, immediately delightful, inventive, cogent."
Unjustly neglected in English, Eich finds his ideal translator here.
Synopsis
"Of the three postwar writers whose work seems most clearly to answer to Adorno's sense that no poetry can be written after the Holocaust, it is Eich (Beckett and Celan are the others) whose refusal of rhetoric is most thorough, with the result that the speaker--the authorial presence--whoever it is who would have persuaded, blamed, or badgered us, seems to have vanished into thin air, leaving nothing to come between ourselves and the pure experience offered by the poems."
--Belle Randall, poetry editor, Common Knowledge"This is an extremely important book. Günter Eich is a highly significant German poet and Michael Hofmann is the master translator of contemporary German literature--both poetry and prose--into English. These pieces of Eich's are powerful, bitter, and compressed poems in English, and they will enlarge the landscape of postwar German poetry for Anglophone readers. Eich and Hofmann meet in blessed conjunction."--Rosanna Warren, author of Departure: Poems
Synopsis
"Of the three postwar writers whose work seems most clearly to answer to Adorno's sense that no poetry can be written after the Holocaust, it is Eich (Beckett and Celan are the others) whose refusal of rhetoric is most thorough, with the result that the speaker--the authorial presence--whoever it is who would have persuaded, blamed, or badgered us, seems to have vanished into thin air, leaving nothing to come between ourselves and the pure experience offered by the poems."--Belle Randall, poetry editor, Common Knowledge
"This is an extremely important book. Günter Eich is a highly significant German poet and Michael Hofmann is the master translator of contemporary German literature--both poetry and prose--into English. These pieces of Eich's are powerful, bitter, and compressed poems in English, and they will enlarge the landscape of postwar German poetry for Anglophone readers. Eich and Hofmann meet in blessed conjunction."--Rosanna Warren, author of Departure: Poems
Synopsis
This is the most comprehensive English translation of the work of Günter Eich, one of the greatest postwar German poets. The author of the POW poem "Inventory," among one of the most famous lyrics in the German language, Eich was rivaled only by Paul Celan as the leading poet in the generation after Gottfried Benn and Bertolt Brecht. Expertly translated and introduced by Michael Hofmann, this collection gathers eighty poems, many drawn from Eich's later work and most of them translated here for the first time. The volume also includes the original German texts on facing pages.
As an early member of "Gruppe 47" (from which Günter Grass and Heinrich Böll later shot to prominence), Eich (1907-72) was at the vanguard of an effort to restore German as a language for poetry after the vitriol, propaganda, and lies of the Third Reich. Short and clear, these are timeless poems in which the ominousness of fairy tales meets the delicacy and suggestiveness of Far Eastern poetry. In his late poems, he writes frequently, movingly, and often wryly of infirmity and illness. "To my mind," Hofmann writes, "there's something in Eich of Paul Klee's pictures: both are homemade, modest in scale, immediately delightful, inventive, cogent."
Unjustly neglected in English, Eich finds his ideal translator here.
About the Author
Michael Hofmann is an award-winning poet and translator. His "Selected Poems" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) appeared in 2009. His other books include the anthology "Twentieth-Century German Poetry" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) and the book of essays "Behind the Lines" (Faber and Faber). He has translated Durs Grünbein, Franz Kafka, Wolfgang Koeppen, and Joseph Roth, among many other writers. He teaches at the University of Florida in Gainesville, and lives in London and Hamburg.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments, xi
Introduction, xiii
from Abgelegene Gehöfte / Remote Smallholdings (1948)
Abgelegene Gehofte / Remote Smallholdings, 2
Pfannkuchenrezept / Recipe for Pancakes, 4
Camp 16 / Camp 16, 6
Inventur / Inventory, 8
Erster Januar / First of January, 12
from Botschaft en des Regens / Messages from the Rain (1955)
Ende eines Sommers / End of Summer, 16
Gegenwart / Th e Present, 18
D-Zug Munchen-Frankfurt / Munich-Frankfurt Express, 22
Kleine Reparatur / Minor Repair, 24
Weg zum Bahnhof / Way to the Station, 26
Lemberg / Lvov, 28
Andenken / Memorial, 30
Wo ich wohne / Where I Live, 32
Reise / Journey, 34
Mittags um zwei / Two in the Aft ernoon, 36
Betrachtet die Fingerspitzen / Examine Your Fingertips, 38
Briefstelle / From a Letter, 40
Einsicht / Understanding, 42
Ende August / End of August, 44
from Zu den Akten / Ad Acta (1964)
Alte Postkarten / Old Postcards, 48
Neue Postkarten / New Postcards, 52
Bericht aus einem Kurort / Report from a Spa, 56
Nachhut / Rearguard, 58
Rest / Remnant, 60
Alte Hollander / Old Dutch Masters, 62
Bruder Grimm / Brothers Grimm, 64
Zu spat fur Bescheidenheit / Too Late for Modesty, 66
Bestellung / Order, 68
Tragtasche / Holdall, 70
Ohne Unterschrift / Unsigned, 72
Jaques Devant, fur Viele / Jaques Devant, for the Many, 74
Aufgelassenes Zollamt / Old Customshouse, 76
Aussicht vom Spezial-Keller / Perspective from the Spezial-Keller, 78
Zunahme / Increase, 80
Auskunft e aus dem Nachlass / Tips from the Posthumous Papers, 82
Ungultige Landkarte / Fraudulent Map, 84
Topographie einer schoneren Welt / Topography of a Better World, 86
Fussnote zu Rom / Roman Footnote, 88
from Anlässe und Steingärten / Occasions and Rock Gardens (1966)
Timetable / Timetable, 92
Berlin 1918 / Berlin, 1918, 94
Kinder-und Hausmarchen / Fairy Tales, 96
Rauchbier / Rauchbier, 98
Alte Postkarten / Old Postcards, 100
Neue Postkarten / New Postcards, 106
Weitgereist / Traveling Far, 110
Fortschritt / Progress, 112
Halb / Half, 114
Satzzeichen / Punctuation Marks, 116
Zwei / Two, 118
Bett huten / Confi ned to Bed, 120
Schluss eines Kriminalromans / Th e End of the Th riller, 122
Armer Sonntag / Poor Sunday, 124
Verspatung / Delayed, 126
Lange Gedichte / Long Poems, 128
Nach Seumes Papieren / From Seume's Papers (1972)
Nordlicher Seufzer / Northern Sigh, 134
Stadtrand / Edge of Town, 136
Philologisch / Philological, 138
Nach dem Ende der Biographie / Aft er Setting Down
the Biography, 140
Optik / Optics, 142
Namen / Names, 144
Steuererklarung / Tax Declaration, 146
Augsburg / Augsburg, 148
Nach Seumes Papieren / From Seume's Papers, 150
Spater / Later, 152
from Uncollected Poems and Poems from Radio Plays
Der Regen in Eltville / The Rain in Eltville, 156
Plane / Plans, 158
Vorwinter / Early Winter, 160
Alter Dezember / Old December, 162
Nomaden / Nomads, 164
Freund und Horazleser / Friend and Reader of Horace, 166
aus: Träume / from: Dreams, 168
Handel / Handel, 180
Napoleon denkt an Josephine / Napoleon Remembers Josephine, 182
Lange Gedichte / Long Poems, 184
Die vorige Woche / Last Week, 186
Und / And, 188
Landgasthof / Rustic Hotel, 190
Klinikfarben / Hospital Colors, 192
Vom Gluck / Of Happiness, 194