european

This is a great collection of poetry from a truly amazing man. The things he's been through in his life of over 90 years provide amazing backdrops for his poetry and breathe wonderful detail into his poetry. I can pick up his book every day and still love it as much as the day I bought it. If you don't take my word for it, take the Nobel Prize distributors' word for it, since he won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1980. If you buy one book of poetry in your life, buy this book! It is amazing and will have a great impact on your poetry and your life!

Students of literature and philosophy familiar with the poetry and political-mythological writing of Nobel Prize winner Czeslaw
Milosz do not need to be convinced that NEW and COLLECTED POEMS: 1931-2001 is a treasure. The author essays power and profundity in his study of totalitarian mentality in THE CAPTIVE MIND.In THE EMPEROR of the EARTH: Modes of Eccentric Vision, he dissected the nihilistic essence of Post-Modernism and those infatuated by it. But it is as POET that Milosz manifests genius...tempered by humility and GRATITUDE ...in bedazzling insights into the human condition.Unlike Solzhenitsyn, with whom he bears comparison as Cross-bearer of TRUTH, Milosz seems...as poets must...more capable of life-affirming epiphanies of love, beauty and friendship with man and nature in the face of chaos, deceit, violence and suffering; that has characterized --and continues to erupture--the 20th century...

I propose here we have another Dante. This marvelous work is his DIVINE TRAGEDY. The SUMMA...poetic, historic, gnostic, archetypal... jouney, quest, trial of a gifted man doomed to understand cosmic forces in apocalyptic battle for the tiny(cosmic???)souls of men is his epic account of what St. Augustine rendered as The City of God vs. The City of Man.

Is beauty here? Are there "time-out's" for play(song;lust; games; most important of all: redemptive hope and wonder-in-gratitude)? Readers of Czeslaw Milosz already know or think they know his poetic "replies".TRUTH is beauty. But not the "cheap" Keat's Urn-stuff...It must affirm GOOD. On pp. 252-253,Milosz WARNS a
child (Berkeley college student in 1963)against BE-coming a liar: "If you have not read the Slavic poets/ so much the better. There's nothing there for a Scotch-Irish wanderer to seek./ They lived in a childhood prolonged from age to age./ For them, the sun and moon was a farmer's ruddy face, the moon peeped through a cloud and the Milky Way gladdened them like a birch-lined road./They longed for the Kingdom that was always near, always right at hand......WHAT HAVE I TO DO WITH YOU? You did not know what I know./ No one with impunity gives to himself
the eyes of a god.../Better to carve suns and moons on the joints of crosses...as was done in my district...to implore protection against the mute and treacherous might/ than to proclaim, as you did, an inhuman thing..."

Agree with the voice that prompted St. Augustine 2000 years ago; or recently in the laudatory article printed in April's ATLANTIC MONTHLY: "Take and read"...this beautiful, important work by a true Master.

After September 11th, I, a formerly avid reader, could no longer read anything but news, dreadful news. A lifelong subscriber to the New Yorker, I picked up an issue which magically opened to a poem by Milosz. I think it was the first or second issue that followed the bombings.

The poem provided one of those rare moments where one feels transformed by words, where life is worth living again because someone said something so beautifully that it was again worth it to continue on.

I don't even know if Milosz wrote that poem specifically in response to what happened on September 11th; surely he saw greater horrors in Poland than we can even imagine. Yet ever since, his words have granted me peace, not only from the fear of annihilation through disaster, but from the ultimate annihilation of death.

I also love that he's still writing at ninety. I love how, against all odds, he decided to fall the way of faith.

I read one of his poems each night, like a prayer, like a song.

What a Classic tale of the Fool coming to age! The story (read: poem) moves along at a quick pace as we follow Perceval through his travails. The story is light and humourous but also is so much deeper at second look. It is too bad Chretin dy Troyes could not have lived to finish this piece.

This unfinnished romance has inspired centuries of literature. Chretien was probably the most popular writer in the 12th century. Despite the age of the book the story is full of issues that concern us today. It is a comming of age story in which a boy becomes a man and learns of his ancestry and potential. It is also a story of spiritual discovery, and the encounter with mystery. The fact that the poem was left unfinnished makes it even more compelling. Chretien claimed that this book was rewritten from a source book given to him by Phillip of Flanders, his patron. Speculation about the nature of this source has run on for centuries. A recent analysis in _King_Arthur_ by Norma Goodrich, makes a good case that the source was real and that these Arthurian stories took place in southern Scotland. So maybe Percival is more than just one of the greatest works of fiction. I love to read direct translations of Celtic mythology, and this is amoung the best available. Easier to read than you might think, but still a challenge. One of my favorite books.

