by R. Howard Bloch ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 2016
A deeply informed investigation into a radically innovative poet.
The creation and influence of an iconic modernist poem.
In 1897, Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898) published a 20-page poem in a British magazine, daring in its syntax, typography, and spatial design. “One Toss of the Dice Never Will Abolish Chance” was meant to be read across an open double page; large blank spaces separate verses of different lengths; some lines contain a single word. In French and a translation by poet J.D. McClatchy, “One Toss of the Dice” appears in a central section of this volume. Jarring and visually and verbally bold, the poem, argues French scholar Bloch (French/Yale Univ.; A Needle in the Right Hand of God: The Norman Conquest of 1066 and the Making and Meaning of the Bayeux Tapestry, 2006, etc.), “dramatizes the difficulty of making sense of a world in which truth, meaning, and order are no longer given, and are constantly changing.” The difficulty of the poem is amply proven by Bloch’s attempt at explication. Like others among his contemporaries—including Verlaine, Valéry, Baudelaire, Whistler, Manet, Dégas, and Renoir—Mallarmé sought ways to reinvent and invigorate art. In 1866, he experienced a “state of altered consciousness,” from which he felt transformed into a “vessel of truth” that channeled the “spiritual Universe.” Nevertheless, he supported himself and his family by teaching high school English and, for a time, writing the entirety of The Latest Fashion, a ladies’ magazine that celebrated elegance and gracious living. His larger project, however, was “to make life rhyme” by “investing the world with poetry.” He tried, Bloch astutely observes, “to reclaim for poetry what poetry had lost to music” and to visual spectacle. Bloch is strongest on Mallarmé’s effervescent artistic context and his centrality to a protean group of artists and writers who frequented his evening salons. He is less persuasive, though, in defending the extravagant claim that Mallarmé’s poem “blazed” the way to modernist movements in art, music, literature, science, and technology.
A deeply informed investigation into a radically innovative poet.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-87140-663-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
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BOOK REVIEW
by William Strunk & E.B. White ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 15, 1972
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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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 E.T.A. Hoffmann ; adapted by Natalie Andrewson ; illustrated by Natalie Andrewson
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by E.T.A. Hoffmann & illustrated by Julie Paschkis
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