Cynthia L. Haven - Böcker

A new selection of foundational works from the influential philosopher who developed the theory of mimetic desireWhy do humans have such a remarkable capacity for conflict? From ancient foundational myths to the modern era, the visionary thinker Rene Girard identified the constant, competing desires at the heart of our existence - desires that we copy from others, igniting a contagious violence. This remarkable and accessible new selection of Girard's work shows him as a writer for our times, as he ranges over human imitation and rivalry, herd behaviour, scapegoating and how our violent longings play out in stories, from Shakespeare to religion. 'The explosion of social media, the resurgence of populism, and the increasing virulence of reciprocal violence all suggest that the contemporary world is becoming more and more recognizably "Girardian" in its behaviour' The New York Review of BooksEdited with an Introduction by Cynthia L. Haven

Czesław Miłosz (1911–2004) often seemed austere and forbidding to Americans, but those who got to know him found him warm, witty, and endlessly enriching. An Invisible Rope: Portraits of Czesław Miłosz presents a collection of remembrances from his colleagues, his students, and his fellow writers and poets in America and Poland.Miłosz's oeuvre is complex, rooted in twentieth-century eastern European history. A poet, translator, and prose writer, Miłosz was a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1961 to 1998. In 1980 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.The earliest in this collection of thirty-two memoirs begins in the 1930s, and the latest takes readers to within a few days of Miłosz's death. This vital collection reveals the fascinating life story of the man Joseph Brodsky called "one of the greatest poets of our time, perhaps the greatest."Contributors include: Bogdana Carpenter, Clare Cavanagh, Anna Frajlich, Natalie Gerber, George Gömöri, Irena Grudzińska Gross, Hynryk Grynberg, Dan Halpern, Robert Hass, Seamus Heaney, Jane Hirshfield, Agnieszka Kosińska, John Foster Leich, Madeline G. Levine, Richard Lourie, Zygmunt Malinowski, Morton Marcus, Jadwiga Maurer, W. S. Merwin, Leonard Nathan, Robert Pinsky, Alexander Schenker, Peter Dale Scott, Marek Skwarnicki, Judith Tannenbaum, Elizabeth Kridl Valkenier, Lillian Vallee, Tomas Venclova, Helen Vendler, Reuel K. Wilson, Joanna Zach, and Adam Zagajewski

French theorist René Girard was one of the major thinkers of the twentieth century. Read by international leaders, quoted by the French media, Girard influenced such writers as J.M. Coetzee and Milan Kundera. Dubbed “the new Darwin of the human sciences” and one of the most compelling thinkers of the age, Girard spent nearly four decades at Stanford exploring what it means to be human and making major contributions to philosophy, literary criticism, psychology and theology with his mimetic theory. This is the first collection of interviews with Girard, one that brings together discussions on Cervantes, Dostoevsky, and Proust alongside the causes of conflict and violence and the role of imitation in human behavior. Granting important insights into Girard's life and thought, these provocative and lively conversations underline Girard's place as leading public intellectual and profound theorist.

French theorist René Girard was one of the major thinkers of the twentieth century. Read by international leaders, quoted by the French media, Girard influenced such writers as J.M. Coetzee and Milan Kundera. Dubbed “the new Darwin of the human sciences” and one of the most compelling thinkers of the age, Girard spent nearly four decades at Stanford exploring what it means to be human and making major contributions to philosophy, literary criticism, psychology and theology with his mimetic theory. This is the first collection of interviews with Girard, one that brings together discussions on Cervantes, Dostoevsky, and Proust alongside the causes of conflict and violence and the role of imitation in human behavior. Granting important insights into Girard's life and thought, these provocative and lively conversations underline Girard's place as leading public intellectual and profound theorist.

Joseph Brodsky (1940-1996) is unquestionably the greatest poet to emerge from postwar Russia and one of the great minds of the last century. After his expulsion from the Soviet Union in 1972, Brodsky transformed himself from a stunned and unprepared émigré into, as he himself termed it, ""a Russian poet, an English essayist, and, of course, an American citizen."" In interviews from 1972 to 1995, Joseph Brodsky: Conversations covers the course of his exile. The last interview dates from just ten weeks before his death. In talks, he calibrates the process of his remarkable reinvention from a brilliant, brash, but decidedly provincial Leningrad poet to an international man of letters and an erudite Nobel Prize laureate. Brodsky's poetry earned him a Nobel, and his essays won him awards and international acclaim. This volume shows that there was a third medium, in addition to poetry and essays, in which Brodsky excelled--the interview. Although he said that ""in principle prose is simply spilling some beans, which poetry sort of contains in a tight pod,"" he nevertheless emerges as an extraordinary and inventive conversationalist. This volume includes not only his notable interviews that helped consolidate Brodsky's international reputation but also early and hard-to-find interviews in journals that have since disappeared. Cynthia L. Haven is a literary critic at the San Francisco Chronicle and a regular contributor to Times Literary Supplement, the Los Angeles Times Book Review, the Cortland Review, and Stanford Magazine. Her work also has been published in Civilization, the Washington Post, and the Georgia Review.