I thought this book would be hard to read and boring since it was written so long ago, but I was wrong. I thoroughly enjoyed it and found it a fascinating story with undertones of all sorts of things. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the real story of the Grail Legend. Read this book instead of relying on other author's interpretations and theories.

Some said that PIETER BRUEGEL THE ELDER, who started as a landscape painter, swallowed and then spat the Alps onto canvases and panels calling up Italian mountainous landscape masters Giulio Campagnola and Titian. In fact, he played out about 80 real "Children's games" in the Italian city view style of Piero della Francesca and of the woodcut-illustrated works of Sebastiano Serlio. But earlier Netherlandish school influences were in Flemish landscape painter Joachim Patinir-type bird's-eye detailed never-never land mapping of "Landscape with Christ appearing to the apostles at the sea of Tiberias," "The flight into Egypt," and "The parable of the sower"; and later in Herri met de Bles-type "Procession of Calvary," as his largest picture, "Sermon of St John the Baptist," and "Suicide of Saul" in all its Albrecht Altdorfer-type impressionistic brilliance, as forerunners along with the brilliantly yellow "Harvesters" and the three "Haymaking" women to Peter Paul Rubens. "The adoration of the kings," as his first large-figure and only upright-formatted picture, was one of two Italian-influenced paintings, with altarpiece-type proportions, Masaccio-type Moor, late Quattrocento-type bending and kneeling kings, and Michelangelo-type upper body for the Christ Child against balanced interweaving of strong and subdued reds, pink, green, dun, chamois, and black. The other was the one work that he kept with him until death, his small picture of Christ with Raphael-type pivotally placed adulteress, as one of his most copied paintings along with "Winter landscape with a bird trap," in a mature, rare grisaille with brown touchings and gray shades, and with his favorite theme of humility and tolerance. His only mythological "Landscape with the fall of Icarus" had its ploughman doing business as usual, thereby acting out the German proverb of no plough stopping for the sake of a dying man. Elsewhere, subtly color-schemed figures and spaces pioneered applying Hugo van der Goes-type stupid staring to bug-eyed, senselessly frenzied human automatons in "Parable of the blind" and bringing together in one artwork about 100 "Proverbs." He foreran Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio and Rembrandt in daringly artificial light effects for great spiritual depth with the brightly illuminated head of St John the Evangelist asleep and the supernaturally lighted Virgin Mary dying uncustomarily surrounded by patriarchs, martyrs, holy virgins, and confessors. The later bareboned getting across attitudes and moods by key body language, as in "The big fish eating the little fish," and by untraditional symbols, as in gluttonously round bulks of bellies and trees in "The land of Cockaigne," took the place of his earliest image- and motif-crowded works, as in the Botticelli-type Calumny with the King and his advisors, Ignorance and Suspicion, for his print series on "Vices" and in the Hieronymus Bosch-type grotesque animal and human combinations of fantasies running wild, with the "Christ in limbo" and "Last judgment" drawings and with the many-hued, -shaded, -textured, and -tinted "Fall of the rebel angels," "Mad Meg," and "Triumph of death" paintings. Throughout, his art drew on a mastery of color, from the wintry crisp, subdued black, brown, gray and white "Hunters in the snow" to the delicately dun, gray, mauve and subdued green "Misanthrope" and the pointillistically fresh-leafed "Landscape with the magpie on the gallows." So author Wolfgang Stechow leaves readers on good terms with the 16th-century Flemish artist's hugely productive career and scantily documented life. His clearly written and helpfully illustrated book works well with HIERONYMUS BOSCH by Jos Koldeweij et al, SEBASTIANO SERLIO ON ARCHITECTURE, SERLIO ON DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE, and ALBRECHT ALTDORFER AND THE ORIGINS OF LANDSCAPE by Christopher S Wood.

I got this book two or three years ago in an Italian-language edition. I can't read Italian, so I can't comment on the quality of the text, but I can say that any Bruegel fan will be very happy to have this book, with or without readable words.

