How do two people collaborate on the writing of a poem or a series of poems? Writing is usually such a solitary pursuit and is so much bound up with identity, that while collaborative projects may be attractive to writers in the abstract, they are rarely successful in practice. Trust and mutual respect would be essential to a joint project, as would a certain self-assurance in the collaborators. Although their relationship was about passion, aesthetics, and even ambition, what I know about Greve and Else's time together, suggests that on Greve's part it had nothing to do with trust, or with a secure sense of selfThese poems by "Fanny Essler" (their joint pseudonym) were published between 1904 and 1905 in Die Freistatt , at about the same time as Greve published his roman-à-clef Fanny Essler (Axel Juncker, 1905) based largely on Else's life. Did she ask Greve to write the poems with her or to polish her initial drafts? Did she want Greve to write a novel about her? Did Greve opportunistically take advantage of her imaginative zest and colourful life? The poems themselves are formally constrained and this in itself suggests Greve's technical skills as a poet. Written from the point of view of a woman, Fanny Essler, the poems paint a picture of the speaker's troubled relationship with a lover who is at turns cold, angry, derisive, and distant. This lover is uncannily similar to Karl in Greve's Fanny Essler , and of course, at the end of the novel the character Fanny dies tragically after being treated coldly by Karl. Did Greve relish the fact that his male characters were controlling and distant with women, that they had mastered their passions and emotions? Could he maintain control over his unruly emotions and his free-spirited lover in his writing as he could not in life? Their stormy relationship off the page certainly suggests that the only way he could "control" Else was by running away from her. The collaboration with Gaby Divay on the translation of these poems has not been an equal one, in the sense that she has many years of research on both Greve and the Baroness behind her, and she is bilingual. My knowledge of German is limited. We laboured together with various dictionaries and thesauri over a number of day long sessions, but I had to rely on her native German for a truly reliable sense of the text. My contribution was to ensure that our English translation sounded truly English. Gaby was also the one who insisted we be faithful as much as possible to the original form, meter, and rhyme scheme. Left to my own devices I would have written a free verse translation. When difficult choices had to be made between right-sounding English, rhyme and meter faithful to the poets' original intentions, and language that was faithful to late nineteenth-century/ early twentieth century diction, Gaby's choices were most often authoritative, and thus the language that we used. I am pleased that we are able to present this translation in electronic form one hundred years after the poems were originally published in German. The translation is particularly timely as it comes out at a time when there is renewed interest in Else and her art, and in her collaborative work with Greve. We hope this translation will stimulate more creative and scholarly interest in the work of this fascinating and dramatic couple.

Jan Horner, Coordinator, Collections Management, University of Manitoba Libraries