Charlie Louth, B.A., Ph.D. (Cambridge)
Professor of German and Comparative Literature, Fellow of Queen's College
Research
Charlie Louth's main research interests include poetry from the 18th century onwards, especially Goethe, Hölderlin, Mörike, Rilke and Celan; romanticism; translation; poetics; and comparative literature. He has translated a selection of Hölderlin's letters, and done a new translation of Rilke's Briefe an einen jungen Dichter and Brief des jungen Arbeiters. He has recently published Rilke: The Life of the Work (OUP, 2020; paperback 2023), and his translation of Hölderlin's complete correspondence is due to appear in 2025. His essays have been collected as Crossings: Essays on Poetry and Translation from Hölderlin to Jaccottet (Legenda, 2024). He is writing a short book on Celan and gradually getting into Mayröcker.
Teaching
German language and literature. Special interests and authors: poetry; Goethe, Hölderlin, Kleist, romanticism, the sonnet, Heine, Rilke, Celan.
Publications
Podcast
Books
Crossings: Essays on Poetry and Translation from Hölderlin to Jaccottet (Cambridge: Legenda, 2024)
(editor, with Carolin Duttlinger and Kevin Hilliard), From the Enlightenment to Modernism: Three Centuries of German Literature - Essays for Ritchie Robertson (Cambridge: Legenda, 2021)
Rilke: The Life of the Work (Oxford: OUP, 2020; paperback 2023)
(editor, with Patrick McGuinness), Gravity and Grace: Essays for Roger Pearson (Oxford: Legenda, 2019)
(editor, with Florian Strob), Nelly Sachs im Kontext - eine »Schwester Kafkas«? (Heidelberg: Winter, 2014)
(editor, with Patrick McGuinness), A C. H. Sisson Reader (Manchester: Carcanet, 2014)
(translator) Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet & The Letter from the Young Worker (Penguin, 2011; reissued Penguin Classics 2012; American edition 2013; Little Black Classics 2016)
(guest editor) Agenda, Vol. 45, No. 2 (Spring 2010), C. H. Sisson Special Issue
(editor/translator, with Jeremy Adler) Friedrich Hölderlin, Essays and Letters (Penguin, 2009)
Hölderlin and the Dynamics of Translation (Oxford: Legenda, 1998)
Articles etc.
‘Sisson, Aeneid 6, and Roman Poems’, in C. H. Sisson Reconsidered, ed. by Victoria Moul and John Talbot (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023), 19-42
‘“der Aquädukte Herkunft”: Rilke and the Uses of Antiquity’, in Brill’s Companion to Classical Reception and Modern World Poetry, ed. by Polina Tambakaki (Leiden: Brill, 2023), 207-39
'The Romantic Affiliations of Benjamin's "Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers"', in From the Enlightenment to Modernism: Three Centuries of German Literature - Essays for Ritchie Robertson, ed. by Carolin Duttlinger, Charlie Louth and Kevin Hilliard (Cambridge: Legenda, 2021), 198-213
‘Jaccottet and Mahon’, P. N. Review 262 (November-December 2021), 38-40
‘Five poems by Nelly Sachs’ (translations), Modern Poetry in Translation 3 (2021), 89-91
‘Celan in English’, in Paul Celan Today: A Companion, ed. by Michael Eskin, Karen Leeder and Marko Pajević (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021), 101-119
‘»bremische Verhältnisse«: Rilkes Briefe an Gustav Pauli’, Blätter der Rilke-Gesellschaft 35 (2020), 78-91
'Zu Rilkes Gong-Gedichten', in Rilkes Musikalität, ed. Thomas Martinec (Göttingen: V&R unipress, 2019), 139-153.