The trouble with most Bruegel books is that they show tiny reproductions of the paintings, necessarily much reduced in size, and, if you're lucky, show a detail or two of each picture. Yet more than any other painter I know of, the pleasure of Bruegel is in the mass of figures. There is no point at all in looking at a painting like the "Children's Games" if you can't spend a good long time looking at all the different figures, enjoying their games and funny poses, and marvelling that the artist could paint them all with such confidence, in translucent paint and with such a sure touch that it looks as if he never rubbed anything out in his whole career.

That's why this book is such a joy: there are ten full-page details of the "Children's Games", on good big pages and in very accurate color. There are ten full-page details of the "Carnival and Lent" picture, and six of the "Suicide of Saul", which is such a small picture to begin with that the details in this book are mostly larger than actual size.

The selections in this book, as the title says, are limited to the pictures in the Vienna museum. This is not as bad a limitation as it might sound, since the majority of Bruegels in the world are probably in this museum. The larger of the two Tower of Babel paintings is here (the one with Nimrod in the foreground), and so are the "Conversion of St. Paul", some of the most famous landscapes, and the splendid "Road to Calvary", with the wonderful classical Mary surrounded by horrible fairground types. All of the pictures are shown with no fewer than four detail pages.

Limiting the book to the Vienna museum does mean that some favorites are left out, though. The Fall of the Rebel Angels, The Triumph of Death, and the smaller, redder Tower of Babel are not in this book. It's still a wonderful volume.

Pieter Bruegel The Elder must have been a very interesting fellow. I would have liked to have known him. This lovely book lets you enter the strange world of Bruegel, overflowing with the reality of the 16th century Netherlands mixed (in the same painting) with biblical and classical scenes! To the modern eye and mind these are very disconcerting combinations! You have the Tower Of Babel being constructed next to a waterway which contains European sailing ships, while off in the distance you can see the houses of Antwerp. You have Icarus falling into the sea while a 16th century farmer walks by with his ox and while another man fishes nearby, both seemingly oblivious to the fate of the poor man. Bruegel's paintings, most of which were done on wood panel, are full of many different people doing many different things. You get a sense of hustle and bustle and life. Oftimes the people are odd-looking and have strange physiques. Children are indistinguishable from adults. Visual puns abound. Men at a wedding dance have outrageously bulging codpieces; bare buttocks are sometimes visible through windows. Other paintings contain moral lessons and are full of horrible demons or skeletons rampaging through the countryside like some awful supernatural army, raping and murdering. Still other paintings are of idyllic scenes, such as maidens walking through the countryside at harvest time or children playing games on the ice during winter. Bruegel was a master of color and the harvest scenes glow with golden yellow and the winter scenes chill you with whites and subtle greys and leaden skies. Taschen has done it again with another fine book with excellent commentary and high quality reproductions. The paintings of Bruegel are full of humor and horror and beauty and ugliness and sometimes so much is going on you can't digest it all at one time. The paintings of Bruegel are full of life.

Mondrian's work is, in my opinion, best appreciated in context. He didn't simply arrive at perpendicular lines as form overnight, and this book demonstrates how Mondrian evolved as an artist over time. The text is highly readable, never too lofty, and quite fascinating at times. Those who are not entirely familiar with Mondrian's career or who want insight into his vision as an artist would do best to consult this text and its many color plates.

Reading this is a must for any artist .

What can I say but I was told to read this and am so glad I was. Some of the best advise I ever got .

TO read the book and what is in it !

A good overall introductory-level book of Mondrian's work. Lots of full-color illustrations, many full page, and relatively short text make this book easy for the reader who is developing an interest in Mondrian's work.

The author places Mondrian's work within the context of the times it was made, discussing concurrent developments and how other artist's work was influential on Mondrian, and how his work in turn influenced other artists. Several illustrations reproduce the work of these other artists.

The text is both biographical and developmental, as the various periods of Mondrian's work are all discussed, from his earliest Hague school-influenced landscapes through his Cubist inspired works to his mature Neo-Plastic paintings.

The photographic reproductions are excellent, and the text is informative without being scholarly. For anyone needing an introduction to Mondrian's work and career, this is the book for you.

I have been interested in the Holocaust for some time, and picked up this book because it seemed like it would be a good overview, and still give me the human side of the story. I was happy to find out that it was very well presented--every two pages is a new topic, and it is laid out with pictures, graphs, and personal recollections which make it easy to grasp. The book is laid out chronologically, which makes it easy to follow, and the language isn't difficult to understand.

