Songs of Love and Grief: A Bilingual Anthology in the Verse Forms of the Originals (European Poetry Classics) [Paperback]

Heinrich Heine (Author), Walter W. Arndt (Translator), Jeffrey L. Sammons (Foreword)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Heine's reputation as one of Germany's greatest 19th-century poets has been overpowered by the fact that most people know his poems through song: to date, according to Jeffrey L. Sammons's introduction, over 8000 have been set to music. There are multiple ironies in having these lieder represent German folk culture: Heine (1797-1856) was born Jewish and subsequently baptized; a politically active lawyer in pre-unification Germany, he spent the last 25 years of his life exiled in Paris, where he produced work suffused with both longing and revulsion for his native land. This collection, which spans Heine's poetic career, presents the German originals and Arndt's translations on facing pages. Arndt, an emeritus professor of the humanities at Dartmouth, is unable to prevent Heine's peculiar brand of ironically charged Romanticism from sliding into sing-song English. He does, however, recognize and bring to the fore much of Heine's coded anguish: ``I seem to hear a far-off droning,/ Nightwatchmen's horn-sounds, dear and soft,/ Nightwatchmen their refrains intoning,/ And sobs of nightingales aloft.''

Copyright 1995 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review

Ah, These Ladies Know For Certain
Anno 1829
Anno 1839
As Part Of The Distant Horizon
The Bliss You Conjured Up For Me
Both In My Daytime Musing
The Bottles Are Empty, The Breakfast Was Good
Burghers In Sunday Jerkins
Chapter 16
Chapter 9
Child: It Would Be Your Undoing
Death Is The Cool Of Night
Do Not Dismiss Me, Even Though
Don't Go Down The Wicked Street
Elope With Me And Be My Wife
Envenomed Are My Songs
Errand
Farewell, You Cheerful Folk Of France
From Those Blue Eyes Of Yours
Good Fortune Is A Flight Wench
Have No Fear, Beloved Soul
Heart, My Heart, Be Not Discouraged
Heavens Gray And Workday-dismal!
However Swiftly You Passed Me First
I Dreamt The Same Old Dream Again
I Had A Handsome Homeland Long Ago
I Had In Mind To Stay
I Kept It A Secret From People
I See You In My Dream Each Night
I Stood In Somber Musing
I Walk In A Flower Garden
I Wish My Heart's Chagrins
I Won't Credit, My Young Beauty
In A Dream I Saw The Beloved
In The Enchanting Month Of May
Kisses Stolen In The Dark
Kisses
The Letter That You Wrote Me
Life's Journey
Lorelei
Losses Which My Aging Faces
Lotus Blossom
The Lovely Wishes Blossom
Man, Do Not Deride The Devil
May The Devil Take Your Mother
Morningtime, I Send You Violets
My Desire's Volcanic Rapid
My Heart, My Heart Is Heavy
My Most Beautiful Proposal
The Night Is Damp And Chilly
A Novel Song, A Better Song
Our Hearts Have Concluded A Pact
Out Of My Aching Smart
Risen In The Morn, I Ask
The Runestone Juts Into The Brine
Sapphires Are Those Eyes Of Yours
The Sea Was Aglitter Far And Wide
Shadow Kisses, Shadow Bliss
She Fled From Me Like A Timid Deer
A Single Fir Stands Lonesome
Softly Through My Spirit Sound
The Sun Irradiates The Sea
The Sun-god's Fierce Resplendence
Taking Ship
There By The Corner House We Stood
They Bore A Love For Each Other
They Come Too Late, Those Smiles You Send Me
They Gave Me Counsel And Words To The Wise
They Have Tormented And Vexed Me
This Radiant Morning Of Summer
The Time I Came To You With My Plaints
Twice Around The Clock I'm Bidden
The Way Of The World
We Felt A Good Deal For Each Other
We Rode In The Darkened Stagecoach
We Sat By The Fisherman's Cottage
We Two, My Dear, Were Children
When By Chance You Pass My Station
When I Feel Blissful In Your Arms
When Of A Morning Early
When You're My Wedded Wife, You'll Be
Where?
Wheresoever You May Walk
Which Should I Fall In Love With?
Whither Now?
World And Life Are Disjoint And Awry!
You Blossom Like A Flower
You Have Diamonds, You Have Pearls
You Lovely Fisher-maiden
A Young Man Loves A Maiden
Young Miss Stood On The Seashore
Your Dour Refrain I Love You Not
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 227 pages
• Publisher: Northwestern University Press; 3 edition (November 22, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0810113244
• ISBN-13: 978-0810113244
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.2 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #450,471 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It's a Rash Poet ..., March 5, 2009

