Уистен Хью Оден – лучшие книги

В книге представлены избранные эссе крупнейшего англо-американского поэта Уистена Хью Одена. Большая их часть взята из книги "Рука красильщика" (1963), ставшей классикой жанра. Поэт рассуждает о взаимосвязи темы и формы; как идея определяет поэтику и наоборот; насколько поэтическое видение мира определяет судьбу поэта и его книг - и насколько оно бессильно перед ходом жизни; о тех, кто являет собой лучшее этому подтверждение. Роберт Фрост, Эдгар По, Уильям Шекспир, Костантинос Кавафис, Уильям Батлер Йейтс, Франц Кафка - Оден умеет найти в пространстве темы точку опоры, на оси которой можно неожиданно развернуть повествование. На "Отелло"…

Книга содержит запись бесед англо-американского поэта и философа У.X. Одена с его студентом, а впоследствии и другом, поэтом Аланом Ансеном. "Застольные беседы" Одена с Ансеном происходили в 1946-1947 гг., когда Оден читал курс лекций о Шекспире в нью-йоркской Новой школе социальных исследований. Впрочем, Шекспир - не единственный герой бесед с Оденом. В театре теней оденовского воображения мы увидим поэтов и политиков, безвестных полицейских и знаменитых распутников. Ироничная, подчас шокирующая откровенность и блестящий ум Одена сообщают книге особую пряность.
Текст дополняют подробные комментарии.

У.Х. Оден читал лекции о Шекспире в нью-йоркской Новой школе социальных наук в 1946—1947 гг. Детально восстановленные Артуром Киршем по конспектам студентов, особенно Алана Ансена, ставшего впоследствии секретарем и другом Одена, лекции позволяют лучше понять не только творчество Шекспира, но и самого Одена. По словам Ансена, «оденовские лекции о Шекспире — удивительное сочетание спокойного, терпеливого ума и поразительных прозрений — яркие, оригинальные, широкие по охвату, бесстрашные, свободные от слащавого почитания и очень, очень умные».

Книга содержит полный курс лекций о Шекспире, прочитанный англо-американским поэтом У.Х. Оденом (1907—1973) в нью-йоркской Новой школе социальных наук в 1946—1947 гг. Поэтический дар Одена и его замечательная способность наводить мосты между авторами и эпохами, богатство и широта охвата литературного материала делают «Лекции о Шекспире» одним из наиболее значительных памятников англоязычной эссеистики XX века. Текст сопровождают подробные комментарии.

Книга избранных произведений английского поэта У.Х.Одена (1907-1973). Его поэзия совмещает интеллектуализм и высокую лирику, трагичность и юмор, реализм и фантазию.
Текст дан параллельно на русском и английском языках.

В книгу американского драматурга и публициста Уистена Хью Одена вошли философские поэмы ("Испания", "Орфей", "Казино" и др.) и проникновенные лирические стихи разных лет. Для поэзии Одена характерно причудливое, необычное переплетение реалистических традиций и элементов романтической поэтики.

Эта книга шла к русскому читателю двадцать с лишним лет - с момента, когда в России вышел первый сборник эссе Уистена Одена (1998). «Рука красильщика» — итог литературной жизни крупнейшего английского поэта и мыслителя XX века. С высоты своего опыта он составляет книгу, в которой размышляет об искусстве и жизни, красоте и истине, поэзии и правде, «я» и «эго», чтении и письме, ремесле и вдохновении. Его литературные наблюдения догматичны, но какое это наслаждение - следить за ходом мысли убежденного поэта и философа! И разве не иллюзия догмы показывает мировую классику в неожиданно истинном свете? Почему герой Кафки — человек без «я»? Что…

Had he been writing now, Auden might well have penned a poem entitled "Tell me the Truth About Publishing", for the publication of this special, short collection was directly inspired by the runaway success of the 1994 film Four Weddings and a Funeral in which one of Auden's poems was recited.

Stretching from October 1932 to June 1948, the poems may have been more revelatory had they been arranged chronologically but commercial demands have placed "Funeral Blues", forevermore known as the poem in the movie, at the end, while "Lullaby", arguably a better poem, is tucked away inside. The period partly coincides with Auden going to America in January 1939 and "Calypso" pulses with the rhythm of a train taking him to his New York rendez-vous at Grand Central. "For there in the middle of that waiting-hall, / Should be standing the one that I love best of all."

Many of the poems have the same jolly air and belting rhythm and indeed were written as cabaret songs. "At Last the Secret is Out" must have been tongue-in-cheek considering Auden's sexuality, yet the cover of this slim tome is resolutely heterosexual. But for dipping into Auden's work, this volume serves its purpose.

