Richard Sieburth (born 1949) is Professor Emeritus of French Literature, Thought and Culture and Comparative Literature at

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then- Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, th ...

(NYU)."Richard Sieburth"
New York University. A translator and editor, Sieburth retired in 2019 after 35 years of teaching at NYU and 10 years at Harvard. Sieburth is an authority on French renaissance poetry, European romanticism and literary modernism in general, particularly on the life and work of Ezra Pound. In addition to his numerous editions of the works of Pound for New Directions and the

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, he has published translations of Nostradamus, Maurice Scève, Louise Labé, Friedrich Hölderlin, Georg Büchner, Walter Benjamin, Gershom Scholem, Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé, Henri Michaux, Antonin Artaud, Michel Leiris, Eugène Guillevic, and Jacques Darras. He has also published translations into French of American poets such as Michael Palmer.

Early life and education

Sieburth obtained a BA from the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...

in 1970 and a PhD from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

in 1976.

Work

Sieburth is recognized as a leading translator from both German and French, including the following: *

Georg Büchner Karl Georg Büchner (17 October 1813 – 19 February 1837) was a German dramatist and writer of poetry and prose, considered part of the Young Germany movement. He was also a revolutionary and the brother of physician and philosopher Ludwig Büch ...

's ''Lenz'' *

Friedrich Hölderlin Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin (, ; ; 20 March 1770 – 7 June 1843) was a German poet and philosopher. Described by Norbert von Hellingrath as "the most German of Germans", Hölderlin was a key figure of German Romanticism. Part ...

’s ''Hymns and Fragments'', *

Walter Benjamin Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin (; ; 15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940) was a German Jewish philosopher, cultural critic and essayist. An eclectic thinker, combining elements of German idealism, Romanticism, Western Marxism, and Jewish ...

’s ''Moscow Diary'' *

Gérard de Nerval Gérard de Nerval (; 22 May 1808 – 26 January 1855) was the pen name of the French writer, poet, and translator Gérard Labrunie, a major figure of French romanticism, best known for his novellas and poems, especially the collection '' Les ...

’s ''Selected Writings'' and "Salt Smugglers" *

Henri Michaux Henri Michaux (; 24 May 1899 – 19 October 1984) was a Belgian-born French poet, writer and painter. Michaux is renowned for his strange, highly original poetry and prose, and also for his art: the Paris Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim ...

’s ''Emergences/Resurgences'' & ''Stroke by Stroke'' *

Michel Leiris Julien Michel Leiris (; 20 April 1901 in Paris – 30 September 1990 in Saint-Hilaire, Essonne) was a French surrealist writer and ethnographer. Part of the Surrealist group in Paris, Leiris became a key member of the College of Sociology with ...

’s ''Nights as Day, Days as Night'' *

Gershom Scholem Gershom Scholem () (5 December 1897 – 21 February 1982), was a German-born Israeli philosopher and historian. Widely regarded as the founder of modern academic study of the Kaballah, Scholem was appointed the first professor of Jewish Myst ...

's ''The Fullness of Time: Poems'' *

Maurice Scève Maurice Scève (c. 1501–c. 1564), was a French poet active in Lyon during the Renaissance period. He was the centre of the Lyonnese côterie that elaborated the theory of spiritual love, derived partly from Plato and partly from Petrarch. This ...

's ''Emblems of Desire: Selections from the Délie'' *

Eugène Guillevic Eugène Guillevic ( Carnac, Morbihan, France, August 5, 1907 Carnac – March 19, 1997 Paris) () was a French poet. Professionally, he went by the single name ''Guillevic''. Life He was born in the rocky landscape and marine environment of ...

's ''Geometries'' *

Nostradamus Michel de Nostredame (December 1503 – July 1566), usually Latinised as Nostradamus, was a French astrologer, apothecary, physician, and reputed seer, who is best known for his book '' Les Prophéties'' (published in 1555), a collection ...

's ''The Prophecies'' *

Louise Labé Louise Charlin Perrin Labé, ( 1524 – 25 April 1566), also identified as La Belle Cordière (The Beautiful Ropemaker), was a feminist French poet of the Renaissance born in Lyon, the daughter of wealthy ropemaker Pierre Charly and his second wif ...

