Berberova's elegant and uncommon biography of the Russian poet Blok defies easy categorization and is a literary event in its own right. Aleksandr Blok (18801921) was a leader of the Russian Symbolists at the turn of the century and ranks among the greatest modern Russian poets. Of particular interest are Blok's artistic and personal reactions to the revolutionary changes in Russian politics and society during his lifetime: his shift from poetic mysticism to a perception of life deeply colored by historical forces, and his astute predictions about Russia's bloody future. A major English-language biography, Avril Pyman's Life of Aleksandr Blok, appeared in 1979, and readers of his poetry who seek details of the life should still turn to that earlier work. Those more interested in the fin-de-siäcle and revolutionary settings of Blok's creative genius will be well served by this new work. Berberova's essay is as much a portrait of Russian society as it is a story of Blok himself, and in the author's deft hand the two are palpably, convincingly linked. Part of the appeal of this biography is the author's lyrical and highly personal, empathetic voice. Berberova, who died in 1993, was both a professor of Russian literature at Princeton and the author of fiction and an autobiography (The Tattered Cloak, 1991, etc.). She lived until the age of 20 in Blok's St. Petersburg and moved in similar literary circles. As she poignantly relates here, Berberova was present at Blok's deathbed, and she offers a heartfelt interpretation of the poet's death: ``We all felt it was the and of a life, the end of a city, the end of a world.'' Soon after his death, she fled Russia. Aleksandr Blok: A Life is Berberova's profoundly moving posthumous homage to a poet, a city, and an era she knew intimately.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-8076-1408-4
Page Count: 152
Publisher: Braziller
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1996
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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