Poetry : Continental European

For most of his life, Victor Hugo (1802-1885) was the most famous writer in the world. His legacy includes the nineteenth century's most celebrated works of drama, fiction, memoir, and criticism. But in his day Hugo was know foremost as a poet-indeed the greatest French poet of the age. He wrote with passion about history, erotic experience, familial love, philosophy, nature, social justice, art, and mysticism. In this new bicentennial edition, acclaimed poet and translator Brooks Haxton offers an exquisite selection of Hugo's finest work: love poems, historical tableaux, elegy, and idyll, including his incomparable "Boaz Asleep," which Marcel Proust praised as the most beautiful poem of the nineteenth century. more...

Price: $14.00

Known as the “Spanish Homer,” Luis de Góngora y Argote (1561–1627) is widely considered to be Spain’s greatest poet. He was both praised and vilified during his lifetime, but his reputation waned in the years after his death; in the 1920s, he was championed by the Modernists, including Federico García Lorca, and influential critics of Spanish literature, including Dámaso Alonso. Famous for intricate metaphors in baroque style and syntax, Góngora has even been immortalized as a literary term: a “gongorism” connotes an involved Latinate style. Yet despite his influence and reputation, Góngora is not well known to English-speaking readers. Selected Poems of Luis de Góngora aims to change that. Making the poet available to contemporary readers of poetry without denying him his historical context, Selected Poems of Luis de Góngora represents Góngora as master of many genres and a writer whose life and poetry are closely intertwined. His verse speaks of the hardships of love, current events, friendship, the trials of life at court, and the beauties of his beloved Córdoba. His ballads and lyrics embrace a great variety of subjects: stories from the border warfare between Moors and Christians, tales of romance, the treacheries of ambition, and above all, a self-mocking autobiography and his own, often irreverent, versions of famous literary themes. John Dent-Young’s free translations capture Góngora’s intensely musical voice and transmit the individuality and self-assuredness of the poet. The first significant edition of this seminal and challenging poet in a decade, Selected Poems of Luis de Góngora will find an eager audience among students of poetry and scholars studying the history and literature of Spain. more...

Price: $30.00

The Beach (La Spiaggia). They’ve all gone away —. the voice was blathering down the receiver. Then, knowingly: — They’ll not return —. But today. on this stretch of beach never visited before. those sunlight patches . . . Signals. of theirs, who hadn't left at all?. And when you turn they’re quiet, as if nothing. What’s being wasted from day to day. is not the dead, but it’s those. patches of the nonexistent, lime or ashes. ready to become light and movement. Don’t. be in doubt, — the sea’s strength assails me —. speak they will. Viewed as one of the most important Italian poets of the last century, Vittorio Sereni (1913–83) wrote with a historical sweep unlike that of any of his contemporaries. A poet of both personal and political responsibility, he wrote of life under fascism, military defeat and imprisonment, the Italian economic miracle and cold war in Europe, and the resurgence of extreme right-wing politics, as well as the roles played by love and friendship in the survival of humanity. An equally esteemed prose writer, his pieces on the contradictions of war and the complex purpose of poetry and the arts in society are seminal contributions to Italian literature. The first substantial translation of Sereni’s work published anywhere in the world, The Selected Poetry and Prose of Vittorio Sereni is a unique guide to this classic twentieth-century poet. This bilingual edition collects the most representative poems from Sereni’s oeuvre, as well as a selection of prose works that extends the themes of his poetry. The book also contains examples of Sereni’s short fiction, published here in English for the first time. With a full chronology, commentary, bibliography, and learned introduction by distinguished British poet and scholar Peter Robinson, The Selected Poetry and Prose of Vittorio Sereni is the only authorized rendering of Sereni’s verse in English. more...

Price: $35.00

The papers in this volume deal with central aspects of Simon Dach’s complete poetic works. One focus is on intensive textual interpretations, which take up topical research issues and apply their methodology to selected texts by Dach. In the process, particular attention is paid to Dach’s Modern Latin poetry, which has hitherto been neglected by research. This volume opens up many texts for research for the first time. Dach’s pro-loco disputation, the invitation to his inaugural lecture and numerous poems in German and Latin are edited with commentaries. A second focus is on aspects of the history of the aftermath and reception of his works. This volume provides the most comprehensive academic study of Simon Dach yet published, and is the first to give an overall impression of his poetic works and his influence on later writers. more...

Price: $248.00

Born into a wealthy family in Toulouse, Gabrielle de Coignard (ca. 1550-86) married a prominent statesman in 1570. Widowed three years later, with two young daughters to raise, Coignard turned to writing devotional verse to help her cope with her practical and spiritual struggles. Spiritual Sonnets presents the first English translation of 129 of Coignard's highly autobiographical poems, giving us a startlingly intimate view into the life and mind of this Renaissance woman. The sonnets are all written "in the shadow of the Cross" and include elegies, penitential lyrics, Biblical meditations, and more. Rich with emotion, Coignard's poems reveal anguished moments of loneliness and grief as well as ecstatic experiences of mystical union. They also reveal her mastery of sixteenth-century literary conventions and spiritual traditions. This edition, printed in bilingual format with Melanie E. Gregg's translations facing the French originals, will be welcomed by teachers and students of poetry, French literature, women's studies, and religious and Renaissance studies. more...

Price: $21.00