Mr. Gilbert's grasp of history and what makes history accessible is discovered during the reading of this book. He seems to know that, with this topic especially, the use of personal stories personifies the experience for the reader.

A very good book, and I would recommend it to anyone.

Martin Gilbert, better known for extremely detailed, research-heavy histories and biographies, has chosen to work from established primary and secondary sources in this history of the Holocaust. As a result, the reader with a strong background in this history will not find much new. However, the book is extremely well-written and very accessible--I read it in two sittings, and my 12-year-old brother has just started it.

In addition to effective writing, Gilbert includes some chilling photographs and reproductions of other primary sources. Especially disturbing are German documents cold-bloodedly noting that so many Jews arrived at such-and-such a camp, of whom X were killed immediately, and Y put to work.

Parents who believe their children are of an appropriate age might consider reading this book together as a way of introducing the most important, and most horrific, crime of this century. It is important.

When one of the world's most eminent historians takes on the single most amazing phenomenon of the century, the Holocaust, it gives one pause for thought. So here we have Sir Martin Gilbert, a noted Holocaust authority, writing masterfully about the events leading up to and including the systematic persecution, deportation and murder of the Jews of Europe. His stirring and singular narrative is regularly punctuated by a number of poignant and shocking eyewitness accounts of many who lived through those numbing events. The test is extremely approachable and easy to read, so that the non-historian can appreciate the breadth and scope of his recounting of the events during the 12-year reign of terror levied by the National Socialists in Nazi Germany.

His approach is chronological, much like that employed in his best-selling three volume series on the 20th century. While he relies heavily on established secondary sources for his documentation, the power of his prose and his well-organized approach makes this an entertaining and educational tome to venture into. Although nowhere near as comprehensive as some other tomes such as Klaus Fischer's "History Of An Obsession", he does trace the centuries' long tradition of anti-Semitism culminating in the official state sanctioned approach codified in the institutionalized Nuremberg laws. In all this, Gilbert brilliantly employs survivor's recollections to paint the atrocities in the hues and colors of real human beings, ordinary and identifiable individuals caught in the insanity of the Third Reich. Furthermore, he pursues their individual identities and humanity by giving the reader information on the postwar futures of these people.

So much has been written about the Holocaust that it is difficult to imagine much new or novel to arise some fifty years after the end of the war. Yet the stage always remains open for the unusual display of finely crafted historical perspectives and brilliantly executed prose. The brilliance in this dazzling book is, as Oscar Schindler would have said, in the presentation. Although I have read a number of other books about these times and events that were more detailed, more graphic, or more comprehensive, this is without a doubt the single most impressive, cohesive, and authoritative volume I have read to date regarding the Holocaust in its enormity, and placed in an understandable and comprehensible context. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in owning the single best one-volume book summarizing and explaining the realities of the Holocaust.

The verse of Ligurian poet Giuseppe Conte is finally available to an English-language audience with THE OCEAN AND THE BOY, Laura Stortoni's translation of his 1983 book "L'oceano e il ragazzo." Conte is one of the most striking poets in Italian literature of the second half of the 20th century, and he has fused Ligurian hermeticism with a deep concern for the natural world.

Giuseppe Conte's poetry is always aware of the fact that Nature remains the foundation and background for any civilization, even though she may be easily forgotten. He writes of how Mediterranean civilizations are all intricately linked with their common setting of sand and ocean, and the "I" in Conte's poetry is often linked to flora and fauna. In "After March" he writes, "I want only to bloom, to live again,I,/no longer I, but hibiscus, acacia." Conte's fascination with how Man remains connected to the land makes him an interesting European counterpart to Gary Snyder or the Native American poet Ray A. Youngbear.

Giuseppe Conte is learned in English literature and admires the works of D.H. Lawrence and Walt Whitman. As he writes in his introduction to this English edition, his thoughts have often been directed west to the Americas, and in fact he has travelled to the U.S. several times after the publication of "L'oceano e il ragazzo." In several places here, such as "The Conquest of Mexico," his poetry deals with the Aztec gods, metaphors for a natural world that remains even after the religion that personified its aspects has become extinct.

I can't comment much on Stortoni's translation of Conte's Italian, as I read the Italian text in this facing-page translation. However, I have glanced at her translation and it seems relatively faithful, although as a non-native speaker of English she does make occasionally idiosyncratic choices of phrase. Nonetheless, she deserves praise for making the work of the fascinating poet accessible to the English-language reader. She has also translated Maria Luisa Spaziani's SENTRY TOWERS into English and is certainly doing a great service for English speakers.

