- Paperback: 712 pages
- Publisher: Wesleyan University Press (Aug 21 2002)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0819565482
- ISBN-13: 978-0819565488
- Product Dimensions: 2.5 x 1.8 x 0.4 cm
- Shipping Weight: 1.2 Kg
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #838,253 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Details |
Product Description
Review
"Bottom: On Shakespeare speaks and sings of a proportion: love is to reason as the eyes are to the mind...It may be the most important book written since the invention of the motion picture medium." (Stan Brakhage, Film Culture )
Book Description
Written between 1947 and 1960 and first published in 1963, the prose work in the first of these two volumes reflects Louis Zukofsky's ongoing obsession with Shakespeare--whose plays he had first seen performed in Yiddish--and is central to understanding Zukofsky's work. Tracing the themes of knowledge, love and physical vision ("the eyes have it") through both Shakespeare's plays and the poetry, Bottom: On Shakespeare is more than a compendious act of homage by one poet to another. In effect, it lays out Zukofsky's poetics and theory of knowledge on a grand scale, tracing his themes through the whole of Western culture, from the Classical Greeks through William Carlos Williams.
The second volume of Bottom: On Shakespeare consists of Celia Thaew Zukofsky's spare operatic setting of Shakespeare's Pericles, Prince of Tyre, a play in which Zukofsky saw Shakespeare rewriting the classic plots and tropes of the Odyssey. The Wesleyan edition features a new foreword by Bob Perelman.
The second volume of Bottom: On Shakespeare consists of Celia Thaew Zukofsky's spare operatic setting of Shakespeare's Pericles, Prince of Tyre, a play in which Zukofsky saw Shakespeare rewriting the classic plots and tropes of the Odyssey. The Wesleyan edition features a new foreword by Bob Perelman.
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Thought as Music,
By A Customer
This review is from: Bottom: On Shakespeare (Paperback)
Of all the (countless) responses to the Bard by writers over the last four hundred years or so, this one may be the most idiosyncratic; it may also be the most intelligent, insightful and inspired. BOTTOM: ON SHAKESPEARE reminds me a little bit of Burton's THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY, first, in its encyclopedic bulk, and, second, in the preponderance of quotes in its pages. Louis Zukofsky was a world-class quoter (he's spiritual kin to Walter Benjamin, I think, who dreamed of writing-if that's the right word-a book composed entirely of quotations), and in BOTTOM, he cites everyone from Homer to Wittgenstein, and whole pages of Shakespeare, for the central purpose of elucidating what may be thought of as the book's thesis, which Zukofsky puts thus:"Love is to reason as the eyes are to mind." I don't pretend to understand entirely what that means. But the idea that to perceive something as it truly is requires love, or is the beginning of love, or both, is beautiful. It's important to keep in mind that although he was a professor of English, widely read, and had an acute literary-critical gift, Zukofsky was, above all, an artist. A staggering amount of scholarship went into BOTTOM, but it is, in the end, a poetic response to Shakespeare, a poet's reply to a poet. By academic standards, therefore, BOTTOM is downright eccentric. An example. Elsewhere, Zukofsky writes, "And it is possible in imagination to divorce speech of all graphic elements, to let it become a movement of sounds." Thought as music. A writer as deeply ethical as Zukofsky would never say something like that if he didn't mean it, and so we find that the second part of BOTTOM, the culmination of his thought on Shakespeare, isn't critical prose, but a musical setting for PERICLES, composed by Celia Zukofsky, Louis's wife. Obviously, this book isn't an introduction to Shakespeare. The student coming to grips with the Bard won't get much help here. Like Zukofsky's poetry, of which it's very much an extension, BOTTOM can be obscure and taxing. On the other hand, it's as beautiful as it is difficult. At every turn, some idea or turn of phrase will make the patient reader gasp (or sigh, I suppose, depending on one's temperament). For anyone really, vitally engaged with Shakespeare, for any fan of Zukofsky, and for anyone who really cares about poetry, five stars is too few to recommend BOTTOM: ON SHAKESPEARE.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
5.0 out of 5 stars (1 customer review) 20 of 20 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Thought as Music,
By A Customer - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Bottom: On Shakespeare (Paperback)
Of all the (countless) responses to the Bard by writers over the last four hundred years or so, this one may be the most idiosyncratic; it may also be the most intelligent, insightful and inspired. BOTTOM: ON SHAKESPEARE reminds me a little bit of Burton's THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY, first, in its encyclopedic bulk, and, second, in the preponderance of quotes in its pages. Louis Zukofsky was a world-class quoter (he's spiritual kin to Walter Benjamin, I think, who dreamed of writing-if that's the right word-a book composed entirely of quotations), and in BOTTOM, he cites everyone from Homer to Wittgenstein, and whole pages of Shakespeare, for the central purpose of elucidating what may be thought of as the book's thesis, which Zukofsky puts thus:"Love is to reason as the eyes are to mind." I don't pretend to understand entirely what that means. But the idea that to perceive something as it truly is requires love, or is the beginning of love, or both, is beautiful. It's important to keep in mind that although he was a professor of English, widely read, and had an acute literary-critical gift, Zukofsky was, above all, an artist. A staggering amount of scholarship went into BOTTOM, but it is, in the end, a poetic response to Shakespeare, a poet's reply to a poet. By academic standards, therefore, BOTTOM is downright eccentric. An example. Elsewhere, Zukofsky writes, "And it is possible in imagination to divorce speech of all graphic elements, to let it become a movement of sounds." Thought as music. A writer as deeply ethical as Zukofsky would never say something like that if he didn't mean it, and so we find that the second part of BOTTOM, the culmination of his thought on Shakespeare, isn't critical prose, but a musical setting for PERICLES, composed by Celia Zukofsky, Louis's wife. Obviously, this book isn't an introduction to Shakespeare. The student coming to grips with the Bard won't get much help here. Like Zukofsky's poetry, of which it's very much an extension, BOTTOM can be obscure and taxing. On the other hand, it's as beautiful as it is difficult. At every turn, some idea or turn of phrase will make the patient reader gasp (or sigh, I suppose, depending on one's temperament). For anyone really, vitally engaged with Shakespeare, for any fan of Zukofsky, and for anyone who really cares about poetry, five stars is too few to recommend BOTTOM: ON SHAKESPEARE. |
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