european

I have both of Tudy's books; she also wrote The Secret Gardens of
Venice. In October, I had the honor of meeting Tudy (what a colorful and dramatic character!) in Venice and accompanying her on a private garden tour of this magical city. She truly knows the aesthetic history of Venice and it shows in her books.

This is a terrific buy. If you never wanted to go to Venice before - you will now! The photographs are outstanding and the text not too boring. An invaluable reference for artists. Thank heaven someone thought to study these ancient floors before they are lost! Supposedly "there is nothing new under the sun", well, I would consider having one of these designs in a new home, if I could find anyone with the patience to complete one!

Despite their somber tone and sometimes dark narrative sequences, all these stories are beautiful. Each is a metaphor (pardon the buzz word) of some aspect of the human condition and the human psyche in a world that seems to offer little hope and less joy. Each explores a distinct dimension of our emotional lives in such limit situations as illness, imprisonment, alienation, mental derangement and death. Each affords immediately clear universal resonance while probing the entirely unique sensibilities of modern Greeks.

A story about a Greek immigrant couple in Australia explores themes like loss of identity, resignation in the face of radical change, conformity... and materialism. Petros becomes Peter and Panayiota is transmogrified into Pat, and they acquire wall-to-wall carpeting and marry off their daughter in a splendid wedding where even the waiters wear gloves.

Political repression and police brutality become painfully real in another story set in the period of the Communist insurrection.

Yet another story relates the first-person hospital experience of a badly injured construction worker whom medical personnel wrap in plaster and then finish off by plastering up his eyes and mouth. The anecdotal experience is secondary to the patient's anxieties and his not always successful struggle to keep a grasp on reality while undergoing it. Pain and discomfort bring on paranoia: ...I thought I heard whispering behind me... I could neverthless sense a slight change in her attitude. There is a particular beauty in this story because it captures the ambiguity so pervasive in contemporary life: has the patient's suffering caused him to lose contact with reality ... or has the medical staff actually decided to finish him off after learning from his X-rays that his body is apparently beyond repair.

The final selection, an extraordinarily successful novella that gives the book its title, is a longish first-person exploration of the female psyche, or what is left of it after more than half of a woman's life has been lived. The narrator is basically dishonest and superficial. She tries to give the impression of radical candor about herself and those who have been more or less important in her life. She is presently lonely and unhappy. She has had three husbands and several lovers. If there is a core of truth in her monologue -- and perhaps there is in every self-examination -- it is not so surprising that she is alone and lonely. It is clear that she deserves it, but the writer does not judge or condemn the speaker: he simply discloses a range of emotions and feelings. His grasp of modern psychology is uncommonly sound, but he (happily) refrains from analyzing his subject in psychological terms. He lets her do al the talking -- and talk she does, and in the process she shows an amazing lack of wisdom, for her age. She is a case study in stunted emotional growth and failure to face up to the reality of herself. Like all the pieces of fiction in the book, this one is massively successful.

The translators have done an extremely fine job. They have taken great care -- and probably devoted a lot of time -- to putting out an excellent piece of English prose.

Wonderful and eclectic mix of short stories. As a first-generation Greek-American, I am very familiar with these themes. However, the author touches many chords felt by all people, such as politics, God, family, regret, and hope. The story "You will find my bones under the rain" was especially good.

A wonderful piece of work, especially in terms of translation. Pitty, however, that it does not contain an index with the basic Latin terms in the original text. One has to read it with the Latin edition in his left hand all the time.

Ever heard the phrase "reasons of state"? Here is the princeps woork on it. Phillipe Augustus used it, Richelieu read it, sure Henry KIssinger read it, just did not cite it...can;t have an opinion on political science without this medieval gem.

Like any master of parody, Flaubert doesn't go completely overboard with this satire of the "...For Dummies" books of his day. If we know a bit about Flaubert, we know that his "definitions" in the book are tongue in cheek, but it's actually possible that a member of the French upper middle class in Flaubert's time would have picked this up and thought it a good handy reference book. Priceless, just priceless.

