Translated and introduced by David Luke

Thomas Carlyle commented over 150 years ago that the name of Goethe conjured up something vague and monstrous to English ears – a reaction still recognizable today. As a contribution towards redressing this situation this volume, published on the 250th anniversary of Goethe’s birth, contains the largest selection of his poetry in English verse translation ever published. The poems (alongside their German originals) are arranged chronologically and, among much else, include his most famous lyric verse, longer poems in their entirety, passages from his poetic drama Faust and from his popular, but in English little-known, romantic idyll Hermann and Dorothea, and the whole of his long-suppressed masterpiece The diary, sometimes referred to as the most erotic moral poem ever written. The whole sequence gives a picture of Goethe’s extraordinarily rich and unusual poetic development. A substantial introduction sets the poetic work in the context of Goethe’s often surprisingly unsettled life. This comprehensive selection and its new translations offer English-speaking readers the chance to enjoy Goethe’s prodigious gifts and huge variety of subject matter and mood, and to appreciate why his name is so often set alongside those of Dante and Shakespeare.

Published by Libris in 1999