Lenz

Synopsis

Lenz, Georg Büchner’s visionary exploration of an 18th century playwright’s descent into madness, grew in part out of Alsatian pastor Johann Oberlin’s journal, which is translated here in its entirety for the first time. Lenz is a dispassionate account on the nervous system of a schizophrenic, perhaps the first third-person text ever written from the “inside” of insanity. At his death at the age of 23 in 1837, Georg Büchner also left behind Leonce and Lena, Woyzeck, and Danton’s Death—psychologically and politically acute plays well ahead of their time.