Poet, translator, essayist, and voracious readerāāKenneth Rexroth was an omnivore in the fields of literature. The brief, radiant essays ofĀ
Classics Revisited discuss sixty key books that are, for Rexroth, ābasic documents in the history of the imagination.ā Ranging fromĀ
The Epic of GilgameshĀ toĀ
Huckleberry Finn, these pieces (each about five pages long) originally appeared in theĀ Saturday Review. Distinguished by Rexrothās plain, wide-awake style,Ā Classics RevisitedĀ presents complex ideas in simple language, energized by the authorās air of talking eye-to-eye with his reader. Elastic, at home in several languages, Rexroth is not bound by East or West; he leaps nimbly from Homer to The Mahabharata, from Lady Murasaki to Stendhal. It is only when we pause for breath that we notice his special affinities: for Casanova, lzaak Walton, Macbeth, Icelandic sagas, classical Japanese poetry. He has read everything. In Sterne, he sees traces of the Buddha; in Fielding, hints of Confucius. āLife may not be optimistic,ā Rexroth maintains in his introduction, ābut it certainly is comic, and the greatest literature presents man wearing the two conventional masks; the grinning and the weeping faces that decorate theatre prosceniums. What is the face behind the mask? Just a human faceāāyours or mine. That is the irony of it allāāthe irony that distinguishes great literatureāāit is all so ordinary.ā
This book title, Classics Revisited, ISBN: 9780811209885, by Kenneth Rexroth, published by New Directions (May 17, 1986) is available in paperback. Our minimum order quantity is 25 copies. All standard bulk book orders ship FREE in the continental USA and delivered in 4-10 business days.
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