This is great humor, and the accepted ideas it mocks are actually remarkably similar to the accepted ideas of our own time. Flaubert has a way of stating these "facts" that holds them up to the light of his brilliant ridicule. Because a dictionary can contain pretty much anything, Flaubert uses this as a platform to discuss views on art, politics, philosophy, food, animals, and just about everything else. Don't expect, however, to read this and just take its opposite in order to understand Flaubert's mind -- sometimes there is double irony here, and the author is himself ambivalent about the proper "definitions" of the words he lists.

Overall, this is a genuinely funny read, and a useful insight into the petty bourgeois society (similar to our own) Flaubert loved to mock.

"ARTISTS. All charlatans. Boast of their disinterestedness (old-fashioned). Express astonishment that they dress like everybody else (old-fashioned). They earn insane amounts, but fritter it all away. Often asked to dine out. A woman artist cannot be anything but a whore."

Flaubert's satirical reference work, the Dictionnaire des Idées Reçues, reveals in a marvellously condensed form the writer's attitude toward the French bourgeois society in which he was brought up. It is a sort of guidebook to19th-century crassness, triteness, pomposity, and irrationalism decked out to look like reason. Clearly Flaubert regarded his own social class with a mixture of detestation, boredom, and intense fascination. He found both comic and tragic possibilities in this cultural stratum, which he mined relentlessly for the realistic details of his novels Madame Bovary, L'éducation sentimentale, and Bouvard et Pécuchet.

In the early 1850s (while at work on Madame Bovary) Flaubert referred in several letters to his "sottisier," a compendium of trite opinions, of the ideas that "ferment in the brains of the brainless." Flaubert never published his dictionary, although in a letter to his mistress, Louise Colet, he hinted that he intended to do so eventually. Topical dictionaries and digests of knowledge were popular in France, especially among the upwardly mobile, who may have fancied that posession of snippets of miscellaneous information conferred a patina of erudition, and made one's dinner-party conversation more sparkling. Flaubert must have enjoyed parodying the entire concept of the "authoritative" reference work; his private compendium was arranged in alphabetical order, with ludicrous cross-references, secondary definitions (which generally contradict the first one), and a tone of pompous omniscience.

The Dictionary's stock of platitudes served Flaubert as a sourcebook for the opinions of many characters in the novels Madame Bovary, L'éducation sentimentale, and Bouvard et Pécuchet. This work, as well as being enjoyable and witty reading for its own sake, is an indispensable artist's eye view of mid-nineteenth century bourgeois mores, and also provides some insight into the paradox the author struggled with in his novels: how to create pure art out of pure vulgarity.

"Dictionary of Silence", the second book of Slovene poetry translated by the exceptional Sonja Kravanja, presents a strong contrast in tone and feeling to the first. Debeljak's poems resound with longing, both in the physical world and the world of dreams. Each thematic series of prose poetry is defined by a particular realm , and a wish for the peace of existential existence.

Kravanja, once again, helps the American reader to begin to understand the heart of the disenfranchised peoples of Eastern Europe, while deftly fulfilling the promise of music and meaning implicit in Debeljak's work.

I found these poems reminiscent of several of this country's greatest poets of the 60's- the sense of loss, the sense of hopelessness, the wish for something more............

In this slim volume of poetry, so beautifully and thoughtfully translated by Sonja Kravanja, the reader discovers both glimpses of an unfamiliar world, but also hears echos of common human experience.The blend is almost eerie. For most Americans the region of the world that is the source of the poet's inspiration is remote and strange.In reading these poems the reader is drawn in, introduced to both the darkness and the light. I found the book moving in ways having to do with the soul more than the intellect. At the same time, the language is sophisticated, serene. This reader will return, many times to these pages.

Geoff Brock's translation is idiomatic, rhythmical, and utterly gorgeous. The poems actually seem to rise from the page; since this translator knows how convey Pavese's plain-speech eloquence, and his painterly crispness. It helps to have a real poet as a translator; Brock's own impressive poems appear in numerous journals. And I hope that this book will get publishing...in gear, and deliver us a collection of Brock's own work real soon.