While not as intensely sublime as the poetry of Eugenio Montale, another famous Ligurian and winner of the Nobel prize in 1975, and not as influential as the works of Quasimodo or Ungaretti, the poetry of Giuseppe Conte is certainly worth a look. His use of modern style while reaching back to the dawn of Mediterranean civilization is truly moving.

Book Review: "The Ocean and the Boy"

"The Ocean and the Boy" is a wonderful compilation of Italian poetry written by Giuseppe Conte and translated by Laura Stortoni. Conte's poems touch on many themes, from pre-Colombian Mexico, to his childhood, to Greek mythology. My favorite theme, though, one that runs consistently through Conte's poetry, is the theme of Nature. Conte spends many lines either intricately describing the flora and fauna that surrounds him, or defining himself in terms of Nature: "I want only to bloom, to revive, I,/ no longer I, but hibiscus, acacia. . ." Of particular interest to me were his poems about the sea, including "What Was the Sea?", "You Should Have Heard the Wind", and "The Ocean and the Boy Walk...." I love the way Conte describes the ocean of his childhood: "It had/ tails and paws of water among the/ rocks, it polished the pebbles, it made. Cyphers of light on the sand: it was/ deep but unfeeling, they said, and celibate, individual, sterile." and "the wind/ of the sea, lifting the waves, tearing up/ the clouds and reweaving them. . ." These poems spoke to me because as a child that had the good fortune to grow up near the sea, Conte made me recall my own experiences: warnings of the oceans unpredictable behavior and the terror I felt (and still sometimes feel in my nightmares) that the huge mass of blue would swallow me up if I waded in too deeply. Yet, one does not have to have had to experience the sea as a child to appreciate these poems, only an understanding of the ocean as a metaphor for incomprehensible and seemingly endless vastness. In "The Ocean and the Boy Walk" Conte presents the ocean as a metaphor for his mind or unconscious, Conte IS the ocean, the ocean (his unconscious) even speaks for him when he cannot "The Boy is mute, the Ocean cries/ far-off cries,...the Ocean does not keep silent, no,/ the Boy descending, knows/ there is a voice, deeper than the darkness. . ." The layout of this book is as equally as impressive as the poetry contained within. Each original poem is presented with the English translation on the opposite page, giving the reader the opportunity to reference as they please. Having the poems side by side makes this book perfect for those interested in learning Italian or learning how to translate from Italian to English, or vice versa, regardless of the reader's level. Printing the Italian is also a credit to the translator, Laura Stortoni, for this forces her to be extremely true to the original poem. That aside, credit is due to her just for the simple fact that now those who are not literate in Italian have the opportunity to enjoy Conte's poetry. When I was studying for my B.A. in Spanish Literature I came to realize just how important it was to experience the literature of other cultures. And of course no translation, no matter how accurate, can compare with the original, but reading a translated version is better than nothing at all. I also began to understand that what makes a good novelist, playwright, or poet, are those can reach an audience beyond their own culture. This is the type of poet Conte is: universal. This book of poetry is filled with poems that can speak to any human once the barrier of language has been broken down. I highly recommend it.

A poetry lover from Santa Barbara, CA

Translator's Comments By Laura Anna Stortoni

Translating, From the Latin, transferre, means, in simple words, to carry something from one place to another. The literary translator carries words, the heaviest of all burdens, from one language to another. But the very act of choosing a certain poem is, first of all, a profession of identification. A remote, often arcane, reason strikes a special inner chord in the translator's soul, giving him/her no peace until the original poem is eaten, chewed, absorbed and finally regurgitated in the other language, having become fiber of the fiber, flesh of the flesh, of the translator. After translating a poem, I often think of it as mine. If I wanted to translate it in the first place, it was a poem I should have written myself. Giancarlo Pontiggia says that the literary translator should simply go where the text orders him to go, letting himself be carried away. I have always trusted my mysterious illuminations far more than the painstaking thirteen drafts that some have recommended for literary translators. While translating Giuseppe Conte's poetry, the "carrying" of the verses was light, spontaneous, with the English words magically appearing to my mind while I was reading the Italian text. This probably happened because Conte speaks of places I have seen, of feelings I have felt. The sea he describes was the sea where every summer I would roam those vast beaches, burnt by the sun and vexed by the winds.

