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Collected in this volume are powerful dramas and psychological fiction by the nineteenth-century iconoclast now recognized as a major figure of world literature. Also included are selections from Buchner's letters and philosophical writings. ... Read more

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Easily my top choice...
The Penguin version of Buchner's works is quite good, especially if you're in a "one-stop-shopping" mindset: the annotations and notes are excellent, both elaborate and illuminative. (One might object that the translator is a bit heavy handed in offering interpretations and scholarly opinions; however, they're useful as a starting point.) In terms of the translation itself, it definitely wields a certain visceral force. I think it is far superior, for example, to the Mueller version. I highly recommend this version. (Bonus opinion: A friend of mine prefers the Oxford World Classics version, which is also quite good, if not as excessively annotated. This friend claims that there are some nuances of language that are better translated in the Oxford. Having never done a side by side comparison with the German, I can't refute his statements.) -For what it is worth, I am currently a graduate student in English Literature, with a concentration in Drama and Performance studies. I'm currently doing some work with _Danton's Death_. ... Read more

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The life of Georg Buchner was short, intense, and tragic—and extremely significant for the development of modern drama. His three plays, Danton’s Death, Leonce and Lena, and Woyzeck, were greatly ahead of their time in their penetrating dramatic and psychological treatment. They served as an impetus for contemporary schools of drama as different as the Theatre of the Absurd of Ionesco and the Epic Theatre of Brecht.

lso presented in this only complete volume of Buchner in English are his two powerful prose pieces, The Hessian Courier and his short story, Lenz.
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An excellent translation of a genius's work
Buchner, unknown to many readers, stands as one of the great prophets of literature.By predicting future literary movements and historical trends, Buchner stands at the head of some of the greatest literature of the modernworld.His influence in the Theater of the Absurd, Existentialism, and thereaction against Hegelian idealism attest to his genius.Considered bymany to be much too ahead of his time (maybe even still ahead of our time),his works are critical in understanding the modern mind.Mueller'stranslation is excellent and his introduction serves well in introducingthe reader to the world of Buchner.

The complete oeuvre of this short-lived revolutionary writer
This thin volume contains the complete plays and writings of one of the most influential playwrights of modern drama.Though dead at the age of 23, Buchner is considered by many to be the progenitor of such variedschools of drama as Theater of the Absurd andExpressionism,Buchnerstood years ahead of his time with the deep psychological treatment he gavehis characters.All of his plays and his revolutionary political writingsare included here.The Mueller translations are an essential addition toany dramatic library. ... Read more

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Karl Georg Büchner (1813-1837) war ein deutscher Schriftsteller, Naturwissen-schaftler und Revolutionär. die Gesellschaft für Menschenrechte, eine Geheimorganisation nach französischem Vorbild, deren Ziel ein Umsturz der politischen Verhältnisse war. 1835 verfasste er nach eigenen Angaben innerhalb von fünf Wochen Dantons Tod. 1834 wurde der Hessische Landbote, den Büchner verfasst hatte, in Druck gelegt. Es handelt sich um eine Flugschrift, die die hessische Landbevölkerung zur Revolution gegen die Unterdrückung aufrief. Büchner wurde dafür vernommen, aber nicht verhaftet. Im selben Jahr floh er nach Straßburg. Aufgrund seiner eingereichten Arbeit und der daran anschließenden Probevorlesung wurde Georg Büchner die Doktorwürde der Universität Zürich verliehen. Weitere Werke des Autors sind: Lenz (1835), Leonce und Lena (1836) und Woyzeck (1837). ... Read more

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It's an IB life for us
Well, this play sure was unique, I'll give it that.I had to read it for the Theatre Arts International Baccalaureate Exam (2001).It was one of three choices (the other two were by Dario Fo and Lorraine Hansberry which explains their listing on the "people who bought this also bought" list) and it seemed the most interesting.Basically, Woyzeck is a soldier in 1830s Germany.He has a girlfriend whom he discovers is cheating on him with a higher-ranking official.All the while, he is humiliated by his superiors and the townspeople.One day, he buys a knife and murders his girlfriend. The author, Georg Buechner, died while writing the play, so it ends, rather ambiguously, with Woyzeck wading into a pond into which he will throw the murder weapon.This was an interesting play to analyze for IB inasmuch as it provided a good deal of material for me to work with and I had good ideas about how the play ought to be produced.Still, the plot was very strange.

