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Guy de Pourtalès (1881-1941) was born in Berlin to an aristocratic family who later settled in Switzerland. After attending universities in Germany, Pourtalès moved to Paris in 1905 to study literature at the Sorbonne. He published his first novel in 1910, married in 1911 and, claiming Huguenot ancestry, acquired French citizenship in 1912. During the First World War he served as a translator for the British army in Flanders. Victim of a gas attack at Poperinghe in 1915, he was later diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis. Pourtalès soon departed Paris for the slower pace of the Château d'Etoy on lac Léman, where between 1926-1932 he applied himself to romantic biographies of musicians. Pourtalès was prolific as an essayist, reviewer and polemicist, whilst maintaining a vast correspondence with other European writers including Stefan Zweig. In 1937 his autobiographical novel La Pêche miraculeuse finally won him a major literary prize, but the loss of his only son during the battle for France in May 1940 sent Pourtalès into a steeper decline. He died in Lausanne in June 1941. Will Stone, born 1966, is a poet, essayist and literary translator. His first poetry collection Glaciation (Salt, 2007), won the international Glen Dimplex Award for poetry in 2008. Shearsman Books has re-published his subsequent critically appraised collections. Will's poetry translations include To the Silenced - Selected Poems of Georg Trakl (Arc, 2005) Emile Verhaeren Poems (Arc, 2013), Georges Rodenbach Poems (Arc, 2017) and Friedrich Hölderlin's Life Poetry and Madness by Wilhelm Waiblinger (2018). Pushkin Press published his translation of Montaigne by Stefan Zweig in 2015, Messages from a Lost World - Europe on the Brink by Stefan Zweig in 2016 and The Art of the City - Rome, Florence, Venice by Georg Simmel in September 2018. Encounters and Destinies - A Farewell to Europe by Stefan Zweig and Surrender to Night - Collected Poems of Georg Trakl will be published in 2019. Will has contributed poems, translations, essays and reviews to a range of publications including The London Magazine, The Times Literary Supplement, The Spectator, Apollo Magazine, the RA Magazine, The White Review, Poetry Review and Agenda. |
