A Defense of Ardor Essays

by Zagajewski, Adam; Cavanagh, Clare

• ISBN13: 9780374529888
• ISBN10: 0374529884
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-10-19
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Summary

Ardor, inspiration, the soul, the sublime: Such terms have long since fallen from favor among critics and artists alike. In his new collection of essays, Adam Zagajewski continues his efforts to reclaim for art not just the terms but the scanted spiritual dimension of modern human existence that they stake out. Bringing gravity and grace to his meditations on art, society, and history, Zagajewski wears his erudition lightly, with a disarming blend of modesty and humor. His topics range from autobiography (his first visit to a post-Soviet Lvov after childhood exile; his illicit readings of Nietzsche in Communist Poland); to considerations of artist friends past and present (Zbigniew Herbert, Czeslaw Milosz); to intellectual and psychological portraits of cities he has known, east and west; to a dazzling thumbnail sketch of postwar Polish poetry. Zagajewski gives an account of the place of art in the modern age that distinguishes his self-proclaimed liberal vision from the "right-wing radicalism" of such modernist precursors as Eliot or Yeats. The same mixture of ardor and compassion that marks Zagajewski's distinctive contribution to modern poetry runs throughout this eloquent, engaging collection.

Author Biography

Adam Zagajewski was born in Lvov, Poland, in 1945. He lives in Krakow and spends part of the year teaching at the University of Houston. He was awarded the 2004 Neustadt International Prize for Literature.

Table of Contents

A Defense of Ardor	3	(22)
The Shabby and the Sublime	25	(26)
Nietzsche in Krakow	51	(16)
Toil and Flame	67	(32)
Beginning to Remember	99	(22)
Reason and Roses	121	(6)
Against Poetry	127	(16)
Poetry and Doubt	143	(12)
Vacation's End	155	(12)
Should We Visit Sacred Places?	167	(8)
Intellectual Krakow	175	(4)
Gray Paris	179	(6)
Young Poets, Please Read Everything	185	(6)
Writing in Polish	191