Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

David Constantine

Drawing on his own unhappy experiences, Goethe's account of Werther's passionate love for Lotte, who is promised to another, is one of the first great Romantic tragic novels. David Constantine's new translation captures the novel's lyric intensity, and is accompanied by an introduction and notes that illuminate Goethe's achievement.

The Sorrows of Young Werther

selected stories

In another country

Midland Otelinde Cay

Following the death of her husband, a literary biographer resolves to turn her professional skills to the task of piecing together aspects of his life, in particular, a journey he made years before they met – a hitchhike through France that he had tried to tell her about in the last few hours of his life. Picking her way through bundles of letters and postcards from five decades earlier, Katrin begins to uncover a life she knew nothing of, and an expedition that exceeded anything her professional, biographical subjects ever undertook. ‘Think of me then,’ her husband beseeched her, at the roadside, thumb in the air, gaily setting forth, ‘never forget me then.’ David Constantine’s passionate tale of grief and rediscovery marks only the second foray into novel writing for an author whose short fiction has won international acclaim. A great work of literature, he reminds us, is never finished, it is ‘a living and moving thing, alive in all its parts in every fibre’, designed to be inexhaustible and to outlive. As Katrin’s journey proves, the lives of those we love are similarly inexhaustible, they keep on offering up new revelations, possessing the people they leave behind, and forever needing to be re-written.

The Life-Writer

Mark Haddon

Margaret Drabble

Ramsey Campbell

Lara Williams

Alan Beard

Gaia Holmes

Bernardine Bishop

Lucie McKnight-Hardy

Matthew Holness

Something has fallen away. We have lost a part of ourselves, our history, what we once were. That something, when we encounter it again, look it straight in the eyes, disgusts us, makes us retch. This is the horror of the abject. Following the success of Comma's award-winning New Uncanny anthology, The New Abject invites leading authors to respond to two parallel theories of the abject - Julia Kristeva's theory of the psychoanalytic, intimate abject, and Georges Bataille's societal equivalent - with visceral stories of modern unease.

Tales of Modern Unease

The New Abject

İnci Ötügen

Başka bir ülkede

Frank Cottrell-Boyce

Kate Clanchy

Courttia Newland

Jacob Ross

Kit de Waal

Alexei Sayle

Juliet Jacques

Holly Pester

Maggie Gee

Stuart Evers

Martyn Bedford

Joanna Quinn

Laura Hird

Michelle Green

Sandra Alland

Andy Hedgecock

Francesca Rhydderch

Whatever happened to British protest? For a nation that brought the world Chartism, the Suffragettes, the Tolpuddle Martyrs, and so many other grassroots social movements, Britain rarely celebrates its long, great tradition of people power. In this timely and evocative collection, twenty authors have assembled to re-imagine key moments of British protest, from the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 to the anti-Iraq War demo of 2003. Written in close consultation with historians, sociologists and eyewitnesses - who also contribute afterwords - these stories follow fictional characters caught up in real-life struggles, offering a streetlevel perspective on the noble art of resistance. In the age of fake news and post-truth politics this book fights fiction with (well researched, historically accurate) fiction.

Stories of Resistance

Protest

Sophocles

Friedrich Hölderlin

Friedrich Holderlin (1770-1843) was one of Europe's greatest poets. David Constantine's Selected Poems of Holderlin won him the 1997 European Poetry Translation Prize. Now he has turned to Holderin's versions of Sophocles, seeking to create an equivalent English for these extraordinary German recreations of the classic Greek verse plays. Constantine has translated Holderlin's translations, carrying as much of their strangeness as possible into his English. The plays themselves need no introduction or apology. These double translations, links in literature from land to land and from age to age, demonstrate the vitality of ancient and modern poetic tradition.

Oedipus & Antigone

Hölderlin's Sophocles

David Constantine's second book shows a remarkable development in the range and power of his poetry. After establishing his reputation with the quiet but resonant poems of A Brightness to Cast Shadows (1980), Constantine has gone on to achieve a classical mastery of form and to further develop a highly individual voice, which now has an almost visionary edge. In the poems and related Greek translations of Watching for Dolphins David Constantine recreates a complete imaginative world. Mythical an biblical figures - Christ, Lazarus, Aphrodite and Persephone - appear as opposing forces of Christian compassion and classical excellence. Contrasts and contradictions are at the heart of Constantine's poetic world. The possibility of personal happiness is insisted upon: any wider optimism would be out of place.