Conte is as possessed by the sea as I am. The sea invades us, pervades us, in the same way that it pervades the poetry of Salvatore Quasimodo and of the Greek poets Elytis and Seferis. As I read Conte's poetry, I saw; and as I saw, the images translated themselves into English without any apparent effort on my part. This is the magic wrought by the poetry that strikes our arcane inner chords. The sea described in this volume is seen with the wonder of a child's eyes, a wonder akin to that of Homeric heroes. It is the "wine-colored sea" described by Homer, a sea fighting and loving, with unpredictable alternation, the earth and the beach, a sea that attempts to conquer, to devour, to attack, to then retreat in peace and soothing calm. The landscapes and seascapes described here are mythical and yet precise: for myths are never general, rather, they emerge from a complexity of details. Conte mentions specific names of local flora and fauna, describes the lush, precarious hills sloping towards the sea, attracted to the waves and yet threatened by them, just as we humans are attracted to danger. This landscape/seascape, sketched with the detailed technique of a naif painter, is a precise childhood memory acquiring the haunting proportions of myth. These memories deserve to be carried and be recorded into another language, so that they can also affect those who cannot read the original. And so I translated them. As a translator, I often feel, humbly, that I have opened a door so that others can enter. Please come in.

When Michel Tournier is mentioned to someone, you often hear comments like: "Isn't that the author who could only write about human sexual perversions?", but if you examine his work more deeply, you'll see that there is a lot more to his writing than that.

"The Ogre" is his second novel and it starts by telling us the story of a French mechanic named Abel Tiffauges, living during the end of 1930's, who one day injures his right hand.

This fascinating novel is divided into six segments, from wich the first (and the longest) is the most fascinating, as it deals with this multi-dimencional character's past and present by the way of one year's worth of diaries wich he starts writing with his left hand after the previously mentioned accident. By the end of the segment this strange character of Abel Tiffauges with his peculiar habits and personality feels extremely real and deep, hence securing the feeling of reality of the whole artistically written book. Finally, the segment ends as Tiffauges stops writing after the beginning of the war between France and Germany.

The first segment is followed by three weaker segments wich, unlike the first one, are told in a traditional third-person narrating and are filled with surprisingly unlikely coincidences and forced events as they describe Tiffauges' journey through nazi-Germany, first as a French soldier, then as a prisoner of war, and finally a ranger.

Then the novel improves again as it gets to its fift segment, wich almost raises to the level of the first one. It shows us an itriquing transformation process, as, again by ridiculously not beliavable coincidences, Tiffauges ends up being an SS-officer and an instructor in a Hitler-Jugend training facility.

Step by step this first reluctant character grows more and more fascinated with anti-semitism and the complex scientific assumptions about racial differences. The segment is dark and unsettling, as the character is devided into two, when he can't separate reality with what he's been thought.

In the sixth and final segment the reader gets to witness Tiffauges' journey through chaos, as he experiences an enlightment that leads to his understanding of his own inner evil and eventually to self-destruction. This process is unevenly described, and not sufficiently explained, as it occurs suddenly and doesn't really lead anywhere.

The ending of the book is blurry, and it leaves the reader frustrated, as it leaves issues unfinished and not dealt with.

In the end "The Ogre" is a book that I recommend to anyone, even though many people will probably not like it as much as I did.

But weather you like it or not, don't leave it unfinished. Once you start it, you'll have to see it through.

Truly one of the great works of recent French literature.

Michel Tournier is, without doubt, the most important French writer of the last 50 years. One of his biographers has spoken of him having "Reconceived the very nature of fiction". 'The Ogre' (his second book) is widely regarded as one of the greatest novels of that same period and yet it seems to have fallen, if not into obscurity, then at least somewhat out of the spotlight.

Tournier is most interested in the essential myths of Western culture. He reinterprets these in his novels and uses them to critique the assumptions and the norms of our society.

'The Ogre' or 'The Erl-King' as it was originally titled, is an utterly extraordinary book. It concerns the life of Abel Tiffauges, a physical monster, but also an innocent. His story is set largely among the rise and fall of the third Reich, but encompasses a breathtaking array of mythological, psychological and spiritual ideas.

The language of the novel is sumptuous, the attention to detail unparallelled. Certain passages of the book are completely heart-breaking, particularly when exposing the casual cruelty of man, whilst others are entrancingly beautiful.

