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Rating: 
Summary: excellent translations
Review: As a german reader I must say that the author had made excellent translations. You have the feeling that he translated with heart - very rich in his speech and sometimes surprising. Some verses of Hoelderlin, which are strange and not easy to understand are in his translations clearer and simpler to understand. " But it is the sea / That takes and gives remembrance, / And love no less keeps eyes attentively fixed, / But what is lasting the poets provide" (Remembrance).
Rating:
Summary: excellent translations
Review: As a german reader I must say that the author had made excellent translations. You have the feeling that he translated with heart - very rich in his speech and sometimes surprising. Some verses of Hoelderlin, which are strange and not easy to understand are in his translations clearer and simpler to understand. " But it is the sea / That takes and gives remembrance, / And love no less keeps eyes attentively fixed, / But what is lasting the poets provide" (Remembrance).
Rating: 
Summary: better to stand alone in a monolingual edition
Review: The translations produced by Mr. Hamburger, himself a poet, reads very well indeed. But should they be used in such bilingual edition as this one, being not very literal? In 'Dichterberuf'('The Poet's Vocation'), the 12th stanza reads:'Zu lang ist Gottliche dienstbar schon/ Und alle Himmelskrafte verscherzt, verbracht/ Die Gutigen, zur Lust, danklos, ein/ Schlaues Geschlecht und zu kennen wahnt es,' and the translation:'Too long now things divine have been cheaply used/ And all the powers of heaven, the kindly, spent/ In trifling waste by cold and cunning/ Men without thanks, who when he, the Hightest,'. We can see that the translator use the alliteration of 'cold' and 'cunning'(only 'Schlaues' in the original) to compensate that of 'verscherzt' and 'verbracht' (only 'spent' in the translation). We can understand why the previous reviewer says the translations are often surprising(and why I says they are not very literal).
Rating:
Summary: better to stand alone in a monolingual edition
Review: The translations produced by Mr. Hamburger, himself a poet, reads very well indeed. But should they be used in such bilingual edition as this one, being not very literal? In 'Dichterberuf'('The Poet's Vocation'), the 12th stanza reads:'Zu lang ist Gottliche dienstbar schon/ Und alle Himmelskrafte verscherzt, verbracht/ Die Gutigen, zur Lust, danklos, ein/ Schlaues Geschlecht und zu kennen wahnt es,' and the translation:'Too long now things divine have been cheaply used/ And all the powers of heaven, the kindly, spent/ In trifling waste by cold and cunning/ Men without thanks, who when he, the Hightest,'. We can see that the translator use the alliteration of 'cold' and 'cunning'(only 'Schlaues' in the original) to compensate that of 'verscherzt' and 'verbracht' (only 'spent' in the translation). We can understand why the previous reviewer says the translations are often surprising(and why I says they are not very literal).
Rating:
Summary: A nice selection, but go for the complete edition
Review: This Penguin selection of Michael Hamburger's outstanding Holderlin translations is drawn from his 800+ page bilingual edition of Holderlin called "Poems and Fragments," published by Anvil Press (search for ISBN 0856463604).
If you love Holderlin, the complete 4th edition of "Poems and Fragments" is well worth the modest extra cost--it's a very hefty, very handsomely produced book, and of course it's the definitive Holderlin in English.
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