Holderlin's Sophocles

Friedrich Holderlin was one of Europe's greatest poets. Acclaimed British poet and translator (Michaux, Jaccottet) David Constantine's Selected Poems of Holderlin won him the 1997 European Poetry Translation. Now he was turns to Holderlin's versions of Sophocles, seeking to create an equivalent English for these extraordinary German recreations of the classic Greek verse plays. Holderlin's versions of these two plays came out in the spring of 1804 and were taken, by the learned, as conclusive proof of his insanity. Constantine has translated Holderlin's translations, carrying as much of their strangeness as possible into English."