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Stephen Spender, along with his friends W. H. Auden, Louis MacNeice
and C. Day Lewis, rose to prominence in the 1930s, writing
powerfully of the fear and paranoia of a continent heading towards
war. By the time of his death in 1995 he had established a
distinguished reputation as a poet, critic, editor and translator.
This New Collected Poems, edited by Michael Brett, gathers seven
decades of verse from Poems (1933) to Dolphins (1994) and the late
uncollected work. Reordering the thematic principle of the 1985
Collected Poems, this edition returns to a book-by-book chronology
and allows the reader to experience, for the first time, the full
development and range of his career.
Stephen Spender, the son of a journalist, was born in London in
1909. He was educated at University College, Oxford, where he met,
among others, W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood and Louis
MacNeice, with whom he was to develop a poetics of engagement,
writing powerfully of the confusion and alarm of 1930s Europe. He
visited Spain during the Civil War, in 1937, where he assisted the
Republican cause with propaganda activity. His post-war memoir
World within World was recognised as one of the most illuminating
literary autobiographies to have come out of the 1930s and 1940s,
distilling a distinctively personal, humanistic socialism. His
poetry has been praised for its exploratory candour, its personal
approach to the stresses of modernity, and its exact portraiture of
social and political upheaval. Grey Gowrie's new selection offers a
timely and incisive revaluation of Spender's substantial poetic
corpus.
Private faces in public places Are wiser and nicer Than public
faces in private places. W.H. Auden, dedication to Stephen Spender,
1932 Stephen Spender wrote almost a million words of journal
entries between his September Journal in 1939 and his death in
1995. In choosing from these voluminous journals for the new
edition, the editors have tried to provide a picture of the various
lives Spender brought together in autobiographical form. The
earlier 1985 edition of the Journals was overseen by the author,
and it privileged his thoughts about poetry - his own and other
people's. The new edition includes the final ten years of Spender's
life and provides access to the more intimate thoughts and feelings
of the private man, but equally documents his life as a public
intellectual who played a part in shaping the European literary and
intellectual culture of his age. As we look back on the dramatic
events of the twentieth century, we find that Spender was involved
in many of them: the reconstruction of Germany and the construction
of Europe (as Unesco's first Literary Councillor), the development
of the cultural Cold War (as editor of Encounter), the founding of
Israel, the anti-Vietnam movement in America. The Journals provide
a personal version of sixty turbulent years of the twentieth
century, hovering between diary, autobiography and history.
Two of Wedekind's most seminal plays, Earth-Spirit and Pandora's
Box both focus on the actions of the young heroine Lulu, who
embodies both animal sensuality and waif-like innocence, as she
escapes a life on the streets, receives a society education,
marries, takes on various lovers, becomes a dancer in a revue, is
imprisoned for murder and encounters Jack the Ripper. When
Earth-Spirit was premiered in Leipzig in 1898, Wedekind was
vilified and persecuted for advocating unfeigned sexual pleasure
and making his heroine a heartless whore. Death and Devil and
Castle Wetterstein, the other plays that make up this volume, are
essentially extensions of and complementary to the Lulu tragedies.
Personal Reflections About Those Qualities In Literature And Art,
In The Present Century, That Mr. Spender Regards As Modern.
Personal Reflections About Those Qualities In Literature And Art,
In The Present Century, That Mr. Spender Regards As Modern.
Proclaimed "one of the great American writers of short fiction"
by the New York Times Book Review, William Goyen (1915-1983) had a
quintessentially American literary career, in which national
recognition came only after years of struggle to find his authentic
voice, his audience, and an artistic milieu in which to create.
These letters, which span the years 1937 to 1983, offer a
compelling testament to what it means to be a writer in
America.
A prolific correspondent, Goyen wrote regularly to friends,
family, editors, and other writers. Among the letters selected here
are those to such major literary figures as W. H. Auden, Archibald
MacLeish, Joyce Carol Oates, William Inge, Elia Kazan, Elizabeth
Spencer, and Katherine Anne Porter.
These letters constitute a virtual autobiography, as well as a
fascinating introduction to Goyen's work. They add an important
chapter to the study of American and Texas literature of the
twentieth century.
Poems Written Abroad is the first publication of the earliest
collection of poetry by the famous poet, novelist, literary critic,
translator, and radical, Sir Stephen Spender (1909-1995). Spender
wrote and compiled this manuscript in 1927, when he was living in
Nantes and Lausanne. In tone and diction, Spender's poems range
from creatively traditional to unexpectedly innovative. They
reflect his reading in Shakespeare and French poetry, as well as
his absorption in music and modern art. They also document his
struggles with his sexual identity and his emerging desire to
devote his life, at whatever cost, to the writing of poetry. This
beautiful facsimile edition, authorized by the Spender estate,
faithfully reproduces the features of the original manuscript now
held by the Lilly Library, including the frontispiece, an ink
drawing by Spender himself, and little-known photographs of the
poet. The editor's extensive introduction and detailed explanatory
notes situate Spender's juvenilia in the context of his life and
work and the history of modern poetry. The volume will appeal to
readers with interests in modern poetry, gender studies, and fine
books.
