Michael Hamburger Quotes

Michael Hamburger was a noted British translator, poet, critic, memoirist and academic. He was known in particular for his translations of Friedrich Hölderlin, Paul Celan, Gottfried Benn and W. G. Sebald from German, and his work in literary criticism. The publisher Paul Hamlyn was his younger brother. Wikipedia

✵ 22. March 1924 – 7. June 2007

Michael Hamburger: 7 quotes0 likes

Famous Michael Hamburger Quotes

“He was out of tune with what a younger generation of poets were writing, and railed against the shallowness and commercialisation of the modern world, from his fastness: a farmhouse surrounded by orchards in Middleton, Suffolk.”

Michael Hamburger

Obituary in The Guardian http://books.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,2099883,00.html <br class="br">About

“Being pre-eminently a moralist, he needed a medium that enabled him to illustrate a moral insight as briefly and vividly as possible. Being an artist and sensualist, he needed a medium that was epigrammatic or aphoristic, but allowed him scope for fantasy and for that element of suggestiveness which he considered essential to beauty.”

Michael Hamburger

Introduction to his translation, Twenty Prose Poems by Charles Baudelaire

“I suppose that I am a very serious poet – except for satirical verse, which I have also been compelled to write, though much of it may be inferior to my more serious poems – perhaps because I am not playful enough by nature, and even my satirical or polemical verse is not entertaining.”

Michael Hamburger

Interview with Lidia Vianu http://lidiavianu.scriptmania.com/Michael%20Hamburger.htm

“The ploughman ploughs, the fisherman dreams of fish;
Aloft, the sailor, through a world of ropes
Guides tangled meditations, feverish
With memories of girls forsaken, hopes
Of brief reunions, new discoveries,
Past rum consumed, rum promised, rum potential.”

Michael Hamburger

Lines On Brueghel's "Icarus" http://www.themediadrome.com/content/poetry/hamburger_lines_on_icarus.htm

“I was invited to Romania at least once, but was warned that I should not be free to travel where I pleased in the country, but should be more or less confined to the Writers' Union. Because I ceased long ago to be an urban poet and feel claustrophobic in literary conferences, I could not accept such an invitation.”

Michael Hamburger

Interview with Lidia Vianu http://lidiavianu.scriptmania.com/Michael%20Hamburger.htm

“It is impossible for a poet to characterize his own work. From other people I gather that I am a gloomy poet, if not a tragic one.”

Michael Hamburger

Interview with Lidia Vianu http://lidiavianu.scriptmania.com/Michael%20Hamburger.htm

“Translation came naturally to me because as a child I was translated from Germany to Britain.”

Michael Hamburger

Interview with Lidia Vianu http://lidiavianu.scriptmania.com/Michael%20Hamburger.htm

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