Poems (English and German Edition)

AT AGE 76 YRS , I DECIDED TO REREAD SOME OF THE BOOKS THAT HAD A POWERFUL EFFECT ON ME IN MY 20'S . HESSE WAS A FAVORITE. I WAS UNAWARE THAT HE WROTE POETRY.HIS EPIC NOVELS ,GAVE ME SO MUCH SPIRITUAL AND CREATIVE UNDERSTANDINGS.I ORDERED THE BOOK OF POETRY BECAUSE I WAS CURIOUS . IT IS A THIN VOLUME, IN GERMAN AND TRANSLATED TO ENGLISH ON THE FACING PAGE.WHEN I READ HESSE IN MY 20'S I WAS SEARCHING FOR KNOWLEDGE OF MANY THING.REREADING HESSE NOW, I REALIZE THAT HE WAS TOO SEARCHING FOR HIMSELF.BUT HE WAS OLDER. KNOWING MORE OF HIS PERSONAL HISTORY, I UNDERSTAND HE WAS A COMPLEX MAN THAT USED HIS WRITING AS A WAY OF FINDING HIMSELF.HOWEVER, NONE OF THIS MATTERS. HIS WRITING IS STIMULATING IN A VERY CREATIVE WAY.IT STILL STIMULATES ME CREATIVELY . I RECOMMEND HIS POETRY. ALL HIS WRITINGS SHOULD BE READ IF ONLY TO UNDERSTAND FROM WHERE WE WHO ARE IN OUR 70 OR 80'S EVOLVED SOCIALLY.

I had a copy of these many years ago but gave a friend a loan of them. They were never returned to me but I am not surprised.What a complement to a book. This is my favourite book. There are many, many books that one likes, or needs, or has to read, or really couldn't care less about; not this one. This is real poetry, as when young a teacher spoke of on some dreary wet day, this is the real thing. No vain intellectual pretence, no prolix mania, no boring litanies, no embarrassing mess, no pseudolit arty farty rubbish, real poetry. From the heart and the head, well crafted, fully mature, vintage poetry. Not too many, perhaps too few, poems, as if unfinished. Almost perfect, where 'perfection' is vanity. I'm not giving it away again.

Translated from German to English by google translation services 😂😂😂

I’m a fan of Hesse. Haven’t read in decades. There is nothing I don’t like. It’s individual taste. You will find there is universality in his writings and could be applied at any time and era.

The English translation helps me refresh my German.

I bought the Kindle book, which was a mistake because it does not have the German original, only the translations. I would not have bought it if I had known this.

If you’re like me, you may not have realized that this German author, known for short philosophical novels such as “Siddhartha,” “Steppenwolf,” and “Demian,” was also a poet. This bilingual edition consists of a selection of 31 poems picked and translated by the Pulitzer Prize winning poet, James Wright. The poems are short form poems that range from less than a page to three pages, and thus even with the inclusion of the original German verse, the book is only 80 pages.It’s hard to imagine a more skilled editor / translator than James Wright, who was considered one of the best American poets of his time. When I was reading up on Wright, I saw that major themes in his poems were “loneliness and alienation,” and those themes are certainly seen in this selection, though I cannot tell you if they’re representative of Hesse’s poetry over all or not. The philosophical outlook of Hesse’s fiction certainly shines through in places, as does the sparse, imagery-centric approach seen in Eastern (e.g. Zen) poetry – a style that tries to keep the poet out of it by presenting scene devoid of analysis or judgment.Though it didn’t do me much good, owing to my inability to speak or even properly pronounce German, I like that the original poems in German are included. An Italian proverb compares poetry translations to women -- i.e. the more beautiful, the less faithful. So, it’s always nice for those with bilingual fluency to be able to look at them side-by-side (which is how they are printed.) Sometimes even hearing the poem without understanding meaning can give one insight into the musicality of the verse.I enjoyed this selection of poems, and while I can’t say how much is Hesse and how much Wright, either way they were well-composed and pleasant to read. I would highly recommend this selection for poetry readers.

This slim volume of poems by novelist Hermann Hesse moves me as deeply now as it did when I was a teenaged boy some 45 years ago. The only difference in my appreciation for it is that I've gained precious life experience & grown over those decades, so that what was merely evocative & haunting to a boy is replete with meaning & feeling to an older (and presumably somewhat wiser) man.As previous reviewers have noted, Hesse's soul springs from the rich soil of German Romanticism, which informs his life's work. These early poems, written at the beginning of the 20th Century, already anticipate the disasters to come, both political & spiritual. They're not didactic, they're not ideological -- they speak from the heart torn by sorrow & insight, and express that heart with quiet, agonized passion:Now we are silentAnd sing no songs any more,Our pace grows heavy;This is the night, that was bound to come.Give me your hand,Perhaps we still have a long way to go,It's snowing, it's snowing.Winter is a hard thing in a strange country.Where is the timeWhen a light, a hearth burned for us?Give me your hand!Perhaps we still have a long way to go.The literal, straightforward translation is by the gifted poet James Wright, and the original German text of each poem is provided on the facing pages. For those who cherish Hesse's novels, this is required reading -- but the same might be said for anyone who feels the pain of the world as it is, and the greater pain of knowing what it might be, if only, if only -- most highly recommended!

Eine ganz nette Ansammlung von Gedichten, größtenteils mit dem Thema Heimatlosigkeit und verlorene Liebe, schön übersetzt, die deutsche Original-Version links, die englische Übersetzung rechts, es sind ca 40 Gedichte übersetzt.Das Thema (so wird es auch im Vorwort beschrieben) ist Hesses "Lieblingsthema" Heimatsuche. Gerade bei diesem Thema hätte ich jedoch gerne das Gedicht "Stufen" dabeigehabt. Es hätten zudem auch einige andere seiner hoffnungsvolleren Gedichte dabei sein können; diese Ansammlung ist etwas sehr melancholisch, sogar für Hesse. Zusätzlich hätten es einfach auch noch mehr Gedichte sein können.

Wonderful words from the brilliant Hermann Hesse, although I was expecting the book to include his tree poem to be in it. It was not included.

neat