50 Near Perfect Books of German Poetry

As a lover of lists, I was intrigued by the list of 100 Near Perfect Books of Poetry compiled by the people at the Lilliput Review.  So I undertook a less ambitious project of listing the 50 Near Perfect Books of  German Poetry, limiting it to 1) books published since 1900, and 2) collections or poem cycles published in the poet's lifetime. The list is arranged by date of publication.

I make no claims of completeness or objectivity: the choices are mine alone. No doubt Marcel Reich-Ranicki, Germany's Literary Pope, would heap scorn on many of my choices. So be it.

I would like to expand my list to 100 Near Perfect Books and would welcome any comments or suggestions - especially post-1980 book titles.

The term Near Perfect is used, since artistic perfection is considered an unattainable ideal. But I would maintain that Near Perfect does would not apply in all cases, such as the titles by Rilke, Celan and Trakl: they are perfect.

 

1. Galgenlieder (1905) Christian Morgenstern

2. Neue Gedichte  (1907) Rainer Maria Rilke

3. Der Krieg (1911) Georg Heym

4. Morgue und andere Gedichte (1912) Gottfried Benn

5. Gedichte (1913) Georg Trakl

6. Gesammelte Gedichte (1917) Else Lasker-Schüler

7. Die heimliche Stadt (1921) Oskar Loerke

8. Gedichte (1922) Hugo von Hofmannsthal

9. Duineser Elegien (1922) Rainer Maria Rilke

10. Die Sonnette an Orpheus (1922) Rainer Maria Rilke

11. Sonette (1934) Bertolt Brecht

12. Antwort des Schweigens (1935) Wilhelm Lehmann

13. Die Frau und die Tiere (1938) Gertrud Kolmar

14. Gedichte im Exil (1944) Bertolt Brecht

15. Entzückter Staub (Gedichte, 1946) Wilhelm Lehmann

16. Totentanz und Gedichte zur Zeit (1947) Marie Luise Kaschnitz

17. Abgelegene Gehöfte (1948) Günter Eich

18. Statische Gedichte (1948) Gottfried Benn

19. In den Wohnungen des Todes (1948) Nelly Sachs

20. Mohn und Gedächtnis (1952) Paul Celan

21. Die Zeichen der Welt (1952) Karl Krolow

22.  Destillationen. Neue Gedichte (1953) Gottfried Benn

23. Die Gestundete Zeit (1953) Ingeborg Bachmann

24. Die Rauchfahne (1953) Heinz Piontek

25. Bukower Elegien (Bertold Brecht)

26. Von Schwelle zu Schwelle (1955) Paul Celan

27. Anrufung des großen Bären (1957) Ingeborg Bachmann

28. Sprachgitter (1959) Paul Celan

29. Nur eine Rose als Stütze (1959) Hilde Domin

30. landessprache  (1960) Hans Magnus Enzensberger

31. Sarmatische Zeit (1961) Johannes Bobrowski

32. Abschiedslust (1962) Wilhelm Lehmann

33. Zeichen im Sand. Die szenischen Dichtungen (1962) Nelly Sachs

34. Mit einer Kranichfeder (1962) Heinz Piontek

35. Chausseen, Chausseen. Gedichte (1963) Peter Huchel

36. Erinnerung an einen Planeten. Gedichte aus fünfzehn Jahren (1963) Günter Kunert

37. Die Niemandsrose ( 1963) Paul Celan

38. Anlässe und Steingärten (1966) Günter Eich

39. Landschaft aus Schreien (1966) Nelly Sachs

40. Wetterzeichen (1966) Johannes Babrowski

41. Atemwende (1967) Paul Celan

42. Landaufenthalt. (1967) Sarah Kirsch

43. Lichtzwang (1970) Paul Celan

44. Teile dich Nacht, Gedichte (1971) Nelly Sachs

45. Unterwegs nach Utopia (1977) Günter Kunert

46. Die neunte Stunde. Gedichte (1979) Peter Huchel

47. Sieben Häute. Gedichte 1962-1979 (1979) Sarah Kirsch

48. Im Fahrtwind. Gedichte und Geschichte (1980) Peter Rühmkorf

49. Was es ist (1983) Erich Fried

50. Der Baum blüht trotzdem (1999) Hilde Domin

Comments

[Hattie]

My tin ear for poetry makes it impossible for me to participate in this endeavor. But what an impressive list!
Now if it were the 100 most perfect musical performances...But in my case that would be a very personal list.

