First published on the eve of war in 1939, the essay has often been read as a pacifist manifesto. Rachel Bespaloff was a French contemporary of Weil’s whose work similarly explored the complex relations between literature, religion, and philosophy. She composed her own distinctive discussion of the Iliad in the midst of World War II—calling it “her method of facing the war”—and, as Christopher Benfey argues in his introduction, the essay was very probably written in response to Weil. Bespaloff’s account of the Iliad brings out Homer’s novelistic approach to character and the existential drama of his characters’ choices; it is marked, too, by a tragic awareness of how the Iliad speaks to times and places where there is no hope apart from war.This edition brings together these two influential essays for the first time, accompanied by Benfey’s scholarly introduction and an afterword by the great Austrian novelist Hermann Broch.

    Nearly twenty years later, when published for the first time in English, Discourse on Colonialism inspired a new generation engaged in the Civil Rights, Black Power, and antiwar movements. Aimé Césaire eloquently describes the brutal impact of capitalism and colonialism on both the colonizer and colonized, exposing the contradictions and hypocrisy implicit in western notions of "progress" and "civilization" upon encountering the "savage," "uncultured," or "primitive." He reaffirms African values, identity, and culture, and their relevance, reminding us that "the relationship between consciousness and reality is extremely complex. . . . It is equally necessary to decolonize our minds, our inner life, at the same time that we decolonize society." An interview with Aimé Césaire by the poet René Depestre is also included.

    W. Foote and J. M. WheelerVoltaire by John MorleyVoltaire in the Netherlands by C. A. Van SypesteynVoltaire by George Saintsbury

    Each timeless myth is superbly presented in story form and enhanced with original art work by world-renowned artist Giovanni Caselli. Though Bulfinch s has been heralded for more than a century, it has never been published in so beautiful and accessible a format. Evocative four-color illustrations, many full-page, bring to life key events and characters of these universal tales and sagas from the Greek and Roman pantheon of gods to the heroes of the Crusades, from the exploits of Robin Hood to the feats of Richard the Lionheart. As enjoyable now as when Bulfinch first assembled them, these selections come from a variety of works Ovid s classic Metamorphoses, Egyptian myths, Eastern mythology, and Hindu, Norse, and Celtic sources. Together they form a remarkable tapestry of human endeavor: dreams, illusions, adventures, loves lost and loves found. In this handsome series, they speak to us afresh, across the ages, vivified through Caselli s inspired art. Original footnotes, indexes, and prefaces make this series not only entertaining, but completely authoritative as well. Thomas Bulfinch (1796-1867), writer and mythologist, was the first to create a popular compendium of ancient myths and legends. Giovanni Caselli (b. Florence, 1939) is one of Europe s most celebrated authors and illustrators. His books have sold in the millions.

    A peasant himself, Guillaumin was unique in that, after a few years of schooling, he continued to work his small farm in central France to the end of his life, reserving nights for study and writing. Guillaumin felt that the French peasant had been misrepresented in contemporary literature--either romanticized as in George Sand or depicted as a dumb victim of the forces of nature as in Zola--and wanted to correct the picture. The result is a moving first-person story that can be read as a fictional account, as well as the best kind of material for historians seeking to understand how nineteenth-century French peasants really lived.

    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

    publication of Simon Watson Taylor's authoritative translation, completed after consultations with the author. Unconventional in form--Aragon consciously avoided recognizable narration or character development--Paris Peasant is, in the author's words, -a mythology of the modern.- The book uses the city of Paris as a stage, or framework, and Aragon interweaves his text with images of related ephemera: cafe menus, maps, inscriptions on monuments and newspaper clippings. A detailed description of a Parisian arcade (nineteenth-century precursor to the mini-mall) and another of the Buttes-Chaumont park, are among the great set pieces within Aragon's swirling prose of philosophy, dream and satire. Andre Breton wrote of this work: -no one could have been a more astute detector of the unwonted in all its forms; no one else could have been carried away by such intoxicating reveries about a sort of secret life of the city. . . .-

    These poems have been selected on the basis of the poignancy of their message and their relevance to contemporary life.This is timeless wisdom translated for modern readers. It is a guide for meditation and a light switch that you can turn on to make your daily connection with spirit. Use these words as tools to better your life each day, to draw continued guidance, inspiration and spiritual wealth.

