Yvan Goll And Bilingual Poetry

"In these magnificent and stirring last poems, the great Yvan Goll is recording nothing less than the disintegration of the European soul, using the intellectual resources of a highly influential and cosmopolitan imagination. One of the finest and most revered poets of the twentieth century, Goll receives the tender treatment he deserves in these remarkably vivid and masterful translations."--Keith Flynn, author of 'The Golden Ratio' and 'The Rhythm Method, Razzmatazz and Memory' This is the first English translation of the last poems of Yvan Goll , one of the twentieth century's finest European poets.

The life of the bilingual writer Yvan Goll (1891-1950) was one of perpetual experimentation and self-renewal. In the first study to treat Goll's whole literary career, Robert Vilain explores the full range of his poetry, novels, dramas, libretti, essays, translations and editions - from Expressionism in pre-war Berlin and fisticuffs with Andre Breton over Surrealism in post-war Paris, to the dream of a new poetry for the atomic age. Goll's journey took in satirical Uberdramen, extravagantly ironic novels and collaborations with Kurt Weill in the 1920s, lyrical love poetry for his wife and a lover, and the experiences of his magnificent alter ego Jean sans Terre in the 1930s, and poetry inspired by alchemy, geology and the Kabbalah in the 1940s. In 1945 he wrote the first poetic response to the Atom Bomb test, the greatest alchemy of all. Born into a Jewish family on the Franco-German border, at home all over Europe until forced into exile, and at his death an American citizen, Goll both suffered and relished his protean identity, living and writing in search of an elusive experience of wholeness

This volume brings together for the first time essays on both Claire and Yvan Goll. The Golls made distinctive contributions to the literary cultures of France and Germany in the first half of the twentieth century. Their writings shed much light upon their respective positions within the exile communities created by the First and Second World Wars, and in the inter-war avant-gardes of Paris and Berlin, whose cosmopolitanism and eclecticism they came to embody. The Golls' literary output was shaped by, and in turn helped to enrich, the experimental trends that often challenged or transcended conventional notions according to which genre and choice of literary language are stable phenomena. The essays in this volume focus on texts by Yvan and Claire Goll in French and German, and in various literary forms: these are examined in relation to contem-porary literary, artistic and musical developments, and place particular emphasis on collaborative and interdisciplinary works. The analyses explore a wide range of theoretical perspectives, including inter-textuality, Trivialliteratur, psychoanalysis, feminism, cultural marginality and négritude. This collection represents a distinctive and wide-ranging contribution to the study of Yvan and Claire Goll at a time of renewed critical interest in their lives and work.

Yvan Goll (1891-1950), a poet of many talents and many languages, his journal Surrealism (1924) was the first to feature surrealist work much to the chagrin of Andre Breton. A Jewish intellectual living in NYC during World War II, much of his French language poetry, including "Landless John," was translated into English by various hands including William Carlos Williams, W.S. Merwin and Galway Kinnell. He was the first to translate Aime Cesaire's "Notebook" into English. Near his death, he wrote a large number of love poems addressed to his wife Claire. Some were published as "Dream Weed / Traumkraut," Goll's work best known to English readers, others are to be found in "Neila," a work of restless paranoia and gripping intensity, translated here into English for the first time."

First Published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.