Guy de Pourtales (1881-1941) was born in Berlin to an aristocratic family who later settled in Switzerland. After attending universities in Germany, Pourtales 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. Pourtales soon departed Paris for the slower pace of the Chateau d'Etoy on lac Leman, where between 1926-1932 he applied himself to romantic biographies of musicians. Pourtales 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 Peche miraculeuse finally won him a major literary prize, but the loss of his only son during the battle for France in May 1940 sent Pourtales into a steeper decline. He died in Lausanne in June 1941. WILL STONE is a poet, essayist and literary translator of French, Franco-Belgian and German literature. Will's previous translations from French include Rilke in Paris, by Maurice Betz (Hesperus, 2011/Pushkin, 2019), Emile Verhaeren: Poems (Arc, 2013), and Georges Rodenbach: Poems (Arc, 2017). Those from German include Messages from a Lost World: Europe on the Brink by Stefan Zweig (Pushkin, 2016), Friedrich Hoelderlin's Life, Poetry and Madness by Wilhelm Waiblinger (Hesperus, 2018), Surrender to Night: Collected Poems by Georg Trakl (Pushkin, 2019), Poems to Night by Rainer Maria Rilke (Pushkin, 2020) and Encounters and Destinies: A Farewell to Europe by Stefan Zweig (Pushkin, 2020). Will has published four critically appraised collections of poetry, the first of which, Glaciation (Salt, 2007/Shearsman, 2016), won a major international prize. He has contributed essays and reviews to the London Magazine, the TLS and other publications while his poems have most recently appeared in Poetry Review and the Spectator.
