[About the poetry collection]

 

Click on the three images below to read the poems of each author in the Luxembourgish original and my English translation. I kept Gonner's idiosyncratic spelling in the Luxembourgish original, even though it might take some getting-used-to for a modern reader. To be perfectly honest, I didn't feel like re-writing the whole thing. :)

 

 

 

Jean-Baptiste Nau was a blacksmith's son from the south of Luxembourg. He worked for a mining company in Rumelange and in 1880, he decided to try his luck in the United States. He lived for a few years in Detroit, Illinois, but never really felt at home abroad and finally went back home to Luxembourg, where he died shortly after.

 

His poems are typical immigration literature. They deal with his passion for travelling and discovering new lands, but also with the longing for Luxembourg and his colleagues back home. Not surprisingly, we don't have a portrait of the author.

 

So click on the coat of arms of the mining town of Rumelange to read his poems in the Luxembourgish original and my English translation.

 

 

 

N.E. Becker emigrated with his parents from the vineyards of the Mosella region in Luxembourg to the grasslands of Wisconsin. Beside his work as a farmer and poet, he had political ambitions and made it into the Council of Ozaukee County.

 

His song, Zur Erënnerung [Remembrance], is the most well-known poem of the Prairieblummen collection. It tells of the first settlers' hardships when they tried to eke out a living in the wilderness of Wisconsin. He also wrote poems about every-day life in America and put local tales of Indians and farmers into rhyme.

 

Click on his portrait to read his poems in the Luxembourgish original and my English translation.

 

 

 

Nicolas Gonner was a journalist and chief editor of the German-language weekly Luxemburger Gazette in Dubuque, Iowa. He saw himself as the mouthpiece of the Luxembourgish diaspora in the American Midwest. In 1883, he published the Prairieblummen collection, in which about two thirds of the poems were written by himself. An eager historian and practicing Catholic, he wrote about such varied topics as the beauty of nature, the transience of human life and legends and tales from Luxembourg and abroad.

 

Click on his portrait to read some of his poems in the Luxembourgish original and my English translation.