'Grace and Gravity in Philippe Jaccottet', in Gravity and Grace (see above, 2019), 178-194
Essay-review of: Franz Kafka, The Burrow: Posthumously Published Short Fiction, translated by Michael Hofmann (Penguin Modern Classics, 2017), Translation and Literature 27 (Spring 2018), 110-20
‘“jene zarten Verhältnisse”: Überlegungen zu Hölderlins Aufsatzbruchstück Über Religion / Fragment philosophischer Briefe’, Hölderlin-Jahrbuch 39 (2014-2015), 124-138
'"Marcher en soi, comme Hölderlin": Hölderlin bei Philippe Jaccottet', in: Wozu Dichter? Hundert Jahre Poetologien nach Hölderlin, ed. Éva Kocziszky (Berlin: Frank & Timme, 2016), 93-114
'Rilke's Sonette an Orpheus: the Tombeau, Dance and the Adonic', Modern Language Review 110.3 (July 2015), 724-738
‘Hölderlin’s Augury: Birds and Bird-Flight in his Ancient-Modern World’, in: The Reception of Classical Antiquity in German Literature, ed. Anne Simon and Katie Fleming, London German Studies XIV (Munich: Iudicium, 2013), 82-103
‘Enchantment and Loss in Ernst Stadler’, Oxford German Studies (Special Issue: Expressionist Poetry I), Vol. 41, No. 3 (December 2012), 310-326
‘Pássaros e voo de pássaros em Hölderlin’, in: Lógica poética: Friedrich Hölderlin, ed. Bruno C. Duarte (Lisbon: Vendaval, 2011), 181-200
‘Pastorale Variationen in Rilkes später Lyrik’, in Nach Duino: Studien zu Rainer Maria Rilkes späten Gedichten, ed. Karen Leeder and Robert Vilain (Göttingen, 2010), 153-167
‘Early poems’, in The Cambridge Companion to Rilke, ed. Karen Leeder and Robert Vilain (CUP, 2010), 41-58
‘Hölderlin’s divine dream’/‘The method in madness’, review of Hölderlin edition and translations, TLS No. 5549 (7 August 2009), 2-4
‘The Romantic lyric’, in The Cambridge Companion to German Romanticism, ed. Nicholas Saul (Cambridge, 2009), 67-84
‘What is particular about Rilke?’, Agenda, 42. Nos. 3-4 (Spring 2007), 82-91
‘A Reading of Goethe’s “Allleben”’, Publications of the English Goethe Society, 76.1 (2007), 29-36
‘Mörike’s lucid intervals’, Oxford German Studies, 36.1 (2007), 21-33
‘“Transzendente Linien”: Coleridge und Friedrich Schlegel als Lessing-Leser’, in Zwischen Aufklärung und Romantik: Neue Perspektiven der Forschung, ed. Konrad Feilchenfeldt, Ursula Hudson, York-Gothart Mix, Nicholas Saul (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2006), 150-164
‘Hölderlins Freundschaftsbriefe’, Hölderlin-Jahrbuch, 34 (2004-2005), 175-179
‘The Traveller - A Tribute to Michael Hamburger’, Modern Poetry in Translation, 3rd series, No. 1 (Spring 2004)
‘Reflections: Goethe’s “Auf dem See” and Hölderlin’s “Hälfte des Lebens”’, Oxford German Studies, 33 (2004), 167-175
‘John Keats’s Letters’, The Reader, 13 (Autumn 2003), 81-85
‘The Frankfurt Edition of Hölderlin’s Hymns: a Review Article’, The Modern Language Review, 98.4 (2003), 898-907
‘Goethe’s Sonnets’, Publications of the English Goethe Society, 72 (2003), 15-24
‘The Style of the Holy Spirit: Johann Jacob Junckherrott’s translation of the New Testament (1732)’, Comparative Criticism, 24 (2002), 255-82
‘Rilke on Capri’, in: Words, Texts, Images: CUTG Proceedings 4, ed. by Katrin Kohl and Ritchie Robertson (Bern: Lang, 2002), 83-92
‘The Question of Influence: Hölderlin’s Dealings with Pindar and Schiller’, Modern Language Review, 95.4 (October 2000), 1038-1052
‘Figures of Transition: Centaurs in Hölderlin and Goethe’, New Comparison, 27/28 (Spring-Autumn 1999), 50-58