Rhymed and metered translation by Claude Neuman, with the original text opposite. – Mars 2025, 66 p., 14 x 21 cm, ean 9782845053274. – The Austrian writer Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874-1929) is better known as a storyteller, playwright and, above all, librettist of Richard Strauss’s operas in the 1910s and 1920s, than as a poet in the strict sense of the term. And yet, from the age of sixteen to twenty-five, he was one of the most virtuoso versifiers in the German language. – We have chosen to translate thirty among his most formally accomplished poems, in which his precocious virtuosity is at its most impressive, both in terms of rhyme and meter. Our translations endeavor to reproduce his rhyme schemes and rhythmic choices, in the hope of conveying his music and of helping the reader respond to the poet’s invitation:

“My thoughts, come drink your fill of the new life,
Shy hopes, almost faded feelings, you too,
You, half-despondent, weary of the strife,
Let the bright flow of life wash over you.”  (“Fount of Life”, 1891).