Best known for the reference that Jane Austen makes to it in her famous send-up of the Gothic genre, "Horrid Mysteries" is actually an English translation of a German Sturm-und-Drang ("storm and stress") novel called "Der Genius" (1796), by Karl von Grosse. In truth, this is as much a ...
It's a shame that only a handful of Hoffmann's work is available in English, and much of what we do have consists of 19th century renderings mired in the mannered, stilted phrasings and irritatingly turgid sentence structure which, in Victorian times proved that an author was "good." Ian Sumter has ...
an excellent resource for Novalis readers who don't speak/read German. a thoughtful and focused selection of writings- adds depth and background to his enigmatic aphorisms and his mystical poetry.
Some of the best of 19th century German literature
The book contains three well known German novellas:
Theodor Storm: Immensee
Adelbert von Chamisso: Peter Schlemihl
Adalbert Stifter: Brigitta
Being German, I know them since I was an adolescent, and I love them. Therefore, here is what others have to say about them:
Theodor Storm ...
An army of Amazons sets out to conquer Greek heroes for the purpose of stocking their women's state with new female offspring. They blast into the midst of the Trojan War, confusing Greeks and Trojans alike and for a moment forcing those enemies into a terrified alliance. When Achilles, the pride and mainstay of the Greeks, and Penthesilea ( Pen-te-sil-lay-uh ), queen of the Amazons, meet, a ...
This volume presents the first complete translation of Fichte Studies, a critique of Fichtean philosophy by the young philosopher-poet Friedrich von Hardenberg. Under the pen-name Novalis, von Hardenberg became the most well-known and beloved of the early German Romantic writers. Those interested in the fate of German philosophy and literature immediately following Kant will find that this ...
The German culture can be said to oscillate between two extremes. The first is the predisposition to obsessively systematize and classify life's experience into knowledge with a calm and indifferent demeanor. The second is the reverse tendency to discard the rational and dive off into the realm of ...
a delightful, well-written triffle worth your time
+ Breathtaking!
While this is subtitled "A Christmas Tale", this wonderfully written story is a story of belonging in a small, isolated community - a wonderful gift that is set at Christmas. Two aspects of the story make this a memorable bit of literature: First, the discription of the physical setting and the ...
Within this book are the best quotes from Novalis in the original German, and translated into English. The poet's perspectives on chance and non-linear reality are clearly articulated. As Novalis was studying what was essentially modern science, his groundedness in German mysticism is even more ...
Ranging from macabre fantasies to fairy tales and tales of crime, these stories from the author of The Nutcracker create a rich fictional world. Hoffman paints a complex vision of humanity, where people struggle to establish identities in a hostile, absurd world. "The editors have made an excellent selection, and the result is a book of great distinction."—Denis Donoghue, New York ...
Ludwig Tieck (1773-1853) was a major figure in German cultural life, a poet, playwright, and novelist who was also an influential art and theater critic, the editor of Kleist and Novalis, and the prime force behind the famous Schegel-Tieck translation of Shakespeare. His was a long and prolific career, which began in the last decades of Frederick the Great's reign, and ended in the aftermath of ...
Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann was born Ernst Theodor Wilhelm - he changed his name in honour of Mozart, and music was his first and possibly greatest love. He was a brilliant critic, a talented painter and caricaturist and, by all accounts, a very serviceable composer. All these elements - music, ...
The four works collected in this volume reveal the fascinating preoccupations of the German Romantic movement, which revelled in the inexplicable, the uncanny and the unknown and, especially, the mysterious world of the fairy tale. Goethe's richly imaginative "Fairy Tale" (1795) depicts an ethereal underground realm and the marriage of a beautiful man and woman, whose union heralds a new age. In ...
I have an obession with this moment in cultural history. Unfortunately, I do not speak German, so a lot of the goodies I crave can be hard to come by... As for this little book, the Kleist stories are pretty available, and Hoffmann isn't too too difficult to find, although I, for one, hadn't read ...
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