's ''Love Sonnets & Elegies'' *

Oswald von Wolkenstein Oswald von Wolkenstein (1376 or 1377 in Pfalzen – August 2, 1445, in Meran) was a poet, composer and diplomat. In his diplomatic capacity, he traveled through much of Europe to as far as Georgia (as recounted in "Durch Barbarei, Arabia"). He w ...

's ''Songs from a Single Eye'' *

's ''A Certain Plume'' *

Charles Baudelaire Charles Pierre Baudelaire (, ; ; 9 April 1821 – 31 August 1867) was a French poet who also produced notable work as an essayist and art critic. His poems exhibit mastery in the handling of rhyme and rhythm, contain an exoticism inherited ...

's ''Late Fragments'' *

Jacques Darras Ancient and noble French family names, Jacques, Jacq, or James are believed to originate from the Middle Ages in the historic northwest Brittany region in France, and have since spread around the world over the centuries. To date, there are over ...

's ''John Scotus Eriugena at Laon & Other Poems''

Awards

Sieburth was made a Chevalier dans l’ordre des palmes académiques in 1985, elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2007, and received an Annual Award in Letters from the American Academy of Arts in Letters in 2017, while his forthcoming ''Late Baudelaire'' (Yale UP, 2020) has been supported by a Guggenheim Fellowship for Translation. Among many honors, he received the PEN/Book-of the Month Translation Prize in 2000 for his ''Selected Writings of Gérard de Nerval'' and his translation of Maurice Scève's ''Emblems of Desire'' was shortlisted for the Weidenfeld Prize and the PEN Poetry Translation Prize in 2003. He was twice shortlisted for the French-American Foundation Translation Prize, in 2007 for ''Stroke by Stroke'' (by Henri Michaux) and then in 2010 for ''The Salt Smugglers'' (Gérard de Nerval), while his translations of Eugène Guillevic's ''Geometries'' was shortlisted for the Three Percent Poetry Translation Prize in 2012. Most recently, his ''A Certain Plume'' (Michaux) received the 2019 PEN Prize for Poetry in Translation and his ''Songs from a Single Eye'' was longlisted for the 2020 PEN Prize for Poetry in Translation.

Selected work

Authored books * ''Instigations: Ezra Pound and Remy de Gourmont'' (Harvard University Press, 1978) * ''Signs in Action: Ideograms of Pound and Michaux'' (Red Dust Books, 1987) * ''Weights and Measures/Poids et mesures'' (Ulysse Fin-de-Siècle, 1988) Editor * Ezra Pound: ''A Walking Tour in Southern France: Ezra Pound Among the Troubadours'' (New Directions, 1992) * Ezra Pound: ''Poems & Translations'' (Library of America, 2003) * Ezra Pound: ''

The Pisan Cantos ''The Cantos'' by Ezra Pound is a long, incomplete poem in 120 sections, each of which is a ''canto''. Most of it was written between 1915 and 1962, although much of the early work was abandoned and the early cantos, as finally published, date ...