As a poet myself, reading Pavese and working with translations from the Italian have helped my writing immensely. I was introduced to Pavese by my creative writing instructor early in my writing and have returned to him ever since. Narrative poetry at its eloquent and poignant best that finds a quiet, understated way of exploring and explaining the human condition.

What a remarkable book, especially for a "first-time" author! There is so much fascinating information contained in the space of 200 pages, it's a tribute to Mr. Curtis (and his editor) that he was able to sandwich everything in - and to keep the sandwich neat and tidy. The book is a joy to read, from when the statue is uncovered by a farmer on the Aegean island of Melos right up until the final flourish, when Mr. Curtis presents his conclusions concerning who sculpted the Venus, when it was done, and what makes the statue a great piece of art. At first, there was a dispute about who was going to get possession of the Venus - the Turks or the French. Mr. Curtis explains why it was so important for the French to bring home this prize: Greek works were considered the epitome of art, if they were from the classical period (around the 4th century B.C.). It was thought that you could do no better than to imitate what the Greeks had done, and the best way to imitate the Greeks was to have their works where your own artists could study them, copy them, and gain inspiration from them. The British had the famous Elgin marbles and the Vatican had the Apollo Belvedere (which was removed from the Louvre and returned to Italy after Napoleon's final defeat), so it was very important to the French that they "bring home the bacon" and get the Venus to Paris. Mr. Curtis did extensive research and it really shows: in addition to the story of the Venus, we learn a lot about Greek society, including the role of women and female sexuality. Mr. Curtis also gives us a crash course in Greek mythology (we need this information in order to understand his conclusions about why the statue was located where it was, its purpose, and what position the missing arms would have been in and what they were doing). The author also gives us a blow-by-blow description of the "battles of the scholars." French scholars were desperate to prove that the sculpture came from the "right" (classical) period and was not carved at a later date. (This was due to the huge influence of a thinker named Johann Winckelmann, who stated that Greek art from after the classical period was inferior.) Battling against the "French School" was the highly respected Adolf Furtwangler, who concluded (based on physical evidence found at the same site where the Venus had been unearthed) that the statue was created during the Hellenistic period, sometime around 100 B.C. This argument seems silly to us - after all, if the Venus is a great work of art, what's the difference? But it points out the importance of historical context and frames of reference. At that time, it was important to the cognoscenti that the sculpture have the right pedigree. This all allows Mr. Curtis to have a lot of fun showing us the mental "loop-the-loops" the various scholars went through trying to prove they were right and their opponents were wrong. This included much wishful thinking and groundless speculation, in addition to selective use of the available data. (Does this sound surprisingly modern to anyone out there?) Another section of the book I really enjoyed was where Mr. Curtis explained how the Venus de Milo would have been displayed back at the time she was created. Based on standard practice of the time, she would have been adorned with bracelets, earrings and a necklace; her hair would have been painted blonde and her lips would have been painted red; likewise, her drapery would have been painted. Mr. Curtis explains that nowadays we would think all of this would ruin the statue, but to the Greeks it all would have made her more lifelike. Over the years many people were involved with the story of the Venus de Milo, and the author doesn't miss out on the chance to humanize the story by letting us in on their idiosyncrasies. For example, one of the Frenchmen who went to Melos to try and get possession of the statue after the discovery was the comte de Marcellus. He was very eager to sail to the island, but not because he was an art lover. He had happened to see a beautiful girl in a painting by a Viennese painter by the name of Johann Ender. Marcellus was obsessed with the girl in the painting, and found out from Ender that she lived on Melos. So, Marcellus was interested in beauty - but not of the inanimate kind! The aforementioned Furtwangler was also a rather interesting specimen - he proposed to his future wife, Adelheid Wendt, on the first night he met her. As with many brilliant men, Furtwangler had no use for brains that he perceived as operating at a lower wattage. Thus, he referred to a fellow scholar as a "complete ignoramus" and he was never happier than when he was able to pick out a museum's prize piece and label it a fake. The book is full of people such as Marcellus and Furtwangler - brilliant, odd, and entertaining. There is one last thing I should mention: the title of my review refers to the artist who sculpted the Venus, a Greek man named Alexandros of Antioch. He also wrote poetry, and composed and sang songs. Those works are all lost to us, but we still cherish his greatest creation.