[Don]

David:

Happy to see you've picked up the ball of "Nearly Perfect" poetry and published a list of 50 in German. In your quest for 100, I was wondering if Hermann Hesse might not be considered. So little has been translated into English (and as he famously said "poetry is what is lost in translation) but what we do have is quite good. The best collections in English are "Poems" translated by James Wright (a very small selection of poems, all centered on the theme of home or the quest for home) and "Hours in the Garden." I don't read German so I wouldn't know what to nominate but thought I would just gauge your reaction to his name.

Your characterization of the idea of "Near Perfect" is spot on.

best,
Don Wentworth, Lilliput Review

PS The 100 near perfect list is now up to 127:

http://lilliputreview.googlepages.com

[David]

Don,

Thanks, and Hesse certainly belongs on the list. I was struggling to find discreet collections of poems he published in book format.

I am pleased that some poems in translation have found their way on your list (including Rilke).

-David

[Hattie]

Heine is the great exception for me when it comes to poets. Him I "get."

[David]

@Hattie

In that case you would also "get" Brecht's poetry. He is squarely in Heine's tradition...

[Hattie]

Oh, right, of course. I've read a lot of Brecht!
I did a long paper on Rilke once, in which I proved my inability to understand what he was getting at! Luckily my prof was as much in the dark as I was!

[Barry Taylor]

Hate to create more work for you, but how about a subsidiary list of recommendable translations of even a few of these, for the benighted ones amongst us without German?

[David]

Good idea, Barry, and I will do just that when I can find the time. In the meantime start with Michael Hamburger's great translations of Paul Celan:

"The Poems of Paul Celan"

Still in print and available on Amazon.

[David Shapiro]

I think of Walter Benjamin as a poet more than philosophger or critic. His sonnet cycle is an example of an imperfect book, whgose is not?
But One Way Street with its prose poems,
suddewn dreams, etc.,, is perhaps the most beautiful book of German poetry. You have not included
Hans Arp, Richgard Huelsenbaeck,
Peter Handke at least Nonsense and Happiness,Brecht's Songs,
Max Ernst's poems, Paul Klee's poems, libretti of Hoffmansthal,
Georg noi matter how much we hate his politics, many German concrete
poets are deleted, no Dadaists,
no German surrealists, Sebald,etc.
End the first 50 blandness wiuth some
sense of German art and poetry:
the texts of Josef Beuys would outshine most of these or many.
Many post-war German poets are
left out, and the moviemakers,
like Handke's very fine script for False Moves or Loneliness of.
Put more "poetry" and nonsense in your
list. After all, Morgenstern is
one of the great German poets before the century. Aphorisms of Krauss
(Karl) would also be fine. Kafka's Blue
Notebook alone is worth 25 of the
books. German Czech poets? But I am
not a scholar of Germany at all,
but I did motivate the strange volume of Scholem's poems. Anyone
would want to have thewm on his desk, as with Bibuer-0Rosenzweig's Bible or the
prose poems of Buber's Hasidim volumes, each story a little poem.

[David]

@David S.,

Thank you for your wonderful suggestions. You have expanded the list well beyond "Lyrik" to encompass "Dichtung".

[The Assistant]

Davids,

you are Richters of Dichters.

David S.,

Max Ernst? Meinen Sie, Ernst Machs?

[Katy]

Hi David. Some translations available by publisher, mainly contemporary stuff. There isn't all that much, and I can't say whether it's near-perfect or not.

Burning Deck has collections by Elke Erb, Friederike Mayröcker, Ernst Jandl, Ulf Stolterfoht, Oskar Pastior and others.

Shearsman Books has Ilma Rakusa and Lutz Seiler.

Graywolf Press's "New European Poets" has a German section.

Zephyr Press has Ingeborg Bachmann and (forthcoming) Zafer Senocak.

Farrar, Strauss, Giroux has Rilke, Hesse, Durs Grünbein and the apparently excellent collection, "Twentieth Century German Poetry", ed. Michael Hofmann.

The Chicago Review's summer 2002 issue on "New Writing in German" features a lot of poets including Peter Waterhouse, Ulrike Draesner, Barbara Köhler and Raoul Schrott.

Michael Hamburger expertly translated Nelly Sachs, Paul Celan and Georg Trakl, among others, much of which is sadly out of print.

For recent German poetry in translation, see lyrikline.org (Mirko Bonné, Volker Braun, Adolf Endler, Uljana Wolf...) or no-mans-land.org (Monika Rinck, Ron Winkler, Silke Scheuermann, Jan Wagner...)

[Katy]

Just found another anthology: Giramondo (an Australian publisher) offers "Mouth to Mouth - Contemporary German Poetry in Translation", featuring Sabine Scho, Kerstin Hensel, Marcel Beyer, Raphael Urweider and eleven others. All translated by Australian and European poets.

[David]

Katy,

Thanks very much for these titles. I'll publish a separate list of translations in due course. It is great to get input from a professional translator.