By 

Giordano Bruno (Wherever I am, I am.) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Songs of Love and Grief: A Bilingual Anthology in the Verse Forms of the Originals (European Poetry Classics) (Paperback)

... in any language, who would try to 'imitate' the lyrics of Heinrich Heine. Translation of poetry has to be a form of imitation, as the American poet Robert Lowell demonstrated in his book "Imitations." So it's a brave as well as rash translator who would attempt to translate Heine's lapidary lyrics not only in meaning of the words but also in the verse forms of the original. But that's what Walter Arndt has done, and though he hasn't matched the master, he's come closer than anyone might have expected, poem after poem.

A native German speaker will certainly not need or want, or perhaps approve of, this book. A person who has no German language at all will probably not be persuaded by these translations that Heinrich Heine deserves his reputation as the greatest of all German lyricists. The book will be of great value, however, to those people who have a little German - a year or two of college, or a childhood memory of a grandparent speaking it - who will find Arndt's translation just close enough to make the Deutsch lucidly intelligible.

Here's a sample in the original and in Arndt's imitation:

Ein Fichtenbaum steht einsam
Im Norden auf kahler Höh.
Ihn schläfert; mit weissen Decke
Umhüllen ihn Eis und Schnee.

Er träumt von einer Palme,
Die fern im Morgenland
Einsam und schweigend trauert
Auf brennenden Felsenwand.

A single fir stands lonesome
On barren northerly height.
He drowses; frost and snowstorm
Shroud him in swathes of white.

He dreams about a palm. She,
In the orient, far, alone,
Sorrowing stands and silent
At a blazing scarp of stone.

Well, okay... The German is so much plainer and more natural, made of commoner words, effortless in its irony and bittersweetness. Of course the 'gender' of the two trees is implicit in the syntax of German, so it doesn't need to be forced. It's a faint little flower of a poem, and yet it seems as endlessly suggestive as a poem by Emily Dickinson or a single pansy blooming from a crack in the sidewalk.

4.0 out of 5 stars Good but not great translations. Pricy for half a book., December 21, 2011

By 

B. Marold "Bruce W. Marold" (Bethlehem, PA United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Songs of Love and Grief: A Bilingual Anthology in the Verse Forms of the Originals (European Poetry Classics) (Paperback)

Regarding this volume, Songs of Love and Grief, translated by Walter Arndt, I believe the earlier review hit most of the right notes. Addressing a reader who does not know German, and who has no intention of learning it, I would bypass this edition, as it is a bit high piiced for 110 pages of poems. Find an edition which has only the English, and maybe for the same price you can find two English translations of the same poems.

For the German speaker, who has no use for the English, I offer the same advice. As chance would have it, I needed the bilingual version as an example, in a language I knew, of how translation of poetry always manages to loose something. I did a translation of a few poems, and I found that Mr. Arndt's emphasis seemed to be on retaining meter and rhyme rather than meaning. One short poem (untitled), on pages 112 - 113, is quite funny in German, and only whimsical in English.

For that reason, I would also warn away anyone who is learning German, since making a literal translation of the text is somewhere around third or fourth in the translator's priorities.