Selected Lyrics (First Edition)

Theophile Gautier (author); Norman R. Shapiro (translation)

ISBN 10: 0300164335 / ISBN 13: 9780300164336

Published by Yale University Press / Margellos, New Haven, 2011

About this Item

Yale, New Haven, 2011. First edition. First printing. Hardcover. Very fine in a very fine jacket. A pristine unread copy. Comes with archival-quality mylar dust jacket cover. Shipped in well-padded box. Smoke-free. Defect-free. 552 pages. Rear poetry.

Seller Inventory # LW-1445

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Selected Lyrics (First Edition)
• Publisher: Yale University Press / Margellos, New Haven
• Publication Date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0300164335
• ISBN 13: 9780300164336
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: New
• Dust Jacket Condition: New
• Seller catalogs:
  • Poetry

About this title

Synopsis

The selected poems of one of the most important nineteenth-century French writers, masterfully translated

In his ABC of Reading, Ezra Pound begins his short list of nineteenth-century French poets to be studied with Théophile Gautier.  Widely esteemed by figures as diverse as Charles Baudelaire, the Goncourt brothers, Gustave Flaubert, Oscar Wilde, Henry James, and T. S. Eliot, Gautier was one of the nineteenth century’s most prominent French writers, famous for his virtuosity, his inventive textures, and his motto “Art for art’s sake.”  His work is often considered a crucial hinge between High Romanticism—idealistic, sentimental, grandiloquent—and the beginnings of “Parnasse,” with its emotional detachment, plasticity, and irresistible surfaces.

His large body of verse, however, is little known outside France.  This generous sampling, anchored by the complete Émaux et Camées, perhaps Gautier’s supreme poetic achievement, and including poems from the vigorously exotic España and several early collections, not only succeeds in bringing these poems into English but also rediscovers them, renewing them in the process of translation.  Norman Shapiro’s translations have been widely praised for their formal integrity, sonic acuity, tonal sensitivities, and overall poetic qualities, and he employs all these gifts in this collection.  Mining one of the crucial treasures of the French tradition, Shapiro makes a major contribution to world letters.

About the Author

Théophile Gautier (1811–1872) was one of the key poets of the French nineteenth century. Norman R. Shapiro is professor of Romance languages and literatures at Wesleyan University and an Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.