Poems is a collection of 31 poems written by the German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 author

Author

An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

 Hermann Hesse

Hermann Hesse

Hermann Hesse was a German-Swiss poet, novelist, and painter. In 1946, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature...

 between 1899 and 1921. They were selected and translated to English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 by James Wright

James Wright (poet)

James Arlington Wright was an American poet.Wright first emerged on the literary scene in 1956 with The Green Wall, a collection of formalist verse that was awarded the prestigious Yale Younger Poets Prize. But by the early 1960s, Wright, increasingly influenced by the Spanish language...

 in 1970 from Die Gedichte, which was published in German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 in 1953. This collection was first published in 1971.

Contents

Each translated poem in this volume appears alongside the original German text. The poems, with the year they were written, are:

• "I Know, You Walk" / "Ich weiß, du gehst" (1899)
• "Across the Fields ..." / "Über die Felder ..." (1902)
• "Elizabeth" / "Elisabeth" (1902)
• "Ravenna (1)" / "Ravenna (1)" (1902)
• "Ravenna (2)" / "Ravenna (2)" (1902)
• "Lonesome Night" / "Einsame Nacht" (1902)
• "A Swarm of Gnats" / "Mückenschwarm" (1911)
• "The Poet" / "Der Dichter" (1911)
• "Mountains at Night" / "Berge in der Nacht" (1911)
• "At Night on the High Seas" / "Bei Nacht" (1911)
• "To a Chinese Girl Singing" / "An eine Chinesische Sängerin" (1915)
• "Departure from the Jungle" / "Abschied vom Urwald" (1915)
• "Evil Time" / "Böse Zeit" (1911)
• "On a Journey" / "Auf Wanderung" (1911)
• "Night" / "Wohl Lieb ich die Finstre Nacht" (1911)
• "Destiny" / "Schicksal" (1911)
• "Ode to Hölderlin" / "Ode an Hölderlin" (1911)
• "Childhood" / "Die Kindheit" (1915)
• "Lying in Grass" / "Im Grase Liegend" (1915)
• "How Heavy the Days ..." / "Wie Sind die Tage ..." (1911)
• "In a Collection of Egyptian Sculptures" / "In einer Sammlung Ägyptischer Bildwerke" (1915)
• "Without You" / "Ohne Dich" (1915)
• "The First Flowers" / "Die Ersten Blumen" (1915)
• "Spring Day" / "Frühlingstag" (1915)
• "Holiday Music in the Evening" / "Feierliche Abendmusik" (1911)
• "Thinking of a Friend at Night" / "Denken an den Freund bei Nacht" (1915)
• "Autumn Day" / "Herbsttag" (1915)
• "To Children" / "Den Kindern" (1915)
• "Flowers, Too" / "Auch die Blumen" (1911)
• "Uneasiness in the Night" / "Angst in der Nacht" (1911)
• "All Deaths" / "Alle Tode" (1921)

Background

Hermann Hesse is best known for his novels, but he was also a poet. In the seven volume German edition of his works, there are some 480 pages of poems. Hesse's novels themselves contain many passages of literal verse.

The common thread that runs through the poems in this collection is homesickness. On the selection of these poems, James Wright

James Wright (poet)

James Arlington Wright was an American poet.Wright first emerged on the literary scene in 1956 with The Green Wall, a collection of formalist verse that was awarded the prestigious Yale Younger Poets Prize. But by the early 1960s, Wright, increasingly influenced by the Spanish language...

 wrote in the Translator's Note: "All I wish to do is to offer a selection of Hesse's poems which deal with the single theme of homesickness." Many of Hesse's novels touched on this subject, including Steppenwolf

Steppenwolf (novel)

Steppenwolf is the tenth novel by German-Swiss author Hermann Hesse. Originally published in Germany in 1927, it was first translated into English in 1929. Combining autobiographical and psychoanalytic elements, the novel was named after the lonesome wolf of the steppes...

(1927):

Towards the end of the novel, Hermine says to Harry: "… Ah, Harry, we have to stumble through so much dirt and humbug before we reach home. And we have no one to guide us. Our only guide is our homesickness."

In these poems Hesse has touched this theme with a "traditionally endearing delicacy."

External links

• Germanic, Slavic & Semitic Studies; The University of California Poems.