Understands Nietzsche in the light of his activity as a creative writer from his juvenilia through the publication of The Birth of Tragedy, providing the first extensive study in English of his early literary works. The name Friedrich Nietzsche resonates around the world. Although known primarily as a philosopher, Nietzsche began his writing career while still a boy with literary texts: poetry, prose, and dramas. The present book is the first extensive study in English of these early literary works. It understands Nietzsche in the light of his activity as a creative writer from his juvenilia through his first two years as professor of classical philology at the University of Basel, that is, through the 1872 publication of his first major work, The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music. Knowledge of Nietzsche's early literary writings further underscores the value of The Birth of Tragedy as a work of world literature. The present study makes available almost all of Nietzsche's early poetry and extensive excerpts from his early prose works and dramas - much of it in English for the first time - along with commentary. A final, extensive chapter on The Birth of Tragedy treats it as the culmination of the early literary works. The book contains many new insights into Nietzsche and his work and essential source material for future research. All quotations from Nietzsche are given in both the original German and in English.

New essays providing a in-depth view of the many facets of the great world poet's work. Friedrich Schiller is not merely one of Germany's foremost poets. He is also one of the major German contributors to world literature. The undying words he gave to characters such as Marquis Posa in Don Carlos and Wilhelm Tell in the eponymous drama continue to underscore the need for human freedom. Schiller cultivated hope in the actualization of moral knowledge through aesthetic education and critical reflection, leading to his ideal of a more humane humanity. At the same time, he was fully cognizant of the problems that attend various forms of idealism. Yet for Schiller, ultimately, love remains the gravitational center of the universe and of human existence, and beyond life and death joy prevails. This collection of cutting-edge essays by some of the world's leading Schiller experts constitutes a milestone in scholarship. It includes in-depth discussions of the writer's major dramatic and poeticworks, his essays on aesthetics, and his activities as historian, anthropologist, and physiologist, as well as of his relation to the ancients and of Schiller reception in 20th-century Germany. Contributors: Steven D.Martinson, Walter Hinderer, David Pugh, Otto Dann, Werner von Stransky-Stranka-Greifenfels, J. M. van der Laan, Rolf-Peter Janz, Lesley Sharpe, Norbert Oellers, Dieter Borchmeyer, Karl S. Guthke, Wulf Koepke. Steven D.Martinson is Professor of German at the University of Arizona.

This book introduces for the first time selected poetry, letters, and other writings by the German writer Thomas Kunst (Leipzig) to the English-speaking world. Given the many prestigious awards the writer has received for his poetry and the originality of his imaginative thinking, the Turkish-German writer Feridun Zaimoglu rightly called Kunst a great poet. Through his immersion in the poetry of Paul Celan, Georg Trakl, Nicolas Born, Thomas Brasch, and several South and North American writers, Thomas Kunst has acquired a distinctive voice and style that rival the most talented writers in Germany today. Music animates his creative writing. What he calls the instrumentation between music and language flows almost effortlessly from his experiences in the world, shaping the multifaceted textures of his writings. Readers will be struck by the author's remarkable clarity of expression, precision, directness, and authenticity. "A poem is a poem for me only when the most ordinary things in it irritate me in the most intense ways." Inner turbulence over the way things are, outer conflict, and the awareness of the ultimate irresolvability of pressing political concerns, everyday experience, knowledge of the classical heritage, and acute aesthetic sensibility unite to provide a unique and challenging reading experience.