Pollard,
David, editor and translator. The Chinese Essay.
University Press, 2002. 372 pp. Paper:
$24.50. ISBN
0-231-11219-9.
Offering an informative overview of
the history of the Chinese essay and succinct introductions to each of the
selected writers, Pollard’s collection is a useful reference tool in addition
to being a revealing survey of
Schouten,
Rob and Robert Minhinnick, editors. In a Different Light: Fourteen
Contemporary
Dutch-Language Poets.
PA: Dufour Editions, 2002. 198 pp. Paper: $19.95. ISBN 1-85411-313-5.
This volume is a ground-breaking
collection of works by fourteen poets writing in Dutch, many of whom have made
continental reputations, yet await discovery by the English-reading world. The tone is often conversational and imbued
with wry humor, but the subjects are death, doubt, alienation—examined through
minutely altered perspectives. Yet, this
is a poetry surprisingly unmoved by nature, by
politics, even by war. Instead, for many
of the contributors, language itself has become the subject. Translated by James
Brockway, P.C. Evans, William Groenewegen, Lloyd Haft, Francis R. Jones,
Shirley Kaufman, Graham Martin, Steve Orlen, Craig Raine, John Scott, Mark
Strand, Rina Vergano and Paul Vincent.
Frabotta,
Biancamaria, editor. Italian Women Poets. Translated by Corrado
Federici.
119-9.
This anthology addresses the issue
of the “gender” of poetic discourse. The
work attempts to answer the question of whether there can be an aesthetic
distinction between “women’s poetry” and “men’s poetry,” and it does so in two
ways: by presenting selected poems from some of Italy’s foremost women writers
of the twentieth century and by putting this question directly to some of the
contributors, in the form of an interview on the nature of poetry.
Shirane, Haruo,
editor. Early Modern Japanese
Literature: An Anthology, 1600-1900.
This
volume of works from the
fiction, poetry, drama, essays, and philosophical
treatises, as well as adaptations from the Chinese, literary criticism, comic
poetry, and folk stories. The book is
illustrated with more than two hundred woodblock prints and paintings that
accompanied the original texts. Many of
these works have been translated into English for the first time, and several
classics have been newly translated for this anthology. The book includes introductions and
commentary to provide historical and literary context for the collection. Translators include James Brandon, Michael
Brownstein, Patrick Caddeau, Caryl Ann Callahan, Steven Carter, Anthony
Chambers, Cheryl Crowley, Chris Drake, Peter Flueckiger, Charles Fox, C. Andrew
Gerstle, Thomas Harper, Robert Huey, Donald Keene, Richard Lane, Lawrence
Marceau, Andrew Markus, Herschel Miller, Maryellen Toman Mori, Jamie Newhard,
Mark Oshima, Edward Putzar, Peipei Qiu, Satoru Saito, Tomoko Sakomura, G.W.
Sargent, Thomas Satchell, Paul Schalow, Haruo Shirane, Jack Stoneman, Makoto
Ueda, and Burton Watson.
Imitations and Transformations of
Short Poetic Texts from the Latin, Italian,
French, Spanish, and German. Translated by Philip Cranston. Edited by
Mechthild Cranston with an afterword by Roger Asselineau. Bilingual.
1-882528-39-5.
Tones/Countertones collects versions
ranging from near-literal to—in two cases—free paraphrase of sixty-four short
poems or excerpts from long poems.
Included are translations from Vergil, Horace, Chrétien de Troyes, Dante
Alighieri, Boccaccio, Pierre de Ronsard, Jean de La Fontaine, Goethe,
Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Rimbaud, Rilke, and Apollinaire.
Hirschman, Jack,
editor. Art on the Line: Essays by
Artists about the point where their
art and activism intersect.
Art on the Line is a
collection of essays—many of them in translation—by writers and artists
speaking about the point where their social commitment and their art intersect. These essays illuminate the aesthetics of
“engaged art,” and include work by artists from
Luthin, Herbert W.,
editor. Surviving through the Days:
Translations of Native
0-520-22269-5. Paper: $24.95; ISBN
0-520-22270-9.
Editor Herbert Luthin’s selection of
stories, anecdotes, myths, reminiscences, and songs is drawn from a wide
sampling of
Obradović,
Biljana D., editor and translator. Fives: Fifty Poems by Serbian and
American Poets: A Bilingual
Anthology.
Line and Cross-Cultural
Communications, 2002. 187 pp. Cloth: $30.00;
ISBN
0-89304-513-6. Paper: $15.00;
ISBN 0-89304-514-4.
