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Michael Hamburger

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Michael Hamburger

Michael Hamburger (1924-2007). Courtesy Anvil Press Poetry.

Michael Hamburger OBE (22 March 1924 - 7 June 2007) was a noted English poet, translator, literary critic, memoirist, and academic.

Life[]

Hamburger was born in Berlin into a Jewish family that left for the United Kingdom in 1935 and settled in London. Publisher Paul Hamlyn (1926–2001) was his younger brother.


He was educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford, and served in the British Army from 1943 to 1947 in Italy and Austria. After that he completed his degree, and wrote for a time.

He took a position at University College London in 1951, and then at the University of Reading in 1955. There followed many further academic positions.

Hamburger published translations of many of the most important German-language writers, mainly poets. He was known in particular for his translations of Friedrich Hölderlin, Paul Celan, Gottfried Benn and W.G. Sebald, as well as for his literary criticism.

He died at his home in Suffolk.

Writing[]

Representative works included The Truth of Poetry (1968), a major work of criticism. His Collected Poems, 1941–1994 (1995) drew on around 20 collections. Hamburger himself commented unhappily on the habit that reviewers have of greeting publication of his own poetry with a ritualised "Michael Hamburger, better known as a translator...". Perhaps ironically, his original poetry is better known in its German translations, by Austrian poet and translator Peter Waterhouse.[1]

He often commented on the literary life: the 1st edition of his autobiography came out with the title A Mug's Game, a quotation from T. S. Eliot, whom Hamburger greatly admired, and to whose 60th-birthday Festschriffe he contributed an eponymous poem of 4 stanzas[2] which tells its own story.

Recognition[]

Hamburger was honored with the Petrarca-Preis in 1992.

His work has been recognised with numerous other awards, including the Aristeion Prize in 1990, and the Order of the British Empire in 1992.

In popular culture[]

Hamburger appeared as a character in W.G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn.

Publications[]

Poetry[]

  • Flowering Cactus: Poems, 1942-1949. Aldington, Kent, UK: Hand & Flower Press, 1950.
  • Poems, 1950-1951. Aldington, Kent, UK: Hand & Flower Press, 1952.
  • The Dual Site: Poems. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958; New York: Dodd, Mead, 1958.
  • Weather and Season: New poems, London, Longman, 1963; New York: Atheneum, 1963.
  • In Flashlight: Poems. Leeds, UK: Northern House, 1965.
  • In Massachusetts Menomenie, WI: Ox Head Press, 1967.
  • Feeding the Chickadees. London: Turret, 1968.
  • Penguin Modern Poets 14 (Alan Brownjohn, Michael Hamburger, & Charles Tomlinson). Harmondsworth, UK, & Baltimore, MD: Penguin, 1969.
  • Travelling. London: Fulcrum Press, 1969.
  • Ownerless Earth: New and selected poems. Cheadle, UK: Carcanet, 1973; New York: Dutton, 1973.
  • Real Estate. Manchester, UK: Carcanet, 1977.
  • Collected Poems, 1941-1983. Manchester, UK: Carcanet, 1984.
  • Roots in the Air. London: Anvil, 1991.
  • Collected Poems 1941-1994. London: Anvil, 1995.
  • Late. London: Anvil, 1997.
  • Intersections: Shorter poems, 1994-2000. London: Anvil, 2000.
  • From a Diary of Non-events. London: Anvil, 2002.
  • Wild and Wounded: Shorter poems, 2000-2003. London: Anvil, 2004.
  • Circling the Square: Poems, 2004-2006. London: Anvil, 2007.
  • Michael Hamburger Reader. London: Anvil, 2014.

Non-fiction[]

  • Reason and Energy: Studies in German literature. London, UK: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1957; New York: Grove, 1957.
  • From Prophecy to Exorcism: the premisses of modern German literature. London: Longman, 1965.
  • The Truth of Poetry: Tensions in modern poetry from Baudelaire to the 1960's London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1969; New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970; London: Anvil, 1996.
  • Hofmannsthal: Three essays. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972.
  • A Mug's Game: Intermitent memoirs, 1924-1954. Cheadle, UK: Carcanet, 1973.
  • Art as Second Nature: Occasional pieces, 1950-1974. Manchester, UK: Carcanet, 1975.
  • A Proliferation of Prophets: Essays on German writers from Nietzsche to Brecht. Manchester, UK: Carcanet, 1983; New York: St. Martin's Press, 1983.
    • also published as Modern German Literature: Essays on German writers from Nietzsche to Brecht. Manchester, UK: Carcanet, 1983.
  • After the Second Flood: Essays on post-war German literature. Manchester, UK: Carcanet, 1986; New York: St. Martin's Press, 1986.
  • String of Beginnings: Intermittent memoirs, 1924 to 1954. London: Skoob Books, 1991.
  • Michael Hamburger in Conversation with Peter Dale (with Peter Dale). London: Between the Lines, 1998.
  • Philip Larkin: A retrospect. London: Enitharmon Press, 2002.

