Synopsis
Although a fair swath of Émile Verhaeren's work has been translated into English, little of the shocking collection that helped to cement his reputation as the bard of industrial modernity has ever been made available. Here at last is a complete English version of Les Villes tentaculaires (1895), set down in knotty, musical free verse. These poems convey the reader into the brothels, cathedrals, factories, cabarets, markets, laboratories, and other haunts of the European metropolis. Here are dramatized the terror, the disgust, and the awe-inducing dynamism of Europe’s cities on the threshold of the twentieth century. The lurid atmosphere and ironic wit of Verhaeren's verse are captured in a new translation by Jacob Siefring, who provides an afterword and a note on the author.
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Tentacular Cities
Seller: ThriftBooks-Atlanta, AUSTELL, GA, U.S.A.
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Paperback. Condition: As New. No Jacket. Pages are clean and are not marred by notes or folds of any kind. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less. Seller Inventory # G1955190712I2N00
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Tentacular Cities
Seller: Asterism Books, Seattle, WA, U.S.A.
Seller rating 3 out of 5 stars
Condition: New. Although a fair swath of Ãmile Verhaeren's work has been translated into English, very little of the shocking collection of fin-de-siècle poetic modernism that helped to cement his reputation has been made available in English. Here at last is a full English version of Les Villes tentaculaires (1895), wrought in knotty, musical free verse. The poems of Tentacular Cities convey the reader into the brothels, cathedrals, factories, cabarets, markets, laboratories, and various other locales of the European metropolis. Here are dramatized the terror, the disgust, and the awe-inducing dynamism of Europeâs industrialized cities at the threshold of the twentieth century. The lurid atmosphere and ironical wit of Verhaeren's verse are captured in a new translation by Jacob Siefring, who also provides an afterword and a note on the author. Praise for Ãmile VerhaerenâVerhaeren is no narrow specialist with an outlook limited to some particular sphere. He is the singer of the whole fullness of modern European life as a whole, with its clashes, its complexities, its agonies and its tensions, its deserted countrysides and its pullulating metropoles, its armaments and its Armageddons, its brothels, cathedrals, laboratories and Stock Exchanges, its sciences and its sensualities, its arts, philosophies and aspirations. [â¦] No muse in the whole of literature is more highly charged with vitality, and no reader is qualified to enjoy her unless he, too, is charged to the maximum with âthe red tonic liquor of a harsh and formidable realityâ.â â"Horace B. Samuel, âModernitiesââThe themes of our life, divided as it is betwen what was and what is becoming, this spectacle of nature overturned and of menâs frenzied impetus, has found in Verhaeren its impresario, its master, its incomparable singer. Through him, our materialistic civilization has been given the high dignity of lyric expression. Verhaerenâs enthusiasm and rhythm sanctify the toil of towns black with smoke, the imposing or extraordinary façades reared, developed and multiplied through the prodigious exertions of industry. The thought of factories, of huge ports, of dynamos, of the frenzied and conglomerate activity of men and machines was enough to transport him. His poems seem at times to be directed toward an apotheosis of energy and the power of fire.â â"Paul Valéry, âIn Honor of Ãmile Verhaerenâ, trans. Frederick Brownâ[T]hat is the great thing in Verhaeren, that he always overcomes whatever is hostile, pain and torment, by a great vista, that in this panting steam of the unaesthetic he already sees the flame of the new beauty. Here for the first time is, seen the beauty of factories, les usines rectangulaires, the fascination of a railway station, the new beauty in the new things. If the town is indeed ugly in its denseness, ugly in the sense of all classical ideals; if the picture of it is indeed cruel and frightful; it is yet not unfertile.â â"Stefan Zweig, âÃmile Verhaerenâ, trans. Jethro BithellâVerhaeren, master of free verse, is also master of romantic verse, to which he can force, without being dashed to pieces, the unbridled, terrible gallop of his thought, drunk with images, phantoms and future visions." â"Rémy de Gourmont, âThe Book of Masksâ, trans. Jack LewisThe Belgian francophone poet Ãmile Verhaeren (May 21, 1855â"November 27, 1916 ) was born at Sint-Amands in the Antwerp region to parents who worked in the textile industry. He published his first collection, Les Flamandes, in 1883. From the late 1880s, he traveled throughout Europe in Germany, Spain, England, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, experiences that would go on to inform his collection Les Villes tentaculaires. He met his spouse-to-be Marthe Massin in 1889, and they were married in 1891. In 1898, he moved to Paris, by which time his books were published by the Paris house Mercure de France. His oeuvre consists of plays, essays on art and politics, lectures, and poetry. He died in an accident while boarding a train after delivering a lecture to Belgian exiles in Rouen. Seller Inventory # 9781955190718