'' (New Directions, 2003) * Ezra Pound: '' The Spirit of Romance'' (New Directions, 2005) * Ezra Pound: ''New Selected Poems & Translations'' (New Directions, 2010) * Benjamin Constant: ''Adolphe'' translated by Alexander Walker (riverrun, 2021) Translations * (& as editor) ''Hymns and Fragments'' by Friedrich Hölderlin (Princeton University Press, 1984) * ''Moscow Diary'' by Walter Benjamin (Harvard University Press, 1986) * '' Nights As Day, Days As Night'' by Michel Leiris (Eridanos Books, 1988) * ''Sun'' by Michael Palmer (Ulysse Fin-de-Siècle, 1988) * (& as editor) ''Gerard de Nerval – Selected Writings'' (Penguin Classics, 1999) * ''Emergences/Resurgences'' by Henri Michaux (Skira/The Drawing Center, 2000) * (& as editor) ''Emblems of Desire: Selections from Maurice Scève's "Délie"'' (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002); 2nd revised ed., (Archipelago Books, 2004) *''The Fullness of Time: Poems'' by Gershom Scholem (Ibis Editions, 2003) * (& as editor) ''Lenz'' by Georg Büchner (Archipelago Books, 2005) * ''Stroke by Stroke'' by Henri Michaux (Archipelago Books, 2006) - includes two Michaux texts: "Stroke by Stroke" (''Par des traits'') and "Grasp" (''Saisir'') * ''The Salt Smugglers'' by Gérard de Nerval (Archipelago Books, 2009) * ''Geometries'' by Eugène Guillevic (Ugly Duckling Press, 2010) * (& as editor) ''The Prophecies'' by Nostradamus (Penguin Books, 2012) * (& as editor) ''Love Sonnets & Elegies'' by Louise Labé (NYRB/Poets, 2014) * ''Songs from a Single Eye'' by Oswald von Wolkenstein (Merano: Medus, 2015 — foreword by Siegfried Walter de Rachewiltz). Second, revised edition (New Directions, 2019) * ''Nights as Day, Days as Night'' by Michel Leiris
Spurl Editions, 2017
— foreword by Maurice Blanchot) * (& as editor) ''Greetings from Angelus: Poems'' by Gershom Scholem (Archipelago Books, 2018) * (& as editor) ''A Certain Plume'' by Henri Michaux (NYRB/Poets, 2018) * (with James E. Montgomery) ''War Songs'' by 'Antarah Ibn Shaddid (NYU Press, 2018) * (with Howard Limoli) ''Aseroë'' by François Dominique (Bellevue Literary Press, 2020) * (& as editor) ''Late Fragments: Flares, My Heart Laid Bare, Prose Poems, Belgium Disrobed'' by Charles Baudelaire (Yale University Press, 2022) * (& afterword) ''John Scotus Eriugena at Laon & Other Poems'' by Jacques Darras (World Poetry Books, 2022) ;Other * (as translator) ''The Cenci'' by Antonin Artaud, performed at the Ohio Theater in New York City in February 2008. * (co-translator with Françoise Gramet) Louise Bourgeois, ''Psychoanalytic Writings'', in Laratte-Smith, ed., ''The Return of the Repressed: vol. 2'' (London: Vilette Editions, 2012) * (interview) Jacques Darras, ''A L'Ecoute: Entretiens avec Richard Sieburth sur la poésie de langue anglaise et sa traduction'' (In'hui/Le Castor Astral, 2018) * (as Executive Producer) ''Sqizo: A Film about Louis Wolfson'' (2019), directed by Duccio Fabbri.

References

External links

Brooklyn Rail
''In Conversation: Richard Sieburth with Adam Fitzgerald''
Cross-Cultural Poetics:Episode #59: Palimpsest and Retrieval
Richard Sieburth discusses and reads from his translation of Georg Buchner's Lenz (available in

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) /

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**''Note'': scan down the page to episode #59. Also available on this page: ***''Episode #65: Richard the II'' in which Sieburth discusses the ''Library of America Ezra Pound'' which he has edited. ***''Episode #211: Emblems of Desire, February 18, 2010'' in which Sieburth reads from & discusses his translations of Maurice Sceve, as published in ''Emblems of Desire''s
Hieronymo's Mad Againe: On Translating Nerval

"Editor's Note": Richard Sieburth on ''Ezra Pound: Poems and Translations''
link here to read Sieburth's editor's note to this ''Library of America'' volume of Ezra Pound

part of Sieburth's ''The Sound of Pound: A Listener’s Guide'' part of PENNSound's Ezra Pound page, with complete recordings of Pound available

at the NYU Department of French website
Acceptance Speech for the 2019 PEN Award for Poetry TranslationSieburth discusses his Nerval translationsSieburth in conversation with Prof. Jane Tylus about his translations of Louise LabéSieburth presents Ezra Pound's "Aspern Tapes" at Harvard University's Woodberry Poetry RoomSieburth interviewed by Jeffrey Yang about Louise LabéPEN 2011 'Translation Slam' with Sieburth, Amélie Nothomb, Jolie Hale, Waqas Khwaja, Adeeba Talukder, and Famida Riaz; moderated by Michael F. MooreReview of Baudelaire's ''Late Fragments'' in the New York Review of Books
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sieburth, Richard Living people French–English translators German–English translators American translators University of Chicago alumni Harvard University alumni 1949 births Translators of Gérard de Nerval