The Desire Notebooks - Couverture souple

High, John

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 1881471330 ISBN 13 : 9781881471332

Editeur : Spuyten Duyvil, 2002

Synopsis

Abstract, vivid and difficult, this harrowing first novel from PW contributing editor High (The Sasha Poems) combines metaphysical speculation with attention to the landscape and religion of Russia. High's three segments entitled "The Book of Mistranslations," "A Face of Desire" and "The Monks Overlooking the Story"Adescribe the recurrence and survival of human desire under the most adverse conditions. Fragments of letters, dialogues, prose poems and descriptive passages bleed into one another to follow a pair of young lovers and a pair of monks, whose travails, though focused on the present, take place over a 1000-year arc of Russian history. The unnamed lovers suffer extreme deprivation in the metaphysical Siberia of contemporary Russia, a place defined by cold, cancer, morphine and nausea. Struggling to stay together, trying to connect through body, word and writing, the lovers are sustained in their secular journey by the monks Peter and Ezekiel, who, High suggests, have been repeatedly reincarnated, always looking for ways to heal each other's pain. An epigraph from Simone Weil resonates with other gnomic prose throughout the novel, invoking an unseen, perpetually ramifying "event" all human beings must choose to accept. Often poetic to the point of hermeticism, High's prose can seem unpolished or pretentious, not quite able to hold together its narrative. At the same time, readers may respond to High's spiritual and intellectual ambition, his accurately conveyed desire to make a novel tell the story of love and death, always and everywhere. One form of clarity is provided by photographs throughout, never before released from the Sovfoto/Eastfoto Archives. (Oct.) Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

John High is the author of several books, including Ceremonies, Sometimes Survival, the lives of thomas-episodes and prayers, and The Sasha Poems: A Book of Fables. He is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including three Fulbrights, two National Endowments and poetry awards from the Witter Bynner Foundation, Arts International, and Arts Link. The publication in 1997 (excerpts from) The Sasha Poems met with extraordinary critical acclaim, here and abroad. He is the editor of Crossing Centuries: The New Russian Poetry (Talisman House). A founding editor of the Five Fingers Review, he has also co-translated books of the Russian poets Nina Iskrenko, Aleksei Parshchikov and Ivan Zhdanov.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Spuyten Duyvil
• Date d'édition: 2002
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1881471330
• ISBN 13: 9781881471332
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 280
• Coordonnées du fabricant: Manufactured by Amazon on behalf of the author; https://www.amazon.fr/hz/contact-us; ; c/o Amazon Media EU S.à.r.l., 38 Avenue John F. Kennedy; Luxembourg; L-1855; Luxembourg