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Georg Büchner (1813-1837)Translated by Michael Hamburger 24grammata.com- free ebook [download]
Introduction
Lenz is the only story known to have been written by Georg Büchner, the author of Danton’s Death and Woyzeck. The story is based on factual evidence. Büchner’s sources were a diary kept by Oberlin in 1778 and a French biography of Oberlin, both of which were published by friends of Büchner’s in 1831. Though Lenz was left unfinished when Büchner died in 1837 – at the age of twenty-three – he wrote it in Strasbourg in 1836, certainly before Woyzeck, possibly before Leonce und Lena. Apart from a single gap which we can fill in from Büchner’s sources, it is unlikely that he would have substantially changed or amended this story. The unusual narrative style, with its repetitions, ellipses and colloquialisms, is wholly in accordance with his general principles and with the peculiar subject of this story, a subject wholly beyond the scope of contemporary writers of fiction. Among other vi things, Büchner was a brilliant scientist; but his interest in Lenz was not so much scientific as sympathetic. The aesthetic principles of Lenz – and other writers of the Sturm und Drang school – link up with Büchner’s own innovations, but especially with his creation of a poetic realism which combines the accurate documentation of facts with an imaginative interpretation of character.
The aesthetic theories propounded by the Lenz of Büchner’s story are adapted from the theoretical writings of Lenz himself, such as the following from his Anmerkungen zum Theater: “…But since the world has no bridges and we have to content ourselves with
the things that are there, we do at least feel an accretion to our existence, happiness, by recreating its Creation on a small scale.” Büchner’s Lenz says almost the same thing in slightly different words: “I take it that God has made the world as it should be… our only aspiration should be to recreate modestly in His manner.” Büchner applied the same principle to Lenz; but in spite of his modest ambition to recreate, rather than to invent, he invariably improved on his material. 24grammata.com- free ebook [download] Στη φωτογραφία έργο της σημαντικής ελληνίδας ζωγράφου Φλώρας Ρουμελιώτη