The authors’ affection for their subject is warmly communicated in this biography of David-Neel (1868—1969), the French Tibetophile who was the first European woman to explore the once forbidden (to foreigners) city of Lhasa. The Fosters already have one biography of David-Neel to their credit (Forbidden Journey, 1987). In their preface to this book, they present it as an entirely revised edition of the earlier one, incorporating information gleaned from additional source materials and interviews. The authors’ characterization of their subject’s many writings—“witty and entertaining”—applies as well to their own. The biography opens as a movie might, on David-Neel’s surreptitious departure from Lhasa in May 1924, after having entered illegally following a perilous journey. Succeeding chapters flash back to her childhood, marriage, and first journeys east, culminating in the great trek by foot to Lhasa. The final chapters on the end of her life, back in France, also review her major writings, which include autobiography, novels, translations of Tibetan texts, and studies of Buddhism. The many epithets used throughout the book, in lieu of the heroine’s name—the seeker, adventurer, pilgrim, scholar, orientalist, iconoclast—give some feel for the scope of her character and work. The authors present her as a Tantric mystic who scorned mystification; an ascetic who laid carpets in her Tibetan cave-dwelling; a radical democrat who, a colonialist still, condescended to her adopted Sikkimese son: in short, as the union of opposites that many deeply religious people are. The authors’ principal concern is that David-Neel be remembered for her part in preserving Tibet’s religious legacy—especially now that it is under attack—through the texts she translated and saved for the West, including Tibetan versions of works no longer available in the original Sanskrit from the early Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna. From the joint talents of the authors (a librarian and a novelist) comes a winsome biography that takes its subject more seriously than itself. (26 b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: May 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-87951-774-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
By meticulously tracing renowned Russian poet Akhmatova's tortuous life, this extraordinarily detailed biography builds up a panoramic view of Soviet cultural history. Reeder (Russian Literature and Culture/Univ. of Marburg, Germany) edited the acclaimed bilingual edition of Akhmatova's collected poetry published by Zephyr Press in 1990. Here she offers a historical chronicle rather than a psychological analysis of Akhmatova (18891966) or a reinterpretation of her poetry. Glossing over the poet's childhood, Reeder plunges into a lively account of avant-garde St. Petersburg in the decadent years preceding the Russian Revolution; Akhmatova, departing from the reigning symbolist aesthetic, pioneered the modernist style of ``Acmeism,'' which stressed everyday language and experience. After the revolution, Akhmatova, often poverty-stricken and at odds with the emerging regime, kept a low profile. Symbols and allegories—more often than not prophetic, Reeder contends—would reemerge in Akhmatova's work as she struggled to express her alienation from Soviet rule and at the same time keep her citizenship and her life- -a task at which most of her fellow writers were less successful than she. Reeder depicts a long series of state crimes, from the murders of Akhmatova's first husband, Nikolay Gumilyov, and her close friend Osip Mandelstam to the hounding of Boris Pasternak and Joseph Brodsky, even after the supposed ``thaw'' of the Khrushchev years. Reeder interprets Akhmatova's poems and those of her contemporaries almost exclusively in light of political and literary history, and the parade of crises and geniuses that she presents becomes so dense at times that it obscures the depth of the verses that she liberally quotes—and by extension of the poets themselves. But this very density is what will make Reeder's biography not only the starting point for all future engagements with Akhmatova's life and work but more generally a key source for scholars exploring the thorny entanglement of politics and art in 20th- century Russia. (32 pages of photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-312-11241-6
Page Count: 640
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1994
A competent academic work, by a freelance writer and scholar, on the eventful life of an energetic and outspoken intellectual and feminist of the 19th century. From early childhood, when she began studying Latin under the tutelage of her father, who was of the opinion that ``mediocrity is obscurity,'' Margaret Fuller (181050) grew into the energetic and sometimes abrasive woman who could ask her friend Ralph Waldo Emerson, ``Who would be a goody that could be a genius?'' In fact, it is partly for her connections with the Transcendentalists that Fuller is remembered, and her ideas may well have been aired beyond her own writings: In 1839, one observer noted that Emerson's lectures were ``fractions of [Bronson] Alcott, [Unitarian minister Timothy] Dwight, and ´ Miss Fuller.'' The popular and influential Conversation classes she held for women in Boston provided ideas for her writing as well as a much-needed income—income she was not receiving from the hard work she was putting in as first editor of the Dial, a philosophical and literary journal. It was for this journal that Fuller wrote the article that, in expanded form, became Woman in the Nineteenth Century, her feminist magnum opus, of which von Mehren delicately notes, ``She felt under no obligation to be strictly coherent.'' In her writings, Fuller addresses poverty and the double standard as contributing to prostitution, warns women not to enter marriages in which they would be too dependent, and argues that a woman should be able to try her hand at any occupation that appeals to her. Even when Fuller got her long-awaited chance to travel to Europe in 1847, her visits to guidebook attractions were set against the background of local poverty and political turmoil; unfortunately, this account is of the sort that offers more details on that turmoil than on Fuller's reactions to it. Von Mehren fails to capture the dynamism of her subject, who never quite emerges as a full-blooded person.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-87023-941-4
Page Count: 536
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1994
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