Michael Hamburger (Michael Peter Leopold Hamburger) Biography

British poet and translator, born in Berlin of a Jewish family who emigrated to England in 1933; he was educated at Christ Church, Oxford. In addition to his work as a writer and translator he has held numerous visiting professorships in the USA. His verse translations of Hölderlin in Poems of 1943 brought the work of that poet to a wider English-speaking readership and established Hamburger as a translator of note. Among his many other translations are Poems (1966) by Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Selected Poems (1982) by Marin Sorescu, and Poems of Paul Celan (1988). His collections of poetry include The Dual Site (1958), Travelling (1969), Real Estate (1977), and Roots in the Air (1991); Collected Poems appeared in 1984. In the course of the 1960s the strict versification predominant in his earlier work gave way to the disciplined freedom of form in which most of his poetry is written. His underlying ethical and psychological concerns often relate to his complex sense of personal identity as a Jew of German birth and English upbringing. Among his critical works are the essays on German literature in A Proliferation of Prophets (1983) and After the Second Flood (1986).