interview with Michael Hofmann
Hi, can you tell me something about your German background? How important is that to your writing? Do you presently write in German? Do any German writers influence your work?
You presently live and work in America and the Anglo-Saxon world and the English language has been formative in influencing your writing. Of course there’s a strong Germanic strand in English too and I wondered if you felt there was some powerful, cogent and expressive element in German that has made it so influential? German is also an inflected language which perhaps connects it profoundly to the Medieval or Ancient worlds. I wondered if the inflected elements in German influenced your English and what you thought of the connection between the German language and the pattern of German historical development?
Has your recent sojourn in America changed your view of English, how do you feel about American culture? Many critics see America caught between backwardness, the parish of the mid-west and south (where you presently are teaching) and the relative cosmopolitanism of the east and west coasts. Do you agree with this overall assessment or do you see an America of multiple diversities? If so, can you tell me something about that diversity?
What American authors do you read, why and how do you feel about American writing at this time?
Ezra Pound said in Cantico del Sole:
The thought of what America would be like If the Classics had a wide circulation Troubles my sleep, The thought of what America, The thought of what America ...
Does it give you nightmares or should we welcome a wide circulation of Ovid or Virgil in the worst American slums? (perhaps there already is?)
Do you like hamburgers with ketchup and mayo or do you think they stink?
Lastly, another German to have settled in the US was the pioneer rocket scientist Werner von Braun. He once remarked that man knows only change and not extinction. As you gaze across the everglades or wherever you happen to be in Florida, does it occur to you that this means that mankind will end up in fire or ice, but perhaps it may be in the sludge? Is Iraq such a quagmire, are the Gates of Hell opened, is the Second Coming immediate and necessary or is this a historical blip? Or a sign of a longer lasting decline?
You presently live and work in America and the Anglo-Saxon world and the English language has been formative in influencing your writing. Of course there’s a strong Germanic strand in English too and I wondered if you felt there was some powerful, cogent and expressive element in German that has made it so influential? German is also an inflected language which perhaps connects it profoundly to the Medieval or Ancient worlds. I wondered if the inflected elements in German influenced your English and what you thought of the connection between the German language and the pattern of German historical development?
Has your recent sojourn in America changed your view of English, how do you feel about American culture? Many critics see America caught between backwardness, the parish of the mid-west and south (where you presently are teaching) and the relative cosmopolitanism of the east and west coasts. Do you agree with this overall assessment or do you see an America of multiple diversities? If so, can you tell me something about that diversity?
What American authors do you read, why and how do you feel about American writing at this time?
Ezra Pound said in Cantico del Sole:
The thought of what America would be like If the Classics had a wide circulation Troubles my sleep, The thought of what America, The thought of what America ...
Does it give you nightmares or should we welcome a wide circulation of Ovid or Virgil in the worst American slums? (perhaps there already is?)
Do you like hamburgers with ketchup and mayo or do you think they stink?
Lastly, another German to have settled in the US was the pioneer rocket scientist Werner von Braun. He once remarked that man knows only change and not extinction. As you gaze across the everglades or wherever you happen to be in Florida, does it occur to you that this means that mankind will end up in fire or ice, but perhaps it may be in the sludge? Is Iraq such a quagmire, are the Gates of Hell opened, is the Second Coming immediate and necessary or is this a historical blip? Or a sign of a longer lasting decline?
posted by Paul Murphy at
March 26, 2008
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