Striding the Borderlands: Charles Ferdinand Ramuz’s Great Fear on the Mountain, by Alice-Catherine Carls Book Reviews [email protected] Thu, 09/05/2024 - 14:03 Caroline Cingria, C. F. Ramuz, pastel (1903) / Images courtesy of Noël CordonierLumen Obscurum Light and darkness are a major part of the global human experience; their contrast is a foundation of life and has always been the source of meditations and rituals. In Genesis, the creation of night and day separated order from chaos. Absolute light and darkness exist at the two extreme ends of a prism. St. Teresa of Ávila and St. John of the Cross defined both as the presence/absence of God. The brain responds to light and darkness. The Latin poet Virgil coined the term lumen obscurum (dark light), which the French playwright Pierre Corneille phrased as obscure clarté and the Polish poet Joanna Pollakówna as avare clarté.[1] The Polish poet Aleksander Wat and the German artist Anselm Kiefer titled one of their works Lumen obscurum. In his newly translated 1926 novel, Great Fear on the Mountain (Archipelago, 2024), Swiss-French writer Charles Ferdinand Ramuz (1878–1947) uses the term obscure lumière—rendered by translator Bill Johnston as “dim light.” Merging light and darkness indicates a tension between seeing and not seeing, feeling and not feeling, knowing and not knowing. It indicates a pause during which fate hangs in the balance. It contains a vortex similar to the... Continue reading at 'World Literature Today'
[ World Literature Today | 2024-09-05 19:03:58 UTC ]
Rakuten OverDrive, a platform for digital books (used by more than 43,000 libraries and schools worldwide), has released a list of its most-borrowed ebooks and audiobooks in 2019. There are no real surprises on the list, besides maybe the fact that so many people want to listen to a woman tell... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-01-08 19:19:19 UTC ]
More news stories like this
My Afghan godfather, a bristling military man, who at one time back in the 1930s held the all-India motorcycle speed record, spoke of A Sportsman’s Notebook as one of the two or three books that formed and continued to inform his mind. I remember his copy of it lying on his bedside table,... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-01-07 09:48:06 UTC ]
More news stories like this
This week, Annalisa Quinn reviews John L’Heureux’s story collection “The Heart Is a Full-Wild Beast.” In 1984, L’Heureux wrote for the Book Review about “The Best American Short Stories 1984,” selected by John Updike. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2020-01-03 10:00:04 UTC ]
More news stories like this
The 1890s saw pioneering works of science fiction, detective fiction, and Gothic horror all published, by some of the greatest English, Scottish, and Irish writers of the age. In the United States, too, novelists addressed social issues, sometimes in comic ways, while social realism continued to... Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2019-12-31 15:00:10 UTC ]
More news stories like this
“The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison” capture the fiercely intelligent and irreverent author of “Invisible Man” in conversation with other novelists and critics of his day. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2019-12-19 10:00:10 UTC ]
More news stories like this
If you find the holidays more foreboding than cheerful, find someone to relate to in these 4 free holiday short stories available to read online. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2019-12-16 11:35:47 UTC ]
More news stories like this
In the publishing world, it seems like winning the Nobel Prize just isn’t what it used to be. A Deutsche Welle interview with Lucien Leitess, director of the Swiss publishing house Unionsverlag, explored the business of predicting a Nobel laureate’s commercial success. The controversy... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2019-12-11 19:54:24 UTC ]
More news stories like this
A deliciously original study of the cheap editions of Pride and Prejudice and other novels – ignored by literary scholars – casts new light on her readershipJane Austen aficionados think that they know the story of their favourite author’s posthumous dis-appearance and then re-emergence. For... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2019-12-11 07:30:31 UTC ]
More news stories like this
“My Brilliant Friend” and Elena Ferrante’s other best-selling books are inspiring female novelists and shaking up the country’s male-dominated literary establishment. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2019-12-09 10:00:14 UTC ]
More news stories like this
JPay made ebooks from Project Gutenberg free to incarcerated people who have their tablets last month. But...where did the money they collected for all of those Project Gutenberg books go? Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2019-12-05 11:39:33 UTC ]
More news stories like this
It’s rare for novelists to make the leap to becoming filmmakers, but Dennis Cooper has not only made the transition, his latest movie Permanent Green Light is one of the year’s best. It reworks his longtime themes of young people, intimacy, and violence to create an affecting story of... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2019-11-18 09:47:50 UTC ]
More news stories like this
It’s a confusing thing, being Irish. We’re European with none of the sophistication, and for a tiny island, we have an impressive lack of consistency. That said, we also have an impressive literary output. Our politics, social movements, and religions have born enough conflict to make a canon... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-11-15 12:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
From meditations on the d/Deaf experience to short stories blurring the mythic and the gothic with the everyday, from mixing the personal and political to a young woman uncover the truth about her family’s past – four outstanding writers have today been named on the shortlist for The Sunday... Continue reading at British Council global
[ British Council global | 2019-11-04 12:55:09 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Every now and then I encounter people who can’t suspend disbelief. They ask how I can write about ‘such terrible things’Feeling unappreciated is your lot as a writer. Few readers; no readers. Scathing reviews; no reviews. Publishers saying, “Don’t call us, we’ll call you” or not taking a punt on... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2019-11-03 17:00:27 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Macmillan's embargo on new ebooks impacts public libraries, now scrambling to make materials available to patrons. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2019-11-01 10:32:08 UTC ]
More news stories like this
TV star joins delegation to the chancellor of the exchequer demanding an end to VAT on digital books, which traditional publications escapeChildren’s laureate Cressida Cowell and former Blue Peter presenter Konnie Huq have joined 90 MPs calling on the government to scrap the “reading tax” on... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2019-10-31 15:01:27 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine EvaristoSince studying Lara as a student, I have been a fan of Bernardine Evaristo’s work, and am delighted to see her win the Booker Prize this year. Girl, Woman, Other follows the lives of twelve black characters with different backgrounds and experiences, most... Continue reading at British Council global
[ British Council global | 2019-10-30 09:49:28 UTC ]
More news stories like this
The genre is experiencing a renaissance with quality novels and short stories from new and established authors. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2019-10-29 18:17:37 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Duolingo's library of interactive short stories is finally available for mobile, particularly for iPhones. The language-learning portal's Stories feature, which offers over 100 fully voiced bite-sized stories designed to test your reading and listeni... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2019-10-29 11:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
John Steinbeck, who won both a Pulitzer Prize (in 1940 for The Grapes of Wrath) and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962, died 51 years ago, and yet he is still making news. Last month, the Los Angeles Times reported that legal squabbling over his literary estate had finally come to an end... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2019-10-21 08:49:16 UTC ]
More news stories like this