“I have had a dream, and I wrote a Big Book about it,” Arno Schmidt might have said. Schmidt’s rare vision is a journey into many literary worlds. First and foremost it is about Edgar Allan Poe, or perhaps it is language itself that plays that lead role; and it is certainly about sex in its many Freudian disguises, but about love as well, whether fragile and unfulfilled or crude and wedded. As befits a dream upon a heath populated by elemental spirits, the shapes and figures are protean, its protagonists suddenly transformed into trees, horses, and demigods. In a single day, from one midsummer dawn to a fiery second, Dan and Franzisca, Wilma and Paul explore the labyrinths of literary creation and of their own dreams and desires.Since its publication in 1970 Zettel’s Traum/Bottom’s Dream has been regarded as Arno Schmidt’s magnum opus, as the definitive work of a titan of postwar German literature. Readers are now invited to explore its verbally provocative landscape in an English translation by John E. Woods.

    Translation of: Wo warst du Adam? and Der Zug war pünktlich.Caption titles: And where were you, Adam? The train was on time.

    The directly appealing melodies, with their infinite variety and grace, and the highly evocative accompaniments, filled with graceful pianistic figures, lend these short masterpieces the rare distinction of encompassing greatness in a score of bars. Schubert's three great song cycles are here reprinted directly from the definitive Breitkopf & Härtel Schubert-Gesammtausgabe. The volume comprises the universally known and beloved songs of Die schöne Müllerin (1823), the somber depth and picturesqueness of Die Winterreise (1827) and Schwanengesang (1828), one of Schubert's last works, a rich and masterly epilogue to the long series of his songs. Whether purely lyrical (as in "Wohin?") or creating revolutionary atmospheric effects (as in "Die Stadt" or "Der Doppelgänger"), all of these songs show the composer to sure and powerful advantage. In addition to the music and German texts, this volume also includes English translations of the texts by Henry S. Drinker, previously unavailable, that are especially designed to be sung to Schubert's melodies.