Waiting on the Opposite Stage: Collected Poems

by Heiner Müller, James Reidel (Translation)

With poignancy and skill, Heiner Müller’s Waiting on the Opposite Stage comprises a personal retelling not only of post-war German history but also of the communist spirit and pathos that gave rise to the Berlin Wall and its fall. The overarching irony of this book is that the author witnessed the rise of his fame due to his country’s ruin. Müller, whose creative life spanned the existence of East Germany, is best known today for his play Die Hamletmachine , which established him as the successor to Bertolt Brecht and gained him international recognition as a post-dramatic playwright. Waiting on the Opposite Stage reveals Müller as a poet, which he chiefly was during his time.
 
Arranged in four parts, this book collects over 400 poems written from 1949 to 1995, including a section with the poet’s unpublished drafts and fragments. With helpful notes and an extensive afterword on Müller’s life and work, James Reidel has carefully preserved the layout of the original German poems with his translations. In verse and prose poetry, this important collection ranges from paeans to Stalin to Müller’s self-awareness of his own human scale and fame to his final eloquent months, when his creative life was cut short by cancer.
 

456 pages, Hardcover

Published January 15, 2021

About the author

Heiner Müller was a German (formerly East German) dramatist, poet, writer, essayist and theatre director. Described as "the theatre's greatest living poet" since Samuel Beckett, Müller is often considered the most important German dramatist of the 20th century after Bertolt Brecht. His "enigmatic, fragmentary pieces" are a significant contribution to postmodern drama and postdramatic theatre.