A History of Clouds: 99 Meditations

by Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Esther Kinsky (Translator), Martin Chalmers (Translator)

 

In these 99 meditations, poet and novelist Hans Magnus Enzensberger celebrates the tenacity of the normal and routine in everyday life, where the survival of the objects we use without thinking—a pair of scissors, perhaps—is both a small, human victory and a quiet reminder of our own ephemeral nature. He sets his quotidian reflections against a broad historical and political the cold war and its accompanying atomic threat; the German student revolt; would-be socialism in Cuba, China, and Africa; and World War II as experienced by the youthful poet.             Enzensberger’s poems are conversational, skeptical, and serene; they culminate in the extended set of observations that gives the collection its title. Clouds, alien and yet symbols of human life, are for Enzensberger at once a central metaphor of the Western poetic tradition and “the most fleeting of all masterpieces.” “Cloud archaeology,” writes Enzensberger, is “a science for angels.”             Praise for the German edition “After reading this wonderful volume of poetry one would like to call Enzensberger simply the lyric voice of transience.”— Sueddeutsche Zeitung             “With this book Enzensberger reveals himself both as a spokesman of persistence and as a decelerator.”— Neue Zuercher Zeitung

Genres: Poetry

137 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

See also:
Cyrillic: Ханс Магнус Енценсбергер

Hans Magnus Enzensberger was a German author, poet, translator and editor. He had also written under the pseudonym Andreas Thalmayr.

Enzensberger was regarded as one of the literary founding figures of the Federal Republic of Germany and wrote more than 70 books. He was one of the leading authors in the Group 47, and influenced the 1968 West German student movement. He was awarded the Georg Büchner Prize and the Pour Le Mérite, among many others.

He wrote in a sarcastic, ironic tone in many of his poems. For example, the poem "Middle Class Blues" consists of various typicalities of middle class life, with the phrase "we can't complain" repeated several times, and concludes with "what are we waiting for?". Many of his poems also feature themes of civil unrest over economic- and class-based issues. Though primarily a poet and essayist, he also ventured into theatre, film, opera, radio drama, reportage and translation. He wrote novels and several books for children (including The Number Devil, an exploration of mathematics) and was co-author of a book for German as a foreign language, (Die Suche). He often wrote his poems and letters in lower case.

Enzensberger also invented and collaborated in the construction of a machine which automatically composes poems (Landsberger Poesieautomat). This was used during the 2006 Football World Cup to commentate on games.

Tumult, written in 2014, is an autobiographical reflection of his 1960s as a left-wing sympathizer in the Soviet Union and Cuba.

Enzensberger translated Adam Zagajewski, Lars Gustafsson, Pablo Neruda, W. H. Auden and César Vallejo. His own work has been translated into more than 40 languages.

Reviews

[Vivek Tejuja · Rating 4 out of 5]

I do not read much poetry, but this title caught my fancy and I had to read it. Well, I also believe that it is impossible to understand the essence of a poem in one reading. You have to read each poem perhaps multiple times before you get to the its bare-bone understanding. This becomes perhaps an even more difficult task when the form is in translation as this collection is.

Enzensberger’s poetry covers a vast range of subjects – private moments, long-term relationships and their trajectories, portraits of historical and literary personalities thrown in for good measure (an elegy to W.G. Sebald that is most moving: “Who touched us, / who seemed to have come from afar / to the sinister, unhomely homeland. / Little kept him here. / Nothing but the search for traces / with a divining rod of words / which twitched in his hand.” Translated by Martin Chalmers), cosmology, and even philosophy.

And in all of this, there are clouds. In various forms and ways – they exist in these poems – more so in the twelve-part title piece that ends the collection. The poems are transparent, sometimes very difficult to comprehend as well, but very empathetic at most, and there were times I also felt that I was left without any thing to hold on to.

The translations by Martin Chalmers and Esther Kinsky are spot-on. The emotions don’t hold back, though there were times I felt I wanted more as a result of the translation. Having said this, A History of Clouds is a great start for anyone who wants to understand poetry and start somewhere.

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy · Rating 5 out of 5]

With a keen eye for paradox, Enzensberger reveals a universe that doesn't care for our certainties, but is the only certainty we can count on. A beautiful collection; witty, wide-ranging, curious about everything, unconvinced by our claims of verity, open to wonder.

[Joseph Schreiber · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of Germany’s greatest living writers, Enzensberger effortlessly turns intimate moments, everyday wisdom, scientific and philosophical imagery into poetry that is moving and profound. His final lines are excellent. His confidence and experience shine through in this collection of poems.
An expanded review can be found here: https://roughghosts.com/2019/06/08/fr...

[Jen (Remembered Reads) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm always unsure of how to rate translated poetry that's published without the original alongside the translation. Without the ability to judge whether or not rhythm or rhyme elements might have been lost in translation, is there any fair way to judge the end product?

Still, the poetry - much of which plays with themes of averages, medians, and the mediocre - was a worthwhile read.

[Tuli Márquez · Rating 4 out of 5]

excellent

[James Mclallen]

STORY OF CRASS