Fast-Paced and Gripping
(I always wanted to say that.)

Woyzeck is a designer's nightmare but an actor's dream:a tragedy of immediate imagery, almost written for the MTV generation.Scenes that last at most two pages flicker around archetypeslike the overbearing Major and the menacing Doctor, while the play's morehuman characters find themselves caught in between.There are searinglytragic moments (as befits the genre).There are also darkly funny ones: Woyzeck's conspiracy theories, Andres's childish songs, the Scholar'spolitically incorrect comments.

Buchner left the world young, and if thisplay is any indication, that's a tragedy too.As a reader, an actor or a(shudder) designer, you'll enjoy being swept along by his work. ... Read more

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Buchner was acknowledged by figures as divergent as Antonin ARtaud and Bertolt Brecht to be the forefather of modern theatre. ... Read more

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The "object" Woyzeck
While evolving around the potential for psychopathic violence and paranoia, Büchner's psycho-medical text not only guarantees human anxiety and hopelessness, but the phenomenological abolition of ontological hierachies. The fragmental composition mirrors a world of poverty, submission and alienation, where the "object" Woyzeck faces a materialistic fatality. ... Read more

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This collection of Buchner's three theatrical works includes Danton's Death, his great play about the French Revolution, Leonce and Lena, his "black" romantic comedy and Woyzeck, the unfinished work on which Alban Berg based his famous opera.All three works remained virtually unknown for half a century but today have found an important place in the modern repertory. ... Read more

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The Great German Dramatist
Danton's Death, Lena und Leonce and Woyzeck... these three plays amongst the stories and letters belong on the shelves of all lovers of German literature. Buchner is indispensible, the open drama of Danton's Death and Woyzeck looks forward to the plays of the Experimentalist writers of the 20th century. There are hints of Beckett and Brecht here. (I should say this book belongs on the shelves of theatre lovers as well...)

Sadly, like Franz Schubert and Novalis, Buchner died too young. He was a genius, devoted to science and medicine whereas his literary works were treated as secondary pursuits by the author. He read the Romantic writers of the time, translations of Shakespeare (some compare the figure of Danton to Hamlet) and philosophy (noteably Kant and Rousseau). This is a wonderful compilation of his works. I highly recommend it. ... Read more

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Excellent Resource
This is a fantastic collection of essays concerning a wide variety of themes and issues surrounding the works of Georg Buechner.Collected by well-respected scholar Dr. Dieter Sevin from a conference held at Vanderbilt University, this volume is an excellent addition to the library of anyone interested in delving deeper into the mind and workings of Buechner.I highly recommend it for anyone studying Buechner.Features essays in original language, both German and English. ... Read more

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Studienarbeit aus dem Jahr 2002 im Fachbereich Germanistik - Neuere Deutsche Literatur, einseitig bedruckt, Note: 1, Freie Universität Berlin (FB Germanistik), Veranstaltung: Grundkurs A + B, Sprache: Deutsch, Abstract: Georg Büchner hat sich für alle seine Werke an Quellen orientiert, selbst in dem „Hessischen Landboten" und dem Lustspiel „Leonce und Lena" finden sich reichhaltige Verwendungen von Büchner bekannten Berichten und Werken. Eine besonders interessante Art der Quellenarbeit verbirgt sich jedoch hinter seinem „Woyzeck".Nähme man den „Woyzeck" schlicht als Dramatisierung des wahren, im Gutachten des Hofrats Clarus ausführlich dargelegten Kriminalfalles Johann Christian Woyzeck, müsste man Büchner Geschichtsklitterung vorwerfen. Doch Büchner ging es sicherlich nicht um eine massenwirksame Aufbereitung eines populären Stoffes. Welche Verwendung das Clarus-Gutachten im Drama erfährt, wozu Büchner die Vorlage dient, will diese Arbeit näher unter Beobachtungen der unterschiedlichen Ebenen des Stückes untersuchen. ... Read more