There aren't many titles about the Venus de Milo, and far fewer in English yet.

Gregory Curtis has written an entertaining and informative book that tells more than the usual cut and dry history and dates for the Venus de Milo. He has written a book that introduces a whole range of characters that had a direct influence on the statue from the time of her discovery on Milos through her arrival at the Louvre and her subsequent history.

I've always fancied myself as an armchair student of the Venus, but learned some new and fascinating things.

The book is a breeze to read. I only wish there had been many more illustrations and preferably some color shots.

Mr. Curtis is convincing in his opinion that the somewhat rough and crude arms found with the statue were probably the originals, but unfortunately, there is no illustration to show how the statue would have looked when she was finished.

This will make an excellent addition to art history libraries and enthusiasts bookcases everywhere.

Arndt's beautifully poetic translation overcomes a common problem among translations of the Divine Comedy, that you cannot read it as a poem but only as a kind of encyclopedia, full of painful details. Arndt allows the knowledgable reader to read this most marvelous of poems in a real way, with delicate breath and smoothness. His excellent combination of Dante's Italian terza rima with English's natural iambic pentameter is truly masterful, and it allows the poem to be read in a deep way, not the somewhat superficial way that most translations allow, even those which proclaim to be poetic but are actually nothing more than chopped-up prose. At the same time, however, Arndt's informative introduction and extremely helpful notes allow a reader to examine the text closely. This edition is, to me, the most satisfying of the four editions of the Divine Comedy I own.

Arndt proves himself a master of both poetry and language with this stunning translation of Dante's classic "Divine Comedy." His poetry is not only in perfect iambic pentameter and terza rima, but his translation captures the true essence of Dante's work -- both the torturous agonies of Hell and glorious ecstasties of Heaven. An absolute MUST for any fan of the great Italian poet

The elevated sound of poetry are here heard. Not fisical reality, but the ideal; In the Paradiso, ideas and feelings are visible. Dante sees God's unexpressible force: love.

I must first say that I was a bit perplexed to see that I was going to be the first to write a review on this book. Regardless of this, I must say that found The Comedy of Dante Alighieri : The Florentine/Cantica III : Paradise (Penguin Classics) by Alighieri Dante, et al to definetely to be in par with the previous two books, e.g., Inferno and Pergatory. Dante has a way with his language that he makes the words dance and sing; and therefore, often confusing texts suddenly become fully understandable. I did however find that some of the latter cantos to be difficult to understand; based on the fact that here he, i.e., Dante discuse allot of religious issues that were contemporary at the time. Overall, I would very much recommend this book, i.e., The Comedy of Dante Alighieri : The Florentine/Cantica III : Paradise (Penguin Classics) by Alighieri Dante, et al and I would have to say that I consider it to be one of the most interesting, thoughtworthy, and intriguing books that I have ever read.

This is a fantastic edition of the Inferno. It is the 1st time I've ever read the Divine Comedy besides excerpts attempting to ape the terza rima. While such exerpts are gratifying the way a 3rd generation video tape of a movie may be, it is far more fullfilling to read a 'literal' representation of the Italian text in English and then frame that within the borders of the original Italian. Singleton's notes are also exceptional and lead to a very complex reading of the text. In short, for someone who cannot speak a word of Italian but wants to have the richest reading of the text, from language to content to the culture the poem draws upon, this is the text to purchase. When I complete the Inferno I plan to complete the rest of the Dante's masterpiece with Singleton holding my hand.

I capitalize CHARLES SINGLETON because amazon.com pile their customer reviews into one long list, admitting no differences between translations. SINGLETON's very literal prose best serves the reader who would read the original Italian, and clarify his reading by referring to the facing English translation. You needn't have studied Italian for this, though some skill in another Romance language is very helpful. But if you insist on getting your terza rima secondhand, read Pinsky's Inferno(Pinsky has yet to bring over the Purgatorio and Paradiso).