Lenz
by: Georg Buchner / Richard Sieburth (Translator)

Softcover. NY, Archipelago Books, 1st transl. thus, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 199 pages. This classic of German literature--often hailed as the inception of European modernist prose--follows the mental breakdown of an 18th-century schizophrenic playwright, Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz. Published after Buchner's death, Lenz provides a taut case study of three weeks in the life of schizophrenic, perhaps the first third-person text ever to be written from the "inside" of insanity. An early experiment in docufiction, Buchner's textual montage draws on the diary of J.F. Oberlin, the Alsatian pastor who briefly took care of Lenz in 1778, while also refracting Goethe's memoir of his troubled friendship with the playwright. English versions of both these historical source texts here accompany Lenz for the first time in this bilingual presentation. Based on the best recent edition of the text, this fresh translation will allow readers to discover why Heiner Muller pronounced Lenz the inaugural example of "21st-century prose." Clean copy.