![]() Quote of the Day
Carcanet Press is our most courageous publisher. When you look at what they have brought out since their beginnings, it makes so many other houses seem timid or merely predictable.
Charles Tomlinson
|
|
Book Search
Subscribe to our mailing list
|
|
Forms of Hope: EssaysTomas Venclova![]()
Categories: 20th Century
Imprint: Sheep Meadow Press Publisher: Carcanet Press Available as: Hardback (288 pages) (Pub. Jul 2011) 9781878818706 Out of Stock
Tomas Venclova, the great Lithuanian poet, has for a quarter of acentury been one of the lonely representatives of the conscience of Lithuania. He belongs to a distinguished line of late-twentieth-century poets, one that includes Czeslaw Milosz and Joseph Brodsky. They are the cosmopolitan exiles, 'the transplanted spirits whose fate has been to burrow back into the mother tongue to claim the home that history denied them'. This drama also plays out in Venclova's Forms of Hope: essays and public statements on political and literary subjects. As an essayist, Venclova writes that he has been occupied by two basic themes: Vilnius, his native city, 'through whose example one could easily trace all of the complexity and tragedy of ethnic and national relations in Eastern Europe,' and 'the eastern European writer's response to the totalitarian challenge'. These studies of contemporary history and writers are themselves part of the struggle.
Contents
Introduction i Preface Politics Letter to the Communist Party A dialogue about a City Jews and Lithuanians Russians and Lithuanians South African Diary On the Choise between Democracy and Nationalism Balkans and Baltics Poems Melted into Ice I. Literature 1. Literary Essays An Exercise in Futility - The Case of Andrei Kurbsky Czeslaw Milosz: Despair and Grace Poetry as Atonement Three Russian Poets 'Lithuanian Divertissement,' by Joseph Brodsky A journey from Petersburg to Istanbul Prison as communicative phenomenon: The literature of the gulag The Game of the Soviet Censor Odi et Amo II. Review Essays A poet in Stalin's Winter Art and Danger In the Lion's Mouth On the Art of Writing in the USSR war and Pieces Out of Chaos Making It The Nonexistent Arrow The Obscene House
'Venclova's Forms of Hope is poignant and eloquent work, merging literary criticism with moral insight. One believes that Mandelstam and Babel might have rejoiced in it.'
Harold Bloom
You might also be interested in:
![]() Interviews and Encounters with Stanley Kunitz
Stanley Kunitz, Edited by Stanley Moss |
Share this...
Quick Links
Carcanet Poetry
Carcanet Classics
Carcanet Fiction
Carcanet Film
Lives and Letters
PN Review
Video
Carcanet Celebrates 50 Years!
The Carcanet Blog
We've Moved!
read more
Books of the Year
read more
One Little Room: Peter McDonald
read more
Collected Poems: Mimi Khalvati
read more
Invisible Dog: Fabio Morbito, translated by Richard Gwyn
read more
Dante's Purgatorio: Philip Terry
read more
![]() |
![]() We thank the Arts Council England for their support and assistance in this interactive Project.
|
|
This website ©2000-2025 Carcanet Press Ltd
|