Texts

by Helmut Heißenbüttel, Michael Hamburger (Translator)

Used book in good condition, due to its age it could contain normal signs of use

Genres: Poetry

119 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1977

About the author

Helmut Heißenbüttel (1921 – 1996) was a German novelist and poet.

He was born in Wilhelmshaven during the Weimar Republic. During the Second World War, he was badly wounded on the Eastern Front so that his left arm had to be amputated. He married Ida Warnholtz in 1954 and they had four children (one son, three daughters).

Reviews

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 3 out of 5]

Experimental prose-poems and poems and proems from a German writer, written for the most in the 50s and 60s. These pieces thrive on repetition, whether phrases recast synonymically, assonant soundalikes, or actual passages repeated several times throughout each story, all in breathless run-on sentences. The closest analogue is probably the later prose works of Samuel Beckett, whose sentences evaporated into a form of profound vagueness, casting themselves loose from tangible meaning into an ethereal realm of pure language, with frustrating and incredible results. These pieces are less successful and tend to the more impish or winkingly abstract, but there are some pearls amid the swine, like this example I screenshotted for you on Twitter.

[Sz steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Remarkable, a favourite book published in 1977- excellent translations… made better by understanding what H was trying to do.