Der Tod
Illustrations by Marcello Crescenzi
Edited by Claudio Rocchetti
The limits of the sphere of dream,
The bounds of true and false, are past.
Lead us on, thou wandering Gleam,
Lead us onward far and fast,
To the wide, desert waste.
Der Tod is the second volume in our series of books exploring the poetry of death, transience, and transition with a focus on the nineteenth century (but not only!). While the first volume, Oh Death!, is an anthology of English poetry, here we gather English translations of German poets, edited by Claudio Rocchetti, along with the german original texts.
During the 1760s and 1770s, Germany witnessed the rise of the Sturm und Drang (“Storm and Stress”), this is the starting point of this anthology, exploring the many developments of the German movement, from primitive and fantastic forms of literature such as folktale and romance to the most modern anticipations.
Featuring poetry by Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, Matthias Claudius, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, Friedrich Hölderlin, Friedrich Heinrich Karl de la Motte Fouque, Ludwig Uhland, August von Platen-Hallermünde, Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, Heinrich Heine, and Friedrich Nietzsche, translated into English by Charles Timothy Brooks, Gustav Mathieu, John Storer Cobb, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Guy Stern, Charles Lamb, W.W. Skeat, Richard Garnett, James Steele, and Walter Kaufmann.