In this book, Obradović has
selected five contemporary poets from
La Torre de, Mónica
and Michael Wiegers, editors. Reversible
Monuments:
Contemporary
Mexican Poetry. Bilingual. Port
Canyon Press,
2002. 696 pp. Paper: $20.00. ISBN 1-55659-159-4.
From the original six poets intended
for this volume, this anthology grew to include thirty-one poets, representing
not only those writing in the Spanish language, but also those writing in
native languages such as Zapotec, Mazatec, and Tzeltal. Unlike anthologies that offer only one or two
poems by each author, Reversible Monuments allows its poets enough space
to present larger than usual selections.
The poets, born shortly before or after 1950 are
translated by twenty-five translators.
The publication of this anthology represents a major collaboration of
cultural foundations and literary organizations, including the
Polkinhorn,
Harry and Mark Weiss, editors. Across the Line/Al otro lado: the poetry
of
The
poetry of
Novák,
Ladislav. The
Transformations of Mr. Hadlíz.
Translated by Jed Slast.
The Transformations of Mr. Hadlíz
is a combination of graphic art, poetry, and prose. The twelve full-color pictures that form the
book’s central motif are taken from a Danish calendar for 1976 and executed by
“froissage,” a particular method invented by Novak of interpreting the lines
formed on crumpled paper. The text to
the art was written in the spirit of automatism virtually overnight and sixteen
years later. The volume also includes
poems from Novák’s alter ego, Mr. Hadlíz.
Brassaï. Henry
Miller, Happy Rock. Translated by Jane Marie Todd.
7139-1.
[Henry
Miller, rocher heureux. Éditions
Gallimard, 1978].
In
this volume, the last book of the
Kristeva,
Julia. Revolt, She Said. An Interview by Philippe
Petit. Translated by
Brian
O’Keeffe. Edited by
Sylvère Lotringer.
In Revolt, She Said, Julia
Kristeva extends the definition of revolt beyond the political realm to include
psychic revolt, analytic revolt, and artistic revolt.
According to
Kristeva, “revolt” refers to a state of permanent questioning and
transformation, an “endless probing of appearances.” “Revolt” then becomes a necessary process of
renewal and regeneration, rather than a process of rejection and destruction.
Roy, André. Parallel to Life: A Notebook. Translated by Daniel Sloate.
parallèle, 1994].
According
to translator Daniel Sloate, André Roy’s entire notebook is “an
attempt to define the ineffable: why is a writer a
writer?” Sloate states that
Haffner,
Sebastian. Defying
Hitler: A Memoir. Translated
and with an
introduction by Oliver Pretzel.
Sebastian Haffner was born in
Weissweiler, Eva,
editor. The Complete Correspondence
of Clara and Robert
Schumann: Critical Edition, Volume
III. Translated by Hildegard Fritsch,
Ronald L. Crawford,
and Harold P. Fry.
488 pp. Cloth: $59.95. ISBN 0-8204-24463. [Clara und Robert Schumann
Briefwechsel, Kritische
Gesamtausgabe, Band III, 1840-1851. Edited by Eva
Weissweiler with
the assistance of Susanna Ludwig].
This volume contains letters written
by Robert Schumann (1810-1856) and Clara Wieck Schumann (1819-1896) between
January 1840 and March 1851. The letters
preceding the couple’s wedding in September 1840 document the last phase of
Robert’s lawsuit against Friedrich Wieck aimed at obtaining permission to
marry. They also include comments on Robert’s
fondness for lieder and his close friendship with Felix Mendelssohn and Franz
Liszt. The letters written when Clara
went on tour without her husband revolve around news about her concerts and her
reactions to such famous men as Hans Christian Anderson and Niels Gade. Translator Hildegard Fritsch is Emeritus
Professor of Modern and Classical Language Studies at
Orbán, Ottó. Our Bearings at Sea: A Novel in Poems. Translated by Jascha
Kessler. Xlibris, 2001. 134 pp. Cloth: ISBN 1-4010-1054-7. Paper : ISBN
1-4010-1053-9.
This book, in effect an
autobiography written in prose poems, divided into thematic groups, is a mosaic
of the life of the poet from childhood on, remembered from the Siege of Budapest
by the Soviet armies near the end of World War II, through the various regimes, up until about
1988. Orbán has won two József Attila
prizes, the Robert Graves Prize, the Déry Tibor Prize, the Radnóti Prize, the
Weöres Prize, and the George Soros Foundation Prize.
Sergeev,
Andrei. Stamp Album: A Collection of
People, Things, Relationships,
and Words. Translated by Joanne Turnbull.
