We call it a grain of sand, but it calls itself neither grain nor sand. It does just fine without a name, whether general, particular, permanent, passing, incorrect, or apt. Our glance, our touch mean nothing to it. It doesn’t… Read More ›
European Literature
Analysis of Vasko Popa’s The Fiery She-Wolf
On the surface, Vasko Popa’s fifth poetry collection, Wolf Salt (1975), appears to be one of his most hermetic works since it revolves around a wolf motif without many points of reference outside of the apparent symbolic. But once the… Read More ›
Analysis of Czesław Miłosz’s Encounter
Encounter We were riding through frozen fields in a wagon at dawn. A red wing rose in the darkness. And suddenly a hare ran across the road. One of us pointed to it with his hand. That was long ago…. Read More ›
Analysis of Paul Celan’s Death Fugue
There is little question that Death Fugue (Todesfuge) is Paul Celan’s most celebrated and anthologized poem, a work that, as Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi avers, has become “as much an icon of the Holocaust as the photograph of the little boy… Read More ›
Analysis of Czesław Miłosz’s Child of Europe
When accepting the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1980, Czesław Miłosz said, “I am a child of Europe, as the title of one of my poems admits, but that is a bitter, sarcastic admission.” Miłosz composed Child of Europe during… Read More ›
Analysis of Alfredo Giuliani’s Birthday
Alfredo Giuliani’s unrhymed free-verse poem Compleanno (Birthday) was first published in I novissimi: poesie per gli anni ’60 (1961), the famous and influential anthology of neo-avant-garde poetry that Giuliani himself edited, containing his own poetry and that of four other… Read More ›
Analysis of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Archaic Torso of Apollo
Archaic Torso of Apollo We cannot know his legendary head with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso is still suffused with brilliance from inside, like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low, gleams in all… Read More ›
Analysis of Tristan Tzara’s Approximate Man
This book-length poetic work was published in the same year that Tristan Tzara’s critical Essay on the Situation of Poetry (Essai sur la situation de la poésie) ran in the Marxist journal Surréalisme au service de la révolution (Surrealism in… Read More ›
Analysis of Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain
Considered a landmark in world literature, The Magic Mountain by the highly respected German novelist Thomas Mann (1875–1955) reveals the conflicting political and cultural trends that divided families and nations throughout Europe in the early 20th century. Set on a… Read More ›
Analysis of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s The Leopard
A historical novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (1896–1957), The Leopard was one of the most successful literary works of 20th-century European literature. The plot is straightforward: In 1860 Giuseppe Garibaldi and his forces have landed in Marsala (Sicily) to… Read More ›
Analysis of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time
The reclusive French writer Marcel Proust, now considered by many scholars as the greatest novelist of the 20th century, labored for more than 14 years and died while still adding to what would eventually be a seven-volume masterpiece. The novel… Read More ›
Analysis of Harry Mulisch’s The Assault
A gripping novel that challenges the notions of innocence and guilt, The Assault is considered among the greatest works of contemporary European fiction. Broken into five episodes, spanning 1945 to 1981, the novel by Dutch author Harry Mulisch (1927–2010) is… Read More ›
Analysis of Rubén Darío’s To Roosevelt
Poem Text It is with the voice of the Bible, or verse of Walt Whitman, that we should reach you, Hunter! Primitive and modern, simple and complicated, with a bit of Washington and a bit of Nimrod. You are the… Read More ›
Analysis of Dante’s Divine Comedy
Dante’s crowning achievement, one of the most important works in Western literature and undisputedly the most important poetic text of the European Middle Ages, is the great poem he calls his Comedy, or Commedia (ca. 1307–1321). This seems an odd… Read More ›
Analysis of Jean Cocteau’s Novels
Twentieth century art in many areas is indebted to Jean Cocteau (5 July 1889 – 11 October 1963). His accomplishments span the artistic and literary activities of his times, the diversity unified by his vision of all art as facets… Read More ›
Analysis of Hermann Broch’s Novels
Hermann Broch must surely be counted among such other major German novelists of the twentieth century as Franz Kafka, Mann, Robert Musil, Heinrich Böll, and Günter Grass, alongside such other creative artists as Wassily Kandinsky, Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka, Gustav… Read More ›
Analysis of Lope de Vega’s The Best Mayor, The King
Lope is like ten brilliant minds inhabiting one body. An attempt to enclose him in any formula is like trying to make one pair of boots to fit a centipede. —Ezra Pound, The Spirit of Romance Any gathering of the… Read More ›
A Brief History of European Novels
How early was the earliest novel? Critics attempt to establish a beginning for the form in order to make the analytical task manageable. Because the novel, as generally defined, holds many elements in common with drama, epic, folktale, fable, satire,… Read More ›
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