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The Body in the Library is a unique tour of the history of medicine and its practitioners. It provides a nuanced and realistic picture of how medicine and society have abetted and thwarted each other ever since the lawyers behind the French Revolution banished the clergy and replaced them with doctors, priests of the body.

Ranging from Charles Dickens to Oliver Sacks, Anton Chekhov to Raymond Queneau, Fanny Burney to Virginia Woolf, Miguel Torga to Guido Ceronetti, The Body in the Library is an anthology of poems, stories, journal entries, Socratic dialogue, table-talk, clinical vignettes, aphorisms, and excerpts written by doctor-writers themselves.

Engaging and provocative, philosophical and instructive, intermittently funny and sometimes appalling, this anthology sets out to stimulate and entertain. With an acerbic introduction and witty contextual preface to each account, it will educate both patients and doctors curious to know more about the historical dimensions of medical practice.

Armed with a first-hand experience of liberal medicine and knowledge of several languages, Iain Bamforth has scoured the literatures of Europe to provide a well-rounded and cross-cultural sense of what it means to be a doctor entering the twenty-first century. A book for every bedside. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

"The nightingale of poetry warbles over our heads all day long."
Like many a young theater type I was enthralled by Woyzeck, and I've always intended to go back and pick up the rest of Büchner's slim body of work. And so I finally did. This is the complete version, as translated by Henry J. Schmidt.

It was certainly an interesting read, particularly Lenz which I was genuinely glad to have encountered. The problem with Büchner's plays is that they are the kind of dramatic pieces which frankly are staged much better than they read as literature. The plays read like tantalizing glimpses and lines, not like complete experiences. I realized that I had read Danton's Death before, but I had not read Leonce and Lena and it may even be that I finished this book with more interest in seeing that staged than Woyzeck itself.

The book comes bound with a selection with notes and documentary material for which I honestly found that I had very little use. It may be more valuable to the scholar than to the general reader. ... Read more

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The dialectical principle of Hegel's theory of tragedy exposes the tragic essence of revolution: the totalized claims of revolutionary ideas contradict their particularized results. Dr. Chen's analysis of Georg Bchner's Dantons Tod, Ernst Toller's Masse Mensch, and Bertolt Brecht's Die Massnahme demonstrates that revolutionary theories employ structures of Hegel's interpretations of history. The revolutionary theories of history assume the role of the Weltgeist itself, whose implementation entails antihumanist actions. In the hubris of the equation of revolutionary theory and Weltgeist, the Hegelian philosophy of history unveils its own tragic structure, which, in turn, is described by Hegel's theory of tragedy. ... Read more

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Georg Büchner is one of the most important dramatists of the nineteenth century, both intrinsically and on account of his enormous influence on the drama of our own time. Professor Benn attempts a comprehensive study of the art and thought of this distinguished writer, emphasising throughout that attitude of revolt which is so characteristic of Büchner. After a brief introduction in which he pinpoints the positive nature of Büchner's revolt and establishes links between his thought and that of Hölderlin and Camus, Professor Benn discusses in the first three theoretical chapters Büchner's revolutionary political principles, his sceptical and iconoclastic philosophical speculations and his fierce attacks on classical theories in art. He then examines each of Büchner's major works - Dantons Tod, Leonce und Lena, Lenz and Woyzeck - analysing the genesis and interpretation of the last in detail. A short concluding chapter summarises the results of the inquiry and assesses the value of the methods used. ... Read more