Edward Said – författare

Filling a significant gap in contemporary cultural studies, Musical Elaborations examines the intersection of the public and private meaning of music. Incorporating the music criticism of Adorno, musical ideas from literary works by Proust, and criticism by Benjamin and de Man into his work, noted critic Edward W. Said discusses performers such as Glenn Gould, Arturo Toscanini, and Alfred Brendel and such composers as Beethoven, Wagner, and Strauss.

This book offers a searing portrait of Palestinian life and identity that is at once an exploration of Edward Said's unclaimable past and a testimony to the lives of those living in exile.

Edward W. Said locates Joseph Conrad's fear of personal disintegration in his constant re-narration of the past. Using the author's personal letters as a guide to understanding his fiction, Said draws an important parallel between Conrad's view of his own life and the manner and form of his stories. The critic also argues that the author, who set his fiction in exotic locations like East Asia and Africa, projects political dimensions in his work that mirror a colonialist preoccupation with "civilizing" native peoples. Said then suggests that this dimension should be considered when reading all of Western literature. First published in 1966, Said's critique of the Western self's struggle with modernity signaled the beginnings of his groundbreaking work, Orientalism, and remains a cornerstone of postcolonial studies today.

One of the late twentieth century’s most celebrated and influential public intellectuals, Edward W. Said was also a critic of astonishing range. This book presents his insightful and elegant analyses of four major operas—originally delivered as the Empson Lectures at Cambridge University in 1997—showcasing the power of Said’s critical acumen to unsettle canonical interpretations.In close readings of Mozart’s Così fan tutte, Beethoven’s Fidelio, Berlioz’s Les Troyens, and Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Said explores how each opera engages with the social and political questions of their own eras—and how they might speak to the present. He pays careful attention to the works’ historical context as well as the possibilities they open for contemporary reinterpretations, examining the tension between opera’s cultural prestige and its potential for subversion. Said considers the representation of national identity, class, and exoticism, and he shows how cultural and literary studies can enrich understandings of operatic texts and performance. Lucid and gracefully written, Said on Opera enlivens well-known works with fresh insights and demonstrates the breadth of Said’s contributions to cultural criticism.This book features an introduction by the editor, Wouter Capitain, who situates these essays in the context of Said’s career, and a foreword by the acclaimed opera director Peter Sellars, who offers a masterful appreciation of Said’s achievements.

One of the late twentieth century’s most celebrated and influential public intellectuals, Edward W. Said was also a critic of astonishing range. This book presents his insightful and elegant analyses of four major operas—originally delivered as the Empson Lectures at Cambridge University in 1997—showcasing the power of Said’s critical acumen to unsettle canonical interpretations.In close readings of Mozart’s Così fan tutte, Beethoven’s Fidelio, Berlioz’s Les Troyens, and Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Said explores how each opera engages with the social and political questions of their own eras—and how they might speak to the present. He pays careful attention to the works’ historical context as well as the possibilities they open for contemporary reinterpretations, examining the tension between opera’s cultural prestige and its potential for subversion. Said considers the representation of national identity, class, and exoticism, and he shows how cultural and literary studies can enrich understandings of operatic texts and performance. Lucid and gracefully written, Said on Opera enlivens well-known works with fresh insights and demonstrates the breadth of Said’s contributions to cultural criticism.This book features an introduction by the editor, Wouter Capitain, who situates these essays in the context of Said’s career, and a foreword by the acclaimed opera director Peter Sellars, who offers a masterful appreciation of Said’s achievements.