Alongside that the book is also a compulsively readable tale of adventure, destiny and discovery. Full of wonderfully arcane details and fabulously structured parallels and mirrors the book continually delights and enriches the reader.

I've just finished re-reading 'The Ogre', some 12 or so years after my first encounter, and I can honestly say it's still the best book I've ever read.

All lovers of Nabokov, Calvino, Borges, Joyce & John Banville, to name a few, should order their copy now!

This is a useful, and highly browseable book. It is a lot of fun, and the author enjoys tracing bawdy terms as well as all the other words in English.

The only drawback to this book is that it is twenty years old, and the study of Indo-European has made enormous progress in those twenty years. As an example, Watkin's dictionary of Indo-European roots (SECOND edition) has virtually obsoleted his first edition -- which was about twenty years old.

But it's enjoyable and useful!

I am a college junior, and I have found no book more helpful in my studies than this one. It is a great reference work that can be used for so many topics and in so many contexts. It is a necessity in my reference collection. The etymlogies of so many roots and words are throroughly explained, and done so with amazing clarity.

Word Ninja

Among the 5,000 books in my library, 50 or 60 of them being dictionaries, this is one of the most erudite and entertaining -- a rare combination. The author's knowledge of literature and language is quite remarkable. Apart from being an invaluable serious reference work it is also a wonderful tome for reading in bed (and it's not too heavy!) It is somewhat too complex, too "deep", to buy as a birthday present for an Auntie or Uncle with everyday interests, but it would make a wonderful present for a gifted young nephew or niece who loves to explore and learn about the wondrous riches of our linguistic and literary heritage

Parlorpress.com is going to put out a new and full translation in the Fall of 2003. I like this abridged edition for my pocket version. I enjoyed starting from this book to see if the tales also had anything to do with Estensi/Ferarra history...and find it was written as a pleasant pastime for the recovering Duke Ercole...'read slowly on a sunny summer day in a room full of open windows...'
Charles Ross did wonderful research. I have seen commentary by C.S. Lewis on Boiardo and the epic tale and read Fortune and Romance essays edited by JoAnne Cavallo. But C.Ross is excellent for a short history of the time, as well.
For independent background on the D'Estensi (D'Este family) and interaction from Feltrino Boiardo (grandfather) to Matteo Maria, these texts are also good: Edmund Gardner's Dukes and Poets of Ferarra; Ferarra the Style of Renaissance Depotism by Werner L. Gundersheimer and Leon Battista Alberti: Master Builder by Anthony Grafton (not much in this title about Boiardo: I used it to confirm or reference related information on Ferarra).
The Boiardo information from Edmund Gardner's book is also still cited by literature scholars, from what I've seen.

Here's what C.S. Lewis wrote about the epic Italian romances of the Renaissance:

"Neglect of Italian romances robs us of a whole species of pleasure and narrows our very conception of literature. It is as if a man left out Homer, or Elizabethan drama, or the novel. For like these, the romantic epic of Italy is one of the great trophies of the European genius: a genuine kind, not to be replaced by any other, and illustrated by an extremely copious and brilliant production. It is one of the successes, the undisputed achievements."

Similarly, one of the undisputed achievements in the shamefully short history of translating these Italian romances into English is Ross' translation of Boiardo's "Orlando Innamorato." This translation was originally published (hardcover only) by the University of California Press in its Biblioteca Italiana series. Then, Oxford University Press published an abridged paperback version in its World's Classics series. Now, Parlor Press offers both a complete paperback and an e-book version. Note that the Parlor Press edition is an ***unabridged*** edition that incorporates the maps of the Oxford edition, as well as offering a newly revised and amended translation.

Readers in English are now, possibly for the first time in history, adequately equipped to read the major Italian epic romances in complete, readable, even admirable English translations. For Pulci's "Morgante," we have Tusiani's massive translation, generously offered by Indiana University Press as a handsome, unabridged paperback. For Boiardo's "Orlando Innamorato," we of course have this outstanding contribution from Ross. For Ariosto's "Orlando Furioso," we have the choice of Waldman's eminently readable prose translation, in one volume in Oxford UP's World's Classics series, or Barbara Reynolds' popular two-volume verse translation in the Penguin Classics series. Finally, for Tasso's "Jerusalem Delivered," we have Esolen's recent, critically acclaimed translation, published by Johns Hopkins UP.

