The Basque philosopher Miguel de Unamuno (1864-1936) was viewed by his peers as being one of the most significant writers and thinkers of the twentieth-century. As an author, Unamuno worked in all of the major literary genres: essays, novels, poetry and plays. However, according to the Mexican novelist and essayist, Carlos Fuentes, it was the philosophical essay which was his real forte. Yet Unamuno, towards the end of his life, provided a different—though not necessarily contradictory—perspective on his work. When Unamuno was asked to define himself, he stated that in all of his writings he should be considered “nothing but a poet.” Taking each of these statements both literally and seriously, what Professor Wasserman attempted to do in this work was to integrate the two assertions. He accomplished this task by first translating passages in Unamuno’s essays from Spanish to English and then by converting the prose translations into lines of poetry, thereby providing the reader with a lyrical and engaging picture of Unamuno’s philosophy of life.
A central figure of Spanish culture and an author in many genres, Miguel de Unamuno (1864-1936) is less well known outside Spain. He was a surprising writer and thinker: a professor of Greek who embraced metafiction and modernist methods; a proponent of Castilian Spanish although born in the Basque country and influenced by many international writers; religious yet an early existentialist. He found himself in opposition to both King Alfonso XIII and the military dictatorship of José Primo de Rivera, then became involved in the political upheaval that led to the Spanish Civil War. Part 1 of this volume, "Materials," gives information on different editions and translations of Unamuno's works, on scholarly and critical secondary sources, and on Web resources. The essays in part 2, "Approaches," offer suggestions for introducing students to the range of his works—novels, essays, poetry, and philosophy—in Spanish language and literature and comparative literature classrooms.
The Bible is by far the leading source of inspiration for Western literature, and in particular, the life of Jesus has drawn the attention of artists and writers throughout the ages. Now, in a volume of astonishing range and originality, Robert Atwan, George Dardess, and Peggy Rosenthal present 280 remarkable poems from world literature focusing on Jesus's life and teaching. Readers accustomed to the predictable inclusions of many anthologies will be surprised and delighted by the diversity of poets represented here, from Aquinas, Dante, de Guevara, Donne, and Sor Juana, to D.H. Lawrence, Gabriela Mistral, Wole Soyinka, Margaret Atwood, Gwendolyn Brooks, Czeslaw Milosz, and Leopold Senghor. Perhaps no other thematically organized anthology could have brought together writers as different as Jorge Luis Borges, Thomas Merton, Alice Walker, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Jack Kerouac. Indeed, simply to turn the page in Divine Inspiration is an adventure in itself. And in terms of form, style, modulations of tone and perspective, the variety here is as unparalleled as it is unpredictable. The editors of Divine Inspiration have done a masterful job of unifying this vast assortment of poems. Organized chronologically around the life of Jesus, the book is divided into nine sections--from Birth and Infancy, through Healings and Miracles, to the Resurrection-- and presents passages from the Gospels followed by the poems they inspired. This structure gives readers the dual pleasures of a strong narrative pull punctuated by moments of lyric intensity. Our familiarity with the life of Jesus is thus enlivened, deepened, and in some cases wholly transformed by the imaginative power of the poems. In the largest section of the book, on the Passion of Jesus, we find an array of poems by Anna Akhmatova, Antonio Machado, Thomas Hardy, Miguel de Unamuno, Charles Baudelaire, R.S. Thomas, Andrew Marvell, Frederico Garcia Lorca, and Denise Levertov, among others. To see the Passion of Jesus refracted through the lenses of such poets is to see it anew, or more vividly than before. And to encounter Chinese, Korean, Nigerian, Arab, Latin American, Scandinavian, Hungarian, and Greek poets alongside English, French, and German is a testimony both to the editors' devoted scholarship and to the power of Jesus's life to inspire great poetry across a spectrum of cultures and eras. An invaluable sourcebook for students, scholars, and general readers alike, Divine Inspiration should prove equally satisfying to readers with a strong interest in religion and to all lovers of poetry.
A central figure of Spanish culture and an author in many genres, Miguel de Unamuno (1864-1936) is less well known outside Spain. He was a surprising writer and thinker: a professor of Greek who embraced metafiction and modernist methods, a proponent of Castilian Spanish although born in the Basque Country and influenced by many international writers, and an early existentialist who was yet religious. He found himself in opposition to both King Alfonso XIII and the military dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera and then became involved in the political upheaval that led to the Spanish Civil War. Part 1 of this volume, "Materials," gives information on different editions and translations of Unamuno's works, on scholarly and critical secondary sources, and on Web resources. The essays in part 2, "Approaches," offer suggestions for introducing students to the range of his works--novels, essays, poetry, and drama--in Spanish language and literature, comparative literature, religion, and philosophy classrooms.
Dispensing with the conventions of action, time and place, and analysis of character, Mist proceeds entirely on the strength of dialog that reveals the struggles of what Unamuno called his 'agonists.' These include Augusto Perez, the pampered son of a recently deceased mother; the deceitful, scheming Eugenia, whom Augusto obsessively loves and idealizes; and Augusto's dog Orfeo, who gives a funeral oration upon his master's death. Augusto is to be married to Eugenia who leaves and causes him to contemplate suicide. Before he does that, however, he consults the book's author Unamuno, who informs him he cannot kill himself because he is a fictional character. Mist even includes a chapter that explains Unamuno's theory of the antinovel. Anticipating later writers such as Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre, Unamuno exploited fiction as a vehicle for the exploration of philosophical themes. First published in 1914, Mist exemplified a new kind of novel with which Unamuno aimed to shatter fiction's conventional illusions of reality. It is an antinovel that treats its fictionality ironically.
The first English translation of Unamuno's first novel, published in 1897, when he was 33. Its setting is the Basque country of northern Spain during the Second Carlist War (1874--1876), a conflict he lived through as a child. Originally published in 1983. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
This book is a new translation, in contemporary English, of Miguel de Unamuno's 1920 masterpiece book-length poem about another masterpiece of Western Civilization, Diego Velázquez's "The Christ of San Plácido," which is commonly known as "The Christ of Velázquez." The translation by William Thomas Little is accompanied by a full scholarly introduction and poem-by-poem commentary. Unamuno, Spain's foremost public intellectual of the early twentieth century, considered this book his masterpiece. This is a book of poetry and religious devotion as well as an ekphrasis, that is, a detail-by-detail meditation on one of the world's greatest paintings. Composed of eighty-nine poems that are fully integrated one with the other, the result is a masterpiece of spiritual meditation via poetical expression.