______________‘A beautifully poised series of dialogues about literature, music and politics, and they're a testimony to the enormous gifts and courage of both men' - Tom Paulin, Guardian'A marvellous eavesdrop on the discourse of exchange between two great intellects' - Nadine Gordimer, TLS‘An extraordinary meeting of minds in troubled times' - Financial Times‘A fascinating exchange of ideas on music, politics and literature' - Classic FM Magazine______________Israeli Daniel Barenboim, one of the finest musicians of our times, and Palestinian Edward Said, eminent literary critic and leading expert on the Middle East, were close friends for years. Parallels and Paradoxes is a series of discussions between the two friends about music, politics, literature and society. Barenboim and Said talk about, among other subjects, the differences between writing prose and music; the compromising politician versus the uncompromising artist; Beethoven as the ultimate sonata composer, Wagner (Barenboim is considered by many to be the greatest living conductor of his work); great teachers; and the power of culture to transcend national differences. Illuminating and deeply moving, Parallels and Paradoxes is an affectionate and impassioned exchange of ideas.

_______________‘A fascinating, oblique entry into the mind of one whose own writings . . . are a brilliant questioning chronicle of contemporary culture and values' - Nadine Gordimer‘Lucid, passionate ... forthright honesty and steely lucidity' - Terry Eagleton, New Statesman‘This fascinating collection ... offers a portrait ... of a vitally interesting individual' - A.C. Grayling, Independent on Sunday_______________No single book has encompassed the vast scope of Edward Said's erudition quite like Power, Politics and Culture - a collection of his interviews from the last three decades.In these twenty-nine interviews, Said addresses everything from Palestine to Pavarotti, from his nomadic upbringing under colonial rule to his politically active and often controversial life in America, and reflects on Austen, Beckett, Conrad, Naipaul, Mahfouz and Rushdie as well as fellow critics Bloom, Derrida and Foucault.Said speaks here with his usual candour, acuity and eloquence - confirming that he was in his lifetime among the truly most important intellects of our century.

_______________‘A series of dazzling case studies exploring the idea of lateness in a range of composers, writers and artists' - London Review of Books‘Gracefully unquiet, probing and wise ... Said's own elegiac masterpiece of late style' - Financial Times‘What Said stands for - critical intelligence, high art and the preservation of the language - must be at the centre of our lives. This book is a fine monument to his life and work' - Hanif Kureishi‘His own late style, if it is acceptable to call it that, mixes an easy mastery of material with an unquenched desire to preserve difficulties' - Guardian_______________On Late Style examines the work produced by great artists -Beethoven, Thomas Mann, Jean Genet among them - at the end of their lives. Said makes it clear that, rather than the resolution of a lifetime's artistic endeavour, most of the late works discussed are rife with contradiction and almost impenetrable complexity. He helps us see how, though these works often stood in direct contrast to the tastes of society, they were, just as often, announcements of what was to come in the artist's discipline - works of true artistic genius.

_______________‘Edward Said had a lifelong passion for music, and possessed the rare ability to write about it for the general reader with a lucid and penetrating intelligence' - TLS‘There are few whose command of words is sufficient not only to illuminate music, but to help music illuminate the world of those who make and listen to it. Said was one' - Daily Telegraph'The sheer eloquence of Said's writings reminds us that with his untimely death we have lost one of our most distinguished music critics.' - Maynard Solomon, The Julliard School_______________WITH A FOREWORD BY DANIEL BARENBOIMMusic at the Limits brings together three decades of Edward W. Said's essays and articles on music. Addressing the work of a wide variety of composers and performers, Said analyses music's social and political contexts, and provides rich and often surprising assessments. He reflects on the censorship of Wagner in Israel; the relationship between music and feminism; and the works of Beethoven, Bruckner, Rossini, Schumann, Stravinsky and others. Always eloquent and often surprising, Music at the Limits reinforces Said's reputation as one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century._______________‘This fine collection by one of the most perceptive music critics of the last half-century is highly recommended' - Library Journal

