Mexico’s Nobel Prize—winning poet and essayist meditates on the Marquis de Sade and his writings. Paz (Sor Juana, 1988; The Light of India, 1997; etc.) discovered Sade when he went to Paris in 1946. Simultaneously repulsed and fascinated by the eponymous father of sadism, the poet found in him a figure crucial for the modern world. In 1947 Paz wrote a poem, “The Prisoner,” as a somewhat begrudging homage but also as an inverted votive offering to the demon that had begun to haunt his imagination. —Where are the borders between spasm and earthquake/eruption and copulation?— he wonders. The poem is the first item included in this very brief book. Second comes an essay, —Metaphors,— which Paz wrote in 1961. Here the writer seeks heroically (if also inadequately) to define Sade’s place in the order of things. Though not systematic at all, the essay coruscates with lightning bolts of insight. He shrewdly distinguishes between sexuality and eroticism, devoting his thought especially to the latter. Unlike mere sexuality, the erotic is fluid and always changing. It belongs as much to our imaginative as to our bodily lives and thus, suggests Paz, lies —beyond— fixed principle. It cannot be defined, yet it defines us. Our passions, he comments, are —more powerful than our character, our habits, or our ideas, they are not ours. We don’t possess them, they possess us.— The final piece, a short memoir of those days in Paris and people with whom he discussed Sade, adds little to the central essay but is pleasant to read. Paz’s sober inquiry into the weirdness and horror of Sade does not titillate, seek to shock, or flirt with kinky absurdities. Paz meets the Sadean challenge with uncommon intelligence and intellectual maturity. Though tiny, Paz’s new book admirably questions and explores the meaning of a figure who will not leave us alone.
Pub Date: April 3, 1998
ISBN: 0-15-100352-1
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1998
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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