by Neil L. Rudenstine ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 18, 2014
Guilt, power, desire and sadism all feature in Rudenstine’s authoritative, meticulously close reading of what he considers...
A new appraisal of Shakespeare’s lyric poetry.
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day” is a familiar first line from "Sonnet 18," one of Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets. Although it is considered to be a love poem, Rudenstine (The House of Barnes: The Man, the Collection, the Controversy, 2012, etc.), an Elizabethan scholar and former Harvard president, argues that taking any sonnet out of sequence distorts its meaning. He sees the lyric poems as interconnected, building a dramatic narrative about a poet’s fraught relationship with a young man he loves and a mistress whom the two men lustily desire. Love, surely, is a theme, but it is a love undermined by faithlessness and deceit, vulnerability and humiliation. Rudenstine groups the sonnets (all appended to his text) into discrete sections that trace the development of themes: the so-called “marriage poems” (1-20) speak to the love between the poet and his younger, wealthier and handsomer friend. In the next group, the poet praises the friend, who has been unfaithful and abandons the poet but begs forgiveness. The friend takes up with the poet’s mistress, the poet questions his own talent and, fearing abandonment by the young man, “embarks on a full attack…on the friend’s character.” Subsequent sonnets chronicle a tumultuous relationship of reconciliation, betrayal, reunion and renewed proclamations of love. The last sonnets speak to the mistress’s “love-kindling fire” in the hearts—and bodies—of both men. Rudenstine handles gingerly some scholars’ assertion of the possibility of a homosexual relationship between the poet and his friend. While that inference can be supported, the author sees the relationship as a magnetic infatuation, not necessarily sexual, that “beguiles and overwhelms” the poet, causing him to “re-create and sustain it, in spite of continual betrayals.”
Guilt, power, desire and sadism all feature in Rudenstine’s authoritative, meticulously close reading of what he considers to be Shakespeare’s majestic poems.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-374-28015-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
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by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955
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
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