At last, we have the long-awaited English translation of Yves Bonnefoy’s celebrated work, L’Arrière-pays, which takes us to the heart of his creative process and to the very core of his poetic spirit. In his poem, “The Convex Mirror,” Bonnefoy writes: “Look at them down there, at that crossroads, / They seem to hesitate, then go on.” The idea of the crossroads haunts Bonnefoy’s work, as he is troubled by the idea that the path not taken may lead to the arrière-pays, a place of greater plenitude, and of more authentic being—an “elsewhere in the absolute.” Seized by this fear that what he terms “presence” exists always somewhere else, a little further on, Bonnefoy here sets out on a labyrinthine quest to find traces of this “original place,” which he locates not only in objects of knowledge and experience as diverse as the deserts of Asia, a hill fort in India, a church in Armenia, the painting of Piero della Francesca but also, crucially, in the undivided intensity of his experiences as a child. Written with a visionary grace, The Arrière-pays is a spiritual testament to art, philosophy, and poetry. Enriched by a new preface by the poet, this volume also includes three recent essays in which he returns to his original account of an ethical and aesthetic haunting, one that recounts the struggle between our instinct to idealize—what he deems our eternal Platonism—and the equally strong need to combat this and to be reconciled with our nature as finite beings, made of flesh and blood, in the world of the here and now.

    

    Paxton's classic study of the aftermath of France's sudden collapse under Nazi invasion utilizes captured German archives and other contemporary materials to construct a strong and disturbing account of the Vichy period in France. With a new introduction and updated bibliography, "Vichy France" demonstrates that the collaborationist government of Marshal Pétain did far more than merely react to German pressures. The Vichy leaders actively pursued their own double agenda--internally, the authoritarian and racist "national revolution," and, externally, an attempt to persuade Hitler to accept this new France as a partner in his new Europe.

    Poet, essayist, philosopher and translator, Sanscrit scholar and pupil of Gurdjieff, Daumal was a founder of the Grand Jeu group. He was iconoclastic and electic, able to embrace simultaneously Alfred Jarry’s Pataphysics and Hindu teachings.Daumal's two major works in English translation, Mount Analogue and A Night of Serious Drinking, have long been classics in this country; but until now, readers have not had acess to the full range of his thought. The Powers of the Word spans a lifetime of essays and notes—many here translated for the first time—from the earliest incitements to drug use and revolt; through Daumal’s unique readings of literary works; to his more mature, but no less ardent, meditations.

    The extensive selections from his Notebooks included in this volume is evidence of his enduring interest in these figures

    

    

    Following the battle of Pavia, Pope Clement VII joined the French-led League of Cognac to resist the threatened Habsburg domination of Europe. Emperor Charles V appealed to the German diet for support and raised an army, which entered Italy in 1527 and joined the imperial forces from Milan, commanded by the duke of Bourbon. This army marched on Rome, hoping to detach the pope from the league. The many Lutherans in its ranks boasted that they came with hemp halters to hang the cardinals and a silk one for the pope. Rome fell on 6 May 1527, Bourbon being killed in the first assault. Discipline collapsed, and the city was savagely pillaged for a week before some control was restored. Judith Hook's book is a classic narrative history of these events and one of the first to appear in English.

    Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.In the area which is now France and was then Gaul, military institutions fundamentally influenced the successes and failures of the Merovingian dynasty, from 481 to 751. Professor Bachrach examines this period in detail, studying the forms of military organization and their relation to political power. Various aspects of the subject are controversial among scholars specializing in early medieval history, yet this is the first book-length study on the subject to be published. For a hundred years scholars have equated the military institutions of Merovingian Gaul with the customs of the Franks, a minority of the population who were rapidly acculturated. Professor Bachrach's study shows the heterogeneous nature of Merovingian military organization, composed of many institutions drawn from non-Frankish people especially from the remains of the Roman Empire. By dealing with all of the significant sources he demonstrates that there was frequent change in the military institutions rather than revolutionary change. The fluid nature of the military organization also is seen to have had profound effects upon the exercise of political power. Probably the most significant finding of the study is that Merovingian military organization, like much else in Merovingian Gaul, resembled Romania far more than Germania.

    Biography of French writer Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850)