Description
Franz Fuhmann's magnum opus.
At the Burning Abyss is a gripping and profoundly personal encounter with the great expressionist poet Georg Trakl. It is a taking stock of two troubled lives, a turbulent century, and the liberating power of poetry.
Picking up where his last book, The Jew Car, left off, Fuhmann probes his own susceptibility to ideology's seductions-Nazism, then socialism-and examines their antidote, the goad of Trakl's enigmatic verses. He confronts Trakl's "unlivable life," as his poetry transcends the panaceas of black-and-white ideology, ultimately bringing a painful, necessary understanding of "the whole human being: in victories and triumphs as in distress and defeat, in temptation and obsession, in splendor and in ordure."
In 1982, the German edition of At the Burning Abyss won the West German Scholl Siblings Prize, celebrating its "courage to resist inhumanity." At a time of political extremism and polarization, has lost none of its urgency.
About the Author
Franz Fuhmann (1922-84) is one of modern Germany's most fascinating literary figures, and the author of dozens of novels, short stories, essays, poems, ballets, and children's books. Isabel Fargo Cole is a US-born, Berlin-based writer and translator.
Book Information
ISBN 9781803090412
Author Franz Fuhmann
Format Paperback
Page Count 310
Imprint Seagull Books London Ltd
Publisher Seagull Books London Ltd
Weight(grams) 302g
Dimensions(mm) 203mm * 127mm * 17mm
At the Burning Abyss is a gripping and profoundly personal encounter with the great expressionist poet Georg Trakl. It is a taking stock of two troubled lives, a turbulent century, and the liberating power of poetry.
Picking up where his last book, The Jew Car, left off, Fuhmann probes his own susceptibility to ideology's seductions-Nazism, then socialism-and examines their antidote, the goad of Trakl's enigmatic verses. He confronts Trakl's "unlivable life," as his poetry transcends the panaceas of black-and-white ideology, ultimately bringing a painful, necessary understanding of "the whole human being: in victories and triumphs as in distress and defeat, in temptation and obsession, in splendor and in ordure."
In 1982, the German edition of At the Burning Abyss won the West German Scholl Siblings Prize, celebrating its "courage to resist inhumanity." At a time of political extremism and polarization, has lost none of its urgency.
About the Author
Franz Fuhmann (1922-84) is one of modern Germany's most fascinating literary figures, and the author of dozens of novels, short stories, essays, poems, ballets, and children's books. Isabel Fargo Cole is a US-born, Berlin-based writer and translator.
Book Information
ISBN 9781803090412
Author Franz Fuhmann
Format Paperback
Page Count 310
Imprint Seagull Books London Ltd
Publisher Seagull Books London Ltd
Weight(grams) 302g
Dimensions(mm) 203mm * 127mm * 17mm