2002.
Distributed
by Northwestern University Press, Chicago.
240 pp.
Paper:
$17.95. ISBN 5-7172-0059-5. Glas New Russian Writing,
Vol. 28.
Natasha Perova, Arch Tait, and Joanne
Turnbull, editors.
Stamp Album, despite winning
the Russian Booker Prize—is not a novel, but a novel memoir. A collector of stamps from childhood, the
poet and writer Andrei Sergeev (1933-1998) later collected impressions as well,
impressions of people, things, relationships and words. Sergeev draws on his extraordinary store of
personal recollections as well as on old letters, photographs, family
documents, Soviet slogans, street conversations, popular songs, children’s
rhymes and irreverences to recreate the texture and perversity of Soviet life
in the 1930s, ‘40s and ‘50s. This is the
first translation of Sergeev into English.
Shklovsky,
Viktor. Third
Factory. Translated and with
an introduction by
Richard
Sheldon. New afterword
by Lyn Hejinian.
“Do we really know how a man ought to be processed?” This is a question at the heart of Third
Factory, a work of aesthetic and political resistance in which the world’s
complexity refuses to be made plain. In
part a memoir of the author’s experiences in three “factories” of life, the
book merges physical detail with theoretical discourse, political allegory with
personal anecdote.
The result is both
beautiful and fierce, a profound mix of “things and thoughts”—as Shklovsky
says—the real and irreducible products of the artist and his world.
Vargas Llosa,
Mario. Letters to a
Young Novelist. Translated by Natasha Wimmer.
0-374-11916-3. [Cartas a un joven novelista.
In the tradition of Rilke’s Letters
to a Young Poet, Mario Vargas Llosa condenses a lifetime of writing,
reading, and thought into an essential manual for aspiring writers, revealing
in the process his deepest beliefs about our common literary endeavor. A writer, in his view, is someone seized by
an insatiable appetite for creation, a rebel and a dreamer. But dreams, when set down on paper, require
disciplined development, and so Vargas Llosa supplies the tools of
transformation, by examining time, space, style, and structure in fiction.
Safranski,
Rüdiger. Nietzsche: A Philosophical
Biography. Translated by Shelley
Frisch.
ISBN
0-393-05008-4. [Nietzsche. Biographie Seines Denkens].
Tracing the origins and growth of
Nietzsche’s philosophy, Safranski follows the philosopher from the beginning of
his burgeoning career as a young philologist to his break with academic
tradition with the publication of The Birth of Tragedy. He details the young thinker’s boyhood
obsession with music and writing and his close friendship, and eventual break,
with Richard Wagner. Safranski also
examines the considerable contradiction and controversies of Nietzsche’s later
life and work. Ultimately, Safranski,
the author of biographies of Heidegger and Schopenhauer, offers a critical
reappraisal of Nietzsche’s
philosophy by examining the intersection of his life
and work. Translator Shelley Frisch has
taught German literature and humanities at
Aristophanes. Frogs, Assemblywomen, Wealth. Translated and edited by Jeffrey
Cloth: $21.50. ISBN 0-674-99596-1. Loeb Classical Library
180N.
Frogs was produced in 405 B.C., shortly after the
deaths of Sophocles and Euripides.
Dionysus, the patron god of theater, journeys to the underworld to
retrieve Euripides. There he is
recruited to judge a contest between the traditional Aeschylus and the modern
Euripides, a contest that yields both comedy and insight on ancient literary
taste. In Assemblywomen
Athenian women plot to save
Euripides. Helen, Phoenician Women, Orestes. Translated and edited by David
Kovacs.
$21.50. ISBN 1-0674-99600-3. Loeb Classical Library.
In Euripides’ Helen, the poet
employs an alternative history in which a virtuous and faithful Helen never
went to
Euripides. Heracles and Other Plays. Translated by John Davie with an
introduction
and notes by Richard Rutherford.
Books, 2002. 307 pp. Paper: $11.00. ISBN 0-14-044725-3.
Of these plays, Heracles
stands apart in its stark portrayal of undeserved human suffering and the
malignant power of the gods. In
contrast, the Cyclops—Euripides’ sole surviving satyr play—celebrates
drink, sex and self-indulgent hedonism.
In Iphigenia among the Taurians, Ion, and Helen,
Euripides exploits the comic potential to be found in traditional myth, weaving
plots full of startling shifts of tone, deception and illusions. Alongside the comedy, however, Euripides
always reminds us how quickly fortunes are reversed and invites us to view the
world with skepticism and compassion.
Commentary by
Margaret Graver.
2002.
