Anthea Bell
Pneumatological Prose
Across the Land and the Water: Selected Poems, 1964–2001
By W G Sebald (Translated by Iain Galbraith)
Hamish Hamilton 213pp £14.99 order from our bookshop
This selection of W G (Max) Sebald’s poems will be treasure trove to his admirers. Brilliantly translated by Iain Galbraith, who has assumed the mantle of the late Michael Hamburger as translator of Sebald’s poetry, it includes works from the whole length of his creative life, cut short far too early in December 2001. It contains material from two early collections in typescript, ‘School Latin’ (including poems from an earlier collection of his student years, ‘Poemtrees’), and ‘Across the Land and the Water’, from which this book derives its title. They were not published in German when they were first written, although Galbraith’s lucid introduction shows that parts of the second collection became preliminary stages for the fine narrative poem After Nature, the three sections of which appeared in the Austrian journal Manuskripte in the mid-1980s, and in Hamburger’s English translation in 2002.
These earlier poems now make their way into English, along with a number of others found in the unpublished manuscripts from Sebald’s literary estate in the German Literature Archive at Marbach. There is great wealth here, and as Galbraith cogently puts it, ‘it is perhaps only in reading Sebald’s poetry,
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'Rivalries are intense and dangerous, and someone has to die.'
@NJCooper_crime on new thrillers by @HenryCPorter, @k_faulkner, @annafbailey, @mserinkelly, @JoelDicker, @AlanJParks, @whartonswords and more.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/april-2021-crime-round-up
This spring, give the gift of reading.
Give a friend a gift subscription to Literary Review for only £33.50.
https://www.mymagazinesub.co.uk/literary-review/promo/spring21/
'It’s long been known that there is an optimum reproductive window and that women enjoy a considerably shorter one than men. For both sexes this window is opening and closing earlier than it used to.' (£)
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-end-of-babies