Gain Complete Plays And Prose Compiled By Georg Büchner Print

Danton's Death, Woyzeck, Lenz and the letters,

I like his writing but I think that his age shows, Woyzeck is very good four for it! but the other works, I wouldn't think especially remarkable, But of course, my knowledge of theatre, and german lit is incredibly, unbelievably limited, Nii veider raamat, et sellele võib vastavalt tujust suvalise hulga tähti anda, Tõlge on võrratu, a good translation Read for grad school: Danton's Death, Leonce and Lena, Woyzeck, Pretty similar to the OUP, The life of Georg Buchner was short, intense, and tragicand extremely significant for the development of modern drama, His three plays, Dantons Death, Leonce and Lena, and Woyzeck, were greatly ahead of their time in their penetrating dramatic and psychological treatment, They served as an impetus for contemporary schools of drama as different as the Theatre of the Absurd of Ionesco and the Epic Theatre of Brecht.


lso presented in this only complete volume of Buchner in English are his two powerful prose pieces, The Hessian Courier and his short story, Lenz.

Woyzeck What a lyrically haunting play, It is little more than fragments of story, song and poetry with an unresolved or unclear ending,

When I say “fragments”, I mean that each scene is brief, but almost complete in itself, The story/plot itself is not necessarily fragmented, The arc of it is rather clear and unremarkable at least by todays standards, A woman cheats on a troubled man, who kills her when he finds out, But it is told in short, poignant scenes some no more than a single line of dialogue,

Like Dantons Death, the language reveals Buchners admiration for Shakespeare, It is lyrical, imaginative, heightened, and unnatural, The characters are reflective and philosophical, Folk songs abound. Along with the short, tightly focused scenes, this dialogue creates a sense that each scene is more like a song, lending it an operatic feel.


Yet the play is frustratingly incomplete, Thats either its greatest flaw or greatest strength, In this translation by Richard Mueller, Woyzeck is captured alive, The translator believes Buchner would have had a trial scene if he had lived, No drafts exist that Im aware of, The translation by Victor Price, on the other hand, has Woyzeck drown himself when he goes back in the lake to throw away the knife.
To him, the play is nearly complete, sitelink goodreads. com/review/show

Thats quite a variation in interpretation, I dont think Buchner would have added a trial scene, Or, if there were a trial, it would have been offstage, I dont see how you could stage something like a trial and maintain the same tone and style, Additionally, it would have been too pat of an ending, Theres a sense of shame and degradation throughout the play that seems to argue against a final reckoning or resolution,

But who knows, Buchner claimed the play was almost done before he became ill and died, At this point we can only presume what he meant and what he ultimately wanted, We can, however, make it mean what we want, Yet there is a greatness in this play, a haunting sense of evil, disintegration and humiliation, Its unlike any play Ive read, I strongly recommend it.

Woyzeck: horrible tragedy, no fun to read at all, For masochists. When I read this book, it was over about two days, right as I was in the middle of an existential and spiritual crisis, I don't know if I can recommend reading Büchner in an existential and spiritual crisis, but I do know that there are circumstances when reading him can feel like being struck by a thunderbolt.


Many romantics, perhaps especially German romantics, wrote with the intention of reproducing the effect of certain folk songs namely, the strange feeling of something occurring on the tip of your mind, filling your head with lonely stories derived from bad dreams.
A woman clips rosemary, puts the sprigs in a bowl, and sees the bowl fill up with blood it's a premonition, of course, She knows exactly what it means, but there's no way she can act on the warning: the thing's already happened, it's already a song, it's already in the past.
That's the sort of feeling they aimed at, To my mind, nobody quite succeeded at capturing that grim power like Büchner, The fragments of "Lenz" and "Woyzeck" are consequently among the most harrowing and haunting pieces of literature I've ever read, all the more powerful because they were never completed he died obscenely young.
They still feel on the tip of the mind specifically, the mind as it sometimes operates at aboutam, when it suddenly and inexplicably worries about the point of life and the problem of evil.

Wozzeck is definitely the best of these three plays, but the other two are worth reading if you liked that,

One of my favourite things about Büchner is that no matter the social standing of a character he always puts extremely eloquent poetic musings on life and death in their mouths.
You are quite quickly forced to give up any question of whether this is realistic or not, and are given the chance of hearing what these characters would say had they the means to express it.

