For Czesław Miłosz, certainly the most acclaimed Polish poet of the last century, poetry can serve as “an instrument that raises us above what we are.” In his admiring and authoritative biography, Andrzej Franaszek reveals Miłosz’ inner struggles in the context of the upheavals of twentieth-century Poland and of the entanglements of literature and politics.
Poet Jean-Christophe Bailly argues that contemporary urban spaces, whether sites of historic importance and cultural heritage or serving a purely functional purpose, no longer lend themselves to wandering and strolling. He compares the memories imposed in museums and on the construction sites of new cities with those of passers-by as they wander through the cityscape, the latter pensive memories he believes are the sole source of utopia.
Creating connections has been the aim of Jean Starobinski’s work for more than half a century. His body of work is large and shifting, created in response to life, lying somewhere between the critical and the clinical. Books & Ideas met this citizen of the world at his house in Geneva, following the recent publication of three important books.
Those I love create me, said the author of Le Fou d’Elsa. Aragon’s first great love was for André Breton: the letters he wrote to his mentor between 1918 and 1931 testify to the torments of a moral, artistic and political education.
Ulrich Raulff studies Stefan George’s tempestuous afterlife and the controversial interpretation of the poet’s political and aesthetic positions. He undertakes a group biography of George’s circle of disciples and shows how they furtively created specific focal points for German discussions about the Nazi past.
