"As in his poetry, in his essays, too", observes Michael Eskin, "Grünbein succeeds in artfully interweaving autobiography and memoir with a host of broader concerns ranging from questions of history, science, and medicine, to question of ethics, aesthetics, and politics, with special attention to the continued relevance of the past – Greek and roman antiquity in particular – in and to the contemporary world, as well as the inevitable interpretive malleability of the past in the light of our ever-evolving present".The poet's dialogue with the ancient legacy is more complex even than his own reflection suggests and most scholars assume.