For the first time and in a masterful translation into German: Wordsworth's major work, one of the great blank verse essays in world literature, describes the spiritual development of the poet and was thus posthumously titled "The Prelude, or Growth of a Poet's Mind." Comparable to Rousseau's "Confessions" or Moritz's "Anton Reiser," Wordsworth unfolds an autobiographical exploration of the soul, intertwining poetic and philosophical reasoning with a portrait of the era from 1770 to 1805 in nearly 10,000 verses. The version translated here from 1805 fundamentally differs from the revised and rewritten edition of 1850, which underwent 45 years of changes. Enthrallingly idealistic and oriented towards heaven and the arts, the young Wordsworth emerges as one of the great seekers in world literature.