Hölderlin's Sophocles Oedipus & Antigone

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.