It does also mean that it makes for pretty heavy reading, and this along with the fact it is a's translation of earlyth century text was at times enough to leave me feeling a bit lost.


I really enjoyed Geoffrey Dunlop's introduction, I so much prefer translators introductions to critics any day, Büchner's story is fascinating and the historical background that Dunlop gives is lovingly handled if at times a bit overly wordy,

The Breadth Büchner covers with these three plays is impressive, Leonce amp Lena is a comedy in an almost Shakespearean vein, Danton's death is political in that it reflects Büchner's cynical outlook on the politics of his time and the french revolution but at heart is more of a social commentary, and then Wozzeck portraits the stifling hardship of the working classes.
But all through these he manages to perfectly fit in his poetic musings on life and death, Throughout all of these stories there is a very definite sympathy with working classes,

The thing that is really going to get you with Büchner is the sheer quality of prose: his stories seem at times a little fragmented but the phrases, reflections and analogies are often astounding.
It seems to me in one way a huge loss that Büchner wrote all of his plays in such a rush and under such stressful circumstances: Leonce amp Lena could perhaps be made clearer in order to become the light comedy it should be Danton's death could be a much more cohesive well rounded story, but perhaps they would not have had nearly the energy had they been crafted over a longer duration.


Tempted to give thishmmmmmmmm, . . sitelink livejournal. com The last, and shortest in the collection, "The Hessian Courier" was an angry little gem, Written in thes, it shows that nothing much ever really changes, 个人之间整个全集里只有丹东之死值得一读即使对一个天才来讲岁刚出头可能还是太年轻了一点 The best translation out there of the first modern tragedian, Includes all Buchner's works, one of which is a heartbreaking translation of the short story/essay "Lenz," the reading of which is key to understanding Buchner's aesthetic.
Mueller captures the frantic, desperate poetry of "Woyzeck" unlike any other translation I've read, Top notch. LENZ
Onth January Lenz crossed the mountains, Snow on the peaks and upper slopes, down into the valleys grey stone, green patches, rocks and pinetrees, It was cold and wet, the water trickled down the rocks and leapt across the path, . .
He felt no tiredness, just occasional regret that he couldnt walk on his head, A surge swept through his breast at first when the rock seemed to leap away, the grey wood shuddered beneath him, and the mist devoured the shape of things then half revealed their giant limbs the surge swept through him, he sought for something, as though for lost dreams, but he found nothing.
Everything was so small to him, so near, so wet, he would have liked to tuck the earth behind the stove, he couldnt understand that he needed so much time to clamber down a slope, to reach a distant point he thought he should be able to measure out everything with a few strides.

Towards evening he reached the crest of the mountains, the snowfields that led down again to the westward plain, he sat a while at the top.
It had turned calmer towards evening the clouds lay solid and motionless in the sky, nothing so far as the eye could see but mountain peaks from which broad slopes descended, and everything so quiet, grey, increasingly faint he felt a terrible loneliness, he was all alone, completely alone, he wanted to talk to himself, but he couldnt, he scarcely dared breathe, his footfall rang like thunder beneath him, he had to sit down a nameless fear took hold of him in this nothing, he was in empty space, he leapt to his feet and flew down the slope.
Darkness had fallen, heaven and earth had melted into one, “
You need to love mankind to be able to reach the essential being of each individual, you must consider no one too lowly, no one too ugly, only then can you understand them the most ordinary of faces makes a deeper impression than any contrived sensation of beauty, and you can let the characters own being emerge quite naturally without bringing in anything copied from outside where no life, no pulse, no muscles surge and throb.
Kaufmann objected that he would find no models in reality for the Apollo Belvedereor Raphaels Madonnas,What does that matter, Lenz retorted, I have to confess that things like that leave me utterly cold, If I work at it within myself, I can doubtless generate feeling of some kind, but it takes a real effort, The writers and artists I like above all are those that most strongly convey the reality of nature, with the result that their work engages my feelings.


Everything else troubles me. I prefer the Dutch painters to the Italians, they are the only ones, too, that you can truly grasp,