By Wolfgang Hilbig, from “I”, published in 1993 by S. Fischer Verlag and due out for the first time in English in July from Seagull Books. Hilbig was born in eastern Germany in 1941 and emigrated to West Germany in 1985 because East German authorities would not permit the publication of his books. Before he died, in 2007, he published three novels and three books of poetry and won Germany’s Georg Büchner Prize. Translated from the German by Isabel Fargo Cole.

Most of W’s perceptions were acquired by looking from outside into the interior of lighted dwellings; what he…