Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) was a German poet, novelist, playwright and politician. Martin Greenberg is best known for his translations of Goethe and von Kleist. He won a citation from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and received the Harold Morton Landon Verse Translation Award from the American Academy of Poets. W. Daniel Wilson is Professor of German at Royal Holloway, University of London.
'Greenberg has accomplished a magnificent literary feat. He has taken a great German work, until now all but inaccessible to English readers, and made it into a sparkling English poem, full of verve and wit. Greenberg's translation lives; it is done in a modern idiom but with respect for the original text; I found it a joy to read.' (Irving Howe) 'Martin Greenberg's version catches the uncanny strangeness of Goethe's greatest work, and should help mediate it for American readers.' (Harold Bloom)