240
pp. Paper: $17.00. ISBN 0-226-30577-5.
The
third and fourth books of
nature and management of human emotion: first
grief, then the emotions in general. In
a lively and engaging style,
and giving a detailed account of the Stoic
position, which he himself favors. Margaret
Graver’s translation makes the work accessible not just to classicists, but to
everyone interested in ancient philosophy or in the philosophy of emotion.
Livy. The Early History of
Foundations. Translated by Aubrey de
Sélincourt, with an
introduction
by R.M. Ogilvie, and a preface and additional material by
S.P. Oakley.
published
in 1960. 496 pp. Paper: $14.00. ISBN 0-14-044809-8.
Livy dedicated most of his life to
writing some 142 volumes of history, the first five of which comprise The
Early History of Rome. Livy brings
alive the great characters and scenes from Rome’s past, beginning with the
foundation of Rome, through the history of the seven kings, the establishment
of the Republic and its internal struggles, up to recovery after the Gallic
invasion of the fourth century BC. He
also represents familiar legends and tales, including the story of
Seneca. Hercules, Trojan Women, Phoenician Women,
Medea, Phaedra.
Translated and edited by John G.
Fitch.
University Press,
2002. 551 pp. Cloth: $21.50. ISBN 0-674-99602-X.
Loeb Classical
Library 62.
Seneca’s plots are based on mythical
episodes, in keeping with classical tradition.
But the political realities of imperial
Furmaroli’s study is almost as much
about Louis XIV and his court as it is about La Fontaine. It provides a detailed analysis of
absolutist politics and attempts by the king and his ministers to enforce an
official cultural style. Fumaroli’s work is a meditation on the plight of the
artist under such a ruler during the imposition of a tyrannical, centralized
political regime. Of particular interest
to Fumaroli is Nicolas Foucquet, whose fall from power is the central event of
the book. Foucquet, La Fontaine’s
patron, was arrested and imprisoned by order of Louis XIV on false charges of
embezzlement and treason. For La
Fontaine, the arrest was a disaster.
Foucquet had generously supported and protected La Fontaine, who remained
loyal to him for decades, helping in his defense and writing pleas for
pardon. The Poet and the King not
only offers a history of one of
Schiavone,
Aldo. The End of the Past: Ancient
Translated by
Margery J. Schneider.
Press, 2002. 278 pp. Paper: $17.95. ISBN 0-674-00983-5. Revealing
Antiquity, 13. B.W. Bowersock, General Editor. [La storia
spezzata:
Roma antica e Occidente moderno,
1996].
This interpretation of past and
present addresses fundamental questions about the fall of the
Vergil, Polydore. On Discovery. Translated and edited by Brian P. Copenhaver.
ISBN 0-674-00789.
The Italian humanist Polydore Vergil
(1470-1555) was born in Urbino, but spent most of his life in early Tudor
England. His most popular work, On Discovery,
was the first comprehensive account of discoveries and inventions written since
antiquity. This work became a key
reference for anyone who wanted to now about “firsts” in theology, philosophy,
science, technology, literature, language, law, material culture, and other fields. Vergil took his information from dozens of
Greek, Roman, biblical, and Patristic authorities. This is the first English translation of a
critical edition based on the Latin texts published in Polydore Vergil’s
lifetime. Brian P. Copenhaver is
Professor of History and Philosophy and Provost at the
Vallejo, José Joaquín,
“Jotabeche.” Sketches of Life in
by
Frederick H. Fornoff. Edited with an
introduction and chronology by
Simon Collier.
$19.95. ISBN 0-19-512867-2.
Writing under the pseudonym
“Jotabeche,” José Joaquín Vallejo wrote forty-one short articles on Chilean
life and society in the early republic.
Known for their caustic wit, his writings were an instant success when
they were first published in Chilean magazines and newspapers. This volume presents these essays for the
first time in English.
Gatti, Armand. Two Plays: The Seven Possibilities for
Train 713 Departing from
Deleage. Københaven & Los Angeles: Green Integer,
2002. 539 pp.
Paper: $14.95. ISBN 1-931243-28-X.
Written more than
twenty years apart, the two plays of this volume—both of which have been
performed in the
to Italian immigrants, Gatti graduated from
the Monaco Lycée in 1941. In 1942, he
departed
Séjour,
Victor. The
Fortune-Teller. Translated from the French by Norman R.
Shapiro and with
an introduction by M. Lynn Weiss.
02719-1. [La Tireuse de cartes].
The Fortune-Teller tells the story of the infant girl Noémi who is taken from her Jewish family after being