Clowns, volcanoes, love, jealousy, grief, birds and disease are the elements that make up Janusz Rudnicki’s haunting short story The beginning of Dante’s Divine Comedy sees the poet “halfway along life’s path” at 35 years old and lost in a dark wood. The beginning of “The Sorrows of Idiot Augustus” by Poland’s Janusz Rudnicki finds […]
The two stories in BEF 2012 that stood out the most for me were Czech writer Jiří Kratochvil’s “I Loshad’” and “The Sorrows of Idiot Augustus” by Polish writer Janusz Rudnicki. The excellence of these two stories shouldn’t be all that surprising. For while these and other Dalkey anthologies try to give exposure to young […]
The Franz Kafka Society’s publication of the first Czech translation of the correspondence of Erika Mitterer with Rainer Maria Rilke alerted me to the existence of a fascinating sounding writer. She was still a teenager when she corresponded with the great poet, published her own poetry collection at 24 and went on to write a […]
Part I: where American conservative Charles Murray’s scientific assessment of periods of cultural greatness is held up to a closer scrutiny than he would probably care for. The further Murray’s essay goes on, the more his conditions for cultural greatness fall into a deeper and deeper murkiness. At one point he sets up a hypothetical […]
A Greek theater company’s production depicting Kafka’s year in Berlin reflects back on a time of financial collapse and growing menace that is frighteningly reminiscent of Europe today. It begins with a society rocked by financial collapse. Anger spills out onto the streets, the extreme left brandishing the hammer and sickle, the resurgent right raging […]
I should admit from the outset that I haven’t always liked the short story form. When I first began reading with any dedication I had the impression that novels conjured entire worlds while short stories were content with slices of life. What’s more, the slice-of-life sensibility appeals so directly to verisimilitude that a story about […]
In this season of bitter political squabbling you would think that art and culture could provide a refuge from the name calling and finger pointing that seems to have taken the place of legitimate debate. Think again, because whether it’s Hungarian plans to ceremonially rebury the fascist writer Jozsef Nyiro or Dmitri Medvedev adding to […]
Two Polish science fiction/fantasy stories have put their translators on the shortlist of the 2012 Science Fiction and Fantasy Translation Awards. Both were nominated in the short form category for individual stories. “Spellmaker” by Andrzej Sapkowski, translated by Michael Kandel for A Polish Book of Monsters anthology, which was reviewed here earlier this year. While […]
Two Geniuses: Francis Bacon & Bohumil Hrabal is a recently opened exhibition at The Gate Gallery that presents an illuminating parallel between two masters of their respective mediums. Both developed unique styles that swam against the current of modern art and literature. “If Bohumil Hrabal had been a painter he would have painted like Francis […]
Where to look to discover new writers? At MFA programs, readings, literary magazines? Wrong. Israeli daily Haaretz tells the remarkable story of parking attendant turned writer Leonid Pekarovsky (or Russian art critic and intellectual turned parking lot attendant turned writer). Having emigrated from Kiev to Israel, Pekarovsky discovered that his intellectual pursuits back home meant […]
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