Great German Poems of the Romantic Era: A Dual-Language Book

By Dover Publications

Lyric poetry blossomed in 19th-century Germany under the fertilizing influence of Romanticism with its focus on the primacy of the imagination, worship of nature and childhood, dreaminess and nostalgia and preoccupation with thoughts of night and death. Although strictly defined as flourishing from 1798 to 1835, Romanticism is not timebound and German Romantic poetry was written both before and after these dates. Indeed, the 131 poems in this volume range in date from 1770 to 1903.
Collected here are great romantic poems by 23 poets: Goethe, Schiller, Hiilderlin, Novalis, Tieck, Brentano, Ruckert, Heine, Miirike, Storm, Nietzsche, and 12 more. Stanley Appelbaum has provided excellent new literal English translations of the poems on facing pages, along with an informative introduction and concise evaluations of each poet. This is a wonderful opportunity for any student of German or lover of poetry to enjoy a rich sampling from one of the world’s great poetic traditions.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Release date: Jun 20, 2012
• ISBN: 9780486120386

Book preview

Reviews for Great German Poems of the Romantic Era

[rrhowell · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I can't really tell you much about how this compares to other poetry in German, or other translations. I am not a German scholar. The translations are fairly literal, line for line. But the poems in this book opened my eyes to some of the beauty of the German language, as well as the delight there is in reading poetry in a different language. The puzzles that are posed. If I were going to teach German, I would use some of these poems fairly early in the process.