Watching for Dolphins

Alexander, Prince of Macedon, is the terror of the world. Persia, Egypt, Athens… one after another, mighty nations are falling before the fearsome conqueror. Some say Alexander is actually the son of Zeus, king of the gods, and the living incarnation of Hercules himself. Worse yet, some say Alexander believes this… The ambitious prince is aided in his conquest by unstoppable war-machines based on the forbidden knowledge of his former tutor, the legendary scientist-mage known as Aristotle. Greek fire, mechanical golems, and gigantic siege-engines lay waste to Alexander's enemies as his armies march relentlessly west—toward the very edge of the world. Beyond the Pillars of Hercules, past the gateway to the outer ocean, lies the rumored remnants of Atlantis: ancient artifacts of such tremendous power that they may be all that stands between Alexander and conquest of the entire world. Alexander desires that power for himself, but an unlikely band of fugitives—including a Gaulish barbarian, a cynical Greek archer, a cunning Persian princess, and a sorcerer's daughter—must find it first… before Alexander unleashes godlike forces that will shatter civilization. The Pillars of Hercules is an epic adventure that captures the grandeur and mystery of the ancient world as it might have been, where science and magic are one and the same.

Pillars of Hercules

This new critical biography of Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843) is the first to appear for more than fifty years. In this time his status as one of the greatest European poets has become increasingly apparent - yet he is commonly considered a 'difficult' poet. A prime aim of this book is to make Hölderlin more accessible to the English-speaking reader. This comprehensive discussion of Hölderlin's work includes close readings of many individual poems, with English translations of all quotations. The author, who is also concerned to locate Hölderlin constantly in his times, recounts in a chronological framework the main line of the poet's life, his dealings with his important contemporaries, his love for Susette Gontard, and the long years of loneliness and frustration. Hölderlin is an archetypal figure, exciting fear and pity, a poet whose religion was founded on the conviction that his gods were absent, and whose modernity lies in his experience of absence.

Hölderlin

The Literary Agenda is a series of short polemical monographs about the importance of literature and of reading in the wider world and about the state of literary education inside schools and universities. The category of 'the literary' has always been contentious. What is clear, however, is how increasingly it is dismissed or is unrecognised as a way of thinking or an arena for thought. It is sceptically challenged from within, for example, by the sometimes rival claims of cultural history, contextualized explanation, or media studies. It is shaken from without by even greater pressures: by economic exigency and the severe social attitudes that can follow from it; by technological change that may leave the traditional forms of serious human communication looking merely antiquated. For just these reasons this is the right time for renewal, to start reinvigorated work into the meaning and value of literary reading. In this fascinating addition to the Literary Agenda series, David Constantine argues that poetry matters. It matters for individuals and for the society they are members of. He asserts that poetry is not for the few but for the many, and belongs and can only thrive among them, speaks of and to their concerns. Poetry considers both the writing and the reading of poetry, which Constantine views as kindred activities. He examines what goes into the writing of a poem and considers what good there is in reading it. Constantine also considers translation, arguing that great benefit comes to the native language from dealings with the foreign; also, that all reading is a form of translation - of texts into the lives we lead. Altogether, Poetry is an attempt, with many quotations, to show how poetry works, what its responsibilities are, and how it may help us in our real circumstances now.

The Literary Agenda

Poetry

The big green issue

Like the work of the European poets who have nourished him, David Constantine's poetry is informed by a profoundly humane vision of the world. In the title-poem of his latest collection - which illuminates the themes of the whole book - the lovers are a utopian answering back against the curse (following a crime against Nature) that is carried by the ship passing above them. Throughout these poems, the personal life, with its own joys and suffering, asserts itself against a world whosecharacteristic forces are dispiriting and destructive. "Nine Fathom Deep" shows how all personal life and all poetry written from it deal with the realities of social and political life in the here and now, assert themselves, fight for survival, and actively seek to make a world in which humane self-realisation would be more and more, not less and less, possible.

Nine Fathom Deep

The prevailing mood of David Constantine's poetry is one of unease, often elegiac or comically edged, barbed with pain or tinged with pleasure. His new book Something for the Ghosts holds a worried and restless balance between celebration and anxiety, restraint and longing. Before ghosts speak, they need a drink of blood, according to Homer. Several of these poems summon up the dead and give them a voice, giving expression to the love and grief that go with them. All poetry, however private or distant its origins, is an attempt to give palpable life to what would otherwise be unapproachable by the senses. Every reader gives someone else's poem a new lease of life, another metamorphosis in flesh and blood, and the poem quickens its new host like the necessary draught that Odysseus gave his ghosts at the mouth of Hades. David Constantine's book does not exorcise any ghosts, but rather does the opposite, making them more vigorous and persistent in their haunting.This edition is now out of print but the whole collection is included in David Constantine's Collected Poems (2004).

