Caspar Hauser: A Poem in Nine Cantos

Caspar Hauser was the enigmatic German who was incarcerated for most of his childhood, released and then murdered. He appeared in Nuremberg in 1828, able to write his name and saywithout understanding it - one sentence: 'I want to be a rider like my father was.' Taken in by well-wishers - one of whom fell in love with him - he was attacked with a razor by an unknown assailant. Three years later, the eccentric Lord Stanhope made him his ward, and left him in another town to go travelling. In 1833 he was killed.David Constantine's epic poem unravels the strange strands of Caspar's short life. He touches on the intrigues of the time (Caspar may have had a claim to the throne of Baden) , but his conception of Caspar is more involved with his innocence and the extraordinary reactions of his untried nervous system to a life in the daylight, and with the hopes and longings he excited in others.