Author Description

Product DescriptionEssays discuss Keats, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Hardy, Pasternak, Rilke, Cezanne, Solzhenitsyn, Kundera, Brodsky and AudenFrom Library JournalAlthough this work consists solely of reviews published in English and American literary magazines from 1980 to 1986, they are well worth collecting. Bayley begins with gentle swipes at critics on the dogmatic left and theocratic right (those who impose themselves as co-creators of the text) and goes on to demonstrate how occasional essays can enrich our reading of a range of European prose and poetry. The bulk of the reviews are of recent biographies and monographs about, or translations of works by, Russian writers ranging from Leo and Sofia Tolstoy to Joseph Brodsky. Articles on Keats and Philip Larkin, Akhmatova and Tsvetaeva are happy juxtapositions; the richly contradictory personalities of Thomas Hardy and Boris Pasternak illustrate Bayley's eloquent defence of the creative dualities of human nature. Recommended. Mary F. Zirin, Altadena, Cal.Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.