Rosmarie Waldrop

Early life in Germany

Waldrop was born in Kitzingen am Main on August 24, 1935. Her father, Joseph Sebald, taught physical education at the town's high school. Toward the end of World War II, she joined a traveling theatre, but she returned to school in 1946. At school, she studied piano and flute and played in a youth orchestra. During Christmas 1954, the orchestra gave a concert for American soldiers stationed at Kitzingen. After the performance, Keith Waldrop, a member of the audience, invited members of the orchestra to listen to his records. He and Rosmarie became friendly and worked together over the next few months, translating German poetry into English.

University years

That same year, she entered the University of Würzburg, where she studied literature, art history and musicology. In 1955, she transferred to the University of Freiburg, where she discovered the writings of Robert Musil and participated in a protest against a lecture given by Heidegger. She then moved to the University of Aix-Marseille, where Keith spent 1956–57 on his GI Bill. At the end of the year, he returned to the University of Michigan. In 1958, he won a Major Hopwood Prize, sending most of the money to Rosmarie to pay for her passage to the United States.

Essays and criticism

Against Language?, The Hague: Mouton/Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1971

The Ground Is the Only Figure: Notebook Spring 1996, Providence: The Impercipient Lecture Series, Vol. 1, No. 3 (April 1997)

Lavish Absence: Recalling and Rereading Edmond Jabès, Wesleyan University Press, 2002

Dissonance (if you are interested), University Alabama Press, 2005