"Funeral Blues" captures the sense of disbelief that the world has the audacity to continue after one has been bereaved. The Cole Porter tone of flippancy and humour--"Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves", makes the understated grief all the more poignant. He declares the emblems of romance redundant. "The stars are not wanted now; put out every one." He swings from the grandiose to the mundane and in doing so, sweeps the reader up in the aura of all-emcompassing love. "He was my North, my South, my East and West, / My working week and my Sunday rest."

Written in the midst of World War II after its author emigrated to America, "The Sea and the Mirror" is not merely a great poem but ranks as one of the most profound interpretations of Shakespeare's final play in the twentieth century. As W. H. Auden told friends, it is "really about the Christian conception of art" and it is "my Ars Poetica, in the same way I believe The Tempest to be Shakespeare's." This is the first critical edition. Arthur Kirsch's introduction and notes make the poem newly accessible to readers of Auden, readers of Shakespeare, and all those interested in the relation of life and literature—those two classic themes alluded to in its title.

The poem begins in a theater after a performance of The Tempest has ended. It includes a moving speech in verse by Prospero bidding farewell to Ariel, a section in which the supporting characters speak in a dazzling variety of verse forms about their experiences on the island, and an extravagantly inventive section in prose that sees the uncivilized Caliban address the audience on art—an unalloyed example of what Auden's friend Oliver Sachs has called his "wild, extraordinary and demonic imagination."

Besides annotating Auden's allusions and sources (in notes after the text), Kirsch provides extensive quotations from his manuscript drafts, permitting the reader to follow the poem's genesis in Auden's imagination. This book, which incorporates for the first time previously ignored corrections that Auden made on the galleys of the first edition, also provides an unusual opportunity to see the effect of one literary genius upon another.

Faber are pleased to announce the relaunch of the poetry list - starting in Spring 2001 and continuing, with publication dates each month, for the rest of the year. This will involve a new jacket design recalling the typographic virtues of the classic Faber poetry covers, connecting the backlist and the new titles within a single embracing cover solution. A major reissue program is scheduled, to include classic individual collections from each decade, some of which have long been unavailable: Wallace Stevens's Harmonium and Ezra Pound's Personae from the 1920s; W.H. Auden's Poems (1930); Robert Lowell's Life Studies from the 1950s; John Berryman's 77 Dream Songs and Philip Larkin's The Whitsun Weddings from the 1960s; Ted Hughes's Gaudete and Seamus Heaney's Field Work from the 1970s; Michael Hofmann's Acrimony and Douglas Dunn's Elegies from the 1980s. Timed to celebrate publication of Seamus Heaney's new collection, Electric Light, the relaunch is intended to re-emphasize the predominance of Faber Poetry, and to celebrate a series which has played a shaping role in the history of modern poetry since its inception in the 1920s.

The Everyman's Library Pocket Poets hardcover series is popular for its compact size and reasonable price which does not compromise content. Poems: Auden is just another reminder of his exhilarating lyric power and his understanding of love and longing in all their sacred and profane guises. One of English poetry's great 20th century masters, Poems: Auden is the short collection of an exemplary champion of human wisdom in its encounter with the mysteries of experience.

This new, revised edition of W. H. Auden's Selected Poems presents the original versions of many poems with Auden later revised to conform to his political and literary attitudes. In this volume, Edward Mendelson has restored the early versions of some thirty poems generally considered to be greater literary achievements than the later versions? so that the reader can now see the entire range of Auden's work. Also included are some twenty-five poems that have never been published in paperback before.

W. H. Auden (1907-73) came to prominence in the 1930s among a generation of outspoken poets that included his friends Louis MacNeice, Stephen Spender and C. Day Lewis. But he was also an intimate and lyrical poet of great originality, and a master craftsman of some of the most cherished and influential poems of the past century. Other volumes in this series: Betjemen, Eliot, Plath, Hughes and Yeats.

This significantly expanded edition of "W. H. Auden's Selected Poems" adds twenty poems to the hundred in the original edition, broadening its focus to better reflect the enormous wealth of form, rhetoric, tone, and content in Auden's work. Newly included are such favorites as "Funeral Blues" and other works that represent Auden's lighter, comic side, giving a fuller picture of the range of his genius. Also new are brief notes explaining references that may have become obscure to younger generations of readers and a revised introduction that draws on recent additions to knowledge about Auden.

As in the original edition, the new Selected Poems makes available the preferred original versions of some thirty poems that Auden revised later in life, making it the best source for enjoying the many facets of Auden's art in one volume.

W.H. Auden was once described as the Picasso of modern poetry - a tribute to his ceaseless experimentation with form and subject matter. Beginning with Anglo-Saxon poetry and ending with an Horatian expansiveness and conversational sweep, this volume should be essential reading for anyone seriously interested in modern poetry after T.S. Eliot. In his lifetime a controversial, outspoken, yet enigmatic, writer, Auden has gradually come to seem an intimate poet, as we have learned to read him correctly. This volume an introduction to his consummate craftsmanship and his unparalleled originality which made him the master-poet of his generation.