Lenz, Georg Büchner’s visionary exploration of an 18th century playwright’s descent into madness, grew in part out of Alsatian pastor Oberlin’s journal, which is translated here in its entirety for the first time. Lenzis a dispassionate account on the nervous system of a schizophrenic, perhaps the first third-person text ever written from the “inside†of insanity. At his death at the age of 23 in 1837, Georg Büchner also left behind Leonce and Lena, Woyzeck, and Danton’s Death—-psychologically and politically acute plays well ahead of their time.
Richard Sieburth’s translations include Friedrich Holderlin’s Hymns and Fragments, Walter Benjamin’s Moscow Diary, Gerard de Nerval’s Selected Writingsand Henri Michaux’s Emergences/Resurgences. His English edition of the Nerval won the 2000 PEN Book-of-the-Month-Club Translation Prize.