I can only express my gratitude to these scholar-translators, whose indefatigable work in translating these Carolingian epics has given me access to a wonderfully rewarding, indisputably major piece of Western literature. I understand that Ross is currently working on a translation of Statius' epic poem "The Thebaid," to be published by Johns Hopkins, and that Esolen is contemplating undertaking a new translation of Camoes' "The Lusiads," which is quite possibly the most neglected ***major*** epic in Western literature. I look forward to both these editions, and again--thanks.

Here's what C.S. Lewis wrote about the epic Italian romances of the Renaissance:

"Neglect of Italian romances robs us of a whole species of pleasure and narrows our very conception of literature. It is as if a man left out Homer, or Elizabethan drama, or the novel. For like these, the romantic epic of Italy is one of the great trophies of the European genius: a genuine kind, not to be replaced by any other, and illustrated by an extremely copious and brilliant production. It is one of the successes, the undisputed achievements."

Similarly, one of the undisputed achievements in the shamefully short history of translating these Italian romances into English is Ross' translation of Boiardo's "Orlando Innamorato." This translation was originally published (hardcover only) by the University of California Press in its Biblioteca Italiana series. Then, Oxford University Press published an abridged paperback version in its World's Classics series. Now, Parlor Press offers both a complete paperback and an e-book version. Note that the Parlor Press edition is an ***unabridged*** edition that incorporates the maps of the Oxford edition, as well as offering a newly revised and amended translation.

Readers in English are now, possibly for the first time in history, adequately equipped to read the major Italian epic romances in complete, readable, even admirable English translations. For Pulci's "Morgante," we have Tusiani's massive translation, generously offered by Indiana University Press as a handsome, unabridged paperback. For Boiardo's "Orlando Innamorato," we of course have this outstanding contribution from Ross (with a foreword by the master-translator of Dante himself, Allen Mandelbaum). For Ariosto's "Orlando Furioso," we have the choice of Waldman's eminently readable prose translation, in one volume in Oxford UP's World's Classic series, or Barbara Reynolds' popular two-volume verse translation in the Penguin Classics series. Finally, for Tasso's "Jerusalem Delivered," we have Esolen's recent, critically acclaimed translation, published by Johns Hopkins UP.

I can only express my gratitude to these scholar-translators, whose indefatigable work in translating these Carolingian epics has given me access to a wonderfully rewarding, indisputably major piece of Western literature. I understand that Ross is currently working on a translation of Statius' epic poem "The Thebaid," to be published by Johns Hopkins, and that Esolen is contemplating undertaking a new translation of Camoes' "The Lusiads," which is quite possibly the most neglected ***major*** epic in Western literature. I look forward to both these editions, and again--thanks.

This is an absolutely exquisite book, with highgloss paper and wonderful color reproductions of marvelous paintings.

To this, Drury offers his expert commentary on how one might look at these paintings to see the painter's perspective on the Christian faith.

One will learn much about looking at paintings, and will never casually observe a painting again. I especially have grown fond of two paintings that this marvelous book acquainted me with, Titian's "Vendramin Family" and Lippi's "The Annunciation." Drury's comments here are very useful.

I would like to give this five stars, but withheld this because of my disagreement theologically with Drury. His theology is far too liberal for me, and I'm afraid that he will sway many who will trust his opinion of Divine Scripture as "the gospel truth, or historical critical truth."

A book to consider to turn to to aid one in viewing Christian painting.

John Drury is an art historian who uses his vocation as a priest to explain the subtlety of meaning that lies hidden in the symbolism of religious paintings in London's National Gallery.

Anyone how has looked at such a painting but not "seen" it, would do well to read this wonderful book and share the insights that the author offers. Paintings that I would have passed by with scarcely a second glance, are revealed within a context of their time, with reference to their history, the world view of the artist, the common and uncommon symbolism employed and much else besides.

It gives the possibility of sharing a visual language that we have lost and enables us to understand what it is about a picture that we sense is great, without comprehending why that might be.

It is hard to think that anyone who has ever visited an art gallery could not profit from reading this book and has certainly given me the enthusiasm to go and look at the pictures for myself.

Painting The Word is a truly outstanding guide to Christian paintings and their meanings brings art and spirituality together in an inspiring coverage. More than a history of painting, this discusses how Christian images reflected and influenced Christian civilization as a whole, with a universal quality delivering balanced messages. Color reproductions of significant Christian works appear throughout.