Under the Edge of Night

“His poetry is beautifully lyrical, and yet impersonal, oracular in the manner of Hölderlin….. By invoking a river or village he evokes a whole world and a whole tradition. His work is occult, but hardly ever obscure, and his artistry has the ‘hiddenness of all perfect things.’ Few poets of our time have written as beautifully as Bobrowski.” —The Times Literary Supplement

Johannes Bobrowski (1917-1964) published his first poems in the East German journal Sinn und Form in 1955. He then began an ambitious cycle of poems he called his “Sarmatian Divan,” set in the half-historical, half-mythical region of ancient Sarmatia. These poems were eventually published in simultaneous East and West German editions under the titles Sarmatian Time (1961), Shadowland Rivers (1962), and the posthumous Weathersigns (1966). Before his death at age 47, Bobrowski also turned to prose, publishing two novels, Levin’s Mill (1964) and Lithuanian Piano (1966), and several collections of short stories.

Richard Sieburth is an award-winning translator, essayist, and literary scholar. His translations include works by Friedrich Höllderlin, Georg Büchner, Walter Benjamin, Gershom Scholem, and Christian Lehnert, as well as Nostradamus, Maurice Scève, Louise Labé, Gérard de Nerval, Charles Baudelaire, Henri Michaux, Michel Leiris, and Jacques Darras. Sieburth has also edited multiple volumes of Ezra Pound’s writings.

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