Lenz (fragment)

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"Lenz" is a story written by Georg Büchner in Strasbourg in 1836. The story is based on Jean Frédéric Oberlin's diary as factual evidence. Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz, once a friend of Goethe, is the subject of the story. In March 1776 he met Goethe in Weimar. Later he suffered from mental disorder and was sent to Oberlin's vicarage in the Steintal. This period is the content of this story. Although left unfinished at the time of Büchner's death in 1837, it has been seen as a precursor to literary modernism, and its influence on later writers has been immense. The story has been adapted for the stage as Jacob Lenz a 1978 chamber opera by Wolfgang Rihm.

[edit] Editions in English

• Lenz. Translated by Michael Hamburger. West Newbury: Frontier Press, 1969.
• Lenz. Translated by Richard Sieburth. Brooklyn: Archipelago Books, 2005. ISBN 0-9749680-2-1.
• Complete Plays and Prose, pp. 139–166. Translated by Carl Richard Mueller. New York: Hill and Wang, 1963. ISBN 0-8090-0727-4.

[edit] References

• Sieburth, Richard. "Translator's Afterword" and "Notes", in the 2005 Archipelago edition.