Something for the Ghosts

Helen Constantine

Sasha Dugdale

Centres of Cataclysm covers the fifty-year history of Modern Poetry in Translation, one of the UK's most innovative and prestigious poetry magazines. Founded in 1965 by Ted Hughes and Daniel Weissbort, MPT has published some of the first translations of the twentieth century's most significant poets, among them Zbigniew Herbert, Yehuda Amichai, Marina Tsvetaeva and Miroslav Holub. MPT was intended, in Ted Hughes's words, as an 'airport for incoming translations', so they might find more permanent residence in English-language poetry. This celebratory and inspiring anthology, Centres of Cataclysm, includes excellent and various poems from the MPT archive together with responses to those poems by English-language poets and writers. Included here also are letters concerning the magazine's history as well as short essays on the art of translating poetry.

Celebrating Fifty Years of Modern Poetry in Translation

Centres of Cataclysm

In A Brightness to Cast Shadows, his first collection of poems, David Constantine creates a world of heightened contrasts: celebrating personal love; reaching into social misery; exploring the beauty and harshness of nature. His poems are often conceived in groups or cycles, and particular landscapes are evoked: West Cornwall, North Wales, the Pennines. The collection includes his poem sequence 'In Memoriam 8571 Private J.W. Gleave', a deeply moving account of his grandmother's lifelong incomprehension of her husband's death in the trenches. David Constantine's poetry is direct and uncomplicated, combining classical precision and a tender lyricism; he writes, as we should read, with the kind of sensitivity Randall Jarrell characterised as 'a mixture of sharp intelligence and of willing emotional empathy, at once penetrating and generous'.

A Brightness to Cast Shadows

Un hombre casado desde hace décadas recibe una extraña noticia: lejos, en otro país, han hallado el cuerpo de la que fue su novia en la adolescencia, fallecida en un trágico accidente en los Alpes cuando él la acompañaba. El hielo ha conservado intacto su cadáver. Así arranca la primera de estas historias, situadas en aislados parajes naturales, en acogedoras salas de estar o en grises rascacielos, en las que la verdadera protagonista es el alma de unos personajes que se enfrentan a la soledad, la vulnerabilidad o la pérdida mientras sus vidas transitan entre lo cotidiano y lo trascendental. David Constantine está considerado un virtuoso del cuento en inglés actual; uno de los autores más exquisitamente sensibles, tanto por la delicadeza de su prosa como por la intrépida hondura de los temas que aborda. Traducidos por primera vez al español, los relatos de esta selección, elegidos entre una prolífica y sólida obra construida durante más de treinta años, son una muestra del extraordinario universo literario del autor: su rico imaginario y la precisión de sus palabras y diálogos –donde lo más valioso es justamente lo que no queda dicho– realzan lo trágico y lo hermoso del ser humano. «Comencé a leer estos relatos con mucha calma, y después empecé a obsesionarme: los leía primero a toda velocidad y volvía a releerlos una y otra vez. Cada frase es exactamente como debe ser.» A. S. Byatt (The Guardian) «Uno de los muchos mensajes de estos relatos es que la vida es demasiado compleja, demasiado misteriosa y permeable, para encajar en categorías unívocas. No es un mensaje nuevo, pero sí es raro verlo expresado con un estilo y convicción parejos.» Toronto Star «El mundo de Constantine nos recuerda al de Harold Pinter o Ian McEwan, donde las banalidades parecen esconder grandes amenazas. (...) Es lo que no se llega a decir lo que resulta tan potente.» Kirkus «Una mezcla fuera de lo común de lo exquisito con lo cotidiano. (...) Inteligente y de factura impecable.» The Times Literary Supplement

En otro país

**WINNER of the 2013 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award** **WINNER of the BBC National Short Story Prize** 'The excellence of the collection is fractal: the whole book is excellent, and every story is excellent, and every paragraph is excellent, and every sentence is excellent. And, unlike some literary fiction, it's effortless to read.' - The Independent on Sunday ‘Perhaps the finest of contemporary writers in this form.’ – The Reader To the woman watching they looked like grace itself, the heart and soul of which is freedom. It pleased her particularly that they were attached by invisible strings to colourful curves of rapidly moving air. How clean and clever that was! You throw up something like a handkerchief, you tether it and by its headlong wish to fly away, you are towed along... Like the kite-surfers in this opening scene, the characters in David Constantine’s fourth collection are often delicately caught in moments of defiance. Disregarding their age, their family, or the prevailing political winds, they show us a way of marking out a space for resistance and taking an honest delight in it. Witness Alphonse – having broken out of an old people’s home, changed his name, and fled the country – now pedalling down the length of the Rhône, despite knowing he has barely six months to live. Or the clergyman who chooses to spend Christmas Eve – and the last few hours in his job – in a frozen, derelict school, dancing a wild jig with a vagrant called Goat. Key to these characters’ defiance is the power of fiction, the act of holding real life at arm’s length and simply telling a story – be it of the future they might claim for themselves, or the imagined lives of others. Like them, Constantine’s bewitching, finely-wrought stories give us permission to escape, they allow us to side-step the inexorable traffic of our lives, and beseech us to take possession of the moment.

David Constantine

Books

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