Translations[]

  • Charles Baudelaire, Twenty Prose Poems of Baudelaire.London: Editions Poetry London, 1946; London: Cape, 1968; San Francisco, CA: City Light Books, 1988.
  • Friedrich Holderlin, Poems. London: Poetry London, 1943
    • revised as Holderlin: His poems. London: Harvill Press, 1952; New York: Pantheon, 1952.
  • Ludwig van Beethoven, Letters, Journals and Conversations. London, Thames & Hudson, 1951; New York: Pantheon, 1952.
  • Georg Trakl, Decline: Twelve poems. St. Ives, Cornwall, UK: Latin Press, 1952.
  • Albrecht Goes, The Burnt Offering: The story of the persecution of the Jews in Germany. London: Gollancz, 1956; New York: Pantheon, 1956.
  • Friedrich Holderlin, Holderlin: Selected verse: With plain prose translations of every poem. Harmondsworth, UK, & Baltimore, MD: Penguin, 1961; London & Dover, NH: Anvil Press, 1986.
  • Bertolt Brecht, Tales from the Calendar. London: Methuen, 1961.
  • 'Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Poems and Verse Plays. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961; New York: Pantheon for the Bollingen Foundation, 1961.
  • 'Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Selected Plays and Libretti. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963; New York: Pantheon, 1963.
  • Nelly Sachs, Selected Poems; including the verse play, 'Eli'. London: Cape, 1968; New York, Farrar, Straus, 1968.
  • Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Poems of Hans Magnus Enzensberger (translated with Jerome Rothenberg). Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1968.
  • Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Poems for People Who Don't Read Poems. London: Secker & Warburg, 1968; New York: Atheneum, 1968.
  • Nelly Sachs, The Seeker, and other poems. New York: Farrar, Straus, 1970.
  • Paul Celan, Poems. Manchester, UK: Carcanet, 1980; New York: Persea, 1980
    • enlarged as Poems of Paul Celan. New York, Persea, 1988.
  • Rainer Maria Rilke, An Unofficial Rilke: Poems, 1912-1926. London, Anvil Press, 1981; Redding Ridge, CT: Black Swan, 1981 [1982].
  • Georg Trakl, Grodek: A poem. London: Scargill Press, 1989.
  • Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Selected Poems. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Bloodaxe Books, 1994.
  • Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Kiosk. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Bloodaxe Books, 1997.
  • Friedrich Holderlin, Poems and Fragments. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2002.
  • W.G. Sebald, After Nature. London, Hamish Hamilton, 2002; New York: Random House, 2002.
  • W.G. Sebald, Unrecounted: 33 poems. London: Hamish Hamilton, 2004; New York: New Directions, 2004.
  • Peter Huchel, The Garden of Theophrastus: Selected Poems. London: Anvil Press, 2004.
  • Paul Celan, 70 Poems. New York: Persea, 2013.

Edited[]

  • Modern German Poetry, 1910-1960: An anthology with verse translations (edited by Hamburger & Christopher Middleton). London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1962; New York: Grove, 1962.
  • East German Poetry: An anthology. Cheadle, UK: Carcanet Press, 1972.
  • German Poetry, 1910-1975: An anthology. New York: Urizen, 1976; Manchester, UK: Carcanet, 1975.


Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.[3]

See also[]

References[]

  • Hamburger, Michael. "T.S. Eliot." In T.S. Eliot: A Symposium, edited by Richard March and Tambimuttu, 178. London: Editions Poetry, 1948.
  • Theo Breuer, "Still He is Turning - Michael Hamburger" in Breuer, Aus dem Hinterland. Lyrik nach 2000, Edition YE 2005.

Notes[]

  1. ↑ Michael Hamburger: Poet, translator and academic, more acclaimed in Germany than in Britain
  2. ↑ Hamburger 1948, p. 178.
  3. ↑ Search results = au:Michael Hamburger, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, Jan. 20, 2014.

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