    Manifestoes of Surrealism is a book by André Breton, describing the aims, meaning, and political position of the Surrealist movement.The translators of this edition were finalists of the 1970 National Book Awards in the category of translation.

    Ten lyrical and passionate essays on the culture, art, and history of Western Europe written from the perspective of the post-Stalinist thaw of the 1960s.

    Fussell illuminates a war that changed a generation and revolutionised the way we see the world. He explores the British experience on the western Front from 1914 to 1918, focusing on the various literary means by which it has been remembered, conventionalized and mythologized. It is also about the literary dimensions of the experience itself. Fussell supplies contexts, both actual and literary, for writers who have most effectively memorialized the Great War as an historical experience with conspicuous imaginative and artistic meaning. These writers include the classic memoirists Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves and Edmund Blunden, and poets David Jones, Isaac Rosenberg, and Wilfred Owen. In his new introduction Fussell discusses the critical responses to his work, the authors and works that inspired his own writing, and the elements which influence our understanding and memory of war. Fussell also shares the stirring experience of his research at the Imperial War Museum's Department of Documents. Fussell includes a new Suggested Further Reading List.Fussell's landmark study of World War I remains as original and gripping today as ever before: a literate, literary, and illuminating account of the Great War, the one that changed a generation, ushered in the modern era, and revolutionized how we see the world. 14 halftones.

     This book is a domestic chronicle of the incredible Bonaparte family, a greedy, amorous, quarrelsome and hot-blooded Corsican clan who provided nineteenth-century Europe — and America — not only with two French emperors, but also with a dazzling assortment of pretenders and parvenus, statesmen and eccentrics, great ladies and adventuresses. Plumped on to the thrones of Europe by the career of Napoleon I, who probably took better care of his family than any conqueror in history, the Bonapartes survived the wreck of the two empires they ruled, buzzing around the honeypots of the continent with all the persistence of the imperial bees of Napoleon's crest. This is a personal history, not a political one. It is the family, with its eccentricities, vulgarities and fascinations manifesting themselves in generation after generation, which holds the centre of the stage. The great political, economic and military events of the time are heard dimly as 'noises off'. Napoleon I himself appears as son, brother, husband, father and above all as founder of a dynasty, rather than as a great public figure. But about the family, its feuds, its treacheries, its love affairs, its moments of greatness and of human tragedy, Mr Aronson seems to have missed not one good story, from the squabbles of Napoleon's rebellious sisters over the carrying of Josephine's train, to Hitler's remarkable deal with Petain for the return of the body of the Duke of Reichstadt to his father's tomb in the Invalides. Mr Aronson paints his family portrait with a wealth of detail based on many years of research with historical documents and original records, letters, memoirs and family diaries — for, in the end, no one seems to have been able to tell quite such a lurid tale about a Bonaparte as another Bonaparte.

    The classic account of modern British journalism, now updated and re-issued.

    At the age of sixteen, she was sent to London to earn her living, where she found a live-in job as a scullery maid. Her day began at 5 a.m., cleaning grates and lighting fires, then she would scrub floors and polish the house - all for two shillings a week, one of which she had to send home to her mother. Things improved when she secured the position of lady's maid in a house in Belgravia, on five shillings a week. Anwyn was required to be a hairdresser, beautician, confidante and secretary. Reporting directly to the lady of the house, she was expected to cover up her mistress's affairs. Her time as a lady's maid was over when she was caught with a young aristocrat in her room and banished from the house, but Anwyn found further employment in a variety of houses, working above and below stairs. However, she found her niche in the jolly working-class atmosphere of the capital city's pubs. London between the wars and during the Blitz is richly evoked and, despite all her hardships, Anwyn never asks for the readers' sympathy.

    The first of these came out in 1946: the ever famous "How to be an Alien." Later he enlarges the picture with "How to be inimitable" and "How to be Decadent." All three books were illustrated by the master of the cartoonists' art, the late Nicolas Bentley. Here they are, all in one volume, which will make life much easier for today's would-be Brits than it was for those who pervaded them. It is said that a few of the latter actually failed to become indistinguishable from the genuine British article because they found it too tiresome to seek out three separate books: a misfortune that need never again occur to anyone.