August von Platen was one of several German post-Romantic poets who strove to overcome Romantic lyricism by restoring poetry's spoken, verbal quality and by pursuing a more precisely defined imagery. Platen's particular strategy was to reach out to the forms of the international cultural patrimony, in which he was extremely erudite. He mastered a dozen languages, including Latin and Greek, the French of his social class, English, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Danish, and Persian. Among German poets he was the most complex metrician since Friedrich Gottlob Klopstock in the eighteenth century and the most ingenious rhymer before Christian Morgenstern in the twentieth century. His personal life, even by the standards of poets, was exceptionally unhappy.

Platen was descended from a prominent and sometimes influential noble family scattered in Germany from north to south, but, though he bore the title of count, his branch was obscure and relatively poor...