What Remains

One of the twentieth century’s foremost public intellectuals, Arendt was intensely private. Though she acknowledged that the language of poetry–especially that of Dickinson, Goethe and Lowell–informed her work, few knew that Arendt herself wrote poems. In fact, between 1923 and 1961, Arendt wrote seventy-four poems, many of them deeply autobiographical. For nearly forty years after her death, these poems remained hidden, until 2011, when they were rediscovered by Samantha Rose Hill. Now, for the first time in English, Hill and Genese Grill present Arendt’s poems. Throughout, Arendt uses poetry to mark moments of joy, love, loss and reflection, and tries to understand her place in the world. A gift to all readers of Arendt, this stunning, dual-language edition provides an unparalleled insight to one of our most original thinkers.