The first book about the Nobel Laureate's transformative but conflicted time in the Golden State."There is much to learn from this book about Miłosz and California, yes, but also about poetry and the world."—Ilya KaminskyCzesław Miłosz, one of the greatest poets and thinkers of the past hundred years, is not generally considered a Californian. But the Nobel laureate spent four decades in Berkeley—more time than any other single place he lived—and he wrote many of his most enduring works there. This is the first book to look at his life through a California lens. Filled with original research and written with the grace and liveliness of a novel, it is both an essential volume for his most devoted readers and a perfect introduction for newcomers.Miłosz was a premier witness to the sweep of the twentieth century, from the bombing of Warsaw in World War II to the student protests of the sixties and the early days of the high-tech boom. He maintained an open-minded but skeptical view of American life, a perspective shadowed by the terrors he experienced in Europe. In the light of recent political instability and environmental catastrophe, his poems and ideas carry extra weight, and they are ripe for a new generation of readers to discover them. This immersive portrait demonstrates what Miłosz learned from the Golden State, and what Californians can learn from him.

René Girard (1923–2015) was one of the leading thinkers of our era—a provocative sage who bypassed prevailing orthodoxies to offer a bold, sweeping vision of human nature, human history, and human destiny. His oeuvre, offering a “mimetic theory” of cultural origins and human behavior, inspired such writers as Milan Kundera and J. M. Coetzee, and earned him a place among the forty “immortals” of the Académie Française. Too often, however, his work is considered only within various academic specializations. This first-ever biographical study takes a wider view. Cynthia L. Haven traces the evolution of Girard’s thought in parallel with his life and times. She recounts his formative years in France and his arrival in a country torn by racial division, and reveals his insights into the collective delusions of our technological world and the changing nature of warfare. Drawing on interviews with Girard and his colleagues, Evolution of Desire: A Life of René Girard provides an essential introduction to one of the twentieth century’s most controversial and original minds.

Brodsky’s poetic career in the West was launched when Joseph Brodsky: Selected Poems was published in 1973. Its translator was a scholar and war hero, George L. Kline. This is the story of that friendship and collaboration, from its beginnings in 1960s Leningrad and concluding with the Nobel poet's death in 1996.Kline translated more of Brodsky’s poems than any other single person, with the exception of Brodsky himself. The Bryn Mawr philosophy professor and Slavic scholar was a modest and retiring man, but on occasion he could be as forthright and adamant as Brodsky himself. “Akhmatova discovered Brodsky for Russia, but I discovered him for the West,” he claimed.Kline’s interviews with author Cynthia L. Haven before his death in 2014 include a description of his first encounter with Brodsky, the KGB interrogations triggered by their friendship, Brodsky's emigration, and the camaraderie and conflict over translation. When Kline called Brodsky in London to congratulate him for the Nobel, the grateful poet responded, “And congratulations to you, too, George!”

“A brilliant story of the three-decade-long collaboration of Joseph Brodsky and his loyal translator. Cynthia Haven draws a vivid portrait of George Kline—an intellectual, a friend, a war hero. These never-before-told stories, collected and painstakingly edited by Haven, fill in the glaring lacunae in Brodsky studies.” —Yuri Leving, author of Iosif Brodsky v RimeBrodsky’s poetic career in the West was launched when Joseph Brodsky: Selected Poems was published in 1973. Its translator was a scholar and war hero, George L. Kline. This is the story of that friendship and collaboration, from its beginnings in 1960s Leningrad and concluding with the Nobel poet's death in 1996.Kline translated more of Brodsky’s poems than any other single person, with the exception of Brodsky himself. The Bryn Mawr philosophy professor and Slavic scholar was a modest and retiring man, but on occasion he could be as forthright and adamant as Brodsky himself. “Akhmatova discovered Brodsky for Russia, but I discovered him for the West,” he claimed.Kline’s interviews with author Cynthia L. Haven before his death in 2014 include a description of his first encounter with Brodsky, the KGB interrogations triggered by their friendship, Brodsky's emigration, and the camaraderie and conflict over translation. When Kline called Brodsky in London to congratulate him for the Nobel, the grateful poet responded, “And congratulations to you, too, George!”