|
Showing 1 - 6 of
6 matches in All Departments
Writing is not like chemical engineering. The figures of speech
should not be learned the same way as the periodic table of
elements. This is because figures of speech are not about
hypothetical structures in things, but about real potentialities
within language and within ourselves. The figurings of speech
reveal the apparently limitless plasticity of language itself. We
are inescapably confronted with the intoxicating possibility that
we can make language do for us almost anything we want. Or at least
a Shakespeare can. The figures of speech help to see how he does
it, and how we might.
Therefore, in the chapters presented in this volume, the
quotations from Shakespeare, the Bible, and other sources are not
presented to exemplify the definitions. Rather, the definitions are
presented to lead to the quotations. And the quotations are there
to show us how to do with language what we have not done before.
They are there for imitation.
"This is the story of two men--of how they achieved great power and
how through their implacable rivalry they destroyed each other,"
writes Arthur Quinn. Anticipating California's admission to the
union, both came to the state in 1849 seeking a seat in the U.S.
Senate. William McKendree Gwin, an aristocratic Southerner, and
David Broderick, a veteran of the bare-knuckle politics of New
York, struggled for control of California's Democratic Party during
the 1850s. Their feud, personal as well as political, ended in
violent death for one and disgrace for the other.
Born eighty years ago in Lithuania, Czeslaw Milosz has been
acclaimed "one of the greatest poets of our time, perhaps the
greatest" (Joseph Brodsky). This self-described "connoisseur of
heavens and abysses" has produced a corpus of poems, essays,
memoirs, and fiction of such depth and range that the reader's
imagination is moved far beyond ordinary limits of consciousness.
In The Poet's Work Leonard Nathan and Arthur Quinn follow Milosz's
wanderings in exile from Poland to Paris to Berkeley as they chart
the singular development of his art. Relating his life and his
works to the unfolding of his thought, they have crafted a lucid
reading of Milosz that far surpasses anything yet written on this
often enigmatic poet. The Poet's Work is not only a solid
introduction to Milosz; it is also a unique record of the poet's
own interpretations of his work. As colleagues of Milosz at
Berkeley, Nathan and Quinn had long, detailed discussions with the
poet. It is this spirit of collaboration that brings a sense of
immediacy and authority to their seamless study. Nathan and Quinn
reveal as never before why Milosz is a true visionary, a poet of
ideas in history. And they show how the influence of Blake, Simone
Weil, Dostoevsky, Lev Shestov, and Swedenborg, together with Henry
Miller, Allen Ginsberg, and Robinson Jeffers, has enriched his
vision. Milosz's lifelong experience of totalitarian regimes that
exalt science and technology over individual needs and aspirations,
his acute sense of alienation as an emigre, and his humanistic zeal
and belief in the primacy of living have brought a prismatic
quality to his poetry. At seventy, Milosz spoke of himself as an
"ecstatic pessimist." In their sensitive mapping of his art, Nathan
and Quinn skillfully demonstrate that Milosz's global influence has
been achieved by the ever-shifting balance he strikes between
ecstasy and pessimism. Irony and humor are never far from this
book, which not only communicates Milosz's polyphonic message but
also evokes his uniquely humane sensibility. The Poet's Work is an
illuminating introduction to Milosz that will inform and engage
scholars and general readers for years to come.
|
|