Shelley said, in his Defence of Poetry, that poetry should be both
centre and circumference of knowledge. In his new book, Spender
takes Shelley's claim and relates it to modern literature. He
points out that, ever since the Industrial Revolution, writers have
been conscious of there being a problem of creating literature in
the industrial era. All the discussions of tradition, symbolism,
myth and the rest are part of a conscious strategy of writers to
come to terms with a modern world which they feel presents quite
special problems for them. Spender shows how Matthew Arnold's idea
that criticism might be more important than poetry in our time, was
taken over by poets who wrote criticism, and how in tern they have
become superseded by critics who write poetry. The critical
intelligence tens to absorb creative energy. He discusses the
difference between the creative and critical functions and things
that the present tendency of criticism to supersede creativity, and
for poetry to become an academic exercise conducted by poets who
are dons, is having a stifling effect on poetry. He thinks that
there is an increasing tendency for the most creative activity of
literature to become shut off from life and fermented, and that
literature should be related much more to contemporary history, and
less to dogmatic principles of academic criticism. This is a book
in which the writer tried to reassert the relationship of
literature to modern life. He believes that this relationship was
the pre-occupation of writers in the 1920s and 1930, but that since
then literature has become increasingly split into the writing of
the new academics and that of aggressive anti-intellectuals. He
things that contemporary criticism should be on a much wider basis,
and take into account the history and the society in which we live,
as well as the abstract principles which recent critics have
evolved. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program,
which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek
out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach,
and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived
makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again
using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally
published in 1963.
Shelley said, in his Defence of Poetry, that poetry should be both
centre and circumference of knowledge. In his new book, Spender
takes Shelley's claim and relates it to modern literature. He
points out that, ever since the Industrial Revolution, writers have
been conscious of there being a problem of creating literature in
the industrial era. All the discussions of tradition, symbolism,
myth and the rest are part of a conscious strategy of writers to
come to terms with a modern world which they feel presents quite
special problems for them. Spender shows how Matthew Arnold's idea
that criticism might be more important than poetry in our time, was
taken over by poets who wrote criticism, and how in tern they have
become superseded by critics who write poetry. The critical
intelligence tens to absorb creative energy. He discusses the
difference between the creative and critical functions and things
that the present tendency of criticism to supersede creativity, and
for poetry to become an academic exercise conducted by poets who
are dons, is having a stifling effect on poetry. He thinks that
there is an increasing tendency for the most creative activity of
literature to become shut off from life and fermented, and that
literature should be related much more to contemporary history, and
less to dogmatic principles of academic criticism. This is a book
in which the writer tried to reassert the relationship of
literature to modern life. He believes that this relationship was
the pre-occupation of writers in the 1920s and 1930, but that since
then literature has become increasingly split into the writing of
the new academics and that of aggressive anti-intellectuals. He
things that contemporary criticism should be on a much wider basis,
and take into account the history and the society in which we live,
as well as the abstract principles which recent critics have
evolved. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program,
which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek
out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach,
and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived
makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again
using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally
published in 1963.
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El Templo (Spanish, Paperback)
Stephen Spender; Translated by Marcelo Cohen; Prologue by Luis Antonio De Villena
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R658
Discovery Miles 6 580
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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Penned in 1929, this autobiographical novel narrates the
experiences of a young poet from Oxford vacationing in Germany.
Addressing themes such as sexual morality, naturism, and fascism,
the novel focuses on the protagonist's spontaneous reaction to the
social and cultural atmosphere of the Weimar Republic, a paradise
that would promptly disappear under Nazi rule. With increasing
tension, lazy afternoons filled with hiking and swimming and nights
spent drinking and dancing at nightclubs slowly give way to the
growing Nazi threat being felt among the youth the protagonist
befriends. "Escrita en 1929, esta novela autobiografica narra las
vivencias de un joven poeta de Oxford durante unas vacaciones en
Alemania. Tratando temas tales como la moralidad sexual, el
naturismo y el facismo, la novela se enfoca sobre la reaccion
espontanea del narrador ante el universo social y cultural de la
Republica de Weimar, un paraiso que pronto desapareceria bajo el
yugo del nazismo. Con una tension creciente, tardes perezosas de
excursiones y natacion y noches llenas de copas y bailes lentamente
le ceden el paso a la creciente amenaza nazi que comienza a dejarse
sentir entre los jovenes con los cuales el protagonista se hace
amigos."
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