Fried's poetry holds some of the most tender lines of poetry in any language. The universal theme of humanity and the various issues that perplex the human race are all presented in these works. A stoic who could find humor and an optimistic message in every aspect of human life, Fried's depth of vision and humility is both refreshing and consoling.

    It needs a close and interpretive reading of his Book of Songs it needs a general knowledge of the politically experimental and altogether chaotic times of which he was so fiery a product; and it needs, first and last, the constant reminder that Heine was a sensitive Jew, born in a savagely anti-semitic country that taught him, even as a child, that Jew and pariah were synonymous terms. The traditions and tyrannies that weighed down on all the German people of his day were slight compared to the oppressions imposed upon the Jews. The demands upon them, the petty persecu tions, the rigorous orders and taboos would form an incredible list. Let these few facts suffice: In Frank fort, when Heine was a boy, no Jew might enter a park or pleasure resort; no Jew might leave his ghetto after four o'clock on a Sunday afternoon; and only twenty four Jews were allowed to marry in one year. In such an atmosphere Heine received his heritage of hate and his baptism of fire.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

    Great Freedom, whereby you are not bound by the life you live in.The writings of Truth that guides you to the life of wisdom, cleanses your mind and leads you to the true and eternal world.

    The narrator and anti-hero is not Bonaventura, but a night watchman named Kreuzgang, a failed poet, actor, and puppeteer who claims to be the spawn of the devil himself. As a night watchman, Kreuzgang takes voyeuristic pleasure in spying on the follies of his fellow citizens, and every night he makes his rounds and stops to peer into a window or door, where he observes framed scenes of murder, despair, theft, romance, and other private activities. In his responses, Kreuzgang is cynical and pessimistic, yet not without humor. For him, life is a grotesque, macabre, and base joke played by a mechanical and heartless force. Since its publication, fans have speculated on the novel’s authorship, and it is now believed to be by theater director August Klingemann, who first staged Goethe’s Faust. Organized into sixteen separate night watches, the sordid scenes glimpsed through parted curtains, framed by door chinks, and lit by candles and shadows anticipate the cinematic. A cross between the gothic and Romantic, The Nightwatches of Bonaventura is brilliant in its perverse intensity, presenting an inventory of human despair and disgust through the eyes of a bitter, sardonic watcher who draws laughter from tragedy. Translated by Gerald Gillespie, who supplies a fresh introduction, The Nightwatches of Bonaventura will be welcomed by a new generation of English-language fans, eager to sample the night’s dark offerings.

    The very wide audience which Rilke’s work commands today will welcome the reissue in paperback of this extremely perceptive translation of the Notebooks by M. D. Herter Norton. A masterly translation of one of the first great modernist novels by one of the German language's greatest poets, in which a young man named Malte Laurids Brigge lives in a cheap room in Paris while his belongings rot in storage. Every person he sees seems to carry their death within them and with little but a library card to distinguish him from the city's untouchables, he thinks of the deaths, and ghosts, of his aristocratic family, of which he is the sole living descendant. Suffused with passages of lyrical brilliance, Rilke's semi-autobiographical novel is a moving and powerful coming-of-age story.

    Once again this bilingual volume, translated in this edition for the first time in English, reveals the importance of the great Romanian-German poet, who lived for most of his life in France. Translator Pierre Joris has achieved a great feat in bringing these three volumes into the English language.

    Surrounded by jealous & hateful enemies, Süß helps the Duke create a corrupt state that involves them both in immense wealth & power.

    His crime: he was the substitute piano player in a student cabaret in which seditious verses were sung. Dallow returns to a life in of loveless sex, police harassment, and brutality, revealing how a corrupt system perverts all human interaction, and how lives are ruined by malicious caprice.

    In time she becomes his lover—then she inexplicably disappears. When Michael next sees her, he is a young law student, and she is on trial for a hideous crime. As he watches her refuse to defend her innocence, Michael gradually realizes that Hanna may be guarding a secret she considers more shameful than murder.

    It’s a shadow wrapped in a shadow and it screams, but it screams in harsh whispers. This collection explores the blackness within, the gritty underground that hides inside memories and cowers just outside fear. The poems, paired with illustrations from Matthias Matthies work in sync to create a collage of blunt sexuality, masochistic, and sometimes sadistic recollections of love, reflection, and self-exploration.Lindemann paints pictures with his poems, a slave to the vulnerability and sexuality that drives mankind. His words themselves are body modifications that settle on readers, piercing then slowly penetrating and pumping his audience full with a mix of pleasure and pain. A combination of longing, emotional depth, and bestial intuition, these pieces evoke an innate nature to seek pleasure, to ask for forgiveness, to instill blame.On Quiet Nights pulls back the curtains at night and asks readers to think about who they are. Lindemann holds a mirror to soul, capturing desire and need, with the courage to answer some of life’s biggest questions: Who am I? What am I? Why am I?

    Expected to redeem himself in this magical land of opportunity, young Karl is swept up instead in a whirlwind of dizzying reversals, strange escapades, and picaresque adventures.Although Kafka never visited America, images of its vast landscape, dangers, and opportunities inspired this saga of the "golden land." Here is a startlingly modern, fantastic and visionary tale of America "as a place no one has yet seen, in a historical period that can't be identified," writes E. L. Doctorow in his new foreword. "Kafka made his novel from his own mind's mythic elements," Doctorow explains, "and the research data that caught his eye were bent like rays in a field of gravity."

    

    As Mann charts the Buddenbrooks’ decline from prosperity to bankruptcy, from moral and psychic soundness to sickly piety, artistic decadence, and madness, he ushers the reader into a world of stunning vitality, pieced together from births and funerals, weddings and divorces, recipes, gossip, and earthy humor.In its immensity of scope, richness of detail, and fullness of humanity, buddenbrooks surpasses all other modern family chronicles. With remarkable fidelity to the original German text, this superb translation emphasizes the magnificent scale of Mann’s achievement in this riveting, tragic novel.

    When he is discovered to be an exceptionally gifted student, the entire community presses him onto a path of serious scholarship. Hans dutifully follows the regimen of tireless study and endless examinations, his success rewarded only with more crushing assignments. When Hans befriends a rebellious young poet, he begins to imagine other possibilities outside the narrowly circumscribed world of the academy. Finally sent home after a nervous breakdown, Hans is revived by nature and romance, and vows never to return to the gray conformity of the academic system.

    Assuming her isolation to be the result of a military experiment gone awry, she begins the terrifying work of survival and self-renewal. This novel is at once a simple and moving tale and a disturbing meditation on humanity.