- Paperback: 1 pages
- Publisher: New Directions (April 14 2009)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 081120135X
- ISBN-13: 978-0811201353
- Product Dimensions: 20.2 x 13.3 x 1.8 cm
- Shipping Weight: 272 g
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #938,023 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||
Product Details |
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
First Sentence
An express train was leaving Kursk station on a hot summer morning in the year 1900. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
An express train was leaving Kursk station on a hot summer morning in the year 1900. Read the first page
Explore More
Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
Customer Reviews
|
There are no customer reviews yet on Amazon.ca
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3.7 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A true artist is an iconoclast, Oct 29 2010
By Luc REYNAERT - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Safe Conduct (Paperback)
In this autobiographical essay B. Pasternak reveals his views on art, his failed careers, his life and loves as a student, his travels across Europe and the artistic and political scene in the USSR.After studying music (under the baton of A. Scriabin) and philosophy (neo-Kantianism in Marburg), Boris Pasternak finally found his true vocation: literature.
His artistic faith
As superbly explained by his French translator, Michel Aucouturier, B. Pasternak's aesthetics are fundamentally influenced by Schopenhauer. Art, true lyricism, binds 'the world as representation' (the objects) to the 'world as will' (our perceptions). True art reveals unexpected features, new aspects of reality. Prose or poetry give a name to these new aspects for the first time and in a unique manner. In this way, art creates a new reality through the 'strength' (the feelings of the author) and through images. In other words, the lyrical principle is a principle of subversion. Art cannot be driven by political imperatives. The poet is always a rebel against the social order: the most enduring images are those of the iconoclast.
Mayakovsky and the totalitarian State
Among the authors of the various Russian literary movements at the time, V. Mayakovsky was B. Pasternak's real hero. The suicide of the one `who had the novelty of the time in his blood', was a very serious blow for B. Pasternak and an unmistakable omen of things to come. (See the memoirs of D. Shostakovich for another view on Mayakovsky.)
During his travels across Europe, B. Pasternak was amazed by Venice, but he stumbles on its 'boca di leone'. Those boxes were for him the symbols of the totalitarian police State: mouths of lions are haunting you everywhere, putting their noses in everything that is intimate; mouths of lions that gobble up one life after another in the secret of their dens.
This literary and politically important book is not a good introduction to B. Pasternak's work. Its phraseology is sometimes ultra poetic. It lacks also the vigor of his masterpiece 'Doctor Zhivago', one of the greatest novels of all time.
5.0 out of 5 stars
He who has ears, let him hear, April 29 2011
By C. Davison "Monsieur Davison" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Safe Conduct (Paperback)
I was surprised to see only 2 reviews for this book. It is a beautiful short read that may not be appreciated by people who are too literal or lacking in imagination. It is a small but rich impression of the shadow of Mr. Pasternak's life. It is not the life itself but something found in the wake and ripples that are created along the way. I certainly recommend this book for anyone interested in a creative view of the world (perhaps the reviewer Kara J Buller is not one of these). I have given portions of the book even to undergrad students and they have truly connected with it. The life of Mr. Pasternak is told through the lens of poetry and mixed into this are insightful musings on the creative process. The author's insights are not too far separated from Rilke's writings on creativity and art.Take the following quote and if you find it engaging you will enjoy this short and enjoyable book. "And it is from this theme that art is born. It is more one-sided than people think. It cannot be directed at will where one wants like a telescope. Focussed on a reality which feeling has displaced, art is a record of this displacement. It copies from nature. How does nature get into this state of displacement? Details attain clarity, losing independence of meaning. Each detail can be replaced by another. Any one is precious. Any one chosen at random serves as evidence of the state which envelops the whole of transposed reality."
0 of 9 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars
Excruciating, July 23 2010
By Kara J Buller - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Safe Conduct (Paperback)
This was assigned to me in grad school in my "fiction as autobiography" class. It succeeded in making me angry for a week. I would write more but I don't want to spend any more time on this book.
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