_______________‘A series of dazzling case studies exploring the idea of lateness in a range of composers, writers and artists' - London Review of Books‘Gracefully unquiet, probing and wise ... Said's own elegiac masterpiece of late style' - Financial Times‘What Said stands for - critical intelligence, high art and the preservation of the language - must be at the centre of our lives. This book is a fine monument to his life and work' - Hanif Kureishi‘His own late style, if it is acceptable to call it that, mixes an easy mastery of material with an unquenched desire to preserve difficulties' - Guardian_______________On Late Style examines the work produced by great artists -Beethoven, Thomas Mann, Jean Genet among them - at the end of their lives. Said makes it clear that, rather than the resolution of a lifetime's artistic endeavour, most of the late works discussed are rife with contradiction and almost impenetrable complexity. He helps us see how, though these works often stood in direct contrast to the tastes of society, they were, just as often, announcements of what was to come in the artist's discipline - works of true artistic genius.

A definitive volume expanded and updated to do justice to the four decade career of one of the most important cultural and intellectual thinkers of the 21st centuryThe renowned literary and cultural critic and political thinker Edward Said was one of our era's most provocative and important thinkers. This comprehensive collection of his work, expanded from the earlier Edward Said Reader, now draws from across his entire four-decade career, including his posthumously published books, making it a definitive one-volume source.The Selected Works includes key sections from all of Said's books, including his groundbreaking Orientalism; his memoir, Out of Place; and his last book, On Late Style. Whether writing of Zionism or Palestinian self-determination, Jane Austen or Yeats, or of music or the media, Said's uncompromising intelligence casts urgent light on every subject he undertakes. The Selected Works is a joy for the general reader and an indispensable resource for scholars in the many fields that his work has influenced and transformed.

Edward W. Said once urged the legendary Eqbal Ahmad not to leave your words scattered to the winds, or even recorded on tape, but collected and published in several volumes for everyone to read. Then those who don t have the privilege of knowing you will know what a truly remarkable, gifted man you are. In these intimate and wide-ranging conversations, Ahmad discusses nationalism, ethnic conflict, the politics of memory, and liberation struggles around the world.

"Considering the emphasis in Said's critical work on space and place and the political importance of geography, it is less surprising to see the luxuriant evocation of a specific topography of dusty roads, grottos, plump figtrees, desert flowers, muddy clods, and the "beckoning hands of lambent hills". Most revealing of all, perhaps, is the poems' tendency to see the world through musical form. Musical imagery is everywhere, testifying to how much of Said's mind in an introspective mood was immersed in the sounds, forms, and fables of Western classical music."-Timothy Brennan, from the book's IntroductionEdward Said was renowned for the breadth, erudition, and humanity of his scholarly and political writing. His ground-breaking studies of literature and culture threw a dazzling new light on the ways in which non-Western peoples have been misrepresented over the course of the centuries, and he was among the world's most prominent voices in denouncing the modern-day injustices of Western foreign policy. This volume collects all of his never-before-published poems, offering insight into the personality of the author of Orientalism, The World, the Text and the Critic, and Culture & Imperialism "to a degree hidden in those works themselves".The nineteen works collected in Songs of an Eastern Humanist canvass a variety of poetic forms, but they are all shot through with Said's capacious intellect and passionate sensibility. They are also remarkable achievements of poetic craft. Said's poetry alternates with unerring judgment between wit and pathos, between sublimely elevated and disarmingly quotidian registers.His individual lines of verse are exquisitely constructed and richly elusive, while his poems as a whole are at once sweeping in their vision and keenly evocative of sensory experience. Their publication amounts to a major literary event, marking twenty years since the great public intellectual's passing.

In his last years, looking back over questions of life, history, exile, identity and Palestine, Edward Said brings his considerable intellect and deep personal engagement to bear on some of the most troubling and volatile issues of our time. In these conversations with Tariq Ali, Said ranges back over his own dislocated existence, his initiation into politics, his involvement with the Palestine cause, his approach to the study of culture and his pervasive love of literature and music. Intimate, personal, thought-provoking and absorbing, these conversations capture Said - as political activist, cultural historian, professor of literature and music aficionado - and confirm his position as one of the most passionate and thoughtful intellectuals of our times.