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TIME OF GRATITUDE

Name: TIME OF GRATITUDE
Author: Gennady Aygi
ISBN: 978-0-8112-2719-3

by Gennady Aygi ; translated by Peter France ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 12, 2017

A well-chosen introduction to the artistic and spiritual forces that shaped a poet.

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Warmth and passion infuse a collection of poetry and prose.

The national poet of Chuvashia, “a remote non-Russian republic nearly 500 miles to the east of Moscow,” Aygi (1934-2006) left the region to study at the Gorky Literary Institute and, encouraged by his mentor Boris Pasternak, began to write in Russian rather than his native Turkic. “Only writing in Russian will allow you to articulate fully everything that is happening within you,” Pasternak told him. That decision changed the course of Aygi’s career, making him accessible to a vastly larger—and international—readership. France, Aygi’s longtime translator and friend, has collected 23 brief memoirs, interviews, poems, and sketches to reveal the poet’s aesthetic inspirations and affinities. A helpful introduction contextualizes the pieces and identifies poets—e.g., Velimir Khlebnikov and Aleksey Kruchonykh—likely to be unfamiliar to most readers. The volume opens with an homage to Pasternak, written after the writer’s death and more than three decades after his meeting with Aygi. The younger poet was awestruck by a man he worshipped as “the older Friend, the Teacher, the unparalleled Interlocutor.” They discussed creativity, craft, literature, and the nature of existence. Pasternak, Aygi said, was capable of being enchanted “by all kinds of things and at any moment: a falling leaf, a child he met when out walking.” The miracle of creation, he told Aygi, surrounds us: “When you read a text, you are communicating not with letters but with the spirit of the author.” Just as the writer Vladimir Mayakovsky had led him to Pasternak, through Pasternak, Aygi discovered Baudelaire, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Kafka (a name “sacred to me”), and Max Jacob. Aygi pays homage to several of these writers and others, including the Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer and French poet René Char. Among avant-garde artists whose work Aygi knew well, Kazimir Malevich receives great adoration.

A well-chosen introduction to the artistic and spiritual forces that shaped a poet.

Pub Date: Dec. 12, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-8112-2719-3

Page Count: 144

Publisher: New Directions

Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2017

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

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TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955

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An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.

Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955

ISBN: 0670717797

Page Count: -

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
MADELINE'S SEASONS
developed by Ludwig Bemelmans ; illustrated by Steven Salerno

- BOOK REVIEW
LOVE FROM MADELINE
by Ludwig Bemelmans ; illustrated by Steven Salerno

- BOOK REVIEW
LA BONNE TABLE
by Ludwig Bemelmans

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IN MY PLACE

by Charlayne Hunter-Gault ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1992

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From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)