Between Nothing & Nothing

by Ernst Meister

Ernst Meister has rarely before been translated into English, and yet his is a poetry which deals with the big love, death, freedom, security and the ambiguity of existence. In this compelling new translation, the reader may accompany Meister not just into the mindset of individual poems, but also through a series of poetic wrestlings with life to a final confrontation with approaching death which very few poets have attempted with such clarity. There is nothing morbid or depressing about these poems, and if the poet's conclusions are unflinching, they are also both startling and uplifting.

Paperback

First published November 23, 2003

About the author

Ernst Meister was a German poet and writer.

Meister's poetry falls within a dark abstract landscape of existentialism, with tortured themes influenced by his experiences during World War II. In his 1976 collection of poems, Im Zeitspalt (In Time's Rift), Meister frankly addresses mortality and the nothingness of our existence as both mind and body decay into death. His poetry is noted for is spare brevity and difficult syntax and has been compared to the work of Romanian poet Paul Celan (1920 - 1970), Meister's contemporary in German letters. However, despite writing 16 collections of verse, Meister was not involved with the dominant literary and cultural elite and his works